As the dust settles on the terrible terror attack in New Orleans, we learned it was a homegrown terrorist and not one who allegedly crossed our so-called “open borders.”
We also found out that the killer attached an ‘ISIS Flag’ to his vehicle as he mowed down people on Bourbon Street.
Clearly, ISIS is not dead. We must not repeat the mistakes of 2018 when U.S. troops were withdrawn from their joint operations with Kurdish forces.
During the Obama Administration, U.S. forces worked with Kurdish SDF units to battle ISIS, a terrorist organization that had not only killed Americans and Kurds in the Middle East, but inspired attacks against Americans abroad. The operation was successful, and ISIS was defeated, losing nearly all of its territory. Kurds captured a number of their fighters. It was a key victory over ISIS, but it was not the complete elimination of the terror group.
In early 2018, I wrote a column praising Trump for continuing Obama’s strategy. But later that year, Trump did the exact opposite, and withdrew American troops from that area, to the consternation of his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
“Mattis was facing the most urgent crisis of his nearly two years in the Cabinet. Trump had just announced, contrary to his administration’s stated policy, that he would withdraw all American troops from Syria, where they were fighting the Islamic State. This sudden (and ultimately reversed) policy shift posed a dire challenge to Mattis’s beliefs. He had spent much of his career as a fighter in the Middle East. He had battled Islamist extremists and understood the danger they represented. He believed that a retreat from Syria would threaten the security of American troops elsewhere in the region, and would especially threaten America’s allies in the anti-ISIS coalition. These allies would, in Mattis’s view, feel justifiably betrayed by Trump’s decision.
“The next day, he met Trump in the Oval Office. Mattis made his case for keeping troops in Syria. Trump rejected his arguments. Thirty minutes into the conversation, Mattis told the president, ‘You’re going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to ISIS. I’m not going to do it.’ He handed Trump his resignation letter…”
After our troops were made to leave, Turkey attacked Kurdish forces, scattering our allies who had been fighting ISIS.
Republicans were outraged. “Just read Gen. Mattis resignation letter,” tweeted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to Fox 5 Atlanta. “It makes it abundantly clear that we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”
In addition, “Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. “must always have the backs of our allies, if we expect them to have our back… Leaving them to die is a big mistake.”
These quotes came from the AP.
ISIS not only made a comeback in 2019, but also spread operations to Afghanistan, giving our Afghan allies two enemies to fight. The rebirth of ISIS and the Doha Deal of 2020, which forced the Afghan government to release the jailed Taliban fighters, completely doomed Afghanistan.
Biden reversed that policy. U.S. forces working with the Kurds even killed a key ISIS leader in 2022, according to PBS. But Trump is about to repeat history, wanting to withdraw American forces again from Syria, while the job against ISIS has not been finished. In December, he sent out this message on Truth Social about Syria, according to the BBC. “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
But
Please call your representative and contact the White House. Tell Congress not to let the new administration abandon the fight against ISIS again, and to work with the Kurds in Syria. Otherwise, we can expect more terrorist attacks like the one in New Orleans while ISIS remains in Syria and elsewhere, continuing to inspire Americans to kill others in their name.