It is “time to end” America’s longest war with the unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan where they have spent two decades in a bloody, largely fruitless battle against the Taliban, US President Joe Biden announced Wednesday.
Dubbed the “forever war,” the US military onslaught in Afghanistan began in response to September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.
Now, 20 years later — after almost 2,400 US military and tens of thousands of Afghan deaths — Biden is naming September 11 as the deadline by which the last US soldiers will have finally departed.
The war is at best at a stalemate.
The internationally-backed government in Kabul has only tenuous control in swaths of the country, while the Taliban are growing in strength, with many predicting the insurgency will seek to regain total power once the government’s US military umbrella is removed.
