The key to the War on Terror is the same as the key to any post-tribal war. The War on Terror is not an ideological fight, it has little to do with nations, religions or any broad strategies.

The core of the War on Terror is exactly the same as that of a football game. "National security" has become a sport, and an ideology is considered valid to the extent it can win on the battlefield. In that sense, the radical groups that attacked America on 9/11 have succeeded in getting a sort of parity with the major world powers.

When, the United States and its allies leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will have a stature in the third world far beyond anything that Vietnam saw after the U.S. withdrew from S.E. Asia. But the Taliban will not have "won", they will have brief independence as a group, followed by the practical problems that they were briefly saved from by the War on Terror.

If radical religion (of any kind) could be isolated from rational influences it could be secure for years or decades. In today's world that is just not possible. George Orwell's observations about human nature and the inevitable victory of a person's need for individuation over their need for group identity are valid in every human society.

Ultimately, the extremists on all sides of the War on Terror are individuals striving to extract a permanent identity from a transient group.