Obama Fighting the Last War

Lest it be forgotten, on September 20, 2001, the Bush administration stated that Osama Bin Laden had been behind the September 11 attacks, and it delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban government in Kabul demanding that the Al Qaeda leader be turned over to American authorities. It was the refusal of Mullah Omar and his colleagues to agree to this that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, Operation Enduring Freedom, originally called Operation Infinite Justice but re-branded at the last moment because of fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. (Whatever the American right may imagine and some writers at TNR on occasion have at least strongly implied, Obama is scarcely the only president ever to have taken these into account.) Subsequent transformations of the rationale for the invasion and the nine-and-a-half years of fighting that have followed should not be allowed to obscure this. That is why it is entirely appropriate that the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden (whether one welcomes it or regrets that the Al Qaeda leader was not captured instead, let us at least call it by its right name) should be the occasion for thinking through whether it is not now time to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.