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The Afghan Terrorist Threat: ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again?’

Posted on Monday, September 13, 2021
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by AMAC, John Grimaldi
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WASHINGTON, DC, Sep 13 — If Joe Biden thinks he put an end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan when he led an ill-advised, hasty surrender, he has another thing coming. It “ain’t over yet.” The SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist activity, reported on Saturday that the Wolves of Manhattan, a magazine that encourages anti-U.S. terrorism, is calling for new 9/11 style attacks using aircraft on American targets.

Newsweek reports that a principal at SITE, director Rita Katz, used Twitter on Saturday to warn of the pro-Al Qaeda magazine’s call for renewed airborne terrorist attacks in the U.S. She wrote: the edition of the “pro-AQ magazine released today [September 11] incites more attacks with aircraft.” Katz added, “As the AQ [Al-Qaeda] community continues to flood channels…their incitements remind one that AQ remains intent as ever to harm America.”

Last month Chris Costa, senior counterterrorism director under President Donald Trump, told the Associated Press: “This [the withdrawal] is a galvanizing event for jihadists everywhere.” And in an interview with Sharyl Attkisson on Sunday, Mr. Trump called it “the most embarrassing event in the history of our country. We ran from guys with knives. Good fighters, but guys with knives, we ran. We had the F-35s and the F-18s and they had knives, and it made our military look so bad, and it was decision making at the top and with some of our television generals.”

It’s not unusual to forget things as we age, like forgetting where you left your glasses. But to forget that the war in Afghanistan was triggered by a devastating terrorist attack on 9/11 shows that President Biden has forgotten that terrorism is the way the enemy likes to fight and that they will now revert to guerrilla warfare.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA Director and a member of Biden’s Democratic Party, says the Taliban that now has control in Afghanistan is the same Taliban that controlled the country that supported Osama bin Laden and his band of Al-Qaeda terrorists and that aided and abetted their 9/11 attacks. In an interview with veteran reporter Greta Van Susteren on her syndicated TV show, “Full Court Press,” he warned that the Taliban continues to support Al-Qaeda and that he believes they will be planning new U.S attacks.

Panetta said, “We were successful at making sure that the United States did not suffer another 9/11 attack. We were able to go after bin Laden and get someone who was in charge of the attack on our country and send a message to the world that nobody attacks us and gets away with it.” It begs the question: did the Biden withdrawal belie that message?

Terrorism expert Ali Soufan, CEO of The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy, says our surrender did, indeed, give lie to Panetta’s “message.” The Washington Post published a Labor Day Op-Ed piece by Soufan in which he said, “… the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 sent the opposite message … the terrorism era is far from over. A new, riskier phase has begun.”

Soufan noted that his organization was monitoring social media soon after the U.S. withdrawal and found that terrorists were being urged to set up shop in Afghanistan.

“Large swaths of Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are all, to a greater or lesser extent, ruled by non-state militias, creating an arc of instability from North Africa to South Asia. These groups work with different agendas (many, though not all, take direction from Iran’s Quds Force), but they share one thing in common: virulent anti-Americanism,” according to Soufan.

In fact, news reports tell us that 8,000 to 10,000 jihadists have entered Afghanistan since the Biden retreat and that when the Taliban seized the Bagram airbase last week, they freed 5,000 terrorist prisoners that had been held by the U.S.

On August 16, before the U.S. withdrawal began, Politico was reporting that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress the terrorist networks in Afghanistan “could gain power faster than expected.” The day before, on August 15, MarketWatch reported that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a call with senators, warned them that the U.S. could be the target of attacks by terrorists based in a Taliban-run Afghanistan. Yet President Biden was saying that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

We lost more than the war in Afghanistan; we lost the ability to effectively monitor terrorist threats. Over the past 20 years, the combined intelligence resources of Afghan and U.S. operatives provided us with advance knowledge on terrorist intentions; the spies we counted on to give us warning of attacks are gone now. And the intelligence operatives who are watching strategically from afar are limited.

The MarketWatch report says that Marc Polymeropoulos, who held several roles related to Afghanistan during a 26-year career in the CIA, the withdrawal “certainly affects our intelligence gathering footprint.”

Our enemies around the world used the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to gloat about America’s surrender in Afghanistan. The Iranian newspaper Vatan-e Emruz ran a story headlined “9/11: The beginning of America’s end. The Chinese Communist Party paper the Global Times marked the occasion by predicting more deadly attacks in the U.S.

Meanwhile, America’s progressive socialists seem to think, and say, not to worry, the 9/11 and the terror attacks over the ensuing years were no big deal. Starting with President Biden, himself, who said the worst violent event — worse than those deadly random acts of mass murder on post-9/11 America was the brou-ha-ha on January 6. He made that absurd observation during his first address in front of a joint session of Congress in April.

And then there was the shameful remark made by Pam Keith, a Democrat contender who lost an election to Rep. Brian Mast [R-FL] in 2020. As mourners gathered to honor the lives of the thousands of dead in New York City, Shanksville, PA, and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, Keith took to Twitter with the message: “People in the Twin Towers on 9/11 had to make the decision to either die in a burning building or jump to their death. How many people had to make that decision on January 6th?”

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PaulE
PaulE
3 years ago

Wars don’t end simply because one side chooses to unilaterally stop fighting. It takes both parties agreeing to cease all hostile actions for any war to truly end. Otherwise, all you have is one side standing down then allowing the other side to slaughter them at will at a time of their choosing. Sorry for the graphic language, but that is the reality of the situation. That’s not peace. That is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Unless I and the rest of the western world have totally missed the moment where fundamental Islamists stood up in unison and declared their so-called holy jihad against all infidels world-wide is now over, we are very much still at war with Islamic extremism. We’re just not currently fighting back, because our feckless leader and his party thinks Islamic extremists can now be bargained with and trusted. Even though there is no valid reason to make that assumption. So excuse me, if I don’t put a lot of faith into anything the current President or his administration says on the matter.

Mary Mc
Mary Mc
3 years ago

If our military has to fight a guerilla type of war, we need tough (non-political) military leaders that have more than a half of brain, and can make correct decisions quickly. Take some of the restrictions off our military and let them do their jobs instead of having to wait for an officer to go through the chain of command ladder, while more harm is being done, because many can’t make a decision. Oh gee, let me see, let me ask so and so. My Father-in-law was in the Battle of The Bulge, my husband was in the Army, my oldest brother was in the Navy in the Bay of Bigs, my third youngest brother was a Marine in Vietnam Nam, my step brother was a Marine in Vietnam Nam, and my oldest son was in the Army in the 101st airborne in Iraq twice – pure hell. He served our country for 23 years. I could not be prouder or more grateful to those I just mentioned – and of all of our military. PLEASE GET OUT AND VOTE AND GET THE EVIL, ANTI- AMERICAN, DEMOLITION DEMOCRATS OUT OF OFFICE IN 2022. We must start fighting back NOW with the will, determination, and strength, that Americans are known for. We must be vigilant and prepared! PRAY TO GOD to help us to do the right thing, and to make good decisions.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
3 years ago

Yes BUT:
o More powerful with our arms & equip
o More United
o appease China to remove our forces early
o worse then 2001.

Just Bill
Just Bill
3 years ago

The fat lady hasn’t sung. The radical moslims are coming back to wreck havoc in the USA. It is just a matter of time, folks. I was surprised they didn’t manage to hit us somewhere on 9-11. Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco or LA come to mind. Stay away from NYC for a while. Or, maybe somewhere else up or down the sea board. Boston, Philadelphia or New Orleans. Anywhere you can get a container ship into. Any NFL game is fair game too; large number of people, cars allowed close by to park or tailgate, or for that matter any NCAA game too. Drag a container full of explosives close by and success; lots of infidels killed. Maybe on national TV. Taking the last 2,500 folks out of Afghanistan and more importantly surrendering the Air Base assured us of that. The Afghan Army was used to close air support; take it away, and they didn’t know how to fight crazies. It doesn’t matter how capable our military is; they aren’t trying to invade, JUST KILL AMERICANS.

Gunny Joe
Gunny Joe
3 years ago

When “not” if the next event takes place, they will have but one rule of engagement, kill all the Americans they can! We are facing two problems. (1) the brain washed people of our Nation, who believe American is bad/wrong/oppressive, you get my drift. (2) a enemy with no definitive boarders who the people of no. 1 will not see as a problem. Folks if we do not change it will, and in all that I can see, be too late for America as we know it.

Raes
Raes
3 years ago

It is disheartening that SOME Americans know…or even want to know…about politics…this is why our Country is in trouble…SOME are too busy…just living life…eventually… they want have a life…just rules…unfortunately…SOME accept…just rules…Live in a communist country for a while…maybe then…SOME will appreciate America…keyword… “SOME”…I agree with…Mark Levin…Why are we supporting our own demise?…We are in trouble…Please WAKE UP AMERICA…

Philip Hammersley
Philip Hammersley
3 years ago

Twenty years, billions of $$, thousands of dead service members and maimed service members and we are right back where we were on 9/11/01. Barry O was correct, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to ( ) everything up.”

Tish
Tish
3 years ago

We shouldn;t have been nice guys the first 20 years, but if izlamists dare attack us again, we should bomb them off the face of the earth ~ ALL of them.

Robin Walter Boyd
Robin Walter Boyd
3 years ago

We are being attacked by extremist Progressives of the far Left internally and by extremist fundaMENTALists of the far right from abroad, and they are working together to bring down the U.S. as a Constitutional Republic. If their combined efforts are successful, just what sort of world will it be with those two extremes free to battle one another without the U.S. to protect citizens? If the U.S. falls, there will remain two evil forces fighting over the rights to the Earth’s population.

Becky
Becky
3 years ago

As long as the murderous pieces of crap wipe DC into a thousand foot crater, let them have at it.
Then we need to, in turn, turn the entire Middle east and islamic Africa into glass. And do it right this time.

Constant de Calonne
Constant de Calonne
3 years ago

One faulty step ie. Quick Afghan withdrawal with absolutely no
pre planning nor ANY after thought. And MULTIPLE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES HAUNTING USA !

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