These projections reveal a staggering audacity – not Obama’s audacity of hope but an audacity of martial commitment. A fifty- to 100-year military campaign – the subtitle of Kilcullen’s book is Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One – will span thirteen presidential terms and twenty-five Congressional sessions, casting a long shadow over generations of politicians not yet running for office. The Long War assumes either perpetual democratic approval by many voters not yet alive or that democracy will simply be circumvented by the national security state. Bin Laden will be dead of natural causes or otherwise long before it’s over. The audacity becomes ever more dangerous without checks and balances. Without his acknowledging it, Kilcullen’s plan plays directly into what he believes is Al Qaeda’s strategy of exhausting the United States militarily and economically. And yet he thinks the Long War is inevitable. Full article.