President Joe Biden has formally announced that he plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11 of this year. 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which sparked the War on Terror that led to the troops being deployed.
As opinion editor, I feel as though I should have an opinion on this. I should feel some sort of way about the ending of a war that’s gone on almost my entire life. But the more I think about it, the more I realize I truly know nothing about the situation.
I know what most children in America have been told: 9/11 was a terrorist bombing by the Taliban/al Qaeda, we went to war over it, Osama Bin Laden was at fault, and we’re still at war. But I don’t know why we’re still at war. I don’t know what we gain from it. I don’t know anything about Afghanistan — their politics, their culture, where they are geographically — and I don’t like that I don’t know. It’s very “1984” — Afghanistan is ambiguous, existing in an elusive and distant land, and our war is unwinnable and perpetual.
Here’s what I’ve been able to understand: A speech given by former President Barack Obama in 2009 said that the goals of the war in Afghanistan were to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 by U.S. forces in Pakistan.
In February 2020, the U.S. envoy Khalilzad and the Taliban’s Baradar signed an agreement which guarantees that Afghanistan will not be used for terrorist activities, and in exchange U.S. troops will pull out of the country. Later that same year, representatives of the Taliban and the Afghan government met to discuss peace, cease-fires and the future government of the country once the U.S. troops withdrew.
When announcing the withdrawal of troops, Biden said that, “I know there are many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust US military presence to stand as leverage. We gave that argument a decade. It’s never proved effective, not when we had 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, and not when we were down to a few thousand. Our diplomacy does not hinge on having boots in harm’s way, US boots on the ground. We have to change that thinking.”
While the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan seems good, I’m left with so many questions. Why was this ongoing situation not explained in school? How many lives, foreign and domestic, have been lost to this war? Did any of this mean anything, even if it didn’t seem to affect me as an individual? I wish I could give concrete answers, and I hate to openly show how little I understand. But I plan to educate myself further on this situation, and I hope my readers do as well. I hope that future generations will be able to explain our country’s wars in a heartbeat, though I certainly hope there will not be more for them to learn about.
Categories: Opinion
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