...and why exactly are we still in Afghanistan?

Yes of course, by all means let us celebrate. Let us not waste our precious time worrying about the ramifications of extra-judicial assassinations, illegal foreign incursions, extraordinary renditions or fruitless torture. Avert your eyes from the continuation of illegal domestic surveillance and airport genital-groping theater. Let us not sully our beautiful minds with stray thoughts of collateral damage or permanently displaced peoples. Don't even bother contemplating the wisdom of totally unnecessary, never-ending military occupations. Let us instead focus on how the ends justify the means regardless of how corrosive those means are to the soul of America...

Give credit where credit is due. According to the wingnut pundits in pineapple upside-down world, while attempting to restore dignity to the White House true American hero George W. Bush used Doc Brown's flux capacitor to travel back to the future and successfully kill bin Laden two years after he left office. Apparently Bush used that same device to make lecherous ne'er-do-well Bill Clinton responsible for failing to stop 9/11. Also readily apparent is the success of Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques regardless of their legality. After all, the rule of law is only for people not easily frightened by their own shadows.

But seriously, if anything, the assassination of bin Laden is a repudiation of Bush's policies and a repudiation of the continuing need for a large occupational force in Afghanistan. I'm truly sorry, but I have to inform you that it was the Bush administration's overweening incompetence that led to the abandonment of Afghanistan. They abandoned the hunt for bin Laden in a vainglorious attempt to achieve the neoconservative wet dream that was the Iraq invasion. That is the primary reason Afghanistan is as fucked-up as it is.

It is time to acknowledge that no one can fix Afghanistan. We could easily operate special ops and robotic death sorties till our empire's end without having to field a hundred-thousand troops and twice as many corporate mercenaries. We need to acknowledge that al-Qaeda has long been virtually non-existent in Afghanistan, and that we need to negotiate a cease-fire with the non-terrorist, nationalist Taliban. Let us try to put an end to the Afghan civil conflict we find ourselves mired in and start getting the fuck out now...