Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America

     

    Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks by al-Qaeda Islamists on America that killed nearly 3,000 people.  We Americans pause on September 11, as I always post on this date, to remember the victims of the massacre, and to give thanks to the many who have helped prevent another attack on such a scale for a quarter century. 

      As I have posted, the September 11 attacks sparked the Global War on Terrorism, which although the name of the war has long fallen out of use, continues sporadically against al-Qaeda or its offshoot, the Islamic State, or other Islamist terrorists, on battlefields around the Islamic world, in addition to various other successful anti-terror methods that are still in use.  The first battlefield was Afghanistan because its de facto regime led by the Islamist Taliban militia had provided safe haven for al-Qaeda’s leadership that had planned the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia with hijacked civilian airliners, another of which was forced down by passengers in Pennsylvania.  The United States led an international coalition, joined by Afghan allies, to overthrow the Taliban, which fell by 2002, and against al-Qaeda, whose leadership was annihilated. 

    The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after a premature American withdrawal (the disastrous Trump-Biden withdrawal that I have posted about), but al-Qaeda, though still a threat in its various forms and global affiliates, has been seriously weakened and Afghanistan has not again become a safe haven for terrorists with a global reach.  The international community, which does not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, would not allow Afghanistan to become again a threat to the world.  Because the lack of U.S. or allied military and intelligence organizational presence in Afghanistan hampers the ability to detect any reconstitution of al-Qaeda in the Central Asian State, continued vigilance is necessary.

    There continues to be armed resistance in various forms to the Taliban across Afghanistan, which the international community ought to support, at least morally, if not materially, and at least privately, if not officially.  The resistance, which favors a return to constitutional representative government and liberty for all, is growing in size and reach, while the Taliban have lost their only ally, Pakistan.  Although the overthrow of the repressive Taliban might be difficult to achieve, it would at least help weaken the Islamist militia to prevent them from becoming a regional threat, and represent a greater consistency in American foreign policy to stand for freedom and against Islamist rule.  But the rapid fall of the terrorist-sponsoring Baathist Assad regime of Syria in December 2024 suggests, even the most repressive dictatorships can suddenly collapse.  A second overthrow of the Taliban regime, whose leading Mullah al-Qaeda has sworn its personal loyalty to, would be another major victory in the War on Terrorism.