Nineteen years ago to the day, President George W. Bush announced what people had been anticipating for weeks: U.S. airstrikes on Al Qaeda and Taliban targets had begun. The United States, Bush said, made clear and unequivocal demands to the Taliban: close down Al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan, hand over Osama Bin Laden, and release all foreign nationals. The Taliban, however, refused all of them.

The U.S. went into Afghanistan seeking to accomplish a mission that was wholly just and legitimate: Destroy the terrorist network that killed 3,000 people on American soil. Having committed the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history, Al Qaeda opened itself up to massive retaliation from the world’s superpower. On the same day U.S. bombers started dropping their payloads on Al Qaeda and Taliban targets, the U.S. State Department sent the Taliban leadership a stern message: “If any person or group connected in any way to Afghanistan conducts a terrorist attack against our country, our forces or those of our friends or allies, our response will be devastating.”