On September 20, 2001, days after the horrific events of 9/11, former President George W. Bush made this pledge before a joint-session of Congress.

"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated," Bush said.

Sixteen years later, America's so-called 'War on Terror' continues.

"This is the most complicated threat environment the United States has seen in recent memory," said Mike Pompeo, president Trump's nominee to lead the CIA.

From the desert sands of the Middle East to the shores of Africa to Asia to here at home, a new study shows the U.S. has already spent nearly five trillion dollars trying to defeat terrorism.

"As a nation we are reminded almost daily that the threats to our homeland have not receded in any way," warned John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general taped to be Secretary of Homeland Security. "The challenges to our way of life have not diminished."

Tens of thousands of terrorists have been killed. In Syria and Iraq alone, the U.S. military estimates that some 50,000 ISIS fighters have been eliminated.

And yet the threat from the Islamic group continues.

"ISIS remains a resilient movement that still controls major urban centers throughout the Middle East," Pompeo said during his confirmation hearing. "We must ensure that they and those they inspire cannot expand their reach."

To do otherwise, says the new head of the Defense Department, would have deadly consequences.

"Increasingly, we see islands of stability in our hemisphere, democracies here, Europe and Asia, under attack by non-state actors and nations that mistakenly see their security in the insecurity of others," said retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis.

In the east African nation of Kenya, where authorities have welcomed America's help in fighting a deadly Islamic terrorist organization, some are looking forward to working with a new administration that isn't reluctant to confront the enemy head on.

If there's one thing the Kenyans appreciate about Donald Trump it is that he is not afraid to name the enemy.

And so far, based on his selection for his national security advisor, the CIA post and attorney general, all three men have called it, 'radical Islamic terrorism'.

Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, and Michael Leeden, a foreign policy analyst, are co-authors of The Field of Fight.

They say Obama's reluctance to recognize the religious motivation behind terrorism has made the U.S ineffective in executing the war on terror.

"Since the days of Sun Tzu that you can't defeat an enemy that you cannot describe or define and by making it impossible for the west to talk about radical Islam it made it impossible for us to design a strategy that would ultimately defeat it," Leeden told CBN News.

Trump has vowed to be more forthright than Obama, saying numerous times, that he will take the fight to radical Muslims.

"We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism just as we have defeated every threat we faced at every age and before but we will not defeat it with closed eyes or silent voices," Trump said during a speech in Ohio on August 15, 2016.

Flynn and Leeden argue that Trump, must among other things, also take on the ideology of radical Islam, if we are to ever win this war on terror.

"We must go after them ideologically," warned Leeden. "We have to go after them militarily, we have to destroy their armies and we have to humiliate them in front of their own people