The heinous act of terror in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day underscores the Biden administration’s staggering failure to keep America safe and deter radical Islamic terror. By allowing focus on this persistent threat to America’s national security to lapse, and instead wasting time and resources attacking political opponents, parents going to school board meetings and Catholics, Team Biden left America vulnerable. It will be up to the incoming Trump administration to fix this mess and keep Americans safe.
In January 2017, when we in the Trump administration took office, the Islamic State (ISIS) controlled a massive piece of Syria and was expanding its vision of radical Islamism on a global scale. It had beheaded two Americans during the Obama-Biden administration.
It took a serious president to actually dismantle that caliphate alongside partners and allies, as well as bring down the threat of radical Islamic terror at home and abroad. By the end of our time in office, we had done just that: the ISIS caliphate was no more, and the threat of radical Islamic terror within our homeland was greatly reduced.
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Over the past four years, we have witnessed a complete abdication of this responsibility in the White House that has resulted in a dangerous resurgence of this threat. Instead of combating radical Islamic terror at home and abroad, Biden downplayed this threat in favor of conjured political threats and allowed the real threats to metastasize culminating in the New Orleans attack.
His administration allowed Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban, allowed Iran and its proxies to thrive and perpetrate the October 7th massacre, and failed to address the rising threat of radical Islamic terror here at home. This empowered our enemies and weakened America.
Even worse, this administration allowed political ideology to undermine America’s core national security imperatives. For four years, we’ve watched this administration call ‘far right’ groups and even supporters of President-elect Donald Trump the greatest threat to American democracy, all while barely lifting a finger when protesters waved Hamas and ISIS flags in city streets and university campuses following the terrible Oct. 7 attacks.
For four years, our wide-open borders have allowed extremists, with ties to groups like ISIS, to cross into our country unfettered, bolstering their capacity to plan and carry out attacks and enhancing their radicalization efforts. By treating counterterrorism as another political weapon or tool for advancing woke ideology, Team Biden left a gap in our national security apparatus that actors like ISIS have eagerly exploited.
In the wake of the New Orleans attack, we’ve unfortunately seen more unseriousness. First, the FBI said the suspect did not act alone, only to now reverse course and say he did act alone. Let’s be clear: the idea that this individual acted alone is absurd on its face. Perhaps he carried out this specific attack alone – but these deplorable acts never occur in a vacuum.
The very idea of a "lone wolf" is fiction. Whether or not accomplices were assisting him the night of the attack, or even in the planning of it, this terrorist was part of a cabal of Islamists who have been radicalized to attack America, and he was not stopped.
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For the FBI to now say he acted alone demonstrates either the continued influence of a warped political agenda, or a complete misunderstanding of the depth and complexity of ISIS’ operations within the United States. Every measure must be taken to discern how and where this individual was radicalized so that the next attack can be anticipated or prevented.
Correcting these gaps in our national security is urgent and must be a priority for the incoming Trump administration. In response to the rising threat of terror, the task is not for the American people to fundamentally alter how they live their lives. This would be a victory for the Islamists.
Instead, the task is for responsible agencies – the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, as well as state and local law enforcement – to recognize the risk posed by radical Islamic terror and take the proper steps to reduce and eliminate it.
This past May, the FBI tweeted that diversity was a top priority for the agency; the safety and security of every American should be its top priority. Fortunately, there couldn’t be a better leader entering the White House to fix the mess created by President Joe Biden. Having served as President Trump’s CIA Director and Secretary of State, I know he will take every measure to eliminate this threat to the American people within our borders and globally, just as we did during his first term.
Most importantly, he will move the focus of our law enforcement and national security apparatus away from domestic political opponents, DEI and wokeness back where it belongs: on taking down the despicable individuals who wish to harm innocent Americans.
