The killing of Osama bin Laden marked a significant achievement in America's long war against al Qaeda. Yet, following last year's Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, it became clear that disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda did not require the occupation of distant lands. Indeed, even in the absence of the terrorist leader's death, the sad and simple truth was that the protracted wars of occupation waged in 9/11's name were an enormous drain on American taxpayers and counterproductive to the goal of stopping terrorism.
Certainly, bin Laden's killing does not mean the end of al Qaeda, but it does provide another reason to bring our ongoing sacrifice in blood and treasure in Afghanistan to a swift end. Moreover, Americans should be circumspect about planners in Washington expanding the War on Terror to distant enemies in Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere. Al Qaeda and its associates have always been manageable security problems, not existential threats to America that require endless war by remote control.
The lesson of 9/11 and its Saudi terrorist financier is that would-be terrorists have reduced their dependence on specific base camps and physical havens. They can plan, organize, and train from virtually anywhere in the world, from Kandahar and Hamburg to Malaysia and Los Angeles. Indeed, the very al Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11 not only found sanctuary in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, but also in politically free and economically prosperous countries like Germany, Spain, and the United States. In this respect, policymakers and prominent opinion leaders must stop conflating the punishment of al Qaeda with the creation of stable societies, particularly when propping up corrupt and illegitimate foreign governments and waging counterinsurgency campaigns distracts from the conceptually simpler task of targeted counterterrorism measures to find and eliminate terrorist threats.