Time for an end

Maybe if the people lead, our leaders will follow. As USA Today polling shows, nearly 6 in 10 of us have had it with the Afghanistan war.

"I kind of feel like Osama was a reason we had gone there in the first place," says Liz Calhoun, 35, a stay-at-home mom from Lakeville, Minn., who was called in one of two USA TODAY polls on the subject during the past 10 days. "Now that he's dead, it's an end."

"If this can be seen as a reason to end it, more power to it," says Jeff Yapuncich, 27, of Harrisonburg, Va. "I don't see any other way it's going to end."

...The demographic groups that gave Obama his strongest support in the 2008 presidential election now are the most supportive of bringing the troops home. That was the view of two-thirds or more of blacks, Hispanics, liberals, women under 50, those under 35, low-income Americans and unmarried people.

"It's time to get out," says Annette Lamb, 50, an Obama supporter and library science professor at Indiana University who lives in Teasdale, Utah. She calls bin Laden's death a convenient reason to justify a withdrawal that probably should take place for other reasons, too.

We seem to be out ahead of our leaders and certainly of our military. Naturally soldiers are going to be invested in finishing what they started. But since, aside from destroying al Qaeda, nobody has ever been able to say what this fight is for, it's hard to see what there is to finish.

President Obama has said he'll begin to bring troops out in July. There's no longer any reason the U.S. departure shouldn't be large and rapid. The Afghanistan war has no purpose. So bring the troops home now -- alive.