We could end this one tomorrow, the same way we ended that one, but I'd prefer not, Helen.
Not to mention, WW2 was an entirely different form of warfare. The enemy had homelands, capitals, infrastructure and industry that could be bombed to defeat them. They met us on the battlefield in open, set piece battle. This enemy hides among civilians, dresses as civilians, is part of no government nor based in any large scale fashion in any one country, it is not dependent on logistical routes, supply chains, industries or natural resources it needs to keep on fighting which we can take out to crippled them. They rarely engage our forces openly in battle and largely engages in terror attacks on civilians and sissified stand off attacks like IEDs when they do engage our forces.
There is no Al Qaeda capital that can be bombed to ruin like Berlin or Tokyo and no civilian population that can be tired out through constant bombing raids on their cities such that pressure can be brought to bear on the enemy itself to disengage. Nor is there a civilian economic structure that can be destroyed that would dissable Al Qaeda.
To try to compare WW2 to this war, and frankly any war, and to use that as a benchmark as to how long asymetrical warfare should last is the height of stupidity and sloppy thinking, which I suppose is Helen Thomas' stock in trade really.
World War II didn't not begin on December 7th. We did not engage an enemy that we needed to.
Communists in America were against us going to war against Hitler. Just like they were against the war in Vietnam and were against the war against Saddam (WHICH IS OVER).
How can Helen Thomas call this the same war? It would be like clocking the entire Cold War onto the end of WWII since it began soon after.