You seem to totally miss the last sentence, so let me reiterate it.
*The conflict is formless*
The foes in the conflict are not formless, but thats beyond the point. When you have killed 1 000 terrorist, has the war been won? 100 000? a million? 10 millions? The formlessness is the conflict itself, since no one, not even you can define it.
Thus the conflict itself can not be won, it can only be fought perpetually. The deepest spy cannot discern what is needed to be destroyed for victory, and the wise can not device a plan for it.
The fact that I disagree with a lot of HN reasoning about the "global war on terror" leads a lot of people to believe that I support the "global war on terror". While I'm not exactly outraged by the targeted killing of people who are trying to blow up passenger jets from a safe house in Yemen, I definitely don't support the overall effort. I think a "war" on what is essentially a brand name is an unbelievably bad idea, one I worry that history will probably pick out as one of our top 5 worst ideas.
Thus the conflict itself can not be won, it can only be fought perpetually. The deepest spy cannot discern what is needed to be destroyed for victory, and the wise can not device a plan for it.