Somber ceremonies marking the 9/11 attacks are a hallowed annual tradition, but as the 20th anniversary arrives with the Taliban suddenly back in control of Afghanistan, America’s enduring sense of loss is compounded by the realization that, in many ways, we’re back where we started.
Any “mission accomplished” moment President Joe Biden hoped to deliver by ending America’s longest war ahead of the historic date was irrevocably marred by the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed government and its replacement by a regime of militant Guantanamo Bay alumni.
Four of the “Taliban Five” have been appointed to key roles in the Taliban’s caretaker government in Kabul. The fifth was reportedly appointed to be the governor of a province in eastern Afghanistan last month. All five men had served in the Taliban government that was deposed in retaliation for 9/11 and were imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay until their release in a prisoner exchange for U.S. Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the FBI for terrorism charges, was named acting interior minister.
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“Meet the new boss,” said a former Republican national security official. “Same as the old boss.”
The scenes in Afghanistan have prompted veterans, policymakers, and ordinary voters to question whether justice was served for 9/11 and whether the ensuing two decades of warfare were worth it.
On a sunny Tuesday morning in 2001, 19 al Qaeda terrorists hijacked and crashed planes into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. It was a horrific scene of mass murder without precedent in U.S. history and the most direct attack on the homeland since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor almost 70 years before.
Yet, the immediate reaction by the public was a degree of unity unseen since in a country riven by political polarization. George W. Bush had won the contested 2000 presidential election by the narrowest of margins in Florida, a state where his younger brother was governor, only after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in a 5-4 decision, one that exactly reflected the split between conservative and liberal blocs. His Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Al Gore, finished nearly 540,000 votes ahead nationwide, making Bush the first popular vote loser to reach the White House since Benjamin Harrison unseated Grover Cleveland in 1888.
Bush soared to job approval ratings in excess of 90% in the wake of 9/11 as the country rallied around its president. Three days after the attack, he traveled to New York City, where he had lost all five boroughs and received just 18% of the vote. Wearing a blue windbreaker, he surveyed the rubble and addressed workers clearing the wreckage, still seeking to rescue people.
“The nation sends its love and compassion to everybody who’s here. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud, and may God bless America,” Bush said, raising his arm. The crowd responded by chanting, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
In one of the iconic images of the aftermath of 9/11, Bush grabbed a bullhorn as he spoke to the construction and rescue workers. Some had said they couldn’t hear the president.
“I can hear you,” he replied. “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican nearing the end of his second term, filled the leadership vacuum that emerged while Bush was still on Air Force One for security reasons and Vice President Dick Cheney was hunkered down in Washington for continuity of government. Giuliani was the first important political figure to rally and reassure the country.
“Today is obviously one of the most difficult days in the history of the city,” Giuliani said calmly during a press conference. “The tragedy that we are undergoing right now is something that we’ve had nightmares about. My heart goes out to all the innocent victims of this horrible and vicious act of terrorism. And our focus now has to be to save as many lives as possible.”
“The number of casualties,” he added, “will be more than any of us can bear ultimately.” Giuliani was celebrated as “America’s mayor.”
The same day Bush visited New York City, Congress passed an authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda and all others complicit in the attack. Only Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, voted no. This resolution became the legal authority by which Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate applauded him during his speech to a joint session — Robert Byrd, the longtime West Virginia Democratic senator, sat behind him, next to the speaker of the House, as Cheney was kept away in an undisclosed location — and had joined hands to sing “God Bless America” outside the Capitol.
But the unity did not endure long. There were complaints that Muslims were being profiled and subject to discrimination, both by the government and private citizens who were fearful after the attack. Bush took great pains to cast the war on terrorism as a fight against evil rather than a quarrel with Islam, though Muslim leaders in the United States argued his policies on surveillance and terror suspect detention had a disparate effect on their communities.
Conspiracy theories about the attacks being an “inside job” or airplanes being unable to bring down the Twin Towers spread across the internet. A cottage industry of 9/11 “trutherism” was formed.
While these were largely fringe phenomena, the effort to expand the war beyond Afghanistan provoked fierce division. In 2002, the Bush administration sought congressional authorization to wage a second war in Iraq to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein and disarm his government of weapons of mass destruction. A majority of House Democrats, half the Democrats in the Senate, and seven Republicans voted no.
Biden, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, worked with influential Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to forge a middle-ground resolution that would increase pressure on Saddam but make Bush come back to Congress again if he wanted to invade. But when House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt threw his support behind Bush’s preferred AUMF language, Biden joined fellow Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards in voting yes. He later called his vote a mistake.
The mission in Afghanistan expanded too. Beginning as retribution for 9/11, it succeeded in toppling the Taliban and degrading al Qaeda, even if bin Laden, top deputy Ayman Zawahiri, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar all initially evaded capture. The focus soon became nation-building, a practice Bush had pledged to avoid during the 2000 campaign: helping Afghan girls attend school, building health clinics, increasing cellphone usage and internet access.
In October 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry boasted of the progress in Afghanistan by noting improved life expectancies and technological advances. “In 2001, there was only one television station, and it was owned by the government. Now, there are 75 stations, and all but two are privately owned,” he said. “Back then, there were virtually no cellphones, zero. Today, there are 18 million cellphones covering about 90% of residential areas connecting Afghans to the world.”
Bush beat Kerry in another close election in 2004, winning 51% of the popular vote. This time, Ohio was the state that determined the Electoral College outcome, with Bush again winning narrowly. Republicans made congressional gains that year and in the midterm elections two years prior. But a serious antiwar movement had now formed, and as the situation in Iraq deteriorated during Bush’s second term — and the weapons of mass destruction proved elusive — it went mainstream.
