U.S. Has No Idea Whether al-Qaida is Beat

The official continued, “I think it is a very useful exercise, for us and for you all, to think about how do you conceive of the defeat of an organization like al-Qaida? But I think, I’ve said in the past, determining whether or not we’ve achieved strategic defeat may be more a question for historians than for analysts.”

So they are going to leave it to historians to decide when the country can get back to normal levels of security and military posture?