Surveying the state of America’s sixteen-year-long war on terror, Thomas Joscelyn argues that the current focus on defeating Islamic State could further empower al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic. This problem is particularly salient as the Trump administration debates sending more troops to Afghanistan, where the Taliban is regaining ground, and is weighing the extent and nature of U.S. involvement in Syria:

[T]he restoration of the Taliban, or anything close to it, would have dire consequences for the United States, particularly because it would be seen as the result of American capitulation. The myth that faith in Allah was sufficient for the mujahedeen to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s (ignoring the billions of dollars in arms supplied by the United States) fueled the generation of jihadists from which al-Qaeda arose. It is not difficult to imagine what a second vanquished superpower would do for their cause. . . . [A]n American retreat would be widely regarded as a vindication not just of [the Taliban’s late leader] Mullah Omar and his heirs, but of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. . . .

The Taliban has its allies, too. Iran long ago cut a deal with it to counter America’s presence in the region. The Russians have provided rhetorical support at the very minimum. Pakistan remains as duplicitous as ever, fighting some jihadists and allowing others to roam free. What little leverage we have in Pakistan today would surely be lost in the event of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban was, after all, originally a Pakistani proxy. . . .

The U.S. focus on fighting Islamic State has obscured another problematic development: the rise of al-Qaeda in Syria. . . . U.S. officials estimate that [the organization’s Syrian offshoot], Nusra Front, has amassed at least 10,000 fighters. . . .

To make matters worse, no American-backed force is ready to move on al-Qaeda’s strongholds in northwestern Syria. Iran has used the war against Islamic State to pursue its long-term objective of becoming the regional hegemon, expanding its footprint in Iraq, Syria, and beyond. The president should have the U.S. military developing aggressive options for fighting the jihadists in Iraq and Syria and for maintaining our position as the chief regional broker.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.