The last U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan on Monday was "the final chapter" in a contentions 20-year military effort that ultimately "saw the U.S. handing Afghanistan back to the very Islamist militants it sought to root out when American troops entered the country in 2001," BBC News reports.
The Afghanistan War "began under President George W. Bush as a hunt for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader who oversaw the 9/11 attacks on the United States," The New York Times recounts. "On that score, it succeeded: Al Qaeda was driven out and Bin Laden was killed by an American SEAL team in Pakistan in 2011." But 20 years, three presidents, more than $2 trillion, and 170,000 lives after the 2001 invasion, America's longest war "failed in nearly every other goal."
Early on, the U.S., "confident it had routed the Taliban, refused their entreaties for a negotiated surrender, and plowed ahead with an enormous effort to not only drive them out but to construct a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan," the Times writes. "The lengthy occupation allowed the Taliban to regroup, casting itself as the national resistance to the American invaders and, three American presidents later, driving them out in a war of attrition, much as Afghans had done to the Soviets in the 1980s."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
BBC News broke the war into four phases: Bush's "nation building," former President Barack Obama's "shifted expectations," former President Donald Trump "planning withdrawal," and President Biden's "rapid execution." Presidential historian Barbara Perry and Carrie A. Lee, a national security expert at the Truman National Security Project, judged the collected U.S. effort an initial victory followed by a long defeat.
"There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan," former President John F. Kennedy said in 1961, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. If that were true, the Afghanistan War's paternity test would show a "victory," even if the war was not.
-
How Mike Johnson is rendering the House ‘irrelevant’Talking Points Speaker has put the House on indefinite hiatus
-
Lazarus: Harlan Coben’s ‘embarrassingly compelling’ thrillerThe Week Recommends Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin play father-and-son psychiatrists in this ‘precision-engineered’ crime drama
-
Dutch center-left rises in election as far-right fallsSpeed Read The country’s other parties have ruled against forming a coalition
-
Judge rules US attorney ‘unlawfully serving’Speed Read Bill Essayli had been serving in the role without Senate confirmation
-
Trump ends Asia trip with Xi meeting, nuke threatSpeed Read Trump had spent the last six days in Asia
-
‘This estrangement from death has beget euphemisms’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
What does history say about Trump’s moves in Latin America?Today's Big Question ‘Bitter memories’ surface as the US targets Venezuela
-
Senate votes to kill Trump’s Brazil tariffSpeed Read Five Senate Republicans joined the Democrats in rebuking Trump’s import tax
-
Border Patrol gets scrutiny in court, gains power in ICESpeed Read Half of the new ICE directors are reportedly from DHS’s more aggressive Customs and Border Protection branch
-
Is the ceasefire in Gaza really working?Today's Big Question Neither Israel and Hamas has an interest in a full return to hostilities but ‘brutally simple arithmetic’ in region may scupper peace plan long-term
-
Shutdown stalemate nears key pain pointsSpeed Read A federal employee union called for the Democrats to to stand down four weeks into the government standoff
