Retrenching in Afghanistan

In the aftermath of the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has laid out a plan going forward for Afghanistan.  He just signed a deal with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in which U.S. troops will help with logistics and backup in Afghanistan for ten years after combat troops leave in 2014.

Although the role of U.S. troops after 2014 will be too small to even look like a case of nation-building, many Americans are still sick and tired of the whole enterprise and pull the plug entirely on the mission.  That's not going to happen, insofar as Afghanistan can be expected to remain a volatile country and continue to be susceptible to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.  Obama is focusing squarely on preventing groups like al-Qaeda  or the Taliban from ever having a prominent role in Afghan affairs again.

So, it's not like we're going to rebuild the country, buy electronic products from them, and give them most-favored-nation trade status or anything like that. All we're settling for, to say the least (the very least), is to have an acceptably stable state free of the influence of religious extremist commandos.  We could have done better, but George Walker Bush squandered that opportunity by diverting his attention to Iraq.  It's not fair to say that Afghanistan would have been a better country today if Bush hadn't taken his eye off the ball; it's only fair to say it would have been a different country.