Leon Panetta, one in a host of voices of the US national security establishment objecting to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, says Joe Biden will have to "go back in" to deliver on a pledge to avenge the deaths of troops in Kabul.
Panetta, who
headed the CIA between 2009 and 2011 before moving to replace Robert Gates at the helm of the Pentagon, went on CNN to predict a forever war on terrorism in America's forceable future, including in Afghanistan.
"I understand that we're trying to get our troops out of there.
But the bottom line is we can leave a battlefield, but we can't leave the war on terrorrism, which still is a threat to our security," he told the OutFront program.
The Obama-era official was commenting on President Joe Biden's promise to go after the Afghan branch of terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), which claimed credit for the Thursday bomb attacks in Kabul. The bombings claimed dozens of lives, including 13 US soldiers. Panetta said Biden was right to promise to retaliate against the people who orchestrated the bombings, and that pledge
may require him to act against his withdrawal plan.
We're gonna have to go back in to get ISIS. We'll probably have to go back in, when Al-Qaeda resurrects itself - as they will with this Taliban [government].
The Taliban has been promising to deny access to Afghanistan territory under its control to international terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda, as the Islamist militant movement seeks international recognition of its power in the country. Taliban fighters, who were guarding the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, were among the victims of the Thursday attack.
Comment: Humanity is being 'defaced' and dehumanized by changes that may never self-correct. As more folks succumb to the pressures of the COVID scheme, increasing resistance may become the only option.