The war isn’t over. Afghanistan is just one front in a global conflict that the United States did not initiate and cannot wish away. When participants in the worldwide Salafist-jihadist movement look at the developments of the last week, they don’t see reasons to quit their mayhem. They see the chaos, panic, violence, disorder, and American retreat as a vindication of their ideology and a spur to further action. Every threat or attack that emanates from Afghanistan will testify to U.S. stupidity and weakness. Kabul will be the global capital of anti-Western jihad. A state provides a better terrorist sanctuary, and has far more versatile capabilities, than a movement. A state gives a movement safe harbor, institutional support, and physical inspiration for “lone wolves” in the West to murder unbelievers. International terrorism flourished alongside the Islamic State of ISIS. Such a state is what the Taliban will build. So the Forever War isn’t over—it’s entered a new phase, where the enemy has the upper hand.
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Yes, and islamists now control more territory in Afghanistan now than they did before 9/11.
And at the same time we’re letting thousands more unvetted Muslims into the U.S…
Our F.B.I., who are supposed to be finding the terrorists infiltrating our borders, are too busy looking for the “far-right extremists” and “white supremacists” among us, and running undercover operations to set up protesting patriots for arrest, to pay any attention to such islamophobic silliness as capturing actual terrorists.
What could possibly go wrong?
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