The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity. I'm aware that there's still some who would question or even justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
And President Obama ultimately dealt with those facts. It is a small distance from that determination to his statement about the May 1st raid (although a large distance from broad international support to a US-only mission that did not even notify Pakistan, where the kill mission took place):
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
And for those who think this success means we can bug out from Afghanistan, I will conclude with the president's words from that Cairo speech:
Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We ... seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case. [NOTE: The gap in the quote above cuts out a part where the president clearly used the wrong word and then retraced his way through the text.]
It is still not yet the case. Continue the mission. Our success in getting Osama bin Laden should be a warning to other enemies that we will never stop trying to defeat them--not a comfort that we will declare victory and come home.
UPDATE: This attitude isn't helpful for outreach, although it hardly represents the concerns of a majority as far as can be determined:
Some Arabs have misgivings about how U.S. forces summarily killed Osama bin Laden and disposed of his body in the ocean, even if many are far more preoccupied by the popular uprisings convulsing the Middle East.
If outrage over our killing of a mass terrorist and the way we buried bin Laden spreads in the Moslem world, our attempts to distinguish our war against jihadis as a war against a narrow subset of Islam is going to fail.
