Afghanistan: The war’s weakened rationale

With Osama bin Laden dead, it’s time for President Obama to “declare victory and end the war” in Afghanistan, said Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. This conflict “lost any sane rationale” a long time ago, and now that the man behind the 9/11 attacks has been killed, it “no longer has even a pretext.” Troop withdrawals were already scheduled to begin in July; Obama should quickly bring all our soldiers home. But before the U.S. pulls out, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, we need to secure a peace deal between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Bin Laden’s death makes such a deal more likely. “If foreign fighters like bin Laden are out of the picture,” the Taliban may be willing to lay down their arms in return for a share of power.

It would be a “huge mistake” to use bin Laden’s death as an excuse to quit Afghanistan, said Michael Rubin in Commentary. The fact that al Qaida’s leader was hiding out at a luxury mansion near Islamabad shows us “that Pakistan is not a true ally in the war on terror.” If we leave Afghanistan before the country is capable of defending itself, “Pakistan will move in and fill the vacuum” with Osama’s radical allies. We can’t let Afghanistan once again become a “sanctuary” for Islamic terrorists, said Gayle Tzemach Lemmon in Foreign Policy. But Obama has done a terrible job of explaining the war’s rationale to the American public. A recent poll found that two thirds of Americans thought the conflict was “no longer worth fighting.” Following the death of “al Qaida’s most visible symbol,” Obama will face growing political pressure to draw down a large percentage of the U.S.’s 100,000 troops.

A drawdown of at least 10,000 troops in July is almost certain, said Yochi Dreazen in The Atlantic, and it may be considerably larger. The successful bin Laden hit has strengthened the hand of Vice President Joe Biden, who has long argued that the U.S. should substantially reduce its Afghan footprint and use special operations forces—like the Navy SEALs who killed Osama—to “mount targeted counterterror strikes inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan.” CIA director Leon Panetta, who was named last week to succeed Robert Gates at the Pentagon, also “largely shares Biden’s beliefs”—suggesting that a fast and deep military withdrawal could soon be in the cards.

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