Is It Time to Get Out of Afghanistan?

[Presley Cannady]

The simple answer is yes...what we are doing now is totally disconnected from what we went in there to (and did) do in 2001.

I recall that the Allies drove al Qaeda into Taliban into the south and west and into Pakistan by spring of 2002. I don't recall in any of the tens years afterwards:

1. destroying the enemy,
2. forcing the enemy to capitulate, or
3. securing Afghanistan (or Pakistan, for that matter)--and consequently the base, supply and assembly area the enemy used to stage the 9/11 attacks--from future contest.

The Coalition leakily denies the enemy a breakout from his diminished territory, though the effort requires--minimum--a level of strength at least equivalent to that at the dawn of 2009. Still, seems to me the war ain't won and the threat eradicated until at least one of those three conditions are met.