Are we winning or losing the war on terror?

The so-called "war on terror" began on September 11 2001 ("9/11") as a response to the four attacks on the United States. 13 years later no allied victory is in sight – indeed the "war" is only getting bigger.

Outcomes of wars are usually difficult to predict while the war is underway. Right up until the northern autumn of 1918 (four years into World War I), for example, it would have been difficult to predict the war's outcome, with both sides attacking and counter-attacking. Suddenly Germany surrendered, even though it had lost none of its metropolitan territory.

Similarly, we have no way of predicting the outcome of the current "war on terror".

First, it is not clear just who is the enemy. The enemies in the two world wars, for example, were obvious and the allies were able to declare victory when the enemies had formally surrendered and their capital cities overrun.

The allies in 2001 failed to identify the enemy. Sometimes it was the Arabian expat Osama bin Laden, sometimes it was the ethnic Afghan force the Taliban, sometimes it was the foreign legion of expat warriors in Al Qaida ("Afghan Arabs").

A lot has changed since 2001, not least with death of bin Laden and the destruction of his al Qaida network in Afghanistan. But we are still at war. Indeed the "war" is getting bigger.

I am still not clear on our war aims. Just who is the "enemy"? What are we seeking to achieve?

Second, the geographical area of operations has expanded. Violence derived from groups operating with a particular interpretation of Islam has now swept through the Middle East and south Asia and is now flourishing in northern Africa and western Africa (such as Boko Harem in Nigeria) and across to eastern Africa. The violence is also attracting impressionable young people from developed western countries, including Australia.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader ("caliph") of the Islamic State, is the new idol for many Islamicist warriors. In only a few years he has achieved far more than bin Laden ever managed to do in terms of claiming territory and wealth.

He has clearer war aims than does the west. He is seeking to redraw the boundaries created by the UK and France at the end of World War I. These two countries broke up the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and took the land for themselves. They invented the modern states of Iraq, Syria etc. He does not accept that division and is seeking to unite the Sunni Arabs.

History suggests that excessively violent regimes eventually fall prey to their own violence, such as the French Revolution and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Eventually the violent people turn the violence on themselves and kill each other off or the threat is so large that other countries eventually intervene, Either way, I cannot see the Islamic State being around for many years.

But would its eventual demise (after a lot more suffering) mean the end of the "war on terror"? Probably not. There will be other people of violence with a similar religiously-inspired political agenda. This is going to be a "long war".

Finally, bin Laden knew that to destroy the western world he would need the cooperation of western countries. Empire dies through suicide and not murder.

The media have played along with the Islamicists by providing them with the oxygen of publicity. "Kill one – and scare a million". The average American stands a far great chance of dying from food poisoning than from terrorism – but the media focus on terrorism. Far more people die on the roads than die in wars – but wars sell newspapers.

Governments have played along by eroding civil liberties in the name of "national security". All of the new legislation will remain in place forever (or until it is replaced by even more strict legislation). This is going to be a "long war". A new "security-industrial complex" has been built on top of the "military-industrial complex". People will not want to lose their jobs no matter how irrelevant their work is.

Governments and media are playing according to the Islamicist game. The Islamicist leaders know they may not have long for this earth and so they write a great deal on their strategy and tactics for their successors to learn from. Many of the readings are available and interpreted into English.

For example, the new Caliph, then writing under the name of Abu Bakr Naji, set out in 2004 (The Management of Savagery) how he would defeat the US. The US should be provoked into invading the Middle East where the troops are easier to kill than back in the US. (The current beheadings are not just insane acts of violence – they are done with the deliberate intention of engendering anger in the west). The US can be counted on to use excessive violence and so alienate a lot of Arabs. The retaliatory violence inflicted on the US troops will in turn lead to social unrest back in the US and so the US will be defeated. This would provide evidence that the Islamicists were on a winning streak. Moderate Sunnis will realize that they would be better off supporting the Islamic State.

In short, the west is engaged in a "long war" of low intensity conflict. But politicians and media just bounce along from one event to another without seeing the big picture. The west needs clear war aims and a clearer perception of the conflict in which it is now engaged.