Pakistan

9/11, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Pakistan, Taliban, War on Terror

Has al Qaeda won the War on Terror? (plus an update on Afghanistan from Bill Roggio)

by  • 

Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal provided Freedom Radio an update last night on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In part, he said, “The momentum has definitely shifted towards the Taliban and towards al Qaeda, particularly over the last year … the U.S. military, NATO, and Afghan government admit the Taliban openly controls 11 … of the 34 Providences in Afghanistan.”

Roggio recently did the math and found that since January 2008, “74 airstrikes and ground raids the Taliban and al Qaeda’s network in Pakistan’s lawless tribal agency [have killed] 13 senior al Qaeda leaders and one senior Taliban leader [and] sixteen other mid-level al Qaeda and Taliban commanders and operatives.”

General McChrystal was placed in command to fight a counter-insurgency operation there with the mission to protect the civilian populace and train up the Afghanistan army and police. The mission entailed setting the conditions for good governance, the infusion of aide, and the building of needed infrastructure. Yet he does not currently have in country sufficient troops to do all those things. Roggio explains the General’s frustration:

“We will not invade northwest Pakistan. … There is another irony with this. Last year, what were we told? We were told conducting cross-border attacks into Pakistan was illegal, it’s immoral, it’s against international law, [and] what we’re doing is killing civilians. Now the same people who told us that was bad want to ramp up those types of attacks. What am I missing here? It is a convenient way out. They’ve learned that Afghanistan is much harder than they thought. They thought everybody supports Afghanistan, it’s the “good” war … but once they found out how difficult [it is] and what the situation was, now they want to back off.”

Click the speaker to listen to Bill Roggio’s 27-minute interview (Windows Media Audio file – see note below):

Me: Perhaps it is fair to say the previous administration “took its eye off the ball” yet most Americans and the media all but forgot about Afghanistan. Pakistan stood by and watched the Taliban reconstitute and grow to more than 100,000 armed insurgents in its northwest and tribal areas. American intelligence officials have shown the Pakistan government evidence that from 8,000 to 14,000 al Qaeda are operating under protection in those areas and helping to train the Taliban’s fighters. In addition, Pakistan’s ISI watched as a total of 62 terror camps opened and now “15,000 to 20,000 trained militants” are directly aimed at India.

President Barack Obama is at a decision point. With McChrystal’s troop requests and recommendations in hand, he is considering whether to change the mission in Afghanistan back to counter-terrorism. Before he decides, America should ask itself a few questions.

If destroying al Qaeda’s ability to conduct terrorism worldwide, denying them sanctuary anywhere, and bringing justice to the murderers of 2,976 men, women, and children on 9/11 was the right mission back then, is it not the right mission today?

Will we accept the occasional mass-murder of our citizens both home and abroad?

Will we let Israel stand alone as again six million Jews face incineration?

While we have the world’s finest military and troops, have the civilians they defend lost the will to fight?

Has al Qaeda won the War on Terror?

——

Note: A 13 MB mp3 file of the interview is available here to download.

9/11, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Iraq, Pakistan, WMD, World Trade Center

Al Qaeda says would use Pakistani nuclear weapons

by  • 

Reuters reported yesterday what we already know, that the ‘ticking time-bomb’ scenario the Leftists disparage as fear-mongering is one al Qaeda would gladly set a clock for and see go off:

DUBAI, June 21 (Reuters) – If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.

Pakistan has been battling al Qaeda’s Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.

“God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al Qaeda’s in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.
…
Abu al-Yazid, also known as Abu Saeed al-Masri, said al Qaeda will continue “with large scale operations against the enemy” — by which he meant the United States.

“We have demanded and we demand that all branches of al Qaeda carry out such operations,” he said, referring to attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, according to many (such as at Think Progress and the Huffington Post), 9/11 was a “one off,” just a minor mass murder in the big picture of geo-political affairs — nothing to learn from or remember about the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or that hole in the ground outside of Shanksville so move on.