The United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, bringing an end to America’s longest war and closing a chapter in military history that will be remembered for colossal failures, broken promises, and a frantic final exit that claimed the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, some of whom were barely older than the war.
Air Force transport jets flew a residual batch of troops from Kabul airport hours before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline for shutting down a final airlift and thereby ending the US war.
Thousands of troops had spent a tense two weeks escorting a hasty and perilous evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans, and others from a nation once again dominated by Taliban terrorists.
In declaring the end of the evacuation and combat effort.
The last flights flew out from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. Washington time, or one minute past midnight in Kabul, according to Gen. Frank McKenzie, director of US Central Command.
The airport had become a US-controlled island, the last stand in a 20-year conflict that had taken the lives of almost 2,400 Americans. The last hours of the evacuation were fraught with drama.
While watching several threats – and at least two actual assaults – by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate, American soldiers faced the difficult task of loading the final evacuees into planes while also evacuating themselves and some of their equipment.
The United States’ final pullout included the withdrawal of its diplomats, though the State Department has left open the possibility of resuming some level of diplomacy with the Taliban depending on how they conduct themselves in establishing a government and adhering to international pleas for human rights protection.
The United States’ war effort appeared to grind on at times, with no ending in sight, no chance of success, and little concern on the part of Congress for how tens of billions of dollars were spent over two decades.
The human toll mounted up, with tens of thousands of Americans injured in addition to the dead, and incalculable numbers enduring psychological scars they have to live with or have yet to understand they will live with.
The United States had a number of failures on its record.
Despite spending $83 billion on training and equipping the Afghan army, it failed to defeat the Taliban.
A cooperation with a U.S.-friendly Afghan government that might prevent the nation from becoming a breeding ground for militants bent on targeting the United States is one of the unmet promises.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War study, over 1,100 coalition personnel and over 100,000 Afghan military and civilians were killed in America’s longest war.
