war in afghanistan essay

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Afghanistan War

By: History.com Editors

Published: August 20, 2021

The United States launched the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The conflict lasted two decades and spanned four U.S. presidencies, becoming the longest war in American history.

By August 2021, the war began to come to a close with the Taliban regaining power two weeks before the United States was set to withdraw all troops from the region. Overall, the conflict resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and a $2 trillion price tag . Here's a look at key events from the conflict.

War on Terror Begins

Investigators determined the 9/11 attacks—in which terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City , one at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and one in a Pennsylvania field —were orchestrated by terrorists working from Afghanistan, which was under the control of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement. Leading the plot that killed more than 2,700 people was Osama bin Laden , leader of the Islamic militant group al Qaeda . It was believed the Taliban, which seized power in the country in 1996 following an occupation by the Soviet Union , was harboring bin Laden, a Saudi, in Afghanistan.

In an address on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban deliver bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the United States, or "share in their fate." They refused.

On October 7, 2001, U.S. and British forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom , an airstrike campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban targets including Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad that lasted five days. Ground forces followed, and with the help of Northern Alliance forces, the United States quickly overtook Taliban strongholds, including the capital city of Kabul, by mid-November. On December 6, Kandahar fell, signaling the official end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and causing al Qaeda, and bin Laden, to flee.

Shift to Reconstruction

During a speech on April 17, 2002, Bush called for a Marshall Plan to aid in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, with Congress appropriating more than $38 billion for humanitarian efforts and to train Afghan security forces. In June, Hamid Karzai, head of the Popalzai Durrani tribe, was chosen to lead the transitional government.

While approximately 8,000 American troops remained in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) overseen by NATO, the U.S. military focus turned to Iraq in 2003, the same year U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared "major combat" operations had come to an end in Afghanistan.

A new constitution was soon enacted and Afghanistan held its first democratic elections since the onset of the war on October 9, 2004, with Karzai, who went on to serve two five-year terms, winning the vote for president. The ISAF’s focus shifted to peacekeeping and reconstruction, but with the United States fighting a war in Iraq, the Taliban regrouped and attacks escalated.

Troop Surge Under Obama

In a written statement released February 17, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama pledged to send an extra 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan by summer to join 36,000 American and 32,000 NATO forces already deployed there. "This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," he stated . American troops reached a peak of approximately 110,000 soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011.

In November 2010, NATO countries agreed to a transition of power to local Afghan security forces by the end of 2014, and, on May 2, 2011, following 10-year manhunt, U.S. Navy SEALs located and killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

Following bin Laden's death, a decade into the war and facing calls from both lawmakers and the public to end the war, Obama released a plan to withdraw 33,000 U.S. troops by summer 2012, and all troops by 2014. NATO transitioned control to Afghan forces in June 2013, and Obama announced a new timeline for troop withdrawal in 2014, which included 9,800 U.S. soldiers remaining in Afghanistan to continue training local forces.

Trump: 'We Will Fight to Win'

In 2015, the Taliban continued to increase its attacks, bombing the parliament building and airport in Kabul and carrying out multiple suicide bombings.

In his first few months of office, President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to make combat decisions in Afghanistan, and, on April 13, 2017, the United States dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb, called the " mother of all bombs ," on a remote ISIS cave complex.

In August 2017, Trump delivered a speech to American troops vowing " we will fight to win " in Afghanistan. "America's enemies must never know our plans, or believe they can wait us out," he said. "I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will."

The Taliban continued to escalate its terrorist attacks, and the United States entered peace talks with the group in February 2019. A deal was reached that included the U.S. and NATO allies pledging a total withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban vowed to not harbor terrorist groups. But by September, Trump called off the talks after a Taliban attack that left a U.S. soldier and 11 others dead. “If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump tweeted .

Still, the United States and Taliban signed a peace agreement on February 29, 2020, although Taliban attacks against Afghan forces continued, as did American airstrikes. In September 2020, members of the Afghan government met with the Taliban to resume peace talks and in November Trump announced that he planned to reduce U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 by January 15, 2021.

Withdrawal of US Troops

The fourth president in power during the war, President Joe Biden , in April 2021, set the symbolic deadline of September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as the date of full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the final withdrawal effort beginning in May.

Facing little resistance, in just 10 days, from August 6-15, 2021, the Taliban swiftly overtook provincial capitals, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and, finally, Kabul. As the Afghan government collapsed, President Ashraf Ghani fled to the UAE , the U.S. embassy was evacuated and thousands of citizens rushed to the airport in Kabul to leave the country.

By August 14, Biden had temporarily deployed about 6,000 U.S. troops to assist in evacuation efforts. Facing scrutiny for the Taliban's swift return to power, Biden stated , “I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war on to a fifth.”

During the war in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 allied soldiers were killed, including 2,448 American service members, with 20,000-plus Americans injured. Brown University research shows approximately 69,000 Afghan security forces were killed, along with 51,000 civilians and 51,000 militants. According to the United Nations, some 5 million Afghanis have been displaced by the war since 2012, making Afghanistan the world's third-largest displaced population .

The U.S. War in Afghanistan , Council on Foreign Relations

Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars , Associated Press

Who Are the Taliban, and What Do They Want? , The New York Times

Operation Enduring Freedom Fast Facts , CNN

Afghanistan: Why is there a war? , BBC News

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Afghanistan six months on from the Taliban takeover – photo essay

The photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports on a country traumatised and tired, with an uncertain future as unemployment and poverty spread and memories of freedoms fade

A ugust’s adrenaline may have worn off but the harrowing memories have not faded. It’s been six months since the Taliban took Kabul, the country’s then president and his cabinet fled and thousands of people flooded the airport in panic, so desperate for a way out that several men tried to hold on to a departing plane and fell to their deaths.

Food distribution in the northern Jowzjan province. Due to the economic crisis, many people cannot afford food, even though it’s widely available in the market.

Shaista, 50, from Jowzjan, says that since the Taliban’s takeover, her husband and children have lost their jobs. Right; Madina, 50, from Jowzjan.

Already scarred by four decades of war, Afghanistan’s rapid regime change has left a mark that will take a long time to process. As the Taliban are slowly putting their government in place, many Afghans feel lost and confused. With uncertain futures, some see little alternative but to seek a new life abroad, adding to a diaspora of more than 5 million worldwide.

Most people, even in Kabul, have no access to clean water in their homes. Here, people are seen filling up jerrycans with water for drinking and cooking.

Tea vendors warm their hands on a cold day in Kabul.

Taliban guards drink tea in Kabul. Right: a Taliban soldier stands on a Kabul street.

