REFERENCE: MY STORY (Part II)

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The following references are associated with Part II - My Story

NARRATIVE

America's Involvement In Vietnam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_in_Thailand: The United States Air Force (USAF) deployed combat aircraft to Thailand from 1960 to 1975 during the Vietnam War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in_the_Vietnam_War: The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War began in the 1950s and greatly escalated in 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_assistance_to_Vietnam: U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic and economic relations were non-existent for more than fifteen years following socialist North Vietnam's victory in 1975 over U.S. ally South Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in_the_Vietnam_War#Financial_cost: Between 1953 and 1975, the United States was estimated to have spent $168 billion on the war (equivalent to $1.7 trillion in 2024).[87] This resulted in a large federal budget deficit.

Nixon In China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_in_China: Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987... Nixon in China formally premiered on the Brown Stage at the new Wortham Theater Center in Houston on October 22, 1987, with John DeMain conducting the Houston Grand Opera. Former president Nixon was invited, and was sent a copy of the libretto; however, his staff indicated that he was unable to attend, due to illness and an impending publication deadline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism#Three_Worlds_Theory: In 1974, China announced its Three Worlds Theory at the UN. Three Worlds Theory states that during the Cold War, two imperialist states formed the "first world"—the United States and the Soviet Union. The second world consisted of the other imperialist states in their spheres of influence. The third world consisted of non-imperialist countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Vietnam_War: According to Walter Isaacson, Nixon concluded soon after taking office that the Vietnam War could not be won, and he was determined to end it quickly. He sought an arrangement that would permit American forces to withdraw while leaving South Vietnam secure against attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik: Realpolitik (/reɪˈɑːlpɒlɪˌtiːk/ ray-AHL-po-lih-teek German: [ʁeˈaːlpoliˌtiːk]; from German real 'realistic, practical, actual' and Politik 'politics') is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following ideological, moral, or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism.
https://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3020355.htm: A new book, based on meticulous research in the Chinese archives, says Mao Zedong was responsible for the deaths of 45 million people between 1958 and 1962 alone. It's called "Mao's Great Famine: A History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe", and its author is the scholar Frank Dikotter, of Hong Kong University... Now, the problem with that approach is that once you start collectivising everybody, as you do in the army, once you start herding people together in giant people's communes and you collectivise everything, you strip people from their land, their homes, their livestock, their tools, there's absolutely nothing left, there's no incentive to work; the profit motive is gone.

Paris Peace Accords

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords: The Paris Peace Accords (Vietnamese: Hiệp định Paris về Việt Nam), officially the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam (Hiệp định về chấm dứt chiến tranh, lập lại hòa bình ở Việt Nam), was a peace agreement signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Center: The Nobel Peace Center is located in the former Oslo Vestbanestasjon (Oslo West railway station) building. Dating from 1872, the former station building was drawn by architect Georg Andreas Bull (1829–1917). It ceased to be used as a railway station in 1989. It is overlooking the harbor and located close to the Oslo City Hall where the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony takes place every 10 December, to commemorate Alfred Nobel's death.
https://www.historyandheadlines.com/nobel-prize-rejected/: The only other person to have refused a Nobel Prize was Le Duc Tho, a negotiator from North Viet Nam who was awarded the prize along with Henry Kissinger of the United States for their peace negotiations to end the War in Viet Nam. Tho refused on the basis that when awarded, peace had not yet been achieved.
https://www.documentarytube.com/articles/le-duc-tho-why-he-refused-the-nobel-prize-award: He remains the first and only person to voluntary refuse the award. So far, there have been more than 130 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. But none refused to accept it except for Tho ... Born in 1911 in a village in a province in northern Vietnam, he adopted the name Le Duc Tho years later in order to hide his true identity. He was originally born as Phan Dinh Khai. At the time of his birth, Vietnam was a French colony known as French Indochina ... That is why Tho refused to accept the award. The agreement Tho and Kissinger made did not led to peace in Vietnam. Some critics call the 1973 prize the Nobel War Prize. Tho said “Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced, and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this award”. But that didn’t happen.

