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The Kill-Bin-Laden-and-Go-Home Strategy |
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So, how do we get out of Afghanistan?
There are a lot of options, as Alex Thurston and Jon Rainwater laid out. Here’s just one, one that I believe could work and could play well politically. Why don’t we kill Osama Bin Laden and go home?
The war in Afghanistan was started after the attacks on September 11th. Its purpose was to destroy the Al-Qaeda safe havens the Taliban government had allowed to flourish in the country. Now, almost eight years later, we find ourselves with a resurgent Taliban that is less a terrorist coddler than an indigenous liberation force, bent on freeing Afghan soil from foreign occupiers like they did when the Russians and British invaded. We find ourselves with a destabilized (and nuclear armed) Pakistan and a nervous Iran because of our troop presence in the country. We find ourselves with an expensive war that only serves as a terrorist recruiting tool.
Let’s just kill Bin Laden, declare the war on terror over, and withdraw immediately. We’ve done what we set out to do, we’ve achieved a measure of victory, and we can leave without undue embarrassment. Politically, we won’t be “running away” or getting “defeated.” Apparently, that’s important.
If you combine this strategy with a regional security pact, it could actually be pretty effective at preventing future attacks as well. The Taliban are likely to retake the country, at least in some aspect, but honestly, that’s not really our fight. We can strengthen our ties with Pakistan by withdrawing from Afghanistan, and with our improved bargaining position, we can work out a way to keep an eye on the area (including bombing terrorist camps, if and when they return) without requiring a massive troop presence. We can use the intelligence network we’ve built up to keep an ear to the ground. And we can work with our allies (and potential allies like Iran) to keep the situation in Afghanistan contained.
It’s just one option for how to solve this problem. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not as neat and clean as, say, magically creating a human rights loving, peaceful, stable, non-terrorist based government in Afghanistan, but it’s way more realistic.
This post is part of Get Afghanistan Right Week. Join us!
I have long been advocating for an Osama man hunt because the stated US policy is pretty muddled or confusing. Nice Post.