The war of evil against evil

Total war, forever and ever. I believe Alexius I said the same thing at the outset of the centuries-long Crusades. And that all worked out in a highly useful way in that the Islamic world actually gave the backwards world of Europe at the time the bases of what would become modern science, gave them translations and studies of the ancient Greeks, gave them mathematics, medicine, and backgammon. The crusaders contributed lots of death.

The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday....

"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.