Joe Biden during the Vietnam War

https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/joe-biden-military-service/: Did Joe Biden serve in the military? No, the current President of the United States never served in the military.
https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/joe-biden-vietnam-war/: In his own words, Biden did not oppose the immorality of the war, which took the lives of as many as 2 million Vietnamese civilians and 58,000 U.S. soldiers, as much as he believed that it was “lousy policy.” Other political figures from his generation “felt more strongly than I did about the immorality,” Biden said. “My view of it was it didn’t make sense.” This posture would become a consistent theme of Biden’s positions on war: With some notable exceptions, Biden has emphasized strategic considerations and constitutional and legal arguments over questions about morality, sovereignty, or foreign casualties caused by U.S. militarism.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/16/fact-check-biden-received-multiple-draft-deferments-vietnam/5809482002/: Born in November 1942, Biden came of age amid the Vietnam War. But unlike millions of men of his generation, he never served in the military. Biden received five student draft deferments, first as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. And after a medical exam in April 1968, he received the "1-Y" classification, which meant he could only be drafted in a national emergency. Biden released his Selective Service records to the Associated Press in 2008. At the time, a spokesperson said he was "disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," per The News Journal. ... As the viral meme says, Biden played football and worked as a lifeguard in high school — details he included in his memoir, "Promises to Keep," per a report from the Associated Press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden: Biden had not openly supported or opposed the Vietnam War until he ran for Senate and opposed Nixon's conduct of the war. While studying at the University of Delaware and Syracuse University, Biden obtained five student draft deferments, at a time when most draftees were sent to the Vietnam War. In 1968, based on a physical examination, he was given a conditional medical deferment; in 2008, a spokesperson for Biden said his having had "asthma as a teenager" was the reason for the deferment.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-aid-vietnam-refugees/: He had opposed an April 1975 aid package for South Vietnam because he argued those evacuation funds could be used as military aid and should be sent through multilateral channels. That April bill ultimately died in Congress.
https://www.pivotnetwork.org/news/us-congressional-records-joe-biden-welcomed-vietnamese-refugees-to-the-united-states: I also found in the U.S. Department of State's declassified archives a document on the April 14, 1975 meeting at the White House between President Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee including Senator Joe Biden, and a number of senior U.S. government officials. In this document, everyone, especially President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, seemed to agree on two important points: (1) Get Americans out of Vietnam safely; and (2) Evacuate about 175,000 Vietnamese. The military aid for the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) was mentioned but no decision was made. ... During the meeting, Senator Biden made only three brief statements. He complained that the State Department had not shown the evacuation plan. Biden wanted to separate the three issues mentioned earlier: (1) Evacuation of Americans; (2) Evacuation of Vietnamese; and (3) military aid. He wanted to focus immediately on the evacuation of Americans because it was easy and well prepared. Like most members of the U.S. Congress, Mr. Biden did not support military aid for Vietnam.
https://vietfactcheck.org/2020/08/31/false-washington-examiner-claims-biden-and-democrats-were-against-vietnamese-refugees/: When reviewed in its entirety, the transcript makes clear that Biden was supportive of getting the South Vietnamese out of Vietnam. But he did not support additional military aid, and wanted an estimate of the number of people to evacuate along with an estimated cost for the evacuation. A key responsibility for Congress is determining spending, so this was an unsurprising question.
https://professorbuzzkill.com/qnq-34/: So, the phrase was out there in mid-1967. By the time General LeMay’s book, “America is in Danger,” was reviewed by the Chicago Tribune in 1968, the reviewer attributed “bomb the North Vietnamese back to the Stone Age” to LeMay.
https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/asthma-sports.html: When people with asthma follow their asthma action plan, they can play sports — and they can be really good at them! Lots of elite athletes have asthma, and some have won Olympic gold medals.

The Fall of the First Republic of Vietnam

https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/02/man-kept-vietnam-communists-kennedy-administration-okayed-assassination/

Harriman’s argument — that Diem’s persecution of Buddhists had “made it impossible for the United States to back him” — eventually won in the White House, despite a congressional fact-finding mission in late October 1963 (the month before the assassination) that concluded Washington should stick with Diem. The White House ignored the report, and a wealth of other information, and communicated to Vietnamese military coup plotters they would not oppose Diem’s removal. ... The men who supported the coup surely must have known what would happen to Diem and his brother. When the two were discovered inside the Church of Saint Francis Xavier in Cholon on 2 November, soldiers acting on coup leaders’ orders secured them inside a personnel carrier, where their executioner “cut out their gallbladders while they were still alive, and then shot them.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaders_of_South_Vietnam

This is a list of leaders of South Vietnam, since the establishment of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina in 1946, and the division of Vietnam in 1954 until the fall of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975, and the reunification of Vietnam in 1976.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_V%C4%83n_Thi%E1%BB%87u

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975.

