That’s the real question, isn’t it? Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) asks it of the witnesses at today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security: “An Afghan state able to secure itself against internal threat with minimal external help”; one that “does not serve as a … base for attacks on its neighbors”; and which is “opposed to the interests of al-Qaeda worldwide.”
Steve Biddle, military analyst with the Brookings Institution: “We need only a country sufficiently in control of its territory that large contiguous blocs of Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for attacking others.”
Rory Stewart, head of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard: An “Afghanistan [that] does not in any way pose a majorly increased threat to the U.S.”