Some of those who decided to stay, or who did not have an option to leave, say they will have to give the Taliban a chance, even though the group has not been recognised internationally. There isn’t a large enough opposition anyway, and Taliban fighters have been stationed even in the most remote valleys of Panjshir, where the last battles of resistance played out.

“We will keep fighting if we have to, we’re not tired,” said Ziaul Rahman, a 21-year-old Talib stationed in Afghanistan’s Logar province. Resistance fighters, whether in Panjshir or in the Uzbek-dominated Jowzjan province, say the same.

Ziaul Rahman, a 21-year-old Talib stationed in Afghanistan’s Logar province.

For the past three and a half years of living and working as a journalist here, I have visited most of the country’s provinces. Since the Taliban’s takeover, I managed to return to many of them again, learning more about how people across the almost nation of 40 million perceive their new rulers.

The Taliban have been accommodating to foreign journalists, a privilege that has not been granted to all Afghan reporters. Several have been tortured, beaten, detained and intimidated and have since either left the country or are trying to get out.

To summarise – or even generalise about – the sentiment of a place as diverse as Afghanistan is, of course, impossible.

Destruction is widespread in Sangin, Helmand, previously right on the frontline. Here, every house is destroyed, few have been rebuilt, and people are starting over.

People cleaning up debris in Sanin, Helmand. Right: construction workers starting to rebuild their houses.

The data is bleak: last week Joe Biden announced that $3.5bn of frozen Afghan funds – including the private savings of ordinary Afghans – would be distributed to 9/11 victims, even though not a single Afghan was involved in the attacks.

Herat’s old city.

The United Nations says at least half a million Afghans have lost their jobs since the Taliban takeover, and estimates that by mid-year up to 97% of people could be living below the poverty line. The majority of development aid – funding almost 80% of the previous government’s expenditure – has ceased, throwing the country into economic crisis.

Human Rights Watch has reported executions and enforced disappearances of former government officials, and to this day many people live in fear and remain in hiding. With the newly appointed all-male cabinet and divisions within the Taliban, Afghanistan’s future remains uncertain.

Taliban fighters sit by the roadside in Logar’s Mohammad Agha district.

“As we feared, the situation is worsening in most respects – a reflection of the Taliban’s determination to crush dissent and criticism,” said Patricia Gossman, an associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Revenge killings, crushing women’s rights, strangling the media – the Taliban seem determined to tighten their grip on society, even as the situation grows increasingly unstable in the coming months.”

A boy flying his kite from a rooftop in Kabul.

Kabul’s Mandawi market is always busy.

At first sight, the changes on Kabul’s streets aren’t all too visible. Surrounded by majestic mountain peaks, parts of the city are still bustling. Kebabs wrapped in fresh warm bread are sold by the roadside, and boys selling balloons navigate through busy traffic. The Taliban’s post-victory euphoria has ebbed, and while the city was flooded with insurgents in summer, most of them now seem to have left. Those remaining man checkpoints or work in the newly established government.

Taliban on the streets of Kabul.

While the Taliban initially detained all drug addicts and moved many of them to prisons, now more are again seen on Kabul’s streets. Right: Sayed Jafar, a carpet vendor, sits in his shop in Kabul. Since the Taliban takeover, business has essentially stopped as his customers have left the country.

Yet at a closer look the city is emptier, though the number of beggars has increased significantly. Once buzzing coffee shops are vacant; several restaurants have permanently closed. Outside the Iranian embassy, long queues of people wait for visa appointments; they say they are hopeless. At a Kabul maternity clinic, a newborn boy lies abandoned. “His family doesn’t have the money to take care of another child,” said Latifa Wardak, one of the hospital’s doctors.

A nameless boy lies abandoned in the prenatal ward at Rabia Balkhi hospital.

Rahela Shahavi, 25, works as a nurse in the postnatal ward at Malalai maternity hospital, where up to 100 babies are delivered each day. Out of the 446 staff, 400 are women. Right: nurses and midwives working in the prenatal ward at Rabia Balkhi hospital in Kabul sit down for lunch.

The trauma of the last months haunts many, and although Afghans are private people who often choose to conceal emotion, they visibly carry their pain. I’ve noticed it when interviewing people. The conversations last longer, because there is a real need to talk and process. With countless cups of green tea consumed, many describe the loneliness felt after their family members escaped the country. Memories of the past Taliban regime are recalled, often linked to present fears. Tears are shed.

A man walks through fresh snow in Panjshir’s Hezarak district.

Leftovers from America’s longest war: a destroyed army vehicle sits by the roadside in Panjshir’s Hezarak district.

There are good moments, too. On a snowy morning, Naim Naimy, 63, from the southern Kandahar province, said he had travelled six hours to see a white Kabul. “I’ve been watching the weather forecast,” he said, standing amid trees in a park, soft white flakes melting on his skin. “I love snow,” he added, smiling.

In Kan-e-Ezzat village, as on many other similar frontlines, the guns have fallen silent since the Taliban’s takeover. Wardak had been one of the first provinces to see a resurgent Taliban after the start of the 2001 US-led invasion, with conflict almost a constant over the past decade.

Lal Mohammad, 48, from Wardak.

Whenever fighting erupted, Lal Mohammad, 48, would run through the family’s compound gathering his children and other relatives, shoving them towards a small, dark, underground cowshed. They would sit amid the dung, crammed in and scared, around 40 of them, sometimes for hours, listening to the sounds of bullets and mortars, often in the cold of the night, waiting for the flare-up to pass.

Naila, 10, from Wardak, has been having nightmares for months, even now that the war has stopped.

The Kabul-based International Psychological Organisation (IPSO) has said Afghanistan is a “trauma state”, estimating that 70% of Afghans are in need of psychological support.

Lal admitted to being traumatised too. He never aligned with the Taliban, but said he was glad that fighting had at least stopped. Most of his family sustained injuries over the years. He pointed to his 12-year-old nephew Sheer, sitting on a cushion next to him, his right hand deeply scared by a shrapnel wound. Little aid had trickled down to Lal’s village. “The foreigners brought us cookies but little development,” he said cynically.

“Everyone in this village has either lost a family member or has an injury. Everyone is traumatised and tired. We didn’t want the Russians, nor the Americans, nor the Taliban. We just want peace. Today I can at least tell my children that the war is over.”

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Introduction

Existing explanations for why the u.s. war in afghanistan ended, trauma, narratives, and war, the narrative emerges and settles in, the narrative peaks, the narrative declines, narratives and war: explaining the length and end of u.s. military operations in afghanistan.

Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs and the Shively Family Faculty Fellow at Wake Forest University.

