The Long War

The Long War is the most recent Bush administration official rebranding of its permanent Global War on Terror (GWOT), which was briefly rebranded as the global struggle against violent extremism (G-SAVE) in May 2005 and quickly reversed to the global war on terror by President George W. Bush in August 2005.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking on February 2, 2006, before the National Press Club, delivered a speech "which aides said was titled 'The Long War'." Rumsfeld's speech came "on the eve of the Pentagon's release of its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets out plans for how the U.S. military will address major security challenges 20 years into the future," Josh White and Ann Scott Tyson wrote in the February 3, 2006, Washington Post.
Rumsfeld said that the United States is "engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world," they wrote. "Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the 'long war,' likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake."