Published: Wednesday, May. 4, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 13A
Last Modified: Thursday, May. 5, 2011 - 10:13 am
THE ISSUE: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States toppled the Taliban regime, which had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. U.S. officials estimate there now are fewer than 100 al-Qaida operatives left in that country. Bin Laden was killed this week in neighboring Pakistan, at a compound in Abbottabad.
Pia Lopez: Yes
The prolonged U.S. war and unrestrained spending spree in Afghanistan is unnecessary and unsustainable.
The successful operation to take out Osama bin Laden – and others to disrupt terrorist capacity – should cause U.S. leaders to reassess threats and match our interests with effective means.
Start with Afghanistan. The stated reason for the continuing U.S. presence is to prevent al-Qaida from re-establishing a "safe haven" from which to launch terror operations globally.
Today, U.S. officials say al-Qaida numbers about 100 in Afghanistan and 300 in Pakistan. Terrorism has become decentralized – with localized cells in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.
This kind of threat – small, loosely affiliated or unconnected groups – is best tackled by doing the patient work of gathering good intelligence. Follow the money, understand the networks and disrupt terrorist operations. We know by now that intelligence officers and paramilitary specialists are better at monitoring and dismantling isolated terrorist cells than large Army brigades.
The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan has ballooned from 5,000 in 2002 to 37,000 when President Barack Obama came into office – to more than 100,000 today. The annual cost has grown to more than $100 billion.
What has it brought? As Robert Pape has written, "the more Western troops we have sent to Afghanistan, the more the local residents have viewed themselves as under foreign occupation, leading to a rise in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks."
Bottom line: The United States does not need to station large ground forces to stop safe havens for anti-American terrorist groups. U.S. air and naval forces in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean can target terrorist camps without being an occupying force on the ground.
The Arab Spring, which has brought out modernizing, moderate elements in the Middle East and North Africa, has been a clear, homegrown repudiation of Osama bin Laden and his ilk.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a speech to West Point cadets in February: "Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it." I'd take that further: The United States ought to rethink the whole issue of U.S. land forces in Afghanistan.
President Obama promised to begin drawing down U.S. troops in Afghanistan by July, with completion by December 2014. Accelerate that timeline and step up diplomacy to defuse the rivalry between India and Pakistan, which has been so destructive in Afghanistan.
Pia Lopez is an editorial writer at The Bee.
Ben Boychuk: Yes, but…
What in the world are we still doing in Afghanistan? It isn't a facetious or rhetorical question.
After all, as Pia notes, nobody pretends al-Qaida has a meaningful presence there. Those amazing Navy SEALs shot Osama bin Laden in a suburb of Islamabad, a short distance from an officer training academy for Pakistan's military.
Is the idea to prevent the Taliban from reconquering Afghanistan and providing a safe haven for other would-be bin Ladens? Clearly, Pakistan already fills that role. It's true that U.S. forces routinely fight and kill Taliban and other hostile tribes in Afghanistan. Somehow, Taliban members never seem to be in short supply. We keep killing them, and more keep coming over the mountains from Pakistan.
Are we making Afghanistan safe for democracy? Hard to say. Americans continue to spill blood and treasure burning poppy fields, building schools and hospitals, and propping up the corrupt regime of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Truth is, Afghanistan was always a sideshow and the focus on bin Laden always missed the point. Terrorists like bin Laden and groups such as al-Qaida do not appear and disappear across borders like apparitions, and "stateless terrorism" is a myth. We can now safely surmise that bin Laden lived comfortably, or at least undisturbed, for several years under the protection of our "ally" Pakistan, much as other terrorist leaders live and thrive under the protection of regimes such as Iran, Yemen, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Killing bin Laden is a victory, to be sure, but a limited one. But propping up Afghanistan while other governments continue to harbor terrorists with impunity squanders American prestige. And waging an endless war against a vague, ill-defined enemy while forcing Americans to change their lives and sacrifice their liberties is folly.
Real victory, argues Boston University political scientist Angelo M. Codevilla, "means having your own kind of peace. It means not having to worry about terrorist attacks or suffering 'security measures.' " Above all, Codevilla says, victory in this seemingly endless war against Islamic terrorism means nothing less than "undoing the regimes that embody terrorist causes." Any opportunity the United States may have had to accomplish such a victory has been wasted in Afghanistan.
President George W. Bush famously said after the 9/11 attacks, "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." If only that were true.
Ben Boychuk is associate editor of City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute (www.city-journal.org).
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