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'Strategically confused': 18 years after 9/11, concern the US still doesn't know its enemy persists washex.am/2NX26l0
When 19 terrorists hijacked and flew airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people, the US dedicated defense, intel, and national security infrastructure toward learning about the group responsible.
Those resources have been effective at preventing similar large-scale attacks, but al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups have found ways to persist.
"We are strategically confused, I would say. We don't really still have a holistic understanding of al Qaeda in particular," Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who studies jihadist groups, told the Washington Examiner.
Joscelyn said there isn't agreement on the basic principles surrounding the group, including its structure, communication, and its relationship with the Taliban, which makes it difficult to counter the threat.
The U.S. and its international partners invaded Afghanistan with the intention of preventing al Qaeda from using the country as a safe haven. The group has been decimated in the years since, but it hasn't been stamped out.
