Obama’s Syria War: Khorasan Terror Group Not As Dangerous As He Says?

When the Obama administration launched airstrikes
in Syria, the assumption was that we were targeting the Islamic
State (a.k.a. ISIS). And we were, but they weren’t the only
terrorist group we bombed. Soon it was announced that the White
House also ordered missile attacks on the “Khorasan Group.” This
little-known Al Qaeda affiliate group, the federal government was
quick to say, poses a big, imminent threat to the U.S. But does it
really?

“Intelligence reports indicated the Khorasan group was in the
final stages of plans to execute major attacks against Western
targets and potentially the U.S. homeland,” said Army
Lt. Gen. William Mayville of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hitting
their compounds and training camps was necessary to disrupt the
plotting of an “imminent attack” on America.

However, as the Associated Press’s (AP) Nancy Benac
writes today, “In government-speak, ‘imminent attack plotting’
doesn’t necessarily mean an attack is imminent.” She highlights the
Justice Department’s definition of term: “An ‘imminent’ threat of
violent attack against the United States does not require the
United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S.
persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”
Regarding the Khorasan Group, “two U.S. officials told the AP that
U.S. officials aren’t aware of the terrorists identifying any
particular location or target for an attack in the near
future.”

And, although the group, which is composed of senior Al Qaeda
officials, “has the desire to attack” Western targets (in contrast
to ISIS’s focus on local attacks), “we’re not sure their
capabilities match their desire,” a senior counterterrorism
official
tells Foreign Policy. The publication questions
“whether it’s actually as dangerous as the White House is now
claiming,” and if it is, why didn’t the Obama administration
“attack Khorasan sooner?”

But, hey, we’re bombing them now, and doing something
to dispose of another group of crazies can’t be a bad thing,
right?

Actually,
according to nation security writer Eli Lake of The Daily
Beast:

U.S. strikes could drive ISIS and Al Qaeda back together,
creating a jihadist Frankenstein. …

The attacks on the Khorasan Group also complicate U.S. efforts
to partner with the more moderate opposition. One Syrian rebel
group supported in the past by the United States condemned the
airstrikes on Tuesday. Harakat Hazm, a rebel group that received a
shipment of U.S. anti-tank weapons in the spring, called the
airstrikes  “an attack on national sovereignty” and charged
that foreign-led attacks only strengthen the Assad regime.

And from
McClatchy D.C.:

By focusing exclusively on Islamic State insurgents and Al Qaeda
figures associated with the Khorasan unit of the Nusra Front, and
bypassing installations associated with the government of President
Bashar Assad, the airstrikes infuriated anti-regime Syrians and
hurt the standing of moderate rebel groups that are receiving arms
and cash as part of a covert CIA operation based in the Turkish
border city of Reyhanli.