Regional Flux and the Long War

"Former Commander of CENTCOM General John Philip Abizaid, born to a Christian Lebanese-American father and fluent in Arabic and knowledgeable in Middle Eastern culture, coined the phrase long war to describe the conflict with extremist Islamic groups such as al Qaeda. This phrase was dropped by Admiral William J. Fallon, but the idea is the same and the conflict will not go away because the phrase isn’t used at CENTCOM any more.
Michael Yon has posted an interesting and well-supported article entitled Al Qaeda is Defeated. He documents the perspective of a powerful South Baghdad tribe concerning al Qaeda violence in their city."
Captain's Journal