Gene Healy on Afghanistan: "We should declare victory, and come home."

At The Washington Examiner, Gene Healy makes the case for declaring victory in Afghanistan and bringing the troops home:

We now have nearly 100,000 troops in-country chasing what President Obama's CIA director admits are "50 to 100" al Qaeda operatives, "maybe less."

Is bin Laden's death "merely symbolic"? Perhaps, but "merely" ignores the importance of symbols in a fight that has a large ideological component. And the symbolism involved in giving the one-time iconic figure a thug's death allows us to put an end to an era of tragically wrongheaded strategy. We should declare victory, and come home.

We certainly don't need to continue funding what George Will has called "New Deal 2.0" in Afghanistan, complete with agricultural subsidies to discourage opium growing, a 900,000-square-foot police training center for the country's illiterate and corrupt security forces, and USAID-sponsored pro-democracy "kite festivals."