Two decades after the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States is withdrawing, leaving chaos in the wake of the country as it found it twenty years ago. “The Taliban control not only Kabul, but the entire country.” How did a war that began in response to the 9/11 attacks become the longest in American history? “If someone had told me in 2001 that we were going to stay there for another 20 years, I wouldn’t have believed them.” And what lessons can be learned for the future? “We did the same thing year after year, year after year, expecting a different result.” “Nearly 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan.” “More than 43,000 Afghan civilians were killed.” “You cannot remake a country in the American image. You can’t win when you fight against people who are fighting for their own villages and their own territory. Those were lessons we thought we had learned in Vietnam. And yet, 30, 40 years later, we end up in Afghanistan repeating the same mistakes.” On the morning of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, when he received word of an attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. ‘We are now looking at a live image of the building. And, uh, what would you say? That would be about the 90th floor or something? The president joined his staff in an empty classroom, where his CIA intelligence briefer, Michael Morell, had seen the attack take place. “There was a TV there and the second plane hit.” “Oh my God.” “Oh God.” “There’s another one.” “Oh.” “Oh my god, there’s another one.” “God.” “And when that happened, I knew this was an act of terrorism.” At the Capitol in Washington, the meeting of Representative Barbara Lee was interrupted. “I heard a lot of noise saying, ‘Evacuate. Leave. Go away. Run fast.’ So I ran to Independence Avenue. When I turned around, I saw a lot of smoke.” “Unbelievable, another plane has crashed into the Pentagon.” “You have to understand that this is the biggest attack ever in the entire history of the country.” At 9:59 a.m., the second World Trade Center tower that was hit collapsed. Twenty-nine minutes later the other tower followed. “The President, he has asked me to meet in his office on Air Force One. The president looked me in the eye and said, “Michael, who did this?” I told the president that I would bet the future of my children that Al Qaeda was responsible for this attack.” Within hours, evidence emerged that Al Qaeda, a multinational terrorist organization led by Islamic fundamentalist Osama Bin Laden, had carried out the attacks. The group was given a safe haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime. “The president’s tendency was to hit back and hit back hard.” “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people…” “So the president decided to go to war.” ” – And the people who brought down these buildings will hear us all soon.” “We had to go to Afghanistan. There is no doubt in our minds, it is a war of necessity. We had to go after Al Qaeda, we had to kill them , we had to get them out and we had to chase them to the ends of the earth.” “The word on the street was that everyone should unite with the president. You know, the country is in mourning.” Three days after the attacks, Lee was under pressure to vote yes to a resolution in Congress authorizing war on al-Qaeda and its allies when she heard a eulogy at a memorial service: “That if we act, we won’t.” become the evil we deplore.” “It was at that point that I said, we need to think about our military response, our national security response, and the potential impact on civilians.” “Mr. Speaker, members, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today. One that is filled with grief for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Nevertheless, I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” “I went back to the office and all hell broke loose.” “The only dissenting vote was Democrat Barbara Lee from California, who voted no.” “Phones, threats. People called me a traitor. She has to go. But then I knew it would set the stage for an eternal war.” Within weeks of 9/11, the US struck back in Afghanistan. “The US military has launched attacks on al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime.” Shortly thereafter, American ground forces arrived in the country. “The invasion was a success very quickly.” “At the gates of Kabul, news of a Taliban collapse had already reached these thousands.” “The Taliban retreat has become a flight.” “By the end of the year, the Taliban had been ousted from power. A large number of Al Qaeda operatives were either killed or captured.” And although Osama Bin Laden had managed to escape, the US had achieved its primary objective. “Al Qaeda could no longer operate from Afghanistan.” President Bush knew there was a history of failed military campaigns in Afghanistan. “We know this not only from intelligence, but from the history of the military conflict in Afghanistan. It was one of initial success, followed by long years of struggle and eventual failure. We will not repeat that mistake.” [Applause] But after his initial success, Bush