Supplemental material available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/82RNG7

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C. William Walldorf; Narratives and War: Explaining the Length and End of U.S. Military Operations in Afghanistan. International Security 2022; 47 (1): 93–138. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00439

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Why did the U.S. war in Afghanistan last so long, and why did it end? In contrast to conventional arguments about partisanship, geopolitics, and elite pressures, a new theory of war duration suggests that strategic narratives best answer these questions. The severity and frequency of attacks by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State across most of the 2000s and 2010s generated and sustained a robust collective narrative across the United States focused on combatting terrorism abroad. Audience costs of inaction generated by this narrative pushed President Barack Obama (2009) and President Donald Trump (2017) to not only sustain but increase troops in Afghanistan, against their better judgement. Strategic narratives also explain the end to the war. The defeat of the ISIS caliphate and a significant reduction in the number of attacks on liberal democratic states in the late 2010s caused the severity and frequency of traumatic events to fall below the threshold necessary to sustain a robust anti-terrorism narrative. As the narrative weakened, advocates for war in Afghanistan lost political salience, while those pressing retrenchment gained leverage over policy. Audience costs for inaction declined and President Joe Biden ended the war (2021). As President Biden seeks to rebalance U.S. commitments for an era of new strategic challenges, an active offshore counterterrorism program will be necessary to maintain this balance.

In May 2017, amid yet another intense national debate about increasing troops in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump asked Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), “How does this end?” Graham answered, “It never ends.” Soon after, Vice President Mike Pence implored Graham to give Trump an off-ramp, some kind of exit strategy. According to Bob Woodward, Graham responded, “It would never end.” 1

Until Trump's 2020 troop reduction and, especially, President Joe Biden's 2021 decision to end combat operations entirely, Graham's counsel seemed almost prophetic. Despite long-standing countervailing pressures at home (e.g., lobbying by advocates of restraint, public disdain for the war, as well as the pro-withdrawal sentiments of Biden and his two immediate predecessors), the United States stayed in Afghanistan for two decades. 2 What sustained this war for so long, and what allowed Trump to begin and Biden to complete the drawdown?

Conventional arguments in international relations about geopolitics, elites (e.g., “the Blob”), 3 and partisanship struggle to answer these questions. Given these shortcomings, this article turns to a new theory of war duration to explain the length and end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The approach centers, at the broadest level, on collective national will or purpose. It does so, more specifically, by focusing primary causal attention on a largely underappreciated yet historically important factor in U.S. foreign policy: strategic narratives. 4

I define strategic narratives as collective national or public-level stories that form out of and center around traumatic events for a group. These events come to be viewed in existential terms as a danger to the national way of life. By collective, I mean that narratives are properties of groups or social facts, like culture. For a nation-state, a narrative becomes collectively salient because it restores order by explaining the pain, assigning blame, and, most importantly, setting lessons going forward to avoid a return to the pain of the past. These lessons are often reflected in a simple mantra—such as “No More Vietnams” or “Stop Terrorism”—that takes on a life of its own in ways that determine national interests to pursue abroad and shape policy debates over time. 5

This article focuses on one especially important type of strategic narrative—the liberal narrative—in the history of U.S. foreign policy. A robust liberal narrative is distinguished by its lesson, notably the need to safeguard liberal political order abroad, “either by promotion (i.e., expanding democracy and liberal rights) or protection (i.e., preventing the spread of counter-ideologies to liberalism).” 6 The liberal narrative manifests in temporally unique variants such as the anti-fascist narrative of the 1930s and 1940s and the anti-communist narrative during the Cold War. With lessons to defend freedom and stop counter-ideologies from spreading, both shared a commitment to protect liberal political order, making them “liberal narratives.” 7

Historically, liberal narratives like these affect policy through the contested nature of democratic politics. At key decision points about the use of force, powerful narratives augment in predictable ways some voices over others in policy debates. Specifically, by tapping into or drawing upon the lessons of a prevailing narrative, agents gain influence by building policy discourses that increase leaders' perceived audience costs, which are defined as the “domestic political price” that leaders pay for choices that are at odds with strong public preferences. 8 Given a narrative's public salience, leaders fear potential electoral or policy losses and, in turn, tend to bring their decisions in line with these narrative-augmented discourses, sometimes against their better judgment. 9

This strategic-narrative argument helps explain the length and end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The severity of the September 11 terrorist attacks coupled with the frequency of follow-on attacks globally by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) into the late 2010s generated and sustained a powerful collective story across the U.S. body politic of missed opportunities by U.S. leaders and a lesson to combat terrorism abroad. This anti-terrorism narrative is the most recent variant of a robust liberal narrative in the U.S. policy process. At various decision points, the narrative created space for promoters of war (especially in the U.S. military) to generate discourses that raised audience costs of inaction and politically boxed in presidents to sustain or expand the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Concerns about looking “soft” and not measuring up to narrative standards shaped the decisions of both President Barack Obama and Trump (early in his term) to stay engaged militarily. In recent years, narrative measures show that as the severity and frequency of terrorist attacks receded (i.e., collapse of the ISIS caliphate, absence of severe al-Qaeda attacks), the anti-terrorism narrative also lost policy salience. Moderators (in this case, civilian leaders and policy experts) gained leverage, audience costs of inaction declined, and restraint gained traction in policy debates. Like event-driven narrative dynamics (i.e., following the killing of Osama bin Laden) that allowed Obama to withdraw from Iraq in 2011, the national sense of purpose in Afghanistan waned, creating political space for Trump to decrease troops and for Biden to end the war entirely.

The strategic-narrative argument builds upon and fills important gaps in existing scholarship. In contrast to standard rationalist accounts, it explores the social construction of audience costs and offers new insights into how narratives shape policy outcomes. The argument also turns to the framework of cultural trauma to explain strategic narratives more systematically. 10 In contrast to some accounts that focus primarily on influential agents to explain how narratives form and endure, trauma theory draws primary attention to the importance of events (e.g., September 11). When collectively viewed as existentially dangerous, these events spark new narratives such as the anti-terrorism narrative. Similar follow-on events over time re-traumatize the nation, helping maintain the salience of the narrative as a lodestar for foreign policy for years or even decades on end. Among other things, this trauma framework best accounts for the long-standing vitality of the anti-terrorism narrative in U.S. politics that other arguments about narratives struggle to explain.

This article turns first to conventional explanations, specifically arguments centered on potential changes in Afghanistan's geostrategic value to the United States, the shifting partisan preferences of different presidential administrations, variation in elite ideological or consensus-based pressures, and shifts in civil-military relations. The second and third sections detail the strategic-narrative argument and methods. Sections four through six present the Afghanistan case studies. The article concludes with policy implications.

