CIA Director Leon Panetta said on Sunday there may be less than 50 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan, with "no question" that most of the terrorist network is operating from the western tribal region of Pakistan.
Panetta's remarks came as President Barack Obama builds up U.S. forces in Afghanistan to prop up the government and, in his words, "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda." About U.S. 98,000 troops will be in Afghanistan by fall.
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So I say, if our original reason for getting involved in that goat farking hellhole was to get rid of alQaeda. And alQaeda is down to their last 50 dead-enders, why can't that be the "win" we need to get the hell out of there?
Mission Accomplished!
We may not have the pleasure of Bin Laden's head on a pike, but we didn't get Hitler in the end either.
Now later in the article, it says that our mission should also include transforming Afghanistan into a country that can never serve as a safe haven for alQaeda again. But that's just a stupidly impossible goal that seems more in tuned with ensuring profitable quarters for the Military Industrial Complex. That mission can't be done in ANY country, including the U.S. We should never even attempt such a thing.
So here's what we do. We declare victory over alQaeda in Afghanistan, and get out of there right goddamn now. If Karzai can't handle it without us, fuck him. The only way that Afghanistan will get better will be when they decide to. We can't bomb them into becoming like Canada.
Next..we pursue alQaeda, or whoever they really are, in the manner that they should have been pursued all along...as an international law-enforcement threat. With quiet intelligence, both human and technological, followed by a sudden, rapid asskicking by ninja FBI/CIA/Special Ops teams that get in, cap the bad guys, and then gets out before anybody knows they are there.
This is what the correct force response to 9/11 should have been all along. One doesn't send Armies after criminals, just like if the American mafia were to blow up some rival's building in Rome, I doubt Italy's response would be to send their entire military over to invade New Jersey. It would go to Interpol.