From the botched Afghanistan withdrawal to the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, Biden's strategic mistakes emboldened terrorism.

The tragic, antisemitic terrorist attack in Sydney last week did not come out of nowhere. And it didn’t happen in a vacuum.

It wasn’t an isolated act of madness, nor was it simply the work of a “lone wolf” who snapped. It belongs to a wider pattern — one that has been darkening for years and accelerated sharply after October 7, 2023.

What we are seeing now is not the sudden return of terrorism, but the slow, predictable consequences of strategic failure piling up. Those failures have an author: The President Joe Biden administration.

“Deadly attacks in Australia and Syria show a diminished ISIS is still a threat,” admitted Matt Bradley for NBC News on December 20, 2025. “‘The do-it-yourself model was professionalized and has been really deployed around the world by ISIS, inspiring dozens of people to carry out attacks in their name,’ one expert tells NBC News.”

It’s true: ISIS never disappeared. It lost territory, yes. It lost the ability to govern openly, to parade tanks through captured cities on cable news. But it did not lose its ideology, its media savvy, its influence networks, or its patience. Those survived intact — and in some cases, strengthened.

The turning point was likely Afghanistan. The U.S. withdrawal in 2021 was not just chaotic; it was catastrophic. The Abbey Gate bombing, which killed 13 American service members and scores of Afghan civilians, handed jihadists a gift they could not have scripted better. In a single moment, ISIS-K humiliated the United States and confirmed a core extremist belief: America cannot be trusted.

“Islamic State Rises Again in Syria, Filling a Void Left by U.S.,” warned Sudarsan Raghavan for the Wall Street Journal back in October. “Attacks by the militant group are up as it exploits a reduced American presence and the collapse of the Assad regime”

From a terrorist’s point of view, the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan after 20 years mattered far more than the tactical details. It wasn’t about helicopters or bereft military bases chock full of American military equipment and tactical gear. 

It was about proof of concept. Proof that time is on their side. Proof that democracies lose patience. Proof that brutality works if you’re willing to wait long enough.

Washington assumed the Taliban would suppress transnational jihadists in exchange for legitimacy. That assumption collapsed almost immediately. Taliban counterterrorism efforts have been inconsistent and factional. In some regions they are brutal but ineffective; in others, quietly permissive. Their repression of minorities — particularly Shiites — has handed ISIS-K exactly what it needs to recruit.

At the same time, the United States blinded itself. 

Human intelligence networks evaporated overnight. Persistent surveillance operations — some entailing years of work by investigators — ended abruptly. “Over-the-horizon” counterterrorism turned out to be more slogan than solution. Even U.S. officials eventually admitted that the capability gap was real. ISIS-K didn’t need long to exploit it.

Then came October 7.

Hamas’s attack on Israel didn’t just shatter a fragile regional equilibrium — it lit a fuse. It reignited jihadist energy across ideological lines, flooded the global information space with violent propaganda, and reminded extremists everywhere that mass terror still has the power to reshape politics.

ISIS and Hamas may be rivals, but they feed on the same atmosphere: grievance, spectacle, and the belief that the West is weak and divided. Since October 7, that atmosphere has thickened. Attacks linked to ISIS ideology have followed — some directed, others merely inspired. The distinction matters to analysts, but not to victims.

The Sydney attack fits this pattern. The symbols matter. The timing matters. It was an attack on Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah. And the fact that it happened far from the Middle East does not make it less connected to what is unfolding there. Terrorism doesn’t respect borders — it never has. It radiates outward from failed states, permissive environments, and strategic miscalculations.

Syria’s ongoing fragmentation has reopened space for ISIS cells. Affiliates in Africa are growing bolder. Online propaganda fills the gaps where territory once mattered. This is not a movement trying to recreate 2015. It’s one adapting to 2025.

All of this unfolded under an administration that managed to alienate allies while emboldening adversaries. Joe Biden’s decision to publicly insult Saudi Arabia — America’s most powerful regional partner — fractured relationships that matter in counterterrorism. Coalitions are not luxuries in this fight. They are necessities. You don’t weaken them while your enemies are reorganizing.

The bitter irony is that these failures are now compounding in the Trump era. The security environment Donald Trump inherited is more volatile, more fragmented, and more ideologically charged than the one he left behind. The damage isn’t easily undone, because it lives in perception: perception of American retreat, inconsistency, and exhaustion.

This is not about resurrected caliphates or warfare in the traditional sense. It’s about something quieter and more dangerous — a belief spreading across extremist networks that time favors them.

Afghanistan was the proof of concept.
October 7 was the accelerant.
Sydney is one of the consequences.

ISIS was never gone. It, and the insidious perversion of ideology behind it, has only been waiting.

What will President Donald Trump do to combat it?

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)