IT WAS JUST ISLAMOPHOBIA, NOT ANALYSIS:

Tonight's announcement that al-Qaeda terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed over the weekend is the product of years of effort and Americans who paid the ultimate sacrifice. But it is also important to recognize just how wrong the conventional groupthink was about the limits of post-withdrawal counterterrorism.

It cannot be exaggerated how improbable conventional critics of President Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan insisted today's success would be. The prevailing critique of an over-the-horizon strategy was that it would be nearly impossible to conduct effective counterterrorism strikes without continuing a 20-year failed counterinsurgency. Arguing otherwise became a lonely position in Washington. 

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