The symbolism couldn't be starker. A year after ordering Navy SEALs to execute the raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- the man who triggered the Afghan War -- President Obama flew to Afghanistan to sign a pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai winding down the decade-long conflict. It's the first time since the killing that Obama has used the bin Laden raid as a lever for getting out of Afghanistan. Only, in classic Obama fashion, he's doing it halfway.
"One year ago, from a base here in Afghanistan, our troops launched the operation that killed Osama bin Laden," Obama said in a televised address from Bagram Airfield. "This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end."
Speaking to reporters on background before Obama's speech, two senior administration officials acknowledged that the surprise presidential visit to Afghanistan came on "a resonant day." But they denied that the White House was playing politics with the anniversary of the bin Laden raid. They spun the accord signed by the two presidents as presenting a path to "responsibly end the war in Afghanistan while achieving our objective of defeating al-Qaida and denying them a safe haven."
Right after the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, the Obama administration argued the killing wouldn't impact its Afghanistan strategy. And to a large degree, the White House had a point, if only an ironic one: al-Qaida is in Pakistan, and the Afghanistan War grinds on independently of the terrorist group that occasioned it. When Obama announced the next month that he would withdraw his surge troops by late summer 2012 -- a drawdown policy the president set in 2009 -- he made minimal reference to the bin Laden raid, and instead predicated the drawdown on the dubious point that the surge had stabilized the country.
Should there be any doubt, the unannounced visit to Afghanistan is a campaign stop. Obama is running for reelection as the president who killed bin Laden, ended the Iraq War and began the end of the Afghanistan War. But the pageantry of Obama's trip conceals the fact that Obama isn't ending the war at all.
The deal Obama and Karzai inked isn't a withdrawal accord. It's a drawdown agreement that turns over combat responsibilities to the Afghan security forces by the end of 2014 -- although the top Obama aides emphasized that much of that transition will actually occur next year. After 2014, the U.S. will guarantee Afghanistan's security and financial stability for at least another decade. Most U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014. But the U.S. will retain a residual force of as-yet-unknown size to train Afghan troops through at least 2016; special operations forces will continue to raid Afghan villages for suspected insurgents; and big Afghan airbases will continue to be launching pads for the drone war over Pakistan -- the war that targets bin Laden's remaining allies.
According to the two senior administration officials who briefed reporters, Obama hasn't made any decisions about the size of any post-2014 force. That will come in another accord that the U.S. and Afghanistan will now negotiate -- one that the aides said would alleviate "anxiety in the region" about the U.S.' future plans.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan after a disastrous invasion, "the international community abandoned Afghanistan to years of civil war, followed by Taliban rule," said one of the officials. "That's a mistake that President Obama is determined to not repeat. This agreement will make clear to the Taliban, al-Qaida and other international terrorist groups that they cannot wait us out."
If that seems like a half-measure, you're paying attention. The bin Laden kill inoculates Obama against charges that he's too weak to fight terrorism. Staying in Afghanistan past-2014 in a reduced capacity inoculates him against charges that he's abandoning the country to the Taliban. Obama -- and his campaign -- hopes that the needle is threaded sufficiently to satisfy the majority of Americans who want out of Afghanistan while also boxing in GOP presidential opponent Mitt Romney, whose position on the war already looks a lot like Obama's.
If anything, Obama's nuanced positioning on the war -- wind it down gradually, but don't actually end it -- is classic Obama. He took a similar approach to Iraq (although there he actually did get U.S. troops out). Bin Laden may be dead, but Obama's caution survives.
