Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president’s national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:

“The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

Less than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan! And he is basing his conservative estimate on the best intelligence data available to our government. That means that al-Qaida, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan―so why are we having a big debate about sending even more troops to fight an enemy that has relocated elsewhere? Because of the blind belief, in the minds of those determined to “win” in Afghanistan, that if we don’t escalate, al-Qaida will inevitably come back.

Why? It’s not like al-Qaida is an evil weed that only grows in Afghanistan. Its members were foreign imports in the first place, recruited by our CIA to fight the Soviets because there were evidently not enough locals to do the job. After all, U.S. officials first forged the alliance between the foreign Arab fighters and the Afghan Mujahedeen, who morphed into the Taliban, and we should not be surprised that this tenuous alliance has ended. The Taliban and other insurgents are preoccupied with the future of Afghanistan, while the foreign Arab fighters couldn’t care less and have moved on to more hospitable climates.

There is no indication that any of the contending forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, are interested in bringing al-Qaida back. On the contrary, all the available evidence indicates that the Arab fighters are now unwelcome in non-Arab Afghanistan.

As such, while one wishes that the Afghan people would put their house in order, this is not, even after eight long years of occupation, our house. Sure, there are all sorts of angry people in Afghanistan, eager to pick fights with each other and most of all any foreigners who seem to be threatening their way of life, but why should that any longer have anything to do with us?

Why should our soldiers continue to die in an intractable civil war that we neither comprehend nor in the end will care much about? Terrorists of various stripes will still exist as they have throughout history, but the ones we are most concerned about have proved mighty capable of relocating to less hostile environments, including sunny San Diego and southern Florida, where the 9/11 hijackers had no trouble fitting in.

There is a continued need for effective international police and intelligence work to thwart the efforts of a widely dispersed al-Qaida network, but putting resources into that effort does not satisfy the need of the military establishment for a conventional field of battle in Afghanistan. That is the significance of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s call for a massive counterinsurgency campaign to make everything right about life in Afghanistan, down to the governance of the most remote village. The general’s report aims not at eliminating al-Qaida, which he concedes is barely existent in the country, but rather at creating an Afghan society that is more like our democracy. This kind of fanciful nation-building is a prescription for war without end. That might satisfy the needs of the defense industry and the career hopes of some military officers, but it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. In the end, it would seem that our military-industrial complex needs the Afghanistan battleground more than al-Qaida does.

Now that al-Qaida has left Afghanistan, what is keeping us there? The non-Arab Taliban is no threat to the United States. The Taliban is an Afghan partisan force that is fighting for power within Afghanistan. Unlike al-Qaida, they have no desire to attack us here in America. Continuing to send our troops into the middle of this civil war is a fool’s errand.

The conventional military maxim "the more troops, the greater the strength" is meaningless in partisan warfare, which is precisely the form of warfare with which we are confronted in Afghanistan. In this form of warfare, instead of one army meeting another army, the partisans disperse, attack separately, instantly retire when threatened by superior forces, and then reappear at the first favorable opportunity.

It’s time to face the fact that our conventional military power is virtually useless in a place like Afghanistan. It’s time to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home. We must not waste their lives in a war that has nothing to do with stopping the al-Qaida terrorist cells that have left Afghanistan for dozens of countries across the globe. How much more do we have to spend in this corner of the world? We have already spent over a trillion dollars on war during the past eight years that could have funded affordable health care for every man, woman and child in America. How long must this go on? It’s time to stop spending lives and money on war in a distant land and start using that money to help the lives of those here in America. Tell the President and Congress to end the war in Afghanistan.

Note: Those wishing to learn more about the situation in Afghanistan are invited to a viewing of the new documentary film “Rethink Afghanistan” at the Quaker Meetinghouse in Crossville on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 4pm. For more information and directions, go to www.crossvillefriends.org.

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This column represents alternative thoughts to other published columns in the Crossville Chronicle. "We the People" is published each Wednesday. Opinions expressed in "We the People" columns are not necessarily those of the Crossville Chronicle publisher, editor or staff. For more information, contact John Wund, editor, at jwund@frontiernet.net.