23 years after 9-11, Islamic jihadism is on the rise again

Kassy Akiva describes how Islamic jihadism is on the rise again, 23 years after September 11, 2001, and the worst part is that today, it has more support than ever:

Twenty-three years ago, Americans woke up to the shocking reality that radical Islamic terrorism was a very real, and very dangerous threat.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, the United States vowed to make the world safe from those forces. For years, it kept that vow, killing Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist masterminds, diminishing Al Qaeda, and waging two wars in the Middle East to decimate terrorist networks.

But now, 23 years after the worst-ever attack on the United States, terrorism is on the rise.

In Afghanistan, President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal, which led to the death of 13 American service members, gave the Taliban power and $7 billion worth of U.S. military equipment. In Iraq and Syria, Iranian-backed militia groups continue a barrage of attacks on U.S. military bases, often injuring personnel.

Worse than the resurgence of Islamic terrorism is Americans’ reaction.

At protests across the country, “United We Stand” has been replaced by anti-American chants. Pledges to “Never Forget” have themselves been forgotten by Americans, many of whom have turned 9/11 into a meme, as pointed out by a 21-year-old college student who said she “genuinely forgot that not everyone thinks it’s funny now,” in an X post that was favorited more than 10,000 times. Others have found much to agree with in Bin Laden’s infamous 2002 “Letter to America.”

A recent poll found that almost one-third of Gen-Zers think Bin Laden’s views were a “force for good,” reported The Jerusalem Post.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that members of this same generation sympathize with Hamas terrorists who raped, massacred, and kidnapped over a thousand Israelis on October 7th, 2023. They wear Hamas headbands and wave terrorist flags at protests, and harass Jewish students from the illegal encampments they’ve constructed on college campuses.

All this has to stem from horrifying failure to seriously confront the indoctrination that's occurred at universities over many years, and even children's schools. It'll take ages to repair the damage done, if at all. This is one of the reasons opposition to Islamic terrorism has been very badly damaged, and made it difficult to combat it in the forseeable future.