The United Nations has recently ratcheted up its criticism of the United States' decision to withhold humanitarian aid to parts of Somalia controlled by the Islamist terror group al Shabaab.

If there is one success story since 9/11, it has been the efforts to combat terror finance. If military action is sometimes akin to conducting surgery with an axe, efforts to dry up sources of funding are like wielding a scalpel.

Al Shabaab, a militant Islamist group with ties to al Qaeda operating in Somalia, poses a real and imminent danger to American and international security.

The new Congress must not shirk its duty in helping government execute its chief mission: protecting American citizens.

The fight against terrorism is no closer to success today than it was a decade ago when, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, President George W. Bush declared a Global War on Terrorism.

Somaliland's election and peaceful transfer of power illuminates a beacon of hope in a part of the world that poses a growing and legitimate security threat to the United States and its allies.

Those who believe bin Laden's death has brought the war on terror to an end fundamentally misunderstand the ideology that motivates both jihadist terrorism and Islamist antipathy toward the West in general and the United States in particular.

The president long differentiated between the hunt for Bin Laden, which he saw as legitimate, and the wider war on terrorism which he saw as not.