When trained soldiers are shooting at each other and engaging in combat-maneuvers, it takes a great deal of mental gymnastics not to call it a battle. Would you prefer "skirmish"? I can get behind that, but that's a difference of scale, not nature.

What we witnessed on Friday was a coordinated attack by members of a self-proclaimed state. If you don't want to call it a battle, you're just arguing semantics. It remains a military operation on our soil by a foreign state.

Moreover, let's not forget the explicit message behind these attacks: Daesh can visibly attack (mostly) when and where it wants. The subtext is that this is going to happen again, as it already has. So yes, the only reasonable way to relate to Friday's events is to consider them as a battle in an ongoing conflict against a geopolitical entity (or a skirmish if you prefer).

Again, and I truly mean no disrespect: denying this is so absurd that there's really no point in discussing it further, as we simply will not agree. Denying that this was a battle/skirmish is just as absurd as claiming that this has nothing to do with Islam (as, sadly, some people are already doing).