President says war on terror can't be won

"I don't think you can win it," Mr. Bush replied. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

As recently as July 14, Mr. Bush had drawn a far sunnier picture. "I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror," he said.

At a prime-time news conference in the East Room of the White House on April 13, Mr. Bush said: "One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we are asking questions, is, 'Can you ever win the war on terror?' Of course you can."

No, McG, I don't mean to tell you any such thing. I mean to tell you that you can't always stop people from planning, but you can sure as heck try to keep them from executing those plans.

Anyway, aside from blaming Clinton, what do you think about this administrations declaring war on terror and then coming to the realization that you can't win it.

Just for fun, I'll say 'Vietnam'.

I think Bush meant that you can not ever eliminate every single terrorist everywhere in the world. But we can make the world a safer place by eliminating the majority of them. There will always be terrorists, but we can make the numbers smaller and make it difficult for them to operate in the world.

I think Bush meant that you can not ever eliminate every single terrorist everywhere in the world. But we can make the world a safer place by eliminating the majority of them. There will always be terrorists, but we can make the numbers smaller and make it difficult for them to operate in the world.

Well, I appreciate you bringing that up. Listen, I should have made my point more clear about what I was saying, you know, what I meant. What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We're fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool. They're trying to shake our conscience. They're trying to shake our will, and so in the short run the strategy has got to be to find them where they lurk. I tell people all the time, "We will find them on the offense. We will bring them to justice on foreign lands so we don't have to face them here at home," and that's because you cannot negotiate with these people and in a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say we quit. That's not the kind of war we're in, and that's what I was saying. The kind of war we're in requires, you know, steadfast resolve, and I will continue to be resolved to bring them to justice, but as well as to spread liberty -- and this is one of the interesting points of the debate, Rush, is that, you know, I believe societies can be transformed because of liberty, and I believe that Iraq and Afghanistan will be free nations, and I believe that those free nations right there in the heart of the Middle East will begin to transform that region into a more hopeful place, which in itself will be a detriment to the ability to these terrorists to recruit -- and that's what I was saying. I probably needed to be a little more articulate.

THE PRESIDENT: Right. Really what I was saying to Lauer was, is that this is not the kind of war where you sit down and sign a peace treaty. A totally different kind of war. But we will win it. Your listeners have got to know that I am, I know we'll win it, but we're going to have to be resolved and firm, and we can't doubt what we stand for, and the long-term solution is to spread freedom. I love to tell the story, Rush, about a meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi. He's my friend. He's the prime minister of Japan. It wasn't all that long ago that may dad your dad and others dads were fighting against the Japanese, but because after World War II we believed that Japan could self-govern and could be democratic in its own fashion, Japan is no longer an enemy; it's a friend, and so I sit down with him to help resolve issues like the North Korean peninsula in other words. We're working together to keep the peace. The same thing is going to happen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's when I say the transformational power of liberty. That's what I'm talking about.