Status of Global War against Terrorism

Many of us have never been fans of the term “War on Terrorism” — it is difficult to articulate a war against a tactic.

The successful surgical strike that killed Zawahiri, the successor to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden… and the drone strike and military operation that took out two ISIS leaders, demonstrated the resolve of the Biden Administration to keep a focus on terrorist groups…. These actions send a strong message to terrorist organizations, their supporters and our allies that the U.S. still considers fighting this threat a significant priority.

The Fall of Faucism and the Return of Common Sense

To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.

Parents have every right to balance the costs of missed educational opportunities for school-aged children against the risks of illness. American adults are entirely qualified to judge for themselves whether masks, gloves, or full body hazmat suits are necessary for day-to-day existence. And individual Americans are intellectually capable of determining whether they wish to be injected with novel mRNA vaccines. To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.

America’s Strategic Oil Reserves

The Biden administration in April sanctioned the sale of our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the highest bidder. They have done so under the logic that putting more oil on the global market at a time when Russia has an energy stranglehold on Europe could force down the pump price of gasoline.

The Al-Qaeda Chief’s Death and Its Implications

What do we know about Zawahiri’s death?

On 2 August, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. had killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on the morning of 31 July. The U.S. said it had discovered that Zawahiri had returned to the Afghan capital with his family in the spring of 2022, after more than two decades in hiding (as early as 1998, he was wanted for his alleged role in al-Qaeda’s bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that year). Much of this time, he was widely thought to be sheltering somewhere near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. officials said the CIA had been watching the safe house in an upmarket district of Kabul, where the al-Qaeda leader was staying for several months, before proceeding with a precision drone strike. The Taliban have not explicitly acknowledged Zawahiri’s death beyond stating that they had no information about his arrival and stay in the capital.