Since that internal clash—and since Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union that “al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America”—the terror group has thrived throughout the Islamic world. In the last year alone, al Qaeda has established safe havens in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

And so naturally, the White House has softened its earlier position, concluding that al Qaeda and its affiliates still represented a serious threat.