At a Brookings Institution panel discussion entitled “The War in Afghanistan: Is it Over?” Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon urged Americans to be patient, saying, “As for the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, trying to root out the remaining elements of al Qaeda and the Taliban, I think this mission at this point is going about as well as we can hope. I think it’s the sort of thing where you’ve got to be patient, you got to expect your results will not be particularly productive at any given moment… I think we’re going to have to keep them off balance, expect relatively modest and occasional tactical battlefield successes. That’s still an accomplishment in and of itself. The problem is it doesn’t lead you to an exit strategy very easily and we may have to keep up this kind of pressure with 7,000 Americans in Afghanistan and 10,000 to 15,000 more in the vicinity, and a number of allied troops well into 2003, 2004.”
Yes, you read that correctly. O’Hanlon worried that up to 7,000 American soldiers might need to remain at war in Afghanistan through 2004. The Brookings Institution panel discussion I’m referring to was held eight years ago.
Today, the Brookings Institution got an answer to the question that it asked long ago: No, the war in Afghanistan is not over. Today, two American soldiers were taken captive by the Taliban, and five others were killed. 56 Americans have been killed so far this month.
There are nearly 100,000 Americans fighting in Afghanistan right now. Eight years after Michael O’Hanlon urged patience with the war in Afghanistan, what reason do we have for following his advice?
