The Hundred Years War?

Okay, this is a little disturbing. At the Mooney Times, Brigadier General Robert Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, speaks out...

Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.

"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.

Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.

The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.

"We do not go as far as to say it is a global insurgency, because it lacks a centralized command and control," he said.

Groups such as al Qaeda, though, are constantly trying to increase their capabilities, and in some cases are outstripping the United States, Gen. Caslen said.
"We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communications -- either to recruit or train," he said. Compared with historical jihads, or enduring Muslim wars, this one "is accelerated because of its capability in communications."

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