expanded the mission to nation-building. To prevent further al-Qaeda attacks, his administration said it wanted to transform the poor, war-torn country into a stable democracy, with a strong central government and US-trained military personnel. “The idea was that it would be impossible for the Taliban to ever come back to power and impossible for Afghanistan to ever be used as a safe haven again.” “There were girls going to school, clinics and hospitals were established, there were vaccinations, elections were planned. Everything buzzed a bit and we all thought: okay, this will be okay.” But by the mid-2000s, after the Bush administration extended the war on terror to Iraq, Richard Boucher realized that the US-backed Afghan government was plagued with corruption and mismanagement. “I used to say to my boys in the Afghan office, ‘If we win, how come it doesn’t look like we’re winning?’” “The Taliban have made a big comeback and are in control of large parts of the country. ” “The people did not reject the Taliban. And that was ultimately because the government couldn’t do much for the people. Everyone had the idea in their head that the government works like in Washington. But Afghanistan has not worked that way in the past. I think that was a moment when we should have at least asked ourselves if it wasn’t really time to leave and say to the Afghans, ‘It’s your place, you run it as best you can.’” instead, by In 2011, President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, had sent nearly 50,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in hopes of reversing the Taliban’s profits. “I think one of the biggest mistakes we made strategically, after 9/11, was not to finish the job here, to focus our attention here. We were distracted by Iraq.” One of those troops was Marine Captain Timothy Kudo. Part of his job was to support the government by digging wells and building schools. He soon lost faith in that mission after, he says, his company killed two Afghan teenagers they mistakenly believed were shooting at them. “And their family saw this happen. The mothers, the grandmothers, they came out. It was the first time I ever saw an Afghan woman without wearing a burqa. They sobbed and cried uncontrollably. I mean, how can you kill two innocent people and expect everything you say to matter in that moment?” “The people here have little faith in the American armed forces. More Afghans now blame the violence here on the US than on the Taliban.” Weeks after Kudo returned home from Afghanistan, there was a monumental development. “I started getting all these texts like, ‘You have to watch the TV.’ My roommate calls me from the other room, ‘Turn on NewsMadura.’” “The United States conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.” “USA! USA!” “At that time people are celebrating in front of the White House. They are celebrating at Ground Zero.” “Here’s what happened. We’re back. It’s justice!” “And in my opinion there is no reason to go through this madness anymore. And of course we did it for another decade after that.” “I think the military and the national security apparatus thought they could win. And I think they wanted to believe that too because they invested so much. People had died and they didn’t want them to die in vain.” “2011, Bin Laden is now dead. Why was it so hard to de-escalate?” Jeffrey Eggers, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council, says that since 9/11, the goal of making sure that Afghanistan would never be a safe haven for terrorists again had become a recipe for endless wars. prevent circumstances that led to such an attack.” “Danger at hand!” [Gunfire] “And if you define it that way, when are you ready?” [Gunfire] “Go! Come on, come on, come on!” Although the wave failed to push back the Taliban, the US withdrew its troops as doubts grew that Afghan troops could defend the country.In 2021, President Biden, the fourth president to preside over the war, announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops, a plan set in motion by his predecessor, Donald Trump: “Nobody has to doubt. We have lost the war in Afghanistan.” “And we can cross?” “It was not a peace agreement; it was a withdrawal agreement. The agreement was essentially: Don’t attack us if we withdraw.” As the US leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban are taking over again after quickly overrunning the Afghan military, which the US has spent more than $80 billion on training and equipping. “The Taliban are at full strength. And their Islamic rule is already coming back.” “They can use this as a recruiting tool. They are now the champions of the jihadist movement because they ousted the United States.” And US officials dwell on the start of the war, 20 years after 9/11. “More people should have thought about endless wars, not only in Congress, but also in the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA and elsewhere, in the White House. That the recipe for using military means to tackle terrorism would only put us in one fight after another. One can only hope that Americans of the new generation think about this.”
