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Ayman al-Zawahiri Killed: What is the box on table front of Biden in the Situation Room ?
Republicans say that the death of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri makes them wonder if President Biden's disastrous decision to pull out of Afghanistan gave the Taliban the freedom to let al Qaeda use the country again as a base of operations.
Al-Zawahiri, who planned the 9/11 attacks with Osama bin Laden, was killed by two Hellfire missiles early Saturday morning while he was standing on the balcony of his safe house in downtown Kabul, Vice President Joe Biden said in a speech to the nation on Monday night.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that al-Zawahiri might be gone, but al Qaeda in Afghanistan is still a threat.
"Contrary to what President Biden says tonight, our ability to fight growing terrorist threats in Afghanistan is on the edge.
"Like before 9/11, al-Qaeda is setting up training camps in Afghanistan," the senator said in a tweet.
Al-Zawahiri may be dead in Afghanistan, but al-Qaeda is not gone.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 2, 2022
Contrary to what President Biden is saying tonight, our ability to combat growing terrorist threats in Afghanistan are on the margins.
There are al-Qaeda training camps emerging in Afghanistan like before 9/11.
“As I said when the Biden Administration withdrew all of our forces from Afghanistan, it was only a matter of time before the country became a safe haven for terrorism once again,” Graham added.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) a former Green Beret who served in Afghanistan, wondered why al-Zawahiri felt secure enough to go to the city of more than 4 million people in the weeks prior to his death.
”Number one, what was the leader of al Qaeda doing in Kabul?” he said on Fox News.
"And from what I've heard from people in Afghanistan and in the intelligence community, he's been there for a while. So, what did they say they would do? Why did he feel so at ease being out in the open?"
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised the killing of al-Zawahiri, but he also said in a statement that it proved "President Biden lied to the American people."
“Al Qaeda is not ‘gone’ from Afghanistan as Biden falsely claimed a year ago,” McCaul said. “And worse, the head of al Qaeda, who was one of the masterminds behind 9/11, was given safe harbor in the capitol city of Kabul – just as al Qaeda was given safe harbor there before 9/11. Our chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan opened the door for al Qaeda to operate freely inside the country to conduct external operations against the United States and our allies again.”
Al-Zawahiri became the leader of al Qaeda after bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team Six in Pakistan in 2011.
Al Zawahiri, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, helped plan the 9/11 attacks and was also responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, which killed 17 American sailors, and the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and hurt thousands more.
In announcing al-Zawahiri’s death, Biden told Americans in a televised address, “Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more.”
“Now we make it clear again tonight, that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide: if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” the president said.
Biden went on to say that the US will “never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven, because he is gone.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) asked the Biden administration to tell Congress about the death of al-Zawahiri "to talk about the rise of Al Qaeda in the region after his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan."
Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the strike that killed al-Zawahiri shows that al Qaeda is still a force in Afghanistan.
"Last year, when the US pulled out of Afghanistan, President Biden said that al Qaeda was no longer there. Turner said in a statement, "This strike shows us that we were wrong."
“The United States has brought justice to al-Zawahiri and the world is safer for it. The president must now turn his attention to the rising threats within Afghanistan,” he continued.
When Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan a year ago this month, there was chaos as thousands of Afghans rushed to Kabul's airport to leave the country before the Taliban took over.
In the chaos, an ISIS member who was a suicide bomber attacked the airport on August 26. He killed 13 American soldiers and more than 160 Afghans.
“When I ended our military mission in Afghanistan almost a year ago, I made the decision that after 20 years of war, the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm,” Biden said.
“And I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond. We’ve done just that.”
