Can We Prevent The Next 9/11? Not Unless We Change Course Very Quickly

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives just released a report on the Biden-Harris administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is scathing. It should be. The Executive Summary reads in part:

“The Biden-Harris administration was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan, with or without the Doha Agreement and no matter the cost. Accordingly, they ignored the conditions in the Doha Agreement, pleas of the Afghan government, and the objections by our NATO allies, deciding to unilaterally withdraw from the country.”

“The Biden-Harris administration prioritized the optics of the withdrawal over the security of U.S. personnel on the ground. For that reason, they failed to plan for all contingencies, including a noncombatant emergency evacuation (NEO) and refused to order a NEO until after the Taliban had already entered Kabul. The Biden-Harris administration’s failure to prepare for a NEO and order a timely NEO created an unsafe environment at HKIA, exposing U.S. Defense Department and State Department personnel to lethal threats and emotional harm. As a result, 13 U.S. servicemembers were murdered by a terrorist attack on August 26, 2021. It was the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan since 2012.”

That’s pretty damning stuff and the criticism is well deserved. Joe and Kamala and their cronies got a lot of people killed, and they should be held to account.

All that is in the past, though, and what perhaps should command our immediate attention is what the report has to say, not about what happened in 2021 but what will happen in the future if we do not act quickly and decisively.

“In the aftermath of the withdrawal, U.S. national security was degraded as Afghanistan once again became a haven for terrorists, including al-Qaeda and ISIS-K.”

We went into Afghanistan after 9/11 to prevent it from being used as a launching pad for attacks against the United States. It had become a safe haven in which al-Qaeda could grow and gain strength. As long as such a safe haven existed, we would not be safe. 9/11 was not the end of anything. It was the beginning of a long war, one which we must win.

Our involvement in Afghanistan, poorly executed as it was, bought us time. It put the enemy on his heels. It prevented the follow-on attacks which were always intended by al-Qaeda to include chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.

Cutting and running from Afghanistan restarted the clock on the countdown to Armageddon. It gave al-Qaeda, and other similar groups, the opportunity to regroup and begin again their efforts to destroy us. Report after report by a wide variety of think tanks, intelligence officers, and military officers points out that al-Qaeda is back in force and preparing for attacks here on our soil.

In September 2021, DIA Director Berrier said “the current assessment — probably conservatively — is one to two years for al-Qaida to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland.” This assessment was echoed by Deputy CIA Director David Cohen, who said that “the one- to two-year timeline sounds about right.”

Testifying before Congress in 2024, General Kurilla commander of Central Command stated, “al-Qaeda, while weakened, still enjoys safe havens in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent operates training camps, safe houses, and religious schools in Afghanistan.”

Later that month, General Kurilla reiterated, “We do see the Taliban as harboring al-Qaeda.” The truth of that statement is irrefutable. The Taliban provide al-Qaeda with sanctuary and support and encourage the growth of that organization on Afghan soil.

The DIA confirmed in March 2023 “the Taliban maintained its decades-long ties to al-Qaeda and had not expelled legacy al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan.”  The UN assessed in June 2023 that between 30 to 60 al-Qaeda leaders and hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters were active in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Many of these al-Qaeda members have received official appointments and serve openly in the Taliban regime.

As of January of this year, it was known that al-Qaeda was operating at least eight new training camps in Afghanistan and openly recruiting jihadists to come to Afghanistan to prepare for war. The group also operates its own madrassas to indoctrinate new fighters and has a number of weapons stockpiles on Afghan soil.

A May 2024 report from the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) Senior Study Group on Counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan found “the Taliban are providing sanctuary to groups designated as terrorists” by the U.S. and the UN despite their pledge to the contrary, and added these terrorist groups “seek to work with the Taliban in Afghanistan and have pledged allegiance to the Taliban’s supreme leader.”

Retired Lieutenant General and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster stated the obvious when he testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee, “When terrorists gain control of havens and support bases they become orders of magnitude more dangerous. We know this from September 11, the most devastating terrorist attack in history, and we know it from the rise of ISIS.”

In the run-up to 9/11, we received countless warnings of what al-Qaeda intended. Bin Laden himself talked repeatedly of taking the fight to the “far enemy”, which was us. Al-Qaida attacked our embassies in East Africa. Al-Qaida almost sank the USS Cole. The signs of what was coming were everywhere.

Within the CIA, ops officers tried repeatedly to get Washington to pay attention. Operations to recruit sources inside al-Qaeda were proposed and in some cases launched. They were in all cases ultimately shut down and stymied. A proposal to kill Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms inside Afghanistan was quashed before the op could get off the ground. The White House did not want to hear about the threat. No one would sanction doing what was required to protect ourselves.

Almost 3000 Americans died as a result.

Today we are following the same path. To the extent Biden has ever talked about Afghanistan it has been to babble nonsensically about the Taliban helping us with counterterrorism. Our military leaders,  whose ethics supposedly require a dedication to the truth, tell us they are monitoring the situation from “over the horizon”.  How a drone flying out of Doha tells us what plans are being discussed amongst Al Qaida operatives in a nondescript compound somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan or sees into the minds of Al Qaida’s leaders remains unclear.

This is not a matter of “if”. It is a matter of “when”. We have given the enemy the time and the space in which to reconstitute. We have opened our borders. We have neutered our intelligence agencies, which now spend their time making “pride” flags and fighting the “patriarchy” instead of running ops and recruiting sources.

We are not just risking a repetition of 9/11 on our soil. That attack was always intended as nothing more than a preamble. The ambition of al-Qaeda was always to launch follow-on attacks using weapons of mass destruction and make what happened on September 11^th look like a good day. They came perilously close and were prevented only by operations that remain classified to this day.

The next 9/11 is coming, and it may be much worse than what happened before. No one is doing anything to prevent that. Once again we are sitting still, lying to ourselves and waiting to get hit.