If We Lose Afghanistan Yes, al-Qaeda would return. But that's just the beginning.

AT THE heart of the Obama administration's deliberations about Afghanistan is the question of whether U.S. security rests on the defeat of the Afghan Taliban movement. The discussion often gets narrowed to the point of whether al-Qaeda, which is based in Pakistan, would gain a new haven in Afghanistan if the Taliban returned to power, so we'll start there. We won't, however, linger long, because for almost all military and civilian experts on the region the question is a no-brainer. ....