OPINION:
As if there was any doubt: President Obama has a horrific record combating radical Islamic terrorism (one that Hillary Clinton would like to continue).
According to a new report, the Taliban now controls the most ground in Afghanistan it’s had in 15 years.
“The Taliban’s warm-weather offensive has shown the insurgents to be bolder and better organized, holding more territory now than at any time since 2001, when their regime was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion,” an Associated Press report stated Thursday.
This week the White House gave approval to allow U.S. commanders in Afghanistan to conduct offensive airstrikes against the Taliban and other insurgent groups, and to allow American troops to restart joint ground operations with Afghan forces.
But this was not the road that Mr. Obama wanted to go down. More than a year ago, the president officially ended American combat operations in the country.
Mr. Obama, declared it was “time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” and announced in May 2014 that he planned to withdraw the last American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.
So much for that. Now, a newly minted battle plan for Afghanistan restarts a combat mission for the 9,800 U.S. service members still in the country.
The Afghanistan Taliban report comes on the heels of testimony from CIA Director John Brennan, who said Thursday there are tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters around the world, more than al Qaeda at its height.
Indeed, the numbers don’t look good.
Between 2010 and 2013 the number of jihadis worldwide doubled to 10,000 while the number of jihadi groups spiked by 58 percent, according to a Rand Corp. study.
Good job, Mr. President. Looks like you have a great handle on radical Islamic terrorism. Just so long as we don’t say the words, I’m sure it’ll stop growing.
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