So, the Wicked Witch is Dead?

Let's notice: Osama bin Laden was not killed in a conventional military operation, and no conventional American or NATO forces are in Pakistan, nor was it a drone attack.

Many opposing war in Afghanistan have advocated tactics like the assault on Abbotabad. I have. It was a military maneuver, to be sure, but it was the kind of action that police forces also do: swooping in on helicopters to take a criminal head of a crime family, which is really what Osama was. Further, the intelligence, while more sophisticated than most police forces, was similar to good detective work.

Meanwhile, we've spent over $1.5 trillion on two wars to "destroy" the terrorists, but covert operations and police work have been the most effective. The question therefore arises: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan?

Why don't we boost our Special Operations forces, and our CIA covert ops, use the kind of surveillance that pinpointed bin Laden's hiding place, and withdraw our troops from a fruitless Afghan war? Even Karzai wants us to go, and there are indications that some Taliban are willing to negotiate: they know they can't win, but we can't either.

Our goal in Afghanistan was to "destroy al Qaeda," but most of its operatives are elsewhere, and we got its honcho in Pakistan, not with full-scale military action, but with covert police action.

AQ is "hiding in plain sight" in Pakistan, in Yemen, and probably in other places. Covert action like the assault in Abbotabad makes sense against a movement like the formless, territory-less al Qaeda.

The Taliban is not the same thing: it's confined to Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, and is largely a Pashtun movement, aiming at Pashtun control of Afghanistan, or southern Afghanistan and the western tribal areas in Pakistan. It does not threaten the US--unless we're in Afghanistan.

The problem is: the US military doesn't want to forego an expensive war, or a foothold in central Asia. Further, we have clients there who don't want us to leave: they make billions on us. There's also a pipeline route.

Osama bin Laden has already accomplished a good part of his agenda: to bankrupt the world's superpower, and to terrorize us into doing away with a significant part of our freedoms: a beacon for Muslims as well as other peoples.

Our military in Afghanistan results in many civilian casualties, even if more of them are at the hands of the Taliban. Even our reluctant client, President Karzai, says we should leave. Further, our counter-productive actions drive Afghans into the arms of the Taliban--young men whose family-members are killed in poorly targeted attacks on their compounds, or on mistaken bombing raids, or when fathers are summarily hauled off to prison at Bagram.

But will an Empire withdraw before it's defeated? Osama's assassination would give us the excuse.