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President Joe Biden gave a uncommon primetime tackle Monday night time to announce that the CIA, on his orders, carried out a drone strike that killed al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri. Zawahri is a longtime radical Islamist chief who succeeded Usama bin Laden as head of al Qaeda in 2011 and masterminded the lethal terrorist assaults towards the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
This drone strike might validate President Biden’s plan to focus on terrorists in Afghanistan with “over the horizon” strikes, one thing many consultants questioned. As well as, the administration claims no civilians have been killed within the assault.
If that is all true, President Biden deserves credit score for a serious nationwide safety win.
However I’ve questions on this strike.
The timing of this assault, coming one yr after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and three months earlier than the November midterm elections, is extremely coincidental. Furthermore, given the tendency of this president and his senior officers to make statements on nationwide safety which have proved to implausible or inaccurate and later have to be walked again, I need to see Congress totally examine this assault.
For instance, why did this strike occur now? With no Western press on the bottom, how can the American folks make sure precisely what occurred? Can we confirm the U.S. truly bought Zawahri and that there have been no civilian casualties?
WHO IS AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI? AL QAEDA LEADER KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN
One other difficulty is whether or not killing Zawahri, who was 71 and in in poor health well being, will make any distinction in defending the U.S. from terrorist assaults since there have been plans to call a successor to Zawahri earlier than he was killed.
FILE — A body seize from a videotape aired 05 August 2006 on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera tv community exhibits Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri at an undisclosed place and time.
(AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
A extra vital query is whether or not President Biden’s choice to take out Zawahri means his administration will lastly acknowledge radical Islamist terrorist as a excessive precedence nationwide safety difficulty as an alternative of a number of trivial points it has harassed in its nationwide safety coverage resembling local weather change.
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After President Trump’s management precipitated ISIS to suffered huge defeats in Iraq and Syria, lack of its caliphate on the bottom, the terrorist group is making a comeback within the Center East and has established a serious presence in Afghanistan and Africa.
ISIS is the world’s predominant terrorist group, considerably bigger and extra influential than its predecessor, al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, nevertheless, stays a harmful group and can also be present process a resurgence in Afghanistan and Africa.
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Historical past exhibits that each time terrorist teams like al Qaeda or ISIS set up strongholds, they may ultimately use them as launching pads to unfold their insurgency to different areas, typically with main acts of terrorism. There’s a excessive chance of this occurring once more.
Hopefully, President Biden’s choice to take out Ayman al-Zawahri is a sign that he and his senior officers acknowledge this and that the drone strike that killed him was not executed principally to attain political factors.
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