By the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the Great Recession had voters wanting to divert resources from the Middle East to problems at home. He had supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan but opposed the Iraq war, which had proved critical to securing the Democratic nomination. But his first move was to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan by 30,000.
“We did not ask for this fight,” Obama said of Afghanistan in a 2009 speech at West Point announcing a surge. “On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.” He added, “These are the three core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition, a civilian surge that reinforces positive action, and an effective partnership with Pakistan.”
Despite his support for retrenchment, Obama warned against precipitous withdrawal. “There are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing,” he said. “I believe this argument depends upon a false reading of history.” Biden, then serving as vice president, advised Obama against the surge.
In 2011, Obama declared his strategy had been successful. “Tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We’ve ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country,” he said. “And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.”
U.S. forces finally killed bin Laden during the Obama administration.
“If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it’s pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive,” Biden, who advised against the bin Laden raid, crowed at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Obama won a second term, but not everything went swimmingly on the “war on terror” front. Troops were sent back to Iraq in 2014 to combat the rise of ISIS. He also repeatedly slowed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But by that point, the war-weariness was becoming bipartisan.
Donald Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination after launching a direct attack on Bush’s foreign policy legacy. “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign,” he told rival Jeb Bush during a debate in South Carolina. “Remember that.” Trump also called the Iraq war a mistake and endorsed a version of the antiwar slogan “Bush lied. People died” with regards to weapons of mass destruction.
“You call it whatever you want,” Trump said. “They lied.” The crowd in the military-heavy, conservative state booed, as they had when Texas Rep. Ron Paul made antiwar arguments on the stage while debating Giuliani in 2007. But Trump won the primary, and Jeb Bush dropped out. He would use Hillary Clinton’s vote against the Iraq war against her in the general election, even as he vowed to “beat the hell” out of ISIS.
Like Obama, once in office, Trump sent additional troops to Afghanistan. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my instincts,” Trump said in his first prime-time address. “I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk of the Oval Office.”
“I share the American people’s frustration,” he said. “I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and, most importantly, lives, trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations.”
But Trump continued to press generals who opposed withdrawal on how the war was going. “We aren’t winning,” he reportedly said. “We’re losing.” By 2019, the Trump administration was negotiating with the Taliban, eventually cutting a deal that Biden officials would later say tied their hands. The Taliban would refrain from attacks on the remaining U.S. forces, which were continually being drawn down, in exchange for the withdrawal of those troops by May 2021.
After Biden defeated Trump, he decided to postpone the withdrawal, but he remained committed to seeing it through by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. “I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan — two Republicans, two Democrats,” he vowed in a statement. I would not, and will not, pass this war on to a fifth.”
That target date drew criticism, including from Trump. “Trump is right, not only should U.S. troops be brought home from the region immediately, but invoking Sept. 11 as an exit target waters down the meaning of a solemn date in U.S. history that should be exclusively reserved for reflection,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told the Washington Examiner at the time.
“Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on Aug. 31,” the new president said in July. “The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart.”
The exit did not remain orderly. Afghan security forces quickly fell to the Taliban. The militant group seized a rapid succession of provincial capitals, then finally Kabul. Americans were advised to leave the country immediately. Chaos erupted at the airport as desperate people sought to flee. The embassy was closed and documents were destroyed. Despite his assurances to the contrary, it was Biden’s “fall of Saigon” moment. The messy departure was punctuated by a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that left 13 U.S. service members dead and temporarily sent evacuations into a state of flux.
Biden praised the “historic” evacuation effort and said 90% of Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan were assisted in doing so, a figure the White House later revised upward to 98%. But the State Department estimated that somewhere between 100 and 200 Americans were still left behind, in addition to a majority of Afghans who had supported the nearly 20-year war effort.
The president conceded only one error. “The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban,” he said. “That assumption — that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown — turned out not to be accurate.”
But Biden’s skepticism of the Afghan government dated back at least to January 2009, when he took a trip to the country as vice president. Reuters described the trip as leaving him “filled with a sense that Afghanistan’s war was ensnaring Washington and could be unwinnable.”
Twenty years, $8 trillion, and 900,000 deaths later, the U.S. has come full circle. The Taliban is back. So are the debates over whether an “over the horizon” strategy can contain terror threats from the region. “We need to look back at the ‘90s and recognize what the defaults were of our strategy of neglect,” said one counterterrorism expert.
Attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is alive at Guantanamo Bay. More than 66,000 Afghan security forces members who fought against the Taliban are dead. Mullah Omar is believed to have died of tuberculosis in 2013. The fate of Ayman Zawahiri is uncertain.
Many veterans of the wars were demoralized by the scenes coming out of Afghanistan, with reports of an uptick in calls to a Veterans Affairs’ suicide prevention hotline during the withdrawal. State Department officials described themselves as “haunted by the choices we had to make” in terms of who to help get out of the country by the Aug. 31 deadline.
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Policy experts find themselves confronting new questions about what is achievable. “Building effective partner militaries is hard,” said an academic specializing in military affairs. “An Iraqi general once told me, ‘No one in the Iraqi army wants to be in the Iraqi army.”
“The whole community is kind of watching to see what happens and whether or not al Qaeda has the ability to regenerate in Afghanistan,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters. He added, “We put the Taliban on notice that we expect them to not allow that to happen.”