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/02/403597845/in-danang-where-u-s-troops-first-landed-memories-of-war-have-faded

The first American combat troops to arrive in Vietnam landed in the coastal city of Danang 50 years ago this past March. The 2,000 Marines had the job of protecting the nearby U.S. air base ... It took the members of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade almost an entire day to bring their men and materiel ashore that day in March 1965.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-marines-land-at-da-nang

The 3,500 Marines were deployed to secure the U.S. airbase, freeing South Vietnamese troops up for combat. On March 1, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor had informed South Vietnamese Premier Phan Huy Quat that the United States was preparing to send the Marines to Vietnam. Three days later, a formal request was submitted by the U.S. Embassy, asking the South Vietnamese government to “invite” the United States to send the Marines. Premier Quat, a mere figurehead, had to obtain approval from the real power, Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, chief of the Armed Forces Council. Thieu approved, but, like Westmoreland, asked that the Marines be “brought ashore in the most inconspicuous way feasible.” These wishes were ignored and the Marines were given a hearty, conspicuous welcome when they arrived.

The Fall of the Second Republic of Vietnam

https://www.historynet.com/north-vietnam-d-74-gun/: The 122 mm D-74, a towed gun that entered Soviet service in 1955, was the most numerous gun in the NVA’s five independent artillery regiments At noon on March 30, 1972, North Vietnam opened its spring offensive with a massive artillery barrage against South Vietnamese positions just south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries. Outgunned and out-ranged in artillery, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam saw its weapons quickly silenced.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/126150: A quick, easy check of an old newspaper database shows Laird's cutoff claim to be false. In the fiscal year running from July 1, 1974, to June 30, 1975, the congressional appropriation for military aid to South Vietnam was $700 million. Nixon had requested $1.45 billion. Congress cut his aid request, but never cut off aid. Nixon's successor, President Gerald R. Ford, requested an additional $300 million for Saigon. Democrats saw it as an exercise in political blame-shifting. "The administration knows that the $300 million won't really do anything to prevent ultimate collapse in Vietnam," said Senator and future Vice President Walter F. Mondale, D-Mn., "and it is just trying to shift responsibility of its policy to Congress and the Democrats." Congress didn't approve the supplemental appropriation. The Times reported that with National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry "Kissinger's personal prestige tied to peace in Vietnam, his aides have said that he will try to pin the blame for failure there on Congress." He tried to do just that at a March 26, 1975 news conference in which he framed the question facing Congress as "whether it will deliberately destroy an ally by withholding aid from it in its moment of extremity." Three years earlier, in October 1972, the month in which Kissinger publicly proclaimed that "peace is at hand," he privately told the President that their own settlement terms would destroy South Vietnam. Congressional aid cuts didn't determine the war's final outcome. Saigon's fate was sealed long before, when Nixon forced it accept his settlement terms in January 1973.
https://prospect.org/article/congress-helped-end-vietnam-war/: But compared to Congress during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Vietnam-era legislature compiled an impressive record in challenging flawed presidential decisions. Between 1964 and 1975, many legislators forced discussion of difficult questions about the mission, publicly challenged the administration's core arguments, and used budgetary mechanisms to create pressure on the Pentagon to bring the war to a halt. A number of liberal Democrats started in the mid-1960s as some of the most vocal critics of escalation in Vietnam; by the early 1970s they were wielding the power of the purse. Many observers have glorified the role of the media and anti-war protestors in forcing an end to one of America's most disastrous foreign policies. But numerous members of Congress deserve equal respect, and can serve as a model for legislators who are today challenging the president.
https://thehistorianshut.com/2018/07/14/when-south-vietnamese-president-nguyen-van-thieu-fled-from-his-country-he-tried-to-take-tons-of-gold-with-him/: Nguyen Van Thieu fled from Saigon on April 26, 1975, while the city was under siege and would inevitably fall. His escape came only five days after he resigned from the office of president. While many other South Vietnamese people were crushed to death while trying to get on American transports, Nguyen Van Thieu received a personal airlift out of Saigon on a U. S. Air Force C-118 transport plane.
https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/nguyen-van-thieu/: Thieu resigned the presidency on April 21st 1975, nine days before the fall of Saigon. His final public address contained an extraordinary verbal attack on the American government, declaring the US withdrawal “an inhumane act by an inhumane ally”. Thieu fled Vietnam soon after and later settled in the US.