The war in Afghanistan was the centerpiece of U.S. forever wars across the first two decades of the 2000s. Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden conducted major policy reviews early in their administrations. The first two opted against withdrawal and increased troops instead—Obama by 30,000 in 2009 and Trump by 4,000 in 2017. Three years later, Trump began—and Biden completed—the withdrawal. What explains this change?

Standard explanations struggle to answer this question. Realists see no geostrategic value in nation-building wars like Afghanistan. Although the end of the war makes sense to realists, its duration does not. 11 Partisan arguments offer no clear explanation either—Obama (D) continued President George W. Bush's (R) policy that Trump (R) also initially followed before shifting to withdrawal, which Biden (D) elected to continue. 12 Elite-based arguments fare poorly, too. For those who focus on elite ideology, reduced elite ideological concerns about Afghanistan over the past decade (e.g., Obama on the overreaction to September 11 and talks of terrorism as nonexistential) should have meant that the United States ended the war years ago. Therefore, why the United States stayed so long and what changed to allow Biden to leave when others could not is puzzling. 13 This is not to say that ideology is irrelevant; it affects how narratives form, but in ways that the narrow focus in extant work on elites alone does not capture well. 14 Alternatively, some scholars argue that a powerful establishment consensus aimed at sustaining U.S. “liberal hegemony” explains U.S. wars in the Middle East. In short, elites want forever wars and get what they want. 15 But if this theory is correct, then how did Biden end the war? As a constant, establishment consensus cannot explain this, nor can it explain many other decisions for retrenchment, such as Obama's choice in 2011 to withdraw all troops from Iraq and his refusal to enforce the Syrian “red line” in 2014.

Finally, I suggest that the strongest conventional argument comes from the civil-military relations literature. When the military enters the political fray with dire public warnings of danger ahead for the nation, some scholars argue that civil-military relations tilt toward the military in ways that often lead to strategically suboptimal outcomes, such as continuing stalemated forever wars. In contrast, these kinds of wars result in retrenchment only when civilians regain the upper hand, especially by muzzling the military in public. 16

The problem with this argument is not that it is wrong. In fact, the strategic-narrative argument I develop here agrees that the balance between military leaders as powerful promoters of war and civilian leaders as moderators of war is important. Not surprisingly, then, when military leaders went public (or threatened to do so) in the Obama and Trump periods, civilian leaders capitulated, troops increased, and war continued. In the Biden period, however, civilians carried the upper hand, the military chose not to go public with its preferences to continue the fight, and the president ended the war. In a broad sense, the cases match civil-military expectations.

This argument's greatest shortcoming comes with explaining change, which is the main puzzle of this article. If the civil-military relations balance is critical to both the continuation of and the end to forever wars, such as the war in Afghanistan, why does that balance tilt one way or the other at different times? More specifically, why does the military go public sometimes and not others, why and how do the public appeals of the military generate pressure on civilian leaders, and under what conditions are civilians able to muzzle the military and, in so doing, gain more leverage over policy?

The politics of strategic narratives help answer questions like these. The civil-military balance generally favors the military when there is a robust liberal narrative—such as the anti-terrorism narrative from 2001 to 2018. The narrative gives military promoters (and their civilian supporters in government) an important political tool to build public pressure on civilian leaders in order to continue/expand war. Military leaders are most likely to go public (or threaten to do so) under such narrative conditions. Civilian leaders—fearful of the political costs of not measuring up to narrative standards (i.e., looking “weak” or “losing”)—capitulate to military pressure. But when a liberal narrative weakens, the civil-military balance often tilts toward the former. Military promoters find themselves on more tenuous ground in policy debates. In the absence of nationwide, narrative-driven fervor to intervene militarily in conflicts abroad, the military tends to hesitate about going public with its preferences for more force. As the public costs of looking weak recede with the weakened liberal narrative, civilians/moderators find more political space to assert themselves, both in internal debates and in public. Long wars such as the U.S. war in Afghanistan often come to an end.

In sum, the nexus between civil-military relations and strategic narratives provides deeper insights into why long wars endure and ultimately end. International relations scholars have shed a great deal of light on the former but not on the latter. For that reason, I now turn greater attention to the narrative side of this equation.

Narratives are not new to the field of international relations. The existing literature on narratives faces two primary shortcomings, though. 17 First, scholars offer no clear explanation for why and when narratives shape policy outcomes, like decisions to continue or end forever wars. My attention to audience costs corrects for this. Second, in explaining how narratives strengthen and weaken over time, existing scholarship gives primary attention to narrators—especially the president in the U.S. context. 18 Although narrators (and sometimes presidents, as such) are important, these arguments tend to overlook how events shape strategic narratives' content and strength across time. In the mid-2010s, President Obama tried to re-narrate and dampen terrorism worries in the United States, for instance. He largely failed because most U.S. citizens viewed Obama's new story as being out of touch amid a surge in ISIS terrorist attacks. The president told the wrong story at the wrong time. Events matter.

I start with scholarship on collective trauma, which draws attention to two particularly important concepts: the severity and the frequency of events. Neil Smelser defines cultural trauma as “a memory accepted and given public credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event(s) or situation(s) which is a) laden with … affect, b) represented as indelible, and c) regarded as threatening a society's existence or violating one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions.” 19 Building off this definition, trauma involves three stages that leave behind marks on society, essentially new prevailing narratives. The strategic-narrative argument starts with identity, which determines what a community values most. Stage one involves severe events that are perceived as an attack on these values, an existential challenge making them traumatic. 20 This severity produces deep emotional reactions—“disgust, shame, guilt … or anxiety”—for a community, which leads quickly to stage two of trauma, notably a collective search for new “routines” and ways to “get by in the world.” 21 Above all else, the affected community looks to presumed wise figures in society for explanation and ways forward. 22

Stage three of trauma—the formation of new collective narratives—emerges from these explanations. Many enter the fray amid severity, often telling competing stories. Specific kinds of severity resonate with the injured group in ways that privilege some stories over others. 23 As a result of the disquiet generated by certain events, some stories become affirmed, validated, and collectively labeled as “good.” Storytellers gain a hearing, according to Jeffrey Alexander, when they “represent social pain as a fundamental threat to … [a group's] sense of who they are.” 24 If severe events repeat frequently, privileged stories resonate deeper and longer. High frequency re-traumatizes the collective, which makes the story indelible (i.e., “see, I told you so”) and helps sustain it over time as the new collective wisdom—or prevailing narrative—with new ways of being going forward. 25

This latter element—new directions toward repair—is a natural part of trauma-generated narratives. Effective storytellers repeatedly narrate ways for “defense and coping,” drawing attention to “mistakes and how they may be avoided in the future” (i.e., blame and lesson). 26 These lessons are often encapsulated in slogans such as “no more Vietnams,” “no more 9/11s,” or “who lost China?” (which helped propel intervention in Korea and Vietnam). Lessons and severe event(s) are intrinsically connected in narratives—the latter gives meaning to the former. 27

This trauma framework—centered on the severity and frequency of events—helps explain the emergence and cross-temporal strength of strategic narratives in U.S. foreign policy. 28 For this article, I grant special attention to one kind of trauma—external trauma—and the type of narrative that it tends to generate. Trauma theorists find that severe event(s) from some force outside a community leads to group unity around a story centered on protecting the ideals of the community—that is, “who we are”—as a means of defense or repair. 29 This external trauma helps explain the emergence and strength of liberal narratives (such as the anti-terrorism narrative) that centers on activism abroad to defend or promote liberal political order.

