Say more about this. Do you mean analogous to the Cold War in that the actual shooting is a proxy event as opposed to direct conflict?
What I'm talking about? The time scale we are looking at, 6 years V decades(at least), for most part WWII was fought by America in the Pacific and western Europe today we are find Islamic terrorists on every continent. In WWII we were fight 3 nations, in this war there really is no nation we are fighting but an idea (Radical Islamism) (yes I know USSR was the main enemy, so this is not a 100% fit). WWII was a conventional war, this war is basically a guerilla war like most of the cold war.
So no I don't mean that, direct conflict with who? It really is a battle of ideas more than anything else.
Dunno about Valin, but I think the analogy is that it's going to be a very long war, without a specific geographic objective.