Remember way back. Long before ISIS was created in American prison camps in Iraq. Remember the guys who lived in caves in Afghanistan and killed roughly 3,000 Americans?
Remember how we were going to crush them?

"We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”
Obama, Oct. 7, 2008

Then Obama killed Osama bin Laden and the president announced that "al Qaeda has been decimated". Senator Kerry said said something similar.
“It took us quite a few years before we were able to eliminate Osama bin Laden and the top leadership and neutralize them as an effective force.”
- Secretary Kerry, 2015

Everyone who has ever watched a Hollywood action movie knows that once you kill the main bad guy, the movie is over. It's a rule.
Detective McClane hugs his wife. Sergeant Riggs and Sergeant Murtaugh tell each other bad puns. Everyone laughs because the world has been made right again. Fade to black. Roll credits.
Hell, the CIA even co-produced a movie to celebrate the victory over al-Qaeda.

We had already moved on, dammit. If only al-Qaeda had read the script.

Afghanistan's top defense official has warned that al Qaeda -- the reason the United States first invaded Afghanistan -- is "very active" and a "big threat" in the country.

Not only was this not supposed to happen, but the resurgent Taliban are working with al-Qaeda again.

That was the very reason NATO forces went into Afghanistan in the first place: to prevent al Qaeda functioning freely while the Taliban, which ruled the country until its ouster at the end of 2001, looked on.
"You see a more overt cooperation between the Taliban and these designated terrorist organizations," Nicholson said

American movie audiences and voters hate the kind of sequels where you have to start from square one all over again.
So, after 15 years of non-stop war against the largest, most powerful military in the world, how many al-Qaeda terrorists are there in Afghanistan? The answer is amusing.

Major General Jeff Buchanan, Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, said the recent discovery and destruction of an al Qaeda training camp in Kandahar province meant previous U.S. estimates of the group's strength were being revised.
"If you go back to last year, there were a lot of intel estimates that said within Afghanistan al Qaeda probably has 50 to 100 members, but in this one camp we found more than 150."

In other words, we haven't a single clue how many there are.

Let's forget about Afghanistan for a moment, like the politicians have, and consider the much larger and more active al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, AQAP.
We've been bombing and droning this al-Qaeda affiliate for almost as long as we've been bombing Afghanistan. So it's with great interest that I read this today.

The United States is considering a request from the United Arab Emirates for military support to assist a new offensive in Yemen against al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate, U.S. officials tell Reuters.

Wait a second. Forget for a moment that Saudi arabia and UAE are using American bombs to kill civilians.
How in the heck did we arrive at this point?

Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country's third largest port.
If Islamic State's capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then al Qaeda's is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals.
AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalized by the country's northern elite for years.

This is decimated?

Check out this map of Yemen.

You'll notice two things: 1) after a year of war all the Saudi coalition has managed is to drive the Houthis away from Aden. The capital of Sanaa is nowhere near being reconquered.
2) AQAP filled those areas and now controls nearly as much territory as the Yemeni government.

Al-Qaeda is also resurgent in Somalia and Libya.
However, nowhere is al-Qaeda stronger than in Syria where they have established an emirate.

Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra has gathered nearly 10 thousand troops around the city of Aleppo, according to Russian military officials. However, they denied an earlier claim by the Syrian government that they had planned to take part in an assault on the city.

10,000 huh? In one place?
It's important to recall how small of an organization al-Qaeda was in 2001.

By 2001, al Qaeda still had no formal branches or franchises. Its membership included a core of just under 200 people, a 122-person martyrdom brigade, and several dozen foot soldiers recruited from the 700 or so graduates of its training camps.

Al-Qaeda in 2001 was so small that you could fit all of them into a high school gymnasium.
Al-Qaeda in 2001, just before we started dropping bombs on Afghanistan, occupied no territory and barely existed outside of rural Afghanistan.

Now al-Qaeda can mass 10,000 soldiers for a single attack in Syria, while occupying a coastline in Yemen that can stretch from London to Edinburgh.
Now think about how many times the presidential candidates have even mentioned al-Qaeda in the debates. Nada. It's not even on the political radar for America.
After all, the CIA-produced movie said it was over. What more proof does Detective McClane need?