Looking Back at the War on Terrorism on this 9/11/2021

 Looking back today at our war on terrorism since the 20^th anniversary of 9/11 is at hand.  I thought about the timing of the growth of three terrorist organizations. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Isis.  

Al Qaeda started in 1988 under Bush 41 but really didn’t start to grow very much until the early 90’s.  At that time another group was forming, the Taliban.  Both groups grew and were under the radar of our then President Williams J. Clinton.  One could argue that because they were under the radar they were allowed to grow and flourish under his administration culminating in Al Qaeda’s attack on the US less than 9 months after President George W. Bush was inaugurated in January of 2001.  We know the outcome of allowing or ignoring Al Qaeda’s rise to power when the Twin Towers came down, the Pentagon was hit and a fourth plane that was headed for the Capital building in Washington D.C. was thwarted by the heroic actions of the plane’s passengers which prevented that group of terrorists from reaching their target.

President Bush’s administration waged what could be considered a successful war against Al Qaeda and to some extent the Taliban for the next seven years as well as the war in Iraq. 

President Barak H. Obama continued to fight the war on terrorism that was started under President Bush, but one could argue that it was more half-hearted in its execution because of changes in the rules of engagement the military was forced to fight under.  While his administration made some strides and had some success including the killing of Bin Laden.  They also had a series of blunders and failures in places like Iraq, Benghazi, and others.  The Obama administration severely underestimate ISIS, calling them the JV team and were not successful in stopping the spread of ISIS throughout the middle east, not to mention the growing strength of the Taliban again under the radar of a democratic administration following the vacuum of leadership that remained after the Americans withdrew from Iraq.

President Trump and his administration took over the fight and took on ISIS and our military was unshackled and quickly drove ISIS back, Freeing Iraq from ISIS rule as well as other areas of the middle east.  He pushed for the end to fighting in Afghanistan and developed a plan for a conditional withdrawal. While the date was earlier than the August 31^st that President Biden set, one could argue if President Trump's withdrawal plan of civilians and allies first, equipment next and military last, he may have well been able to complete it on his timetable. 

But elections have consequences, and we will never know If he and his administration could have completed this withdrawal in the timeframe he originally set.  President Biden decides to withdraw the military without coordination with our allies in the middle of the might leaving civilians to the mercy of the Taliban.  Now he said nobody could have predicted this would happen. Apparently, he did not learn from the history of Vietnam in the 70’s or even the abandoning of Iraq during the Obama administration of which he was a part.  ISIS took over in record time just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, (George Santayana) who was later misquoted by Winston Churchill saying that “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”. Regardless of who said it or how they said it, President Biden who lived through both tragic withdrawals in Vietnam and Iraq should have learned from his own history as a participant in those historic events and should have known this would happen again. 

Islamist terrorists had been allowed to thrive and grow under three presidents.  Al Qaeda under President Clinton, ISIS under President Obama, and now the Taliban has taken over an entire country and is gaining strength beyond what they enjoyed under the Clinton years under this president, Joe Biden. 

Apparently, the democratic party and its leaders either don’t care that these groups are brutalizing women and minorities, destroying all of the progress made over the last 20 years just as long as it doesn’t have an effect on the democratic party power base and their vision of a one-party system of government for Americans under their own iron fist.   Maybe they are allowing this to happen to give them a road map for their own takeover of our nation and how to take care of those who oppose them in the name of freedom.