“You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are
bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into
the dustbin of history!”
Thus in 1917 Leon Trotsky
consigned the Mensheviks, the non-Bolshevik faction of the Russian
Social Democratic Workers’ Party, to perennial insignificance—a fate
from which they never recovered. Only five years ago, al Qaeda’s
downfall appeared similarly imminent. Its founder and leader was dead. A
succession of key lieutenants had been eliminated. And the region was
transformed by the
Arab Spring.
Civil protest, it seemed, had achieved what terrorism had manifestly
failed to deliver—and al Qaeda was the biggest loser. As John O.
Brennan, then deputy national security advisor for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism and assistant to the president, told an audience
gathered at a DC think tank in April 2012, “For the first time since
this fight began, we can look ahead and envision a world in which the
al Qaeda core is simply no longer relevant.”
Less than a month later, on the first anniversary of al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden’s killing, U.S. President Barack Obama proudly
proclaimed that, “The goal that I set—
to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild—is now within our reach.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-03-29/coming-isis-al-qaeda-merger?cid=nlc-fatoday-20160329&sp_mid=51025873&sp_rid=cm1lYXl1QGNvbWNhc3QubmV0S0&spMailingID=51025873&spUserID=NTA0ODM0MjY1MDkS1&spJobID=883727088&spReportId=ODgzNzI3MDg4S0
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