Liberal states (including the public in these states) view other states and developments in the international system through the ideological lens of their own regime type (i.e., identity)—they notice and worry about the plight of liberal order abroad because it threatens their own security. 30 The severe events most likely to spark stage one of trauma emerge when ideologically distant—in this case illiberal—rival(s) make strategic gains, especially through either a direct attack on the United States or a series of attacks on other kindred liberal or liberalizing states. Like the ideology literature in international relations, I argue that these kinds of strategic shifts are not objective, as realists expect. Instead, their impact on a polity is conditioned by state identity. 31 When these attacks produce civilian casualties and/or lead to the expansion of illiberal governments abroad, collective anxiety around existential danger to the national way of life rises exponentially. This sense of existential panic around high-severity events comes almost immediately after direct attacks (e.g., Pearl Harbor or September 11). 32 With indirect attacks on ideological kin, geographic distance from the target often means that it takes several accumulated attacks to generate the same collective sense of severity and, with that, collective trauma. 33

Whether their pathway is direct or indirect, high-severity attacks lead to stages two and three of trauma. Many of society's “wise figures” will engage in storytelling in stage two. External trauma privileges stories from agents who I call “promoters,” those who validate public fears of existential danger and the need to defend liberal order abroad. 34 If rival gains come via direct attack, promoter stories immediately prevail and the liberal narrative strengthens quickly. 35 If attacks are indirect, the slower growth of severity means that promoter stories gain acceptance more slowly, too. In stage three, repeated rival attacks/gains validate the promoter story, giving it collective strength. Finally, the frequency of events sustains narrative strength and salience over time. In a path-dependent way, the liberal narrative remains robust if an ideological rival regularly continues (i.e., at least every two or three years) to make gains, especially if it either directly or indirectly attacks other ideologically kindred (in this case, liberal or liberalizing) states. 36 In essence, frequent and severe challenges abroad perpetually re-traumatize the nation, giving a robust liberal narrative ongoing strength and vitality. 37

The dominant variant of the liberal narrative during the Cold War—the anti-communist narrative—offers a good example of the theory. In the 1940s, the U.S. public was traumatized by a cascade of Soviet ideological gains: communist advances in East-Central Europe, atomic bomb tests, an alliance with newly communist China, and support of the Korean War. This development shut out moderate voices, such as progressive Vice President Henry A. Wallace, and allowed promoters to establish a robust liberal narrative around stopping communism. For much of the forty years that followed, frequent demonstrations of communist-bloc strength (i.e., Sputnik, gains in Africa and Asia, the Cuban Revolution, and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) re-traumatized the United States, keeping the anti-communist narrative robust. 38

There are two potential pathways by which severity and frequency can weaken the liberal narrative. First, the narrative will weaken most profoundly and substantially when an ideological rival experiences a debilitating defeat or changes its ideology altogether. These kinds of positive events generate what Emile Durkheim calls “success anomie,” or a collective sense of lost purpose for the nation that makes the old narrative appear antiquated as a guide for policy. 39 Positive events profoundly weaken a temporal variant of the liberal narrative for years to follow—this becomes permanent if a rival fails to rebuild.

Second, narrative weakening could also occur when either trauma-generating strategic gains by an ideological rival cease for at least four years, or when a rival takes accommodating steps to reduce tension. This absence of negative events can also produce success anomie. When either scenario happens, the frequency and severity of traumatic events fall below the threshold necessary to sustain a robust liberal narrative. In these conditions, especially when marked by the positive event of a rival's debilitating defeat, a political opportunity space emerges for certain agents who I call “moderators” to engage in storytelling about reduced ideological danger and restraint abroad. U.S. presidents sometimes become moderators, but as Obama found out the hard way, their success as storytellers depends on the event-driven context. That is, they must tell the right story at the right time. 40 The liberal narrative weakens under these conditions of rival decline or absence of negative events; retrenchment settles in as the new lodestar for the polity. For example, the liberalization and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 initiated a major re-narration by moderators. As a result, the anti-communist narrative disappeared from discussions of U.S. foreign policy.

narrative discourses and war

Narratives shape policy outcomes—such as decisions to sustain or end wars—by raising audience costs. Standard accounts demonstrate that audience costs emerge when heads of state bind themselves by making a public commitment to action abroad. 41 Audience costs from strategic narratives form in a different way, however, notably through social construction. 42 At key decision points, agents (promoters or moderators) use strategic narratives to build discourses for or against war. These discourses generate different domestic political cost-benefit scenarios: high audience costs of action, or high audience costs of inaction. 43 While not required for these kinds of discourses to form, appeals by leaders with robust narratives as a justification for policy may help fuel these narrative-driven discourses and elevate audience costs. Leader pledges (i.e., the conventional audience-cost argument) can matter, then, but only if they are linked to prevailing narratives. Regardless of their contributions to the process, democratic leaders worry about future elections or their broader policy agendas (i.e., the potential political consequences of elevated audience costs) when facing robust, narrative-based discourses. Consequently, leaders usually bring policy in line with the narrative discourses that agents build around them.

For starters, I assume that at any major policy decision point, both promoters and moderators will be present to advocate their different positions. Liberal war continuation (and expansion) is most likely when a strong liberal narrative develops at key decision points in a conflict. Here, a robust liberal narrative (meaning, again, an elevated national passion to protect liberal order abroad) augments promoter arguments. This gives promoters a special hearing with the public and in policy debates generally. 44 Promoters know this and use the liberal narrative to create (or policymakers fear they will create) broad public movements, which raises audience costs of inaction. In wartime, military leaders are often also promoters, and strategic narratives tip the civil-military balance in their favor. Civilian leaders who do not support continuing or expanding military action fear losing future elections or policy goals, and thus some bring their policies in line with promoters' arguments. Others get “pushed to act” against their better judgment to continue or expand liberal wars.

