Our View: Last chance to step back from quagmire

The electoral outcome has caused almost all concerned to avert their eyes, pretend not to remember the unseemly events that led up to Hamid Karzai securing a second term as president of Afghanistan, and declare that in lieu of a possibly even messier episode on Saturday that this decision confers that elusive quality known as legitimacy on Karzai and the once and future government of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, opinions about legitimacy — all around — generally have more to do with one's preferred path forward than with reality in Afghanistan.

The suspiciously neat denouement to an Aug. 20 election in which fully a third of the votes "cast" for Karzai were determined to be fraudulent could give President Barack Obama one last chance to rethink radically — i.e., in a way that gets to the root of the situation — what the U.S. posture in Afghanistan should be. If he focuses on the larger question of just why the U.S. is occupying Afghanistan, which is largely irrelevant to anything resembling core U.S. geopolitical interests, he just might decide, as we did long ago, that a military occupation, whether or not it involves overt "nation-building," is a foolish misuse of American troops and treasure.

If the U.S. has a legitimate interest in that part of the world, it is to make sure that al-Qaida, which orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and still harbors international terrorist ambitions but has been considerably weakened over the past eight years, does not establish secure bases from which to mount future attacks on the U.S. — and perhaps on Western Europe if one sees U.S. interests in a slightly more expansive way. The evidence is that al-Qaida is not active in Afghanistan and is unlikely to be, no matter who prevails in the current insurgency, if the U.S. makes itself clear to all parties. Al-Qaida in Pakistan can best be neutralized by the methods that have worked best so far — intelligence, cutting off financial conduits and the occasional special forces or drone attack when local intelligence is reliable.

That doesn't require a large-scale military presence in Afghanistan. Indeed, a strong case can be made that continuing U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will weaken or deflect attention and resources from the primary mission.

Unfortunately, comments from people in the Obama administration suggest that it is determined at least to maintain the current military commitment of some 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and may be open to an escalation. President Obama himself expressed hope that Karzai is now "going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community's interest in his country to initiate reforms internally." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "When President Karzai accepted (the runoff) without knowing what the consequences and outcome would be, that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward."

Ah, the charms of wishful thinking!

This could be the Obama administration's last chance to draw down the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan with a modicum of grace. Once the commitment is made, it will be indisputably Obama's war, and the dynamics of political positioning will make it almost impossible to change course. That way lies quagmire.