At 3:29 p.m. on Monday Aug. 29, the United States officially ended its engagement in Afghanistan. The two decade-long war definitively failed nearly all of its goals, and now leaves Afghanistan in an arguably worse state than at the arrival of U.S. troops.

    To truly understand the cataclysmic failure of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, it must be studied from its origins onwards. In late 1979, following an Afghan coup at the height of the Cold War, a pro-Soviet government was established in Afghanistan. This development sparked violent conflicts between the new government and a rebel Afghan group, known as the mujahideen. The mujahideen, which translates to holy warriors, began a jihad against the Soviet government which soon garnered international attention. The U.S., being staunch opponents of Soviet expansion and the encroachment of communist government, covertly funneled arms to the mujahideen for years using Pakistan to smuggle weapons and ammunition. The CIA began to send anti-aircraft weaponry to the mujahideen in 1986, which greatly improved their ability to counter Soviet defenses. The U.S. also publicly supported the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan, with President Ronald Reagan meeting Afghan fighters in 1983 and subsequently hosting Yunus Khalis, leader of the mujahideen, at the White House in 1987.

    14 years later, two planes crash into the Twin Towers, another strikes the Pentagon, and a fourth crashes in a Pennsylvanian field, with some suspecting it was intended to strike the White House or Capitol building. These massively deadly suicide attacks shocked the world, and ignited a fiery international hatred for a previously obscure group, Al-Qaeda, as well as its leader, Osama bin-Laden. Bin-Laden arrived in Afghanistan in 1996 following his expulsion from Sudan, and soon ingratiated himself to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. But why was this foreign terrorist leader so quickly accepted by the notoriously harsh Omar? Simple, he had aided the mujahideen during the anti-Soviet war, just as the U.S. had. But why does the leader of the Taliban care about bin-Laden’s support of the mujahideen? Simple, following the collapse of pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan, young members of the mujahideen became more and more radical, eventually forming the Taliban. The Taliban was quickly populated by many former mujahideen, and began to gain power in the region, eventually becoming a de facto ruling body.

The U.S. has no consideration or sense of responsibility for the homeostasis of the international community, and acts entirely in self-interest with little forethought. In no situation is this better represented than the Afghanistan war. First, the U.S. sends weapons and other supplies to the mujahideen, enabling them to fight a pro-Soviet government, but also giving them the regional power that eventually led to the creation of the Taliban by mujahideen members. The U.S. supported the mujahideen solely to counter Soviet advancement, even though a Soviet government in Afghanistan would have had little impact on the U.S. The U.S. also supported the mujahideen despite knowing that they had declared their war against the pro-Soviet government to be jihad-a term which has long been correlated with religious terrorism. 

Following a slew of small attacks against U.S. troops and allies in the 1990’s; however, attitudes towards the Taliban changed. The U.S. moved to a mode of passivity that is common between powers who do not possess the level of animosity necessary for all out conflict. Then came the 9/11 attacks. The instantaneously outraged American population demanded retaliation, and the House of Representatives echoed this sentiment, voting 420-1 to authorize military force in the Middle East. It is from this point onward that the U.S. ceases to act in the interest of the global community, instead letting virility and defensiveness prompt its actions. 

Even from the outset, a war prompted solely by retaliation seemed an unlikely occasion for rational decision making, and proved to be as costly to taxpayers as it was to the reputation of the U.S. military. Countless stories of soldiers committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of liberty began to flow from the Middle East. The U.S. had transformed Afghanistan into a stage upon which to flex its military muscles. The Taliban was forced to flee and essentially overthrown in a matter of months, and Afghanistan was left without a governmental authority. Unsurprisingly, given the events of both the Korean and Vietnam wars, America saw itself responsible for bringing freedom and prosperity to the people of Afghanistan and maintained a threatening military presence in the area for two years. However, this freedom and prosperity was mostly brought in the form of extensive military engagements that left the area physically and economically crippled. In 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the “end of major combat activity” and deemed the political situation in Afghanistan to be stable and primed for reconstruction. This was patently false, and the U.S. likely knew it.

As the U.S. began to escalate its presence in Afghanistan, a new president, Hamid Karzai, was elected in 2004. Karzai was a U.S. friendly, and had organized locally to help combat the Taliban. Despite this seeming progress, the Afghan parliament began to fill not only with politicians, but also former warlords and faction leaders. Within the next two years, the Taliban began a new insurgency into southern Afghanistan, and the U.S. was now responsible for preventing their reemergence. For over a decade, the U.S. executed thousands of drone and air strikes, killing intended targets but also thousands of innocent citizens. Botched military and political strategy prolonged the conflict, as well as the killing. 

In recent years, the conflict in Afghanistan has become more violent than it has been since its first five years. Demands to end the war came from millions of citizens as well as other international powers, and the U.S. eventually began a sluggish exit. Given its reputation in both Southeast Asia and Central America, it is hardly shocking that the U.S. had left Afghanistan totally crippled, and vulnerable to the attacks of the Taliban. Within months of President Biden’s announcement that the U.S. would end engagement in the area by Sept. 11 2021, the terrorist group had gained full control of the country. 

This is a classic example of American pride. What began as a vicious, although not unwarranted, attempt at retribution morphed into two decades of horrific violence, resulting in the overtaking of Afghanistan by the terrorist group whose predecessors the U.S. once supported. Having spent little time planning for as serious a conflict as they were entering, the U.S. found itself scrambling to repair the deep mistakes of its first five years in Afghanistan, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The complete lack of responsibility and any ability to successfully finish what they have started are unfortunately constant in the history of modern U.S. warfare, and will likely persist for decades to come.