Sometimes, these reluctant leaders ironically help create the strong liberal discourses that later push them along. In the 1960 presidential campaign, President John F. Kennedy intentionally took a tough position against Fidel Castro's communist regime in Cuba to enhance his anti-communist credentials with voters. This stance helped Kennedy win the White House, but it also boxed him in once in office. As promoters in Congress built a robust discourse around anti-communism for a tough policy in 1961, the political costs of looking weak on communism proved too high for Kennedy to pursue his preferred course of normalizing relations with Castro's regime. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion followed. 45

Liberal wars end as liberal discourse weakens. Because of a national sense of lost purpose, moderator appeals (which often come from civilians in wartime) resonate more in policy debates as the liberal narrative weakens. Promoter arguments tend to appear odd, by contrast, maybe even extreme. Consequently, promoters often go quiet, especially in public. 46 In this scenario, leaders face lower audience costs of inaction, and they may in fact perceive higher audience costs of action given the absence of a national passion for war. In this latter scenario, leaders worry about the domestic political dangers of carrying on or expanding the war. As a result, a weak liberal discourse allows leaders who prefer ending a liberal war to do so, and it pushes those leaders who prefer to continue fighting to instead phase down or end military action. During the 1990s, moderators inside President Bill Clinton's administration repeatedly pointed to flagging public support for things like democracy building and humanitarian intervention (i.e., a weak liberal discourse). 47 This discourse constrained military options for Clinton, especially in the Balkans, throughout his administration. 48

I combine congruence and comparative case study methods to test the strategic-narrative argument in decisions for troop increases in Afghanistan by Obama (2009) and Trump (2017) against Biden's decision to withdraw (2021). 49 For space reasons and because Biden made the final decision, I devote less attention to Trump's 2020 pledge to withdraw. The cases are good for comparison, holding several background factors constant, such as war (Afghanistan) and period (post-9/11). The Obama-Biden cases are especially good for comparison because they share a common policy approach and party affiliation, but they lead to different outcomes. Outcome variation avoids sampling on the dependent variable.

Tautology is a pitfall for any ideational argument. To avoid this, I use a method of symbolic structuring of discourse to assess narrative strength and its component parts (i.e., severity and frequency) at time t-1, meaning independent of and prior to the decision-making process. 50 Narrative strength is measured in each case study using content analysis of newspaper editorials and the Congressional Record (see the online appendix), along with secondary sources and public opinion polls. Editorials reflect the collective national discussion across the country around specific events at specific points in time. Consequently, they are a well-established tool for measuring collective ideas, like narratives. Scholars find that patterns in the Congressional Record do the same—in a mutually constitutive way, authoritative actors both reflect and help reinforce prevailing narrative trends in any given period. 51

For the Afghan cases, I first scanned the historical record for geostrategic gains that were likely to reach the threshold of severity required to spark trauma and the initial narrative-making process. Most notably, examples include any attacks by an illiberal actor on the United States or other liberal states that caused civilian casualties or threatened to spread illiberalism. Second, and most importantly for the strategic-narrative argument in this article, I then scanned the historical record beyond the initial trauma for any similar follow-on severe attacks. If the strategic-narrative argument is correct, the above measures should demonstrate that a direct attack on the United States, or a series of indirect attacks on strategic partners (i.e., severity), open(s) space for promoters and generates a new liberal narrative centered on existential danger, blame, and a lesson to get active abroad against a specific foe. Likewise, these measures should also show that a follow-on attack (i.e., frequency) reinforces and sustains the narrative. Specifically, patterns of discourse in congressional and editorial commentary will typically show extensive references to existential danger and the need to get active, and they will link present severe events to those in the past, especially at the narrative founding. Secondary sources and polls will show the same pattern. 52

On the other hand, if severity and frequency are low in a given period—owing to the defeat of an ideological rival (i.e., positive event) or scarcity of direct/indirect attacks (i.e., absence of negative events) by a rival for at least two or three years—there should be less discussion in editorials and the Congressional Record about an ideological foe compared with periods marked by narrative robustness. Likewise, talk of existential danger, blame, and the lesson to protect liberal order abroad should be substantially less than in periods of a robust liberal narrative. Polls and scholarly or pundit assessments in secondary sources will validate this outcome.

Finally, using a singular type of congruence test, I explore narrative discourses and their impact (if any) on decisions to continue, expand, or end war. If the strategic-narrative argument is correct, assessments by pundits, memoirs, and the like should show how narrative-based discourses affected policy decisions in predicted ways. When the liberal discourse is robust, various actors (especially leaders) should talk about the domestic pressure to continue military action or the domestic costs of withdrawal. But when the discourse is weak, they should talk about domestic costs to maintain military action or political space to retrench from conflicts abroad. 53

The September 11 terrorist attacks dramatically reversed the weak liberal narrative environment of the early post–Cold War period. 54 “This week's frontal assault on America is a collective trauma unlike any other in any of our lifetimes,” observed the San Francisco Chronicle . 55 “A new narrative literally fell from the sky on September 11” and “became embedded in the popular imagination,” noted a pair of scholars. 56 Almost everyone became a promoter. As anticipated when external trauma arises from a direct attack, the story immediately saturated the public discourse—print media, television, members of Congress, and eventually in statements by President George W. Bush. The story included all standard parts of a national security narrative: detailing events existentially, assigning blame, and setting a way forward to repair (i.e., lesson). Members of Congress repeatedly framed events in existential terms, as an attack on “our laws, our cherished beliefs.” 57 “This is war,” declared House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO), just after the attack. 58 Newspapers across the country echoed the same themes, as did polls in late September: 58 percent of Americans wanted “a long-term war”; 73 percent supported ground troops to “combat international terrorism.” 59

In the years that followed, the frequency of severe attacks remained high and reinforced the liberal narrative. Targets included, to name a few, Kuwait (2002), Bali (2002, 2005), Mombasa (2002), Riyadh (2003), Casablanca (2003), Istanbul (2003), Madrid (2004), London (2005), Algiers (2007), and countless bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2004. 60 These events (especially against liberal or liberalizing allies in Europe and Iraq) sparked fervent national discussions in the United States.

