Bill Tallen

I’ve recently pointed to the mounting threat of jihadist terrorism inside the United States. 

I return to the topic because I’ve just finished reading a book that I recommend to every thinking adult in America: "The Gathering Storm," by Pineapple Press, a diverse group of current and former soldiers, analysts, and operatives whose first manifestation was as Task Force Pineapple, one of the private sector groups that worked at considerable risk and expense to extract from Afghanistan our trained and loyal Afghan friends and allies, in the wake of America’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal. 

Those contributors describe in chilling detail the imminent terrorist threat posed by a consortium of enemies that have been actively preparing for action against America that will indeed probably resemble the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Al Qaeda, which was never fully defeated, the Taliban government of Afghanistan, the Haqqani network, ISIS-K, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are the primary players, recalling the old Arab saying: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” All played a role in planning and preparing the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, which may be seen by historians as a rehearsal for a much larger effort against the United States, long in preparation and aided by our open borders in the Biden years.

The foreword to "The Gathering Storm" is written by Scott Mann, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer who has his own podcast and has appeared on the Shawn Ryan show online, as has Sarah Adams, a former CIA analyst with a broad background across several agencies in intelligence and counter-terrorism. Their arguments are based on open-source intelligence, not classified information, although their former positions and experience have obviously contributed to their analytical skills and judgment. The U.S. government, including agencies that should be at the forefront of preparation and preemptive action against this threat, is to varying degrees complacent or in denial over this threat. We all hope they are right, but the record does not inspire confidence. As with any calculation of risk, we have to weigh the cost and inconvenience of preparations against the consequences if the enemy does come and we are not prepared. 

As Mann and Adams and many others warn, we are not currently prepared for this threat. They estimate numbers similar to the number of actual Hamas terrorists who entered Israel on Oct. 7; 1,000 to 1,500. I have seen estimates several times higher, and these authors do note the apparent capacity and through-put of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere, as demonstrated seven months ago when the Al Qaeda-affiliated network sent 10,000 trained fighters to assist in the final overthrow of the Assad government. Those troops are likely to remain in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East — there are AQ fingers in many pies — but raising an army of 10,000 trained, organized foreign fighters and deploying them 2400 miles from Afghanistan to Syria was not a heavy lift for Al Qaeda.

What do these numbers mean for us? Recent history shows that Al Qaeda, Iran, and their affiliates are smart, adaptive, and learn from experience. We should not expect a repeat of 9/11 in the sense of isolated attacks on symbolic icons like the World Trade Center. They are far more likely to engage in widely distributed attacks across America, to drive home the point that nowhere and no one is safe. They will target infrastructure — dams, pipelines, the power grid, essential industry and facilities — as well as civilian populations, as they did in Israel, to spread demoralizing fear and horror. If there were only 1,000 of them, and they were evenly distributed across the continental United States, there would be a fraction more than 20 per state; if the higher estimates prove to be true, the number could be five to 10 times greater. America’s experience with active shooters includes very few incidents that involved more than a single attacker; imagine by comparison a school shooting, or an attack on any public gathering, executed by two to four trained fighters wielding automatic rifles and grenades, who will not stop or surrender, that happens in a small American town where there are only two to four police officers on-shift at any given day. Multiply by hundreds of those teams nationwide, with force multipliers provided by IED’s specifically targeted on first responders. Stare into that abyss for a while, and then ask yourself if we have enough police and National Guardsmen to defend us through a single day of such an assault. 

If time allows, standing up the Wyoming State Guard will help; and private-public sector communications and partnership, and enhanced readiness of first responders to meet this unprecedented threat, are vital. The stakes have never been higher, and the time for action is now.