“It’s over,” U.S. President Joe Biden declared last week in a somber address to the nation and the world.
There were no celebrations to mark the conclusion of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of a 20-year war that claimed tens of thousands of lives and cost trillions of dollars. It was sadly fitting, and likely inevitable, that the Afghanistan war would end as it did — chaotic, confused and with far more questions than answers.
After two decades of invasion and occupation, the enduring image of the conflict is likely to be the swirling mass of humanity that surrounded Hamid Karzai International Airport in the final days of the U.S. military presence. In our collective memory, the chaos of the final week will always overshadow the more than 100,000 people who were evacuated. Attention will invariably focus on the failures rather than the successes.