I have never been optimistic about winning a war on terror, crime, or drugs because no one ever defines victory and therefore you never win. I can understand a war against a nation, but a war against an ideology does not make much sense. Such a war is better fought by law enforcement, possibly with military assistance, but not as a military campaign.A couple of excellent questions.
Technically of course there has been no declaration of war. This does not mean this is not a war, simply that it is not a legal textbook traditional war (there actually are very few of those).
The US, and the West, but also moderate muslims, is engaged in a conflict or war with what I refer to as the jihadi's: aggressive and determined muslim radicals (by no means a unified force) who have as their objective to wage holy war against both moderate muslims and all non-muslims who are not willing to accept muslim rule. This conflict is not new. I would date its beginning tot 1978-79 with the Iranian Revolution and other - unrelated but similar - movements in Afghanistan and elsewhere. For many years the US and the West tried to ignore this conflict or treat it as a simple political and security issue, but this was no longer possible after the Al Qaeda attacks on the US homeland. Since then, the US has been waging a sustained campaign, on many fronts throughout the world and with many different allies, to combat the various manifestations of the Jihadi war.
The objective of the US campaign has been to neutralize as much as possible the jihadi threat by destroying its bases, fighting the regimes and authorities that support it, seize its finances, establish counter-forces in the muslim world, etc. On the whole this campaign has been very costly in terms of costs and lives but also quite succesful. It will, however take many more years of sustained effort to defeat the jihadi threat.
Having said al that I come to the last question, which I take to be a question abouit the use of a sustained engagement on the ground in Afghanistan. I think it is debatable if the objectives we pursue there require a continued presence in force on the ground. Unfortunately, the Karzai regime is very weak and riddled with corruption. The fear (well grounded) is that after the departure of Western troops it will collapse and the Taliban will again seize power. But maybe this is inevitable. in that case it all comes down to the question wheher a new Taliban regime in Afghanistan can be contained so it doesn't pose a threat to the rest of the world. That is a difficult question to answer.
thank you for your response.
if a new taliban regime were to pose a thread, or at least a threat larger than any other regime that funds and shelters terrorists, do we really need full scale ground war with a 100,000 boots on the ground? probably not.
also, if we acknowledge that when we leave, the taliban will reconstitute, which it will, then doesn't that mean we can never leave since they will always re-take power?
the other thing i question is: how do you wage a war against a tactic? in "fighting jihadis", aren't we really waging a war on terror... defining what we're doing with those words basically makes it an endless endeavor.
Exactly. I don't see any way to win a war against a tactic or an ideology. If we had fought a war against fascism instead of fighting the germans, we'd still be waging WWII.