The rising price of gas and the Montanans in combat with our armed forces remind us daily of the dangers we face from our Islamic enemies. If the situation worsens, the economic effects could hit real estate prices and hurt the local construction boom. So what is this “war” we are in?

It is a war that can be neither won nor lost over the next decade. Our invasion of Iraq has won more converts to the cause of the jihadists among Muslims throughout the world, including Europe. Destabilizing Iraq has strengthened Shi’ite and Sunni extremists, and made them more popular.

The frustration feeding extremism is growing. Most Muslims remain poor, so many emigrate. Arabs have been repeatedly embarrassed by Israeli successes. The Qu’ran says Jews should be tolerated as subservient inferiors, so most non-Arab Muslims sympathize with the hapless Palestinians. Israel is seen as a Western, increasingly American proxy that perpetuates the several centuries of humiliating Christian domination of Islam. Rising India is the object of increasing wrath because of Kashmir. We cannot fix any of this.

Resentful Islamists, however, can never win their war. When they control a country, as they have in Iran and Afghanistan, they alienate most people who want prosperity and security, not fanatical puritanism or endless war. Islamic terrorists can kill some, but cannot destroy us. Those Americans who speak of an emerging World War III are wrong. Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the USSR could have destroyed us; Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda, even with Syria and Iran, can’t come close. That is the point of terrorism; it is the psychological weapon of the weak.

So, what is to be done? Our first line of defense, our human intelligence services, is in sad shape. No amount of electronic wizardry can replace a network of spies who need to be recruited from the ranks of Muslims themselves. The CIA’s spying and analytic talents began to be dismantled under the Carter administration, and in the past few years, they have been so further degraded as to be almost useless. We have many friends in the Muslim world who desperately fear their own extremists, but we have alienated them by our counterproductive bumbling in Iraq. Most friendly, educated Muslims no longer trust America’s judgment.

We get essential intelligence help from our European allies, but have endangered it by our pointless refusal to honor international treaties.

We must turn back to our own experts both in and out of government. After 9/11 our leaders never listened to them. We need to reopen the American libraries that won over so many young intellectuals in the Muslim world and elsewhere in the past, but were mostly closed down in the 1990s to save a little money. We need to make these libraries accessible, and not turn our cultural centers abroad into fortresses. We need to make it easier for Muslim students to come to our universities in America, even as we also make sure they are really students, and not just terrorists learning how to fly airplanes. A little common sense and a culturally more sophisticated domestic intelligence service would go a long way toward making this possible.

All this calls for patience and hard work, not panic. Those who now hate us will not change their minds, but they can be contained, and over time many who are not now committed can be won over. We do not need to abandon Israel or give in, but we do need to think of the future. We need to be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, to train more experts, to cultivate potential friends. We were very good at that during the Cold War.

This new struggle cannot be won by military might alone. We cannot impose our idea of democracy on populations that do not trust us. We cannot make friends just by throwing our weight around. So we have to look at this as an effort that will have to last one or two generations. Thinking otherwise has misled our top leaders, and for that we have paid a steep price. Eventually we will learn and adapt, but there is much lost ground to be regained.