In December 2023, this column warned that President Joe Biden’s failure to show strength in the Middle East was going to get American servicemembers killed. His weakness was sure to invite more aggression from Iran-backed terrorists and his policy of merely telling our enemies “don’t” was certain to fail. Tragically, the writing on the wall turned out to be correct, and exactly one month after Townhall’s warning was published, three U.S. service members were killed in a drone attack carried out by Iran-backed terrorists on an American base in Jordan.
Now, the threat has increased, not just to heroically selfless service members deployed abroad, but to Americans going about their daily lives in the United States. Again, Biden’s feckless policies are to blame and his demonstrated lack of interest in protecting national security endangers the lives of Americans across the country. His national security failures are the kind that get Americans killed.
As in the Middle East when Biden sat idly by and watched as scores of attacks were carried out by Iranian terrorist proxies over the course of several weeks, the president again appears unconcerned about the escalating threat to homeland security.
Putting an exclamation point on Biden’s lack of interest in securing the nation is a story that broke just this week: eight Tajikistani nationals with ties to ISIS were arrested in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. They had illegally entered the country via the U.S.-Mexico border, were processed by border agents, vetted, and released into the interior of the country.
One of the illegal aliens was reportedly caught on a wiretap talking about bombs, and all had information connecting them to ISIS flagged — but that derogatory information only came to light after they’d been released into the U.S. despite the Department of Homeland Security’s admission that the illegal aliens had been “fully vetted."
How many more “vetted” illegal aliens processed into the U.S. also have ties to ISIS, other terrorist organizations, or America’s other foes? The Biden administration has played a shell game for years with exact numbers, but lawmakers have turned up documents showing that, via one unlawful program alone, 404,000 “inadmissible aliens” have been paroled into the United States under Biden.
There’s also the more than 1.6 million “known gotaways” — illegal aliens who are spotted or detected unlawfully entering the U.S. but evade apprehension and, therefore, vetting and processing by border agents. All we know is that they’re here. 1.6+ million of them. The equivalent of the entire population of a major American city such as Philadelphia or Phoenix. We have no idea where they came from, who they are, or what their intentions in the U.S. are.
While millions of illegal aliens escape apprehension to enter the U.S. and the Biden administration paroles hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens into the country while using a vetting system that fails to flag terror-tied individuals, there have still been more than 400 illegal aliens whose identifies have been flagged on terror watch lists.
Despite all of this damning data, Biden refuses to act decisively to crack down on the threat and protect the homeland — just as he failed to respond forcefully to terrorists in the Middle East. The threat was clear there, and the threat is abundantly clear here at home.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) this week noted that Wednesday marked the eight years since the Pulse Nightclub shooting. The ISIS-inspired attack carried out by an individual on the terror watchlist in Orlando stole 49 innocent lives. “[T]he Biden Admin is making the same dangerous mistakes as Obama that allowed for that tragedy to happen,” Waltz emphasized.
Members of Biden’s own administration — including FBI Director Christopher Wray, CENTCOM commander General Erik Kurilla, and Attorney General Merrick Garland — have issued similar warnings in recent months, but there’s been no substantive action from the president to address and mitigate the growing threats to national security.
A piece in Foreign Affairs this week, titled “The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again,” notes that the “wax and wane of terrorism warnings over the years has generally corresponded with the level of actual risk” and such warnings “in many cases…triggered government responses that thwarted terrorists’ plans. Given the states, complacency is a greater risk than alarmism,” write Graham Allison and Michael J. Morell.
“Combined, the stated intentions of terrorist groups, the growing capabilities they have demonstrated in recent successful and failed attacks around the world, and the fact that several serious plots in the United States have been foiled point to an uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusion,” the piece pointing to “echoes of the run-up to 9/11” emphasizes. “Put simply, the United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead.”