by Robert M. Traxler

We have not seen a large terrorist attack form a foreign source for a very long time. In the past, we had one averaging every few years.

It begs the question: why? The theories are all over the place; however, my thoughts go to the battles of Fallujah, battles one, two and three, but mostly the second battle. The hard-core Islamists from around the world decided to make Fallujah their Alamo, their Stalingrad, their Okinawa. They came from around the entire planet and fought to the death to hold the city.

Hard-core Islamists came from Iraq, the Philippines, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria and many more nations; more than three thousand in the second of the three battles for the city. Thousands died, an entire generation of the most radical Islamists.

Add in ISIS and the hardcore Salafi Jihadist branch of Sunni Islam who died in Iraq and Syria, and the pool of the hard-core forces was reduced to the point of combat ineffectiveness; it is being rebuilt one terrorist at a time. Sept. 11 only required a few dozen radicals, the USS Cole a few dozen, the list goes on; of the dozens, less than half were willing to die for the cause. The leathernecks and dogfaces, but mostly Marines, removed thousands of terrorists from the gene pool and made us safer for a generation.  

Google Fallujah and the first few references will charge the United States with war crimes because of the civilian casualties, proof positive that the ’”hate America first” and foremost crowd own the messaging. These are the same folks who will tell us the southern border is secure, global climate change will end the world by 2030/2050 is settled science not to be denied,

Qaedat al-Jihad or Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are not in league together, even though the head of Al-Qaeda was hiding out in a home owned by the number two Taliban leader when killed, the government spending trillions had nothing to do with inflation, and President Donald Trump is a paid Russian agent. Please do not forget to blindly believe them, or you are a racist, sexist, Islamophobe, a non-believer, a science denier. We must believe inflation is nonexistent and zero per our President; the 8.525% figure is a MAGA lie. Been to the grocery store lately?

Ayman al Zawahiri was the leader of the most active and infamous terrorist group in the world. In my opinion, Osama Ben Laden was the face of terror, but Dr. Zawahiri was the brain. Dr. Zawahiri was a surgeon and a man with a genius IQ and a long history of terror activity, going back to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in Egypt in 1981. His being hosted by the Taliban in Afghanistan opens the linkage between the two groups that brought us 9/11.

The twenty-plus years since 9/11 have hopefully seen progress in intelligence gathering and HUMINT. Human intelligence agents on the ground are not as necessary as they were in 2001? I doubt it, but we can only hope that after our cutting and running from the now Islamic State of Afghanistan, the “over the horizon” strategist will work as well as HUMINT intelligence has in the past dozens of centuries. Our residual indigenous Afghani HUMINT assets were still in place when Dr. Zawahiri was dealt with; however, they are deteriorating every day we are not in Afghanistan.    

A generation has been born after 9/11 and after the United States Marines with Army armor decimated the flower of Muslim extremists in Iraq. A new generation of radical Islamists is coming of age. The 9/11 terrorists were 24.2 years old on average. If history repeats itself, then we are due for an attack by the new generation of extremists.

The statement, “if we fight them overseas, we do not need to fight them here” was widely ridiculed by the progressive/socialists, but it was true. We should all hope and pray the CIA, NSA, and FBI are expending as much effort to prevent an attack as they have in persecuting and prosecuting President Trump and the January sixth protesters/attack. If we wait until the gunnels are awash to pump out the sinking ship or use a teaspoon to bail, it will once again be too late.

My opinion.