MOSCOW, July 30 (RIA Novosti) – The terrorist ideology behind al-Qaeda is expanding significantly, despite US President Barack Obama’s statements that the Islamist terror threat is in decline, The Washington Free Beacon reported, quoting Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
“It’s not on the run, and that ideology is actually, it’s sadly, it feels like it’s exponentially growing … These organizations that are out there that are well-organized, they are well-funded, they reach into these young people and they pull them in. And there seems to be more and more of them today than there were when I first started this thing in, post 9/11,” the news website quoted Flynn as saying.
The comments made by the DIA chief highlight the fact that the Obama administration failed to target the Islamist ideology and mistakenly focused on military actions, such as drone strikes instead, The Washington Free Bacon reported.
Combating terrorism was Obama’s first priority since he became president; however critics argue that he failed to achieve the goal.
“I believe that al-Qaeda has grown in numbers and influence since the Obama administration took office,” The Washington Free Bacon quoted retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, as saying.
Many al-Qaeda leaders have been killed, but the newer generation of leaders appears to be even more threatening. An example is the head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
A large number of young people in Africa and the Middle East are being sucked into terror groups and being pushed to follow the widespread Islamic ideology.
“The administration had willfully distorted the reality of the current threat. By completely denying the relevance of the religious motivation that drives jihadism, they have focused exclusively on al-Qaeda as an organization. This has made the growth of other organizations like ISIS/IS possible,” The Washington Free Bacon quoted Sebastian Gorka, a professor of counterterrorism at the Marine Corps University as saying.
Security experts worry that terrorists who trained abroad may come back to the United States and do damage there. They argue that one of the biggest threats to security is that ISIL or another terrorist group inside Syria will obtain chemical weapons.
According to The Washington Post, just about every part of the United States has been hit by some form of terrorist attack since 1970. There have been about 3,000 terrorist attacks in the United States over the last 40 years. In more than 50 percent of the cases, terrorists used bombs.
