With Bin Laden Gone, U.S. Can Leave Afghanistan

With Osama Bin Laden dead, President Obama should find it far easier to justify withdrawing U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan.

After all, that’s why U.S. troops went there in the first place. 

Now that he’s gone, the rationale for staying evaporates.

No matter that the war was increasingly unpopular in America,  leaving Afghanistan was always a practical political problem for Obama with the elusive al Qaeda leader alive. A troop withdrawal presented Obama with the unpalatable prospect of leaving Bin Laden the last man standing.

To all but the hardiest true believers now, Afghanistan’s endemic corruption has made nation-building a mirage.  It's time to let them do it themselves.