Most specifically, the salience of promoter narratives about existential danger, parallels to 9/11, and the lesson to fight terrorism increased dramatically. Bush framed the 2005 London terrorist attack as an assault on “human liberty.” 61 Of Madrid, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the bombing should “redouble everyone's efforts” to go after terrorists. 62 As anticipated by trauma theory, every congressional statement in the two weeks after the Madrid and London attacks described them in existential terms, which both reflected and revalidated the robust liberal narrative. “Americans were shocked and dismayed … when terror struck the capital of the United Kingdom, the cradle of Western liberty,” one said of London. 63 “The free nations of the world will … ensure that those who hate freedom and liberty will not succeed,” said another of Madrid. 64 Likewise, no one framed these as isolated, disconnected events, but instead linked them together as “reminders” and, with that, extensions of September 11 and the anti-terrorism narrative. Many talked of how Americans did and should look “through the prism” of September 11 to make sense of Bali, Madrid, London, Istanbul, and the like. “No American will ever forget the infamous day of 9/11,” a member of Congress said of Madrid. 65 Finally, promoters stressed that these events supported the lesson to press on in the fight against terrorism. It was like a drumbeat from political leaders: “stand firm against terrorism”; “renew our determination to eradicate terrorism”; “dismantle the al Qaeda network”; “remain defiant in the face of terrorism.” 66

Like the days after 9/11, promoter appeals resonated and echoed nationally, pointing to the continued strength and vitality of the anti-terrorism narrative into the late 2000s. This was evident in two ways. First, it showed up in newspapers across the country, from big cities to small towns. Content analysis of seventy-two editorials in the ten days after the Madrid bombings found that 54 percent of the papers described the attacks in existential terms related to democracy, liberty, freedom, or civilization; 64 percent drew parallels between the bombing and other recent terrorist attacks, especially 9/11; and 70 percent referenced the central lesson of the narrative to actively stamp out terrorism abroad. The same was the case with editorials following the London bombings: 63 percent were existential; 71 percent were connected to 9/11 or other terrorist attacks; and 73 percent referenced the lesson to remain or become more active abroad to fight terrorism. 67

Take a Wall Street Journal editorial, for instance, about Madrid. “So much for the illusion that the global war on terror isn't really a war,” noted the editors, “That complacent notion which has been infiltrating its way into the American public mind, blew up along with 10 bombs on trains carrying Spanish commuters yesterday.” The editors then listed eleven other attacks—including September 11—to draw attention to the existential danger that “terrorism remains the single largest threat to Western freedom and security.” 68 Headlines around the Madrid, London, and Bali bombings were similar: “This Week, ‘Madrid Became Manhattan’”; “Ground Zero, Madrid”; “Terror in London: A Reminder to the World that War of 9/11 Is Not Over.” 69 A total of 56 percent of Americans agreed that the London attacks showed that “it is necessary to fight the war against the terrorists in Iraq and everywhere else.” 70

A second indicator of narrative strength was the extent to which both Democrats and Republicans used the narrative as a political battering ram by the late 2000s. The Bush White House had long painted political opponents as weak on terrorism to win votes. 71 By 2006, with al-Qaeda gaining new ground in Iraq (where the United States was deeply invested in trying to build a liberal democratic government), Republicans doubled down on this message, saying that Democratic proposals for withdrawal from Iraq would aid terrorists. “If we were to follow the proposals of Democratic leaders,” said one Republican (GOP) House member in a 2007 debate on a resolution opposing the Iraq troop surge, “anarchy in Iraq would give al Qaeda and other extremists a haven to train and plot attacks.” 72 Thirty-nine other Republicans (73 percent of GOP speakers) echoed the same that day. Many senior Democrats also used the anti-terrorism narrative as a counterpunch. “Fighting terrorism, fighting extremism … is weakened by our being in Iraq,” said Representative Barney Frank (D-MA); “it has emboldened radicals everywhere.” 73 Others noted similarly how Bush “distracted us from the real war on terror” and “weakened our fight against al Qaeda.” 74

Afghanistan played a big part in these Democratic counterpunches around terrorism, especially after a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate showed that the Taliban/al-Qaeda had made significant gains there. Democratic calls to “refocus” the war on terrorism invariably meant moving attention to Afghanistan. 75 Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) led the way. 76 “We must get off the wrong battlefield,” Obama charged in an August 2007 speech, before committing to send two additional divisions to Afghanistan. 77 The speech was intentional, meant to counter charges from Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in a July presidential primary debate that Obama was weak on foreign policy. Cognizant of how Bush successfully painted rival presidential candidate John Kerry as “weak” on terrorism in 2004, political strategist David Axelrod hatched the idea of the August speech. 78 “Outflanking Bush-Cheney with a serious, aggressive, intelligent campaign against Islamist terror?” said a pair of observers, “It's what the country wants. And it seems to be what Obama is offering.” 79

Overall, Obama's August 2007 move reflected the strength of the liberal narrative around terrorism in the late 2000s. It also fueled a narrative-based discourse that constrained Obama throughout his presidency.

obama's first troop surge

When President Obama took office in 2009, a request for additional troops for Afghanistan was on his desk. 80 Obama initially hesitated. “I have campaigned on providing Afghanistan more troops,” he said in a January 23 National Security Council (NSC) meeting, “but I haven't made the decision yet.” Supported by Vice President Joe Biden and other civilian moderators in the White House, Obama expressed doubts about escalation, blocked a move by military leaders to add troops without his approval, and commissioned former NSC staffer Bruce Riedel to conduct a review of Afghan policy, after which Obama would decide on troops. 81

Moderators failed, however. Animated by the cascade of narrative-validating terror attacks, a surging liberal discourse prevented Obama from maintaining this wait and see approach, pushing him to approve 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan in mid-February 2009, well before the completed review. Combined with the president's campaign pledges, public support for the troop request by promoters—like Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—ignited an expansive national discussion for more action. In editorials, 70 percent supported more troops, 85 percent discussed combating terrorism (i.e., the narrative's lesson), and 40 percent mentioned Obama's campaign pledges. 82 The Washington Post criticized Obama for waffling on his campaign promises: “The war on terrorism did not end on January 20 [Obama's Inauguration Day].” 83 Polls showed that 70 percent of respondents expected Afghanistan to fall under “the control of terrorists” if the United States left; 63 percent favored more troops. 84 Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes bemoaned the “political drama” and the fact that “the media started calling Afghanistan ‘Obama's War.’” 85 The White House saw costs of inaction rising.

