Victor Davis Hanson: 'The next three and a half years, I think, will be our most dangerous since the 1950s of the Cold War'
Media top headlines August 20
In
media news today, the Los Angeles Times says Kamala Harris now 'owns'
Afghanistan policy after touting her role in withdrawal decision,
Columbia Journal Review torches NYT, CNN for their roles in the 'Cuomo
myth,' and media outlets repeat Biden remark that GOP governors are
'banning masks in schools'
The Biden-ordered Afghanistan
withdrawal and subsequent Taliban takeover has increased the global
terror threat to its highest point in two decades, and without U.S.
intelligence operatives in the region, an al Qaeda 9-11 style attack may be imminent, experts warn.
Dr. Tom Copeland, an expert in intelligence failures and mass casualty terrorist attacks
and director of research at the Centennial Institute told Fox News on
Thursday that the fall of the Afghan government will likely coincide
with the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th
terrorist attack. Moreover, Copeland warned, the United States'
complete withdrawal could presage another attack of that nature on U.S.
soil.
"Having an entire country as a safe haven, will give [al
Qaeda] more physical space and more breathing space to reconstitute and
go back to planning major events, so I think the U.S. withdrawal itself
is a large part of that threat," Copeland said.
TALIBAN GOING ‘HOUSE TO HOUSE,’ HANGING PEOPLE WHO WORKED WITH U.S.: SOURCE
With
the country under complete Taliban control, al Qaeda is expected to set
up shop and fully resume operations, making terror attacks on the West
an ever-present national security concern, he explained.
The fear,
Copeland said, is that for the first time in nearly 20 years, the U.S.
will be blind on the ground with the absence of an embassy, military bases, and a CIA station based in the region.
"Even
though we may be better organized to defend the homeland than we were
in 2001, this withdrawal is going to leave us with a much more limited
window into what the terrorists are doing inside Afghanistan," he told
Fox News.
On Friday, President Biden appeared to downplay the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, only to be later corrected by the Pentagon.
"Let’s
put this into perspective here," Biden said during a press conference
Friday defending the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. "What
interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?"
PENTAGON ADMITS AL QAEDA HAS ‘PRESENCE’ IN AFGHANISTAN MINUTES AFTER BIDEN SAYS THEY ARE ‘GONE’
Roughly an hour later, Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin questioned Defense Department press secretary John Kirby on Biden’s statement.
Griffin
asked Kirby for an estimate on how many al Qaeda operatives were
currently in Afghanistan, and Kirby was not able to give her a specific
number.
"I haven't seen an estimate on that," Kirby said. "OK, I don't know if we have an exact estimate."
"You don't have military intelligence estimates about how many al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan?" Griffin pushed back.
"We
know that al Qaeda is a presence as well as ISIS in Afghanistan," Kirby
said. "And we've talked about that for quite some time. We do not
believe it is exorbitantly high, but we don't have an exact figure for
you, as I think you might understand."
Military historian and Fox News contributor Victor Davis Hanson believes Copeland's assessment of an impending attack on the West "may very well be correct."
"The
next three and a half years, I think, will be our most dangerous since
the 1950s of the Cold War," Hanson told Fox News on Thursday.
"Jihadists
now have a centrally located haven that has a proven record of
successfully launching anti-Western terrorist operations; the Taliban
are far more jubilant now than in the past, given the climatic defeat of
the entire NATO coalition, and, finally, they feel there no longer
exists U.S. deterrence," he explained.
"I am confident saying that the U.S. is at higher risk of international terrorism today than at any point in the last 20 years."
"Iran, China and Russia
will in the next year likely become far more adventurous in our
experience on the expectation that the Biden administration, the woke
Pentagon, and the politicized intelligence agencies either cannot or
will not deter them," Hanson went on. "That encourages the Taliban who
feel that the U.S. will be pressed simultaneously by several enemies and
won’t dare confront them."
Paul D. Miller served in Afghanistan,
first in the military – then as a CIA operative -- before he was tapped
as director of the Afghanistan desk for the National Security Council
during the Bush and Obama administrations. Asked about the U.S. national
security threat expressed by Copeland and Hanson during a Fox News
interview on Thursday, Miller said plainly "I am confident saying that
the U.S. is at higher risk of international terrorism today than at any
point in the last 20 years."
What upsets him most, he said, is that this "was an avoidable catastrophe.
"It
was a manmade disaster, it was policy engineered chaos," he said. "The
President continues to insist that this was unavoidable. It was
inevitable. The war had already been lost. There was no other way out,
could not have been would have the chaos. All of this is false…and
everybody paid responsibility for the consequences of his choice to
withdraw."
Miller noted that the government in Afghanistan is the "same one that harbored al Qaeda 20 years ago."
Until
Biden's withdrawal, al Qaeda and affiliated Jihadist militants "were on
the run," Miller explained. Now, the terrorist group is "certain to
regain some measure of safe haven in Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.
"They
were spending their energy and their time running and hiding from our
airstrikes or drones or Special Forces. They didn't have time to plan
their attacks. They now have breathing room to reconstitute themselves
and focus on creating, recruiting, fundraising and planning. They
couldn't do that for 20 years. Now they can. That means we are all at
heightened risk of a terrorist attack – not just United States, but this
could very well be our European partners as well."
As for a timeline, U.S. intelligence agencies should gear up for an attack "within the next four to five years," Copeland said.
"They
said al Qaeda might take two years to reconstitute itself but it sounds
like from what I've read, they're thinking they could do it in six
months," he told Fox News.
"Now, that doesn't mean we'll have an
attack in six months, it does take time to plan these spectacular
events… I don't think it'll happen then, but I think in the next four or
five years we should anticipate at least efforts by al Qaeda and ISIS
and other groups that may form in the aftermath here."
Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report
No comments:
Post a Comment