Rob Stein

speaker

556 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 11 Sep

Rob Stein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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The NPR Politics Podcast · The legacy of 9/11 · 11 Sep 2026 podcast

It would be very, very difficult, I think, to have a sustained ongoing campaign just because the U.S. matched

and its partners have great visibility all over the world. matched

They could respond very quickly. matched

So I think the individual attack is still very much a possibility. matched

a big group forming and carrying out a sustained attack would be very hard to do or at least to go unnoticed. matched

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are still out there. matched

They haven't gone away. matched

They number certainly in the thousands. matched

They're broken up into smaller groups. matched

I think North Africa, West Africa is where they're most active and are having the ability in some cases to destabilize governments there. matched

but their activity is more local than active in the West. matched

That's one of the distinctions I would make, although al-Qaeda's ambitions are still to go after Western targets, but they haven't been able to do that in many years at this point. matched

For me, it's the three wars that the U.S. matched

has been involved in the past quarter century and almost nonstop. matched

If you had told me after 9-11, the U.S. matched

would be fighting three major wars over the next quarter century in three neighboring countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran— matched

and that after that 25-year period, the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan, and that all three of those wars had failed to achieve the confident predictions that US presidents had made at the beginning of them, I would not have believed you. matched

And the US has been stuck in this loop, essentially, for the past quarter century of unleashing its formidable military power matched

making great military gains in the early weeks of these wars and then thinking this will quickly and cleanly lead to a political settlement that the U.S. matched

wants. matched

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