Promoters inside the administration elevated these costs too. In the January 23 NSC meeting, General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, said that failure was coming in Afghanistan and that al-Qaeda would gain ground: “we cannot achieve our objective without more troops.” Mullen echoed the same. 86 Obama knew the political risks. Just ten days prior, Senator Graham had warned Obama that Republicans would use failure in Afghanistan in the 2010 midterms. During a February 13 meeting, advisers gave Obama two options: wait on Riedel's report or add 17,000 troops. Promoters (including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) harped on narrative themes: a “bloodbath” for al-Qaeda without more troops. 87 The domestic fallout of that happening was simply too high. “For practical and political purposes there really was no choice [italics added],” observed Bob Woodward. 88 Four days later, Obama publicly justified more troops as being vital to counterterrorism; 63 percent of the electorate approved. 89 Like Woodward, the New York Times concluded that Obama “had no choice” given what he said “during the campaign.” In short, Obama's opportunistic use of the anti-terrorism narrative during the 2008 presidential campaign fueled a robust liberal discourse and high audience costs of inaction that forced his hand in February 2009. 90

obama and the second troop surge

In June 2009, National Security Advisor James Logan Jones Jr. told General Stanley McChrystal, the head of military operations in Afghanistan, that the president wanted to “reduce U.S. involvement” and shift to an aid-based strategy. 91 Eight weeks later, McChrystal requested an additional 40,000 troops as part of a report assessing the situation in Afghanistan. When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates informed the president, “the room exploded” in opposition. 92 Moderators in the White House warned Obama that he had pledged to end the Middle East wars. 93 “I shared Joe's [Biden] skepticism,” Obama said as he pushed back against more troops. There “are no good options,” he noted in a September 12 NSC meeting. 94

In the end, moderators lost again. As in February, the president capitulated to the anti-terrorism narrative pressure. In early September 2009, promoters generated a robust liberal discourse for more troops, arguing that failure risked another September 11. Frustrated by Obama's hesitancy, military leaders—namely, Petraeus, Mullen, and McChrystal—played a critical role by going public to use the robust anti-terrorism narrative to their advantage (which augmented their position in policy debates, as the strategic-narrative argument expects). The move was calculated. In a late August meeting on handling White House resistance to more troops, Senator Graham (while on air force reserve duty in Afghanistan) told Petraeus and McChrystal that their messaging focused too much on the Taliban. “America is worried all about al Qaeda attacking,” he counseled, “Americans understand that the Taliban are bad guys, but what drives the American psyche more than anything else is, are we about to let the country that attacked us once attack us twice?” 95 In short, Graham counseled the generals to use the anti-terrorism narrative to their political advantage.

The generals complied, now focusing their message on al-Qaeda, new attacks, and the potential for “failure” without more troops. 96 Petraeus warned publicly that the Afghan government would collapse without a fully resourced counterinsurgency. 97 On September 15 (just three days after Obama's “no good options” comment), Mullen told Congress that success in Afghanistan required more troops. A few days later, the Washington Post reported on a leaked copy of the McChrystal report in a front-page article titled “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure.’” The sixty-six-page report mentioned “failure” or “defeat” fourteen times. 98 Finally, McChrystal said publicly that he rarely spoke directly with Obama and that another September 11 would come without additional resolve. 99 Obama looked weak and out of touch.

As expected, these moves fueled a powerful liberal discourse across the country for more troops in Afghanistan. From mid-September to mid-October, 71 percent of statements on Capitol Hill about Afghanistan mentioned comments by the generals, and 88 percent of supporters of more force warned of another September 11: “Afghanistan is where the attacks of 9/11 originated” and “the sacrifices we make overseas now will prevent another 9/11-style attack here at home.” 100 Promoters in Congress attacked Obama's hesitancy to uphold his March pledge to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda” following Riedel's review. 101 “Soft-peddling … in Afghanistan,” said one; Obama's “latest verbal wavering aided terrorists,” said another. 102

Editorials showed similar trends. In the two months prior to Obama's decision to send troops, 72 percent mentioned the generals, while nearly 80 percent commented on a liberal narrative of either avoiding another September 11 or fighting against terrorism in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan served as al-Qaeda's base,” noted one paper. 103 Fifty-eight percent endorsed more troops. 104 Many critiqued Obama for hesitating and accused him of “second thoughts,” “full retreat,” “Afghan rethink,” “blinking,” “appeasement,” and labeled him a “coward.” 105 Opinion polls reflected these narrative trends. In September and October 2009, 58 percent of editorials considered fighting in Afghanistan to be “necessary to protect Americans from having to fight terrorists on U.S. soil,” and 62 percent trusted the generals more than Obama. Obama's approval on Afghanistan fell to 36 percent, down from 63 percent in April. 106

For Obama, the liberal discourse elevated the costs of inaction, which drove his decision to increase troops. First, this discourse reinforced what he already knew: Politically, he could not afford to “lose” Afghanistan and risk another September 11. Promoters inside the government hammered this theme. “We were surprised once on 9/11,” Riedel told Obama, following his review (which endorsed more troops). “It's going to be pretty hard to explain what happened to the American people if we're surprised again,” he added. 107 Following a May briefing on al-Qaeda, Obama noted that even minor attacks would have “an extraordinarily traumatizing effect on the homeland.” 108

Costs of inaction were also evident in a September 12 NSC meeting, which was the first such meeting about McChrystal's report. The political implications of McChrystal's “failure” warning shaped the debate. Despite his hesitancy, Obama admitted that he could not “reject McChrystal's plan out of hand” because the “status quo was untenable” and that more time was needed to “root out al-Qaeda and its leadership.” 109 When Biden warned that Obama would politically own the war, the president snapped, “I already own it.” Thinking of his reelection timetable, Obama then asked if progress was possible within three years. 110 An aide noted that the broader narrative discourse—especially charges of waffling on terrorism—amplified political concerns like Riedel's warning that Obama alone would “take the blame for any bad outcomes.” 111 “Why is the whole thing framed around whether I have any balls?” Obama asked aides. 112 The robust liberal discourse was on his mind.

The discourse-generated costs of inaction also drastically narrowed Obama's options. Obama was keenly aware of the importance of the public discourse, saying that he wanted the decision to be made behind closed doors, away from “congressional politics and media grousing,” so that he could consider all options. He then became enraged at military leaders' public comments. Why? Because the warnings of failure and another September 11 reinforced the anti-terrorism narrative—what Obama referred to as the national “impulse after 9/11 to do whatever it took to stop terrorists”—in ways that “boxed him in.” 113 He talked about this repeatedly at the time and later admitted to feeling “jammed.” Obama told aides in early October, “They're about to ask for a game-changing number and they're going to the public and leaking it to trap us.” 114 Obama was stuck. Fearful of narrative-based pushback, he could not demote or fire the generals. In fact, just the opposite. Concerned about the political costs of doing otherwise, Obama included Petraeus in all NSC meetings on Afghanistan from late September onward. 115

Moderators knew that the liberal discourse reduced their traction. “It's going to be the lead story on the evening news … [and] double black headlines above the fold on every single newspaper,” said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel about Mullen's September 15 congressional testimony. Emanuel also complained constantly to Gates about Obama feeling boxed in. Gates agreed, calling McChrystal's leaked report “a political bombshell” that narrowed Obama's options. 116 In the end, efforts by the White House to counter the liