Eli Lake, Columnist

How Trump Could Finally Win the War on Terror

Unlike Bush and Obama, the president-elect can describe the enemies for what they really are.

December 9, 2016 at 9:58 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Telling it like it is.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer

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When Donald Trump becomes president next month, he will inherit a long war that risks becoming a permanent one.

George W. Bush began it after 9/11, when he called it the "war on terror." Barack Obama has tried and failed to end it. "Democracies should not operate in a state of permanently authorized war," he warned in his last major national security speech Monday. In this spirit, he laid out a series of principles he believed should guide America's counterterrorism efforts.