It's going to be a Long War, as the terminology once called this struggle, given what the Islamic world has to overcome:
Interviews with refugees from the fighting in Iraq and Syria as well as people still in those countries shows that over 80 percent believe the Islamic terrorists in general and ISIL and al Qaeda in particular are creations of the West (particularly the United States) and Israel as a means to destroy their countries and Islam. This is nothing new and while all this is unbelievable to most Westerners and largely ignored by Western media and politicians it is very real and has been for a long time. Media in these countries is full of even more fanciful (to Westerners) inventions.
Not that the West is immune to this type of thinking. Think "truthers" on various subjects, whether 9/11, our president's place of birth, or Area 51.. But this is fringe thinking and not dominant in our society as it is in the Islamic world.
So we'll be on the frontlines of fighting jihadis to keep them at bay for a long time, unless we want to go back to the days when jihadis could plot against us and send their jihadis to America, relying on our homeland defenses to stop the attacks at or within our borders.
I know it is tiring. It is expensive and it is draining to be at war. But it is not true, as the pacifist thinking once routinely claimed, that it takes two to make war. In a perfect world, only your own side wages war against a passive enemy.
And if we decide to responsibly end our part of the war, figuring there is some acceptable collateral damage we will accept rather than fight (and perhaps we'll hope that at some point they will have killed enough of us to satisfy their limitless sense of grievances), our enemies will happily kill us for as long as they want.
Don't count on that. Our jihadi enemies are on a mission from God, as Strategypage is wont to put it.
