President Biden Has Not Forgotten

 

One of the most significant figures behind the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been taken out by way of drone while hanging out on a balcony in Afghanistan, at a safe house where he was hosted by Sirajuddin Haqqani. 

So, a couple of things--this demonstrates that we did not still need to be at war in Afghanistan for our principal counterterrorism mission to be continued. If someone wants to bring up the Doha accords, I'm just echoing what has already been established, the Taliban never renounced al-Qaeda. Not attacking our troops as we were pulling out was the bare minimum. Just as with the Osama bin Laden operation, this demonstrated the resolve of the United States to follow through in the pursuit of terrorists--where we cannot receive full justice, we will avenge. 

I would not be fully in character if I did not take the opportunity to backhand the twice-impeached one-term wonder who hosted the KSA-backed LIV golf tournament at his Bedminster property and dissembled that "we" never got to the bottom of 9/11. He too, could have gone after al-Zawahiri, but apparently did not know who that was. As to Trump's "successful" attacks of his own, I have never been persuaded he fully knew what he was doing. I mean really, I think he was clueless, you guys. We can pretend al-Baghdadi was a bigger get for a whole moment of stony silence in Trump's honor, if he likes. And I think he really would. 

I'm not short on memory. I think a lot of us consider the savaging of Trump at the 2011 WHCD followed by Obama's announcement that the US got bin Laden both scared Trump off of running in 2012 and began his supervillain origin story to become the only president to plan an attack on the US homeland himself. 

That should not be forgotten, either. 

Failure Has Many Fathers

 

Taliban Commander Who Led Attack on Afghan City Was Released From Prison Last Year, Officials Say - WSJ https://t.co/4qDJdyTyYc

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 16, 2021

The co-founder of the Taliban was captured under Obama and was released under Trump, and is now going to be the new leader of Afghanistan. Somehow, this is Biden's fault, because he inherited a withdrawal plan from Trump that was supported by the former guy until it looked bad, because that's how Trump rolls. 

But the problem was not just settling Al-Qaeda business and departing in Bush's first term, which always seemed like it should have been possible, but I think strategically, they fucked up Afghanistan in Bushworld because they really wanted to take a poke at Iraq. And if Afghanistan was wrapped up, the Iraq WMD crisis wouldn't have seemed as immediate.

 Leaving Obama to try and wind down Iraq according to the Bush-signed SOFA. Which wasn't leaving him with a great bunch of choices. Obama, to his credit, never tried to leave a mess in Syria--except of course, ISIS happened. 

And you know what Trump did with regards to our attempts to unfuck that. I'm not trying to place a partisan frame on what had happened, of course, just trying to smash the stupid lies Republicans want to tell about what they've been doing the last two decades. 

 (Just like the economy, re: unemployment and the debt, GOP does the damage, Democrats clean up.)

Mike (Klepto) Pompeo doesn't walk away from it. (Even if he'd rather be obnoxious about CRT and other stuff right now.)  The Bush Administration certainly shouldn't. They initiated the lie that kept us there--that we could fix it. That women and children depended on us. 

We were guilted into forever war. Biden is doing the honest thing. The buck is stopping with him. So for many lazy pundits, that means he gets the onus of failure? Pshh. I am not a goldfish. and can remember years of effort. Media pundits can and should do the same. 

9/11 Happens Every Year

There's a good reason Bretagne is my lead-in to this post--she's a good old girl. She's 15, which is old in dog-years. She's the last known 9/11 service dog left.  In  her way, she's had a more intimate experience of the destruction that happened than a lot of people do--but it has literally been a dog's age.

Today a co-worker remarked "Did you know this is the 13th anniversary of 9/11?" and the question just seemed weird. Of course, the date is 9/11--was it that it's been thirteen years that seems odd? I didn't ask. It's just math, or aftermath. Babies born then are in middle school. We're still in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is dead.

For awhile, there were bumper stickers that said "Never forget" (still are on older cars), and I can't and I won't. But time does pass. I heard a speaker on some news show say that it is never over for the families of victims, and while it's undoubtedly true, I wonder if the event recedes--it seems like it should. There should be healing.

Bretagne sniffed out the bodies of the fallen, but became an inadvertent therapy dog as well to humans on-site. I don't know how dogs understand things, or what memories she has. But there's something to be said for understanding that that intimate scent of death is in Bretagne's past. And ours. But the therapy goes on. For all of us.

We are still, in some ways, a nation in recovery from a terrible shock, and the actions that have taken place since are many, and the world is a little different for those of us old enough to comprehend a genuine sense of "before" and "after". We are still at war with terror, even if we don't call it a war on terror. In a way, this war is picking at an old wound.

I don't think our wariness is wrong. It only needs to be informed and right. I don't think the lingering trauma is wrong--everyone heals at their own pace. But I think the day comes that the focus needs to be on healing, service, and fixing the broken parts of our past so suddenly disrupted on that beautiful late-summer morning.

And it may happen even on some late-summer beautiful day that someone remembers--isn't it 9/11? as if they almost forgot. I think that day has to come. It may take more than a dog's age, but it will come. And it will then be normal.  And it won't be so bad, even, that it is.

This makes a lot of sense--al-Qaeda's Would-be Undiebomber a Double Agent.

Because I'm not sure how they even recruit people for this sort of thing:

U.S. officials said Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, one of America's Most Wanted terrorists, was scheming to bring down a U.S.-bound jetliner with a new, "sleeker” version of the underwear bomb when he was killed by a CIA drone Sunday in Yemen. 

Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency provided the key to thwart the plot by setting up an undercover informant to pose as a wannabe jihadi, a source said. 

The double agent managed to get the Yemen Al Qaeda franchise to trust him with the latest version of the underwear bomb. 

He delivered it to authorities and is being debriefed by U.S. officials and allies. The Los Angeles Times was the first to report the use of a double agent.

You know, like the bomb Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab singed his junk with. Seriously, why is AQAP still trying to build a better bulge bomb? Are they that committed to futzing with air travel? Can't get new material? Because really? The tinkering involved to get a nice big "boom" from a gadget smushed up in someone's briefs instead of just a manscaping incident gone terribly wrong? Is probably going to continue to have a very limited payoff.  I'm no demolitions expert, just a person who has smuggled a small, nonmetallic device in my drawers from time to time, but I can attest to the practical issue of poor ventilation and the reality of having a whole person's body piled on top of the "package".   And while I agree with the article that the people involved in this terror plot are hardened, violent veterans of international terror--there's still just a part of me that hears "underwear bomb" and thinks "What the fuck is wrong with these people?" and not in a "very impressed with their deviousness" kind of way, either.  Even if a terrorist successfully mined their own shorts, they are still a person who thought mining their shorts was a good idea.

Honestly, AQAP? Villain weirder, why don't you?

On the other hand--yay CIA for excellent bad-guy getting. You guys? Way better than shorts-mining terrorists.  I mean that.