The Taliban were hoping to take Afghanistan by September 11, but, thanks to the Biden administration, Kabul has fallen — and the Taliban have declared the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

As embattled Americans may recall, Afghanistan provided a base for the massive terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Twenty years later, America is even more vulnerable for all the same reasons.

“The road to 9/11 again illustrates how the large, unwieldy U.S. government tended to underestimate a threat that grew ever greater,” proclaims The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. Examples of unwieldy government include the vaunted CIA, FBI and INS but as the report concluded: “We see little evidence that the progress of the plot was disturbed by any government action.” (emphasis added) Even so, the report looks to government for the solution.

“Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies,” the report contends. “It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.” In addition, “the massive departments and agencies that prevailed in the great struggles of the twentieth century must work together in new ways, so that all the instruments of national power can be combined.” And they were.

The response to massive bureaucratic failure was to create a massive new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, “combining 22 different federal departments and agencies into a unified, integrated Cabinet agency.” According to President Bush, the new DHS was “the most significant transformation of the U.S. government in over a half-century,” but there was precedent for the expansion.

President Carter was also concerned about bureaucratic inefficiency, so he worked to create a new bureaucracy, the Senior Executive Service. SES bosses, under the control of political appointees, “operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies.” Rep. Herb Harris, Virginia Democrat, warned that the SES “will open the door to politicization.” That was also the case with the DHS.

After documenting the worst Islamic terrorist attack in history, the 9/11 Commission Report contended that “the face of terror is not the true face of Islam.” On the other hand, “mosques, schools and boardinghouses served as recruiting station in many parts of the world, including the United States.” The composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama also disregard Islamic terrorism and targeted ordinary Americans who valued freedom, limited government, and their constitutional rights.

In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security, then under Janet Napolitano, released Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic And Political Climate Fueling Resurgence In Radicalization And Recruitment. This document warns of “white supremacist” types that are “hate-oriented” or “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” The FBI also shifted from Islamic terrorism to Americans they smeared as “right-wing extremists” and such.

The FBI, CIA and DHS failed to prevent terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009; San Bernardino, California, in 2015, and Orlando, Florida, in 2016. These were all cases of mass murder by Islamic jihadists, inspired by terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To all but the willfully blind, none of the lessons had been learned.

9/11 was perpetrated from within the United States, but under the Biden Junta, the border is essentially open and the easy access is bound to encourage Islamic terrorists. The latest issue of al Qaeda’s online magazine, urges “attacks against the American enemy, whether inside its homeland, which is preferred, or outside.” For the best success, “try to always choose a location where it is hard for those gathered to find shelter, hide, or escape. Do this to ensure that the largest number of people are killed.”

As the 9/11 report notes, a tiny group of people, not enough to man a platoon, achieved an attack in some ways “more devastating than Pearl Harbor.” That called for a response like the one after Pearl Harbor, swift and massive force against terrorist groups and any nation that harbors them, stopping at nothing less than total victory. In the early going President Bush talked a good game but failed to follow through with force. His best response was to expand the large, unwieldy government that had failed with yet another bureaucracy. All the massive government agencies that failed to prevent 9/11 have been thoroughly politicized and now ignore the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

The FBI now targets “domestic” terrorists, meaning people who would vote for Donald Trump, question the 2020 election, and value their constitutional rights. The CIA, once headed by Gus Hall voter John Brennan, now produces videos confirming its status as just another “woke” bureaucracy. Over at the U.S. military, joint chiefs boss Gen. Mark Milley has the guns pointed inward at the “brownshirts” who voted for Trump, Milley’s version of – who else? – Adolph Hitler. Consider also the vaunted Department of Homeland Security, created after 9/11 to keep the nation safe.

DHS boss Alejandro Mayorkas is letting in thousands of “migrants,” from all over the world, who have no valid claim to asylum or residency in the United States. That should bring back memories.

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country,” noted 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, released in 2004. By this time 20 years ago, the report explains, the al Qaeda team “demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States.” Twenty years later, the visas are no longer necessary.

Prior to 9/11, the Terrorist Travel report notes, “no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal.” Indeed, even after the 9/11, “border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy.” Commission staff believed “it must be made one,” but it wasn’t, and in 2021 the border has an existential problem.

As the 20th anniversary approaches, with the Taliban poised to take Afghanistan, recall what national counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke told national security advisor Condoleezza Rice on May 29, 2001: “When these attacks occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them.”

Should similar attacks occur on September 11, 2021, the Biden Junta will wonder how to avoid blame. They might call it “workplace violence” in the style of Fort Hood in 2009, or blame it on an internet video, as in Benghazi in 2012, or pass it off as the “JV team,” unworthy of attention.

This is what happens when a thriving country with a limited government becomes a large, unwieldy government with a country. This is what happens when free people become subject to the aristocracy of bureaucrats. This is what happens when a composite character president continues to run the show through the addled Joe Biden and his leftist Junta.