If Defense Secretary Gates is unable to provide a clear answer to that question, the answer is pretty clear and speaks volumes.
A member of the audience later asked Gates whether he thought the United States is winning the terror war.This sounds like quite a divide from the Bush administration's plan to focus exclusively on the military while ignoring the political intricacies of Iraq and the region. He doesn't do nuance, remember?
He cited areas of progress, including the elimination in late 2001 of Afghanistan as a haven for al-Qaida. But he also said the Islamic extremists have managed since then to expand their recruiting grounds.
"On the negative side of the ledger, I think we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation," he said.
He called for more "creative thinking" to address the root causes of Islamic extremism, but he added that even those efforts will not be the complete answer to winning what he called a long war on terrorism.
"One of the disturbing things about many of the terrorists that have been caught is that these are not ignorant, poor people," he said. "These are educated people, often from professional families. So dealing with poverty and those issues is not going to eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce the pool of people prepared to give their lives for this cause."