Afghan Civil War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan: The final and complete withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from Afghanistan began on 15 May 1988 and ended on 15 February 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1996%E2%80%932001): The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Afghanistan: The Islamic State of Afghanistan was the government of Afghanistan that was established by the Peshawar Accords of 26 April 1992 by many, but not all, Afghan mujahideen parties, after the fall of the socialist government. Its power was limited due to the country's second civil war, which was won by the Taliban, who took control of Kabul in 1996. The Islamic State then transitioned to a government in exile and led the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. It remained the internationally recognized government of Afghanistan at the United Nations until 2001, when the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan was created and an Afghan Interim Administration took control of Afghanistan with US and NATO assistance following the overthrow of the first Taliban government.

The Afghanistan War

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-did-the-us-spend-in-aid-to-afghanistan/: (Published on Fri, September 3, 2021) Military spending was 70% of total foreign aid or $91.4 billion to Afghanistan since 2001. Economic aid was $39 billion or 30% of total foreign aid to Afghanistan since 2001.
https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-u-s-aid-to-afghanistan/: Total annual U.S. spending on Afghanistan amounted to about $45 billion as of 2018. Most of that spending was funding to military forces and security objectives. The U.S. spent only $800 million on economic development. Afghanistan’s GDP has increased from $4.055 billion in 2002 to $19.444 billion in 2017. Primary school enrollment increased from about 22 percent in 2001 to 98 percent in 2004 after only three years of U.S. aid and has not gone below 90 percent since then. In 2002, the average life expectancy in Afghanistan was about 56. It has increased steadily since then and reached about 64 by 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021): The War in Afghanistan was a prolonged conflict lasting from 2001 to 2021. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition under the name Operation Enduring Freedom in response to the September 11 attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the Islamic Republic three years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora: In December 2009, New Republic published Peter Bergen's "The Battle for Tora Bora" In his critique of the battle, Bergen reconstructed the U.S. allies engagement at Tora Bora. He said that General Tommy Franks, then U.S. Army chief, refused to deploy 800 Army Rangers from nearby bases to assault the complex of caves where bin Laden was supposedly hiding. Bergen characterized this as "one of the greatest military blunders in recent US history". Bergen says that the US failure to capture bin Laden at the time provided energy to the Taliban. It regrouped and became stronger after U.S. officials diverted forces for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and war there
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghan-cop-kills-6-us-troops-officials-say/: The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the gunman joined the border police in order to kill foreign soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Ghani: On 2 August 2021, Ghani blamed the sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan to the advance of the Taliban and said the latter had not cut ties with terrorist organizations and had escalated attacks against women, which the Taliban denied. On 11 August 2021, Ghani appealed to local warlords and private militias to fight the Taliban and also appealed to a popular uprising against the Taliban. On the same day, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan reported that the Taliban would not negotiate or hold peace talks with the government as long as Ghani remains as the president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban: During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, and were widely condemned for massacres against Afghan civilians, harsh discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities, denial of UN food supplies to starving civilians, destruction of cultural monuments, banning women from school and most employment, and prohibition of most music.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghan-cop-kills-6-us-troops-officials-say/: The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the gunman joined the border police in order to kill foreign soldiers.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/: The blame game has begun over who lost Afghanistan ... The fact is, President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, were both eager to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and end what Biden referred to in his Aug. 16 speech as “America’s longest war.”
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973604904/trumps-deal-to-end-war-in-afghanistan-leaves-biden-with-a-terrible-situation: And the other thing that was very pretty unconventional about the way that this negotiation happened was the U.S. diplomats are trying to negotiate a kind of a schedule for a withdrawal. And, you know, there's a certain amount of bluffing involved, which is if we don't get the deal we want, we're not going to pull out. But while they were doing that over the course of 2019 and early 2020, President Trump was just kind of unilaterally announcing these troop withdrawals. I'm going to pull everybody out, or I'm going to - we're going to go down to 7,000 troops starting now. And he didn't consult anybody and didn't even necessarily tell his negotiators that he was doing that. So he was like literally kind of taking their sticks away from them at the table as they were doing this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US%E2%80%93Taliban_deal: The Afghan government was not a party to the US–Taliban deal, and on March 1 Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rejected a prisoner exchange, saying: "The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners. [...] The release of prisoners is not the United States authority, but it is the authority of the government of Afghanistan." Ghani also stated that any prisoner exchange "cannot be a prerequisite for talks," but must be a part of the negotiations.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/29/1032044382/what-we-know-about-the-13-u-s-service-members-killed-in-the-kabul-attack: The August attack was one of the deadliest days for American forces in the past decade of the 20-year war in Afghanistan — and took place just days ahead of the U.S.'s planned full withdrawal from the country that had been overtaken days earlier by the Taliban.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/fact-check-biden-buttigieg-iraq-afghanistan/index.html: What, then, was Biden talking about when he said he was the man who “thought we should not be going into Afghanistan”? He was referring to his opposition to President Barack Obama’s “surge” of additional troops into the country when Biden was vice president in 2009, a campaign official said on condition of anonymity. (Biden is known to have argued against the surge in internal debates.)
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/19/joe-biden-says-he-opposed-obama-troop-surge-afghan/: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden said Thursday he fought within the Obama administration against surging troops to Afghanistan, saying it was a mistake to pour forces into a conflict that U.S. power could not win. ... He was challenged at the Democratic debate over a Washington Post article that reported the military misled the pubic over the war, publicly saying it was going well while internally it believed the conflict was slipping away ... “I’m the guy from the beginning who argued that it was a big, big mistake to surge forces to Afghanistan,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he was only now able to reveal his vehement opposition because of the public reporting. “I argued against it constantly.”

