Bill:
Nope, Amb Crocker is right. AQ hasn't changed its ideology, nor has Taliban nor has Pak Army/ISI. If Taliban & Co were to reacquire Afghanistan, I see no reason at all why they would not resume doing what they had done before.
This is a semantic point but I'll bring it up. Amb Crocker referred to another 9-11. I referred to another 9-11. None of the attacks you mentioned were on the scale of 9-11 nor were any of them intended to be on the scale of 9-11. Now to your list.
I think you may be casting your net a little bit wide when you throw in Beslan, and Oklahoma City. Yes obviously attacks can be planned and carried out by other people in other places than Pak Army/ISIland and Afghanstan but the context of the discussion is AQ or AQ affiliated or sympathetic organizations. If you are going to include Beslan, OKC and Tokyo why not throw in the attack on Mecca or the Red Army Brigades in Italy or killing of the guy in Sarajevo that started WWI? And if you are going to include Iraq and Syria why not include Vietnam, Algeria, Cyprus and all the terror associated with the war in central Africa in the 90s and 2000s?
I did read that some of the London train bombers traveled to Pakistan for training. The failed Times Square bomber traveled to Pakistan for training and the guy from Denver who wanted to blow up the subway traveled to Pakistan for training. And the Mumbai attack was planned and run by the ISI from Pakistan. So I think that if you want to run a big op, especially a big complicated one, are AQ or affiliated, there is only one place in the world you can do that from and that is Pak Army/ISIland now, and Afghanistan if Taliban & Co get their bloody mitts on it again.
AQ in Yemen may be able to sneak an explosive cartridge on a cargo plane or make jockey shorts that might go bang but those are not ops on the scale of 9-11. In order to do something like that you need a country that likes you to live in. Cyber planning always sounds good but people still have to train somewhere, practice somewhere and make things somewhere. About the only place they can do that now, in the context of which we are speaking, is Pak Army/ISIland or perhaps Afghanistan again in the future.
We would be foolish to think that any one piece of dirt the only one that is needed to do bad things from. But we would be equally foolish to not to recognize that one particular piece of dirt is critical, and has been critical if you are looking at a particular type of big attack.
Ultimately though, the point isn't that is it possible that something big could be pulled off from somewhere else. Amb Crocker said that if Taliban gets Afghanistan back, AQ will be back with them. The last time that happened, it was not good.
Bookmarks