Working for the CIA, James A. Mitchell spent thousands of hours speaking with al-Qaeda leaders in American custody, especially Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (in shorthand, KSM), mastermind of the September 11 attacks. In his new memoir, Mitchell describes the experience and explains what he and his colleagues learned. Marc Thiessen writes in his review:

[P]erhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States—and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan—and now Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had to the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut—when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law-enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of the USS Cole in Yemen—arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack. . . .

But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize [that] we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

KSM was right. For the past eight years, our leaders have told us that we are weary of war and need to focus on “nation-building at home.” We have been defeating ourselves by quitting—just as KSM predicted. But quitting will not bring us peace, KSM told Mitchell, explaining that “it does not matter that we [Americans] do not want to fight them.”

On Wednesday, Elliott Abrams testified before Congress about the Taylor Force Act, passed in 2018 to withhold U.S. funds from the Palestinian Authority (PA) so long as it continues to reward terrorists and their families with cash. Abrams cites several factors explaining the sharp increase in Palestinian terrorism this year, among them Iran’s attempt to wage proxy war on Israel; another is the “Palestinian Authority’s continuing refusal to fight terrorism.” (Video is available at the link below.)

As long as the “pay for slay” system continues, the message to Palestinians is that terrorists should be honored and rewarded. And indeed year after year, the PA honors individuals who have committed acts of terror by naming plazas or schools after them or announcing what heroes they are or were.

There are clear alternatives to “pay to slay.” It would be reasonable for the PA to say that, whatever the crime committed, the criminal’s family and children should not suffer for it. The PA could have implemented a welfare-based system, a system of family allowances based on the number of children—as one example. It has steadfastly refused to do so, precisely because such a system would no longer honor and reward terrorists based on the seriousness of their crimes.

These efforts, like the act itself, are not at all meant to diminish assistance to the Palestinian people. Rather, they are efforts to direct aid to the Palestinian people rather than to convicted terrorists. . . . [T]he Taylor Force Act does not stop U.S. assistance to Palestinians, but keeps it out of hands in the PA that are channels for paying rewards for terror.

[S]hould the United States continue to aid the Palestinian security forces? My answer is yes, and I note that it is also the answer of Israel and Jordan. As I’ve noted, PA efforts against Hamas or other groups may be self-interested—fights among rivals, not principled fights against terrorism. Yet they can have the same effect of lessening the Iranian-backed terrorism committed by Palestinian groups that Iran supports.