A Full Withdrawal From Afghanistan ?

(Photo is from the Department of Defense Flickr site.)

For quite a while now President Obama has been telling Americans that he will withdraw the American troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014. But that is just a partial truth. The administration and the Pentagon have always intended to leave around 34,000 troops in that country far into the future -- supposedly to train Afghan troops and to be there to fight "terrorists".

However, that idea may be changing. White House aides have told CBS News that the president is now considering a withdrawal of all troops. They say that while this has always been an option, it was not considered to be a serious option until recently. Why the change? A couple of reasons.

First, the president is growing frustrated with the Afghan government. President Karzai has been very critical of American troops recently, and at the last minute, withdrew from talks arranged with the Taliban. Second, the Afghan government still has not agreed to give the troops that would remain an immunity from Afghan law. That second reason is the same reason that troops were not left in Iraq.

Is the president finally starting to realize that the Karzai government cannot be trusted? I hope so. It has been obvious to many of us for a while now that his government is not much better than the one he replaced, and much more corrupt. The truth is that it was always a foolish idea for the U.S. to try and impose a U.S.-style government in that country -- just as foolish as it was for the USSR to try and impose a soviet-style government there.

The country is still ruled by ruthless warlords, who will impose the government they want when we leave -- and that will happen no matter how long we stay. We are accomplishing nothing except to delay the inevitable, and to continue getting our troops killed there (not to mention innocent civilians).

We should withdraw all of our troops from that troubled country. And personally, I don't think we should wait another year and a half to do it. We should do it immediately.