The War On Terror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks: The attacks resulted in 2,977 non-hijacker fatalities, an indeterminate number of injuries, and substantial long-term health consequences, in addition to at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2021/08/12/from-kobani-to-kabul-can-us-bombers-halt-taliban-advances-in-afghanistan/?sh=7202507d1d53: The use of bombers in similar wars, especially in support of allied forces on the ground, has proven successful in the past. In 2001, U.S. bombers, including B-52s, provided decisive air support to the Northern Alliance, enabling that group to rapidly rout the Taliban from Kabul, which it famously did on horseback.
https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/al-qaeda: Exiled by the Saudi regime, and later stripped of his citizenship in 1994, bin Laden left Afghanistan and set up operations in Sudan, with the United States in his sights as enemy No. 1. Al Qaeda took credit for the attack on two Black Hawk helicopters during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993, as well as the World Trade Center Bombing in New York in 1993, and a car bombing in 1995 that destroyed a U.S.-leased military building in Saudi Arabia. In 1998 the group claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and, in 2000, for the suicide bombings against the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed, and 39 injured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Attacks: Al-Qaeda has carried out a total of six major attacks, four of them in its jihad against America. In each case the leadership planned the attack years in advance, arranging for the shipment of weapons and explosives and using its businesses to provide operatives with safehouses and false identities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden: On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was shot several times and killed at his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a CIA-led operation with Joint Special Operations Command, commonly known as JSOC, coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)—also known as "Night Stalkers"—and operators from the CIA's Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from former JSOC Special Mission Units. The operation's success ended a nearly decade-long manhunt for bin Laden, who was wanted for masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States ... Accounts of how bin Laden was located by U.S. intelligence differ. The White House and CIA director John Brennan stated that the process began with a fragment of information unearthed in 2002, resulting in years of investigation. This account states that by September 2010, these leads followed a courier to the Abbottabad compound, where the U.S. began intensive multiplatform surveillance. According to journalist Seymour Hersh and NBC News, the U.S. was tipped off about bin Laden's location by a Pakistani intelligence officer who offered details of where the Pakistani Intelligence Service held him in detention in exchange for a bounty.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/15/al-qaeda-afghanistan-terrorism-777511: Only a small portion of the 15,000 American troops in Afghanistan are involved in the counterterrorism mission that the military calls its “core objective” there. Even fewer of those are hunting Al Qaeda, whose presence in the country has dwindled after years of drone strikes. Instead, U.S. special operations forces are focusing on the Afghan branch of ISIS, a less secretive group that in some way offers an easier target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ayman_al-Zawahiri: Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Salafi jihadist group al-Qaeda, was killed by a United States drone strike on 31 July 2022 in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was the successor of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan on 2 May 2011. Al-Zawahiri, who had helped to plan the September 11 attacks against the U.S., had gone into hiding following the attacks, and was located by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) months before his death. After receiving authorization from U.S. President Joe Biden to initiate the strike, the CIA fired two Hellfire missiles at the balcony of al-Zawahiri's house, killing him. ... The strike came nearly a year after the conclusion of the War in Afghanistan. U.S. officials called al-Zawahiri's presence in Afghanistan a violation of the agreement for the withdrawal of American forces from the country, under which the Taliban would not allow al-Qaeda members any sanctuary. Following the strike, members of the Haqqani network attempted to cover up al-Zawahiri's death, although the U.S. was able to confirm it. In response to the strike, Biden released a statement announcing al-Zawahiri's death, calling it a "deliverance of justice".