Margaret Wente writes:
Our liberal values won’t allow us to discuss the only realistic way to fight this war: to forget about the Taliban and focus on al-Qaeda. That’s why we went in the first place. The Taliban are evil, but they have no designs on us. We need to narrow our objectives and get the bad guys using special forces, intelligence, technology and targeted assassinations. But nobody can say that. All hell would break loose.
Our enormous investment in Afghanistan also means we can’t invest in places where our efforts might make a difference. As Robert Fowler, the diplomat kidnapped by al-Qaeda, observed to the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, there are places in the world where we can send girls to school without using the military.
