Since the attacks on the Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the thwarted attack on an airliner in Pennsylvania, the nation has been on a war footing.
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For groups such as Islamic State, there is no crime of war or crime against humanity that they have not breached. The results in the last 15 years prove as much.
The September 11 attacks killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 others.
A breakup of Islamic State could send hundreds of sympathizers underground around the world, lying quietly in wait for years to build new networks and plot attacks, they said. At the end of 2015, according to a Gallup poll, Americans named terrorism the No. 1 problem facing the United States, and confidence in the government to protect us dropped to an all-time low.
“Every violent event that happens is branded a terrorist event”.
And it is a war that has come full circle.
The attacks led inevitably to the US invasion of Afghanistan, where September 11 architect Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were based.
The Taliban and al-Qaida fled to the mountains.
The UK went to war with Iraq alongside the U.S. in 2003. Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime and installed a democratically elected government, at the cost of a long fight against a determined insurgency.
We must keep that spirit alive – even as we debate more military action in the Middle East.
But al-Qaida’s powerful and locally popular Syrian branch, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, commands an army of thousands of trained fighters and now serves as a base for senior al-Qaida operatives experienced in making explosives and carrying out terrorist attacks, USA officials and terrorism experts say.
However, the 9/11 attacks have assumed a significance far greater than all other terrorist acts in the world.
While such “grand terrorism” hasn’t become a reality yet, it could be in the future. Obama’s kill-first policy, along with his desire to close Guantanamo Bay and reluctance to capture or interrogate terrorist leaders, has dried up the sources of human intelligence to help predict and prevent coming attacks.
The reason is that during this period the so-called Islamic State carried out a series of murderous attacks in the USA and Europe, where in the a year ago tragic events took place in Brussels, Paris, Nice.
The next president will have to deal with the long-term consequences of both Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and Obama’s decision to pull all United States troops out.
France, which has found itself a primary target for ISIS terror attacks, increasingly sees the U.S. reaction to 9/11 as the instigating cause of that, with several high-profile analysts and top officials saying that the post-9/11 interventions led to an “era of instability” of which much of Europe, including France, has been a victim.
Beyond Afghanistan, America’s efforts were profound and far-reaching: increasing our efforts to uncover terrorists before they struck; striving to counter their ideology; and increasing our worldwide efforts against the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Unless things change, we need to prepare for more terror in coming years, not less.
One of the many things the inquiry touched upon is the role of 9/11 in setting the scene for Iraq.
Afghan and US forces also are battling remnants of al-Qaida and a new militant group, the Islamic State (sometimes called ISIS or ISIL), which is trying to establish a foothold in Afghanistan to extend its reach eastward from the Middle East. “An average of five Americans per year have died on United States soil and approximately 20 per year have lost their lives worldwide”.
But the occupation of Iraq offered them a new opportunity, underlining how jihadi groups have resisted attempts to vanquish them and have now expanded into franchises in the Middle East, Asia, the West and parts of Africa.
In fact, despite fierce political differences between Bush and Obama and the hot rhetoric of the current campaign, there has been continuity in how America has fought the war on terrorism in the years since 9/11. They must ask this November which candidates will likely continue the Obama strategy of withdrawal – reducing American casualties in battle but accepting them at home.
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9/11 marked the first time in history that steel-framed high-rises collapsed due to fire. With Donald Trump, voters will receive a mercurial unpredictability, combined with an instinct for pulling back to our shores, discarding our alliances and leaving the Middle East to its furies. How vulnerable do you feel to violence and how much does it affect your day to day choices?
