"The current war on terrorism requires fighting with ideas." 


Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, USAF  
deputy director for the war on terrorism
within the strategic plans office of
the Pentagon's Joint Staff 
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Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler:  

"We're in a generational war. You can try and fight the enemy where they are and where they're attacking you, or prevent them and defend your own homeland. 

But that's not enough to stop it. We've got to break the chain, and that's ... the ideology. We really need to show the errors in Islamist extremist thinking. Continued...

I don't care about the politics. I care about people understanding the facts of what's our enemy is thinking about, what's our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight. They're absolutely committed to the 50-, 100-year plan. 

One of my concerns is how to maintain the American will, the public will over that duration, America's past wars lasted three to four years and sustaining support for longer wars is very difficult.
 
We're pretty convinced that the extremists are not ever going to give up the fight, they are driven by the concept of jihad that makes it a religious duty to wage terrorist war. communists by militarily taking them to the battlefield. We took them to the intellectual battlefield and beat them

The current war on terrorism requires fighting with ideas. In the Cold War, we didn't beat ... the against their ideas, the ideology of communism. 

One goal is to disrupt al Qaeda efforts to "radicalize" young people ages 19 to 25 through educational efforts. Another objective is to assist moderate Muslims who see extremism as unacceptable. 

Ultimately, Muslim scholars, clerics and other religious and government leaders will have to take a stand," albeit one that carries grave risks because of the extremists' harsh methods."