We have been waging the "war on terror" for more than 13 years now. At least, that's what we have been told by our government. But the truth is that we haven't been fighting terrorists at all. We have been fighting insurgents in Afghanistan (and now in Syria and again in Iraq) who want to establish a muslim theocracy in those countries and we haven't done a very good job of that.
We haven't won any of those conflicts because the residents of those countries, and the entire muslim world, don't see this as fighting terrorists. They view it as another christian crusade waged against muslims -- and because of that, we are creating a lot more enemies than we are killing or capturing.
We are fighting countries, but the truth is that terrorists don't have a country. They slip in and out of countries and survive nicely because we can't possibly fight every country they go in and out of. We have the best-trained and best-equipped military in the world -- and no one is better at fighting a conventional war.
But the terrorists won't fight a conventional war, and our military is not the way to fight them. Diplomacy, intelligence, and law enforcement are the only effective tools against terrorists. And it would also help to understand that not all terrorists are muslim (remember Oklahoma City, bombed by christian terrorists?).
The chart above was made from information in a series of Rasmussen Polls (the most recent being done on October 28th and 29th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3 points). It shows that while the public was fooled into thinking we were winning the "war on terror" for quite a while, now a plurality understand we are actually losing that "war". I hope it's because they are finally starting to realize we are waging that war the wrong way, and with the wrong tools.
