President George W. Bush stood firm and resolute in the days after 9/11 and declared — without equivocation — that America would not go to war “against Islam.”

Our enemy, he told a grief-stricken nation, are the religious perverts who acted in the name of a mainstream religion.

Then we went to war against terrorists.

President Barack Obama came into office eight years later and said the same thing. He has followed through on President Bush’s declaration. Yet those who condemn Barack Obama’s strategy choose to ignore the war policies enacted by his immediate predecessor in the White House.

So, what does a one-time congressional leader and former candidate for president of the United States want to do? He wants to go to war against Islam. Newt Gingrich said last night the nation needs to apply “tests” to Muslims to determine if they believe in Sharia law, which he said is incompatible with “western civilization.”

The former speaker of the House has given the radical Islamists a lead-pipe-cinch recruitment tool. He has just delivered to them all the evidence many of the terrorists need to justify their jihad against the United States and our many allies around the world.

Two presidents — one Republican and one Democrat — who’ve been up to their armpits in this on-going war against radical Islamic terrorists have laid down an important marker that Newt Gingrich has declared no longer matters.

Suffice to say, at least, that Newt no longer is in a position to turn his shrill rhetoric into public policy.

Thank goodness, at least, for that reality.