Winning

Bush's comments (and now furious backpedaling) that we will never be able to win the war on terror raise the interesting question of how you can defeat something when you can't even name it. As many others have pointed out, terror is a method, not an opponent. In World War II, we didn't fight a war to defeat blitzkriegs, we fought a war to defeat fascism and militarism. At the end of the day, this is a war against Islamic fundamentalism and its various secular Arab allies. Why the pretense of never mentioning the true enemy here? Are they afraid of roiling Arab sensibilities? But if that's the case, it doesn't sound like a clear plan for victory.