Should Obama withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan?

America was supposed to leave behind a force several thousand strong to help Afghans provide security after 2014. But now...

Afghan soldiers sit alongside U.S. soldiers during a pre-patrol briefing in Afghanistan on June 26, 2012.
(Image credit: John Cantlie/Getty Images)

With Afghan President Hamid Karzai meeting with President Obama in Washington on Friday, White House officials are saying for the first time that the U.S. might pull all of its soldiers out of Afghanistan after 2014 — the so-called zero option, which would come over the objection of military commanders. The Pentagon wants to leave up to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan to continue strengthening and training Afghan forces, and to keep al Qaeda from rebuilding in the war-torn country after the U.S. and its NATO allies withdraw at the end of 2014. (The U.S. has already reduced its troop strength to 66,000 from a peak of 100,000.) Should Obama push to keep some U.S. soldiers in the country to help ensure stability, or is it long past time we brought all the troops home?

It's smart to consider the "zero option": Karzai thinks he "holds all the cards," says David W. Barno at Foreign Policy, on the theory that the U.S. has no "workable option" other than leaving behind a sizable force to back him up. He's wrong. We're in a budget crisis, so perpetual spending on troops in Afghanistan is a "tough sell." Besides, we used the zero option in Iraq, and it "has not become an Iranian puppet state nor descended into chaos."

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.