During MSNBC's coverage of Wednesday's terrorist attack in New Orleans, Christopher Soufan Group's senior vice president of global operations, who served as director of hostage rescue and recovery in the Biden administration and has held counterterrorism missions in multiple administrations, said: Mr O'Leary said: “Al-Qaeda and ISIS are now more powerful than ever,” and the U.S. government is “shifting a lot of attention and resources and authority away from al-Qaeda. Let's just bury our heads in the sand and hope the bogeyman goes away.” The same thing will start happening again.”
host Christina Ruffini asked.[W]Earlier, people were talking about the status of ISIS and al-Qaeda as a global jihadist movement, but when we talk about allies, it doesn't matter whether it's who these individuals are talking to directly or just an inspiration. It doesn't matter if you are just receiving rations or not. Can you tell us the story — I feel like we've heard this a lot before — are those organizations getting weaker or stronger, and are they taking this kind of action? How much of an impact can you have on someone who tries to do that?”
“Most people would be surprised to learn that al-Qaeda and ISIS, through their affiliates around the world, are now more powerful than ever,” O'Leary responded. So, just for people's information, before September 11th, al-Qaeda had about fewer than 500 members, most of whom had been driven to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and ISIS evolved from Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates are globally dispersed in more than 20 countries around the world and have approximately 40,000 members. Therefore, it is very naive to think that terrorism is behind us. And unfortunately, the U.S. government has diverted a lot of attention, resources, and authority away from government. If we keep burying our heads in the sand and hoping that the bogeyman will go away, these things will start happening again. So we were told that this is a generational battle, first of all, we need to be committed to it. And secondly, there is a great Afghan saying. “You have a clock, we have time.” Well, people who are committed to this extremist ideology, they're not going to get away with it, and they're going to come after us when we let our guard down. ”
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