Bring the troops home from Afghanistan, America’s infinity war

As millions of people flock to movie theaters to see an imaginary one, a real infinity war has been raging in Afghanistan for almost 17 years.

Launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American war in Afghanistan has long since lost any semblance of focus or strategy. With $45 billion in ongoing annual costs and hundreds of thousands of casualties, the United States isn’t much closer to getting a handle on Afghanistan than when it started. As every analysis of the situation there can’t help but note, whichever imperial power down the centuries has tried to impose its will in what the British called the Great Game has had the same luck

According to the latest report from John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, the situation remains bleak.

Among other things, the Afghan economy has slowed. It stopped growing in 2012 and much of what has been achieved economically remains reliant on continued foreign assistance. Only two-thirds of Afghans live under the control of the Afghan government. Suicide attacks and sectarian attacks surged significantly last year. And for all of America’s anti-drug efforts, the opium trade has fully thrived since 2002.

As time goes on, the notion that it’s either possible or worth American blood and treasure to turn that situation around with more money, more lives and more time grows even thinner.

Fortunately, some American policymakers seem to be realizing what Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviet Union learned in the graveyard of empires: Afghanistan is an incredibly difficult place to achieve any degree of stability or control over.

While there’s only so much stock to put in the talk of any politician, President Donald Trump is apparently among those who would like to get the United States out of Afghanistan.

In conversations with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, Trump told Paul that could happen. “The president told me over and over again in general we’re getting the hell out of there,” Paul said. For the sake of putting an end to the unproductive agony that is America’s infinity war, we urge Trump to heed his best instincts on America’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East and bring the troops home.