The National Interest

Perhaps, if America were to abandon Afghanistan and the Taliban took over again. Denying them a safe haven is obviously in America’s national interest. But there are several other wild places where al-Qaeda might also set up shop, such as Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, the Philippines or Uzbekistan. “We clearly cannot afford to wage protracted warfare with multiple brigades of American ground forces simply to deny al-Qaeda access to every possible safe haven. We would run out of brigades
long before bin Laden ran out of prospective sanctuaries,” writes Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. Mr Obama knows this, of course. His purpose in committing so many troops to Afghanistan is not merely to prevent al-Qaeda from returning but also to prevent the country from collapsing into chaos and destabilising its nuclear-armed neighbour, Pakistan. That is too complicated to put on a bumper sticker, but Mr Obama still has the political capital to attempt it.