? A stable central government? If that is the goal, please keep in mind that Afghanistan has never enjoyed such a thing. George Will has rightly noted that far greater odds of success in establishing stability are failing miserably in Bosnia right now. Why would success in Afghanistan be something that we cannot even achieve in a more promising place like Bosnia?
? The elimination of the Taliban? Are they really our enemy or are they merely a tool of our larger foe, Al Qaeda? Eliminating the Taliban serves what purpose? There is good reason that Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires.
? An environment in which Al Qaeda can no longer nest and train? If that is the goal, we must then prepare to make war in Yemen, Somalia, and countless other lands where Al Qaeda is already at home, alive, and well.
I raise these questions because we no longer seem interested in the morality of our intended actions or their intended results. In order to justify our military action there, one must first know what success actually is. We do not. And where there is no definition of success, there necessarily is no reasonable chance of it.
So, what our intentions were in 2001 no longer matters. Whether our entry into Afghanistan was justifiable then is not of import now. The landscape has changed. The metaphorical sands have shifted. We have been in Afghanistan, we have placed soldiers in untenable positions, and we have never fully grasped what it is we are trying to do. It is time to pull out.
This is not to say that we have failed, nor is this to say that we have lost. This is merely to say that a clear reassessment indicates that our strategy for defense against Islamic terror must change as time passes. We face a real and present danger. Arrests in our own homeland in the last month remind us that the threat is real. However, having troops in Afghanistan serves no real purpose. They can be better deployed or employed elsewhere, rather than remaining in a land where they have no real mission and no definition of success.
Feel free to fight Al Qaeda. Feel free to combat Islamic terror in ways that make a real difference. Feel free to craft a realistic and meaningful strategy for how America can continue to allow Muslim immigration in an era where we are discovering that Islam is incompatible with Western ideals of equality and freedom. But, most of all, feel free to earn your Nobel Peace prize by removing our sons and daughters from a situation where they no longer belong. And use them instead to make a real and lasting difference.