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror: The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant Islamist and Salafi-Jihadist armed organisations such as Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their international affiliates; which are waging military insurgencies to overthrow governments of various Muslim-majority countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_military_intervention_in_Somalia_(2007%E2%80%93present)#2021: Beginning in the late 2000s, the United States Military has supported the Federal Government of Somalia in counterterrorism as part of the ongoing Global War on Terror that began in wake of the September 11th attacks. Support, mostly in the form of drone and airstrikes, advising, training, and intelligence, increased during the Obama administration and Trump administration, with hundreds of drone strikes targeting the terrorist group al-Shabaab. Two U.S. special operations personnel and a CIA paramilitary officer have died during operations in Somalia.
https://www.counterextremism.com/countries/somalia-extremism-and-terrorism: Since U.S. President Joe Biden signed an order authorizing the redeployment of around 450 Special Operations forces inside Somalia in May 2022, the U.S. has undertaken not only military approaches in countering al-Shabaab.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/somalia/counter-terrorism-somalia-losing-hearts-and-minds: 11 JULY 2005 - The U.S. has had some success but now risks evoking a backlash. Ultimately a successful counter-terrorism strategy requires more attention to helping Somalia with the twin tasks of reconciliation and state building.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/danab-brigade-somalias-elite-us-sponsored-special-ops-force: The Danab Brigade really began to take shape in 2015, according to Paul Williams, a professor at George Washington University, who has researched its operations extensively. By 2017, it had become an example of what a professional Somali combat unit could look like: well-armed and trained, with troops from a diverse mix of backgrounds, recruited on merit and paid on time. Danab played a key role, alongside forces from the fledgling Somali National Army and the African Union Mission in Somali, in Operation Leopard Hunt, which sought to cut al-Shabab off from Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
https://global.georgetown.edu/features/isis-vs-al-qaeda-what-s-the-difference-and-does-it-matter: In its fight against the United States and its allies, Al-Qaeda relies on terrorist attacks as a means to either push for their retreat from the Muslim world or at least to “make them show their real face” as in the case of the Iraq war in 2003. Al-Qaeda further provides local jihadist groups with funding, weapons, and training to fight against U.S.-backed regimes and U.S. forces in the region. Its propaganda tries to convince Muslims over time to follow Al-Qaeda’s vision of “global jihad.” ... As a result of its different priorities, ISIS pursues another set of strategies to achieve its objectives. In contrast to Al-Qaeda, its main target is not the “West” but rather Shi’a and other religious minorities as well as “apostate” Sunnis in the Arab world. Seeking to control land, consolidate, and expand by using its army to conquer more territory, it applies methods of conventional warfare when sweeping into new areas or defending existing holdings. Suicide bombings are used as part of these warfare tactics to undermine morale in the security forces. Byman further underlined that the group efficiently promotes a “badass ideology” via social media and promises financial and sexual rewards to attract fighters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State: By the end of 2015, it held an area that contained an estimated eight to twelve million people and stretched from western Iraq to eastern Syria, where it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law. ISIL was estimated at the time to have an annual budget of more than US$1 billion and more than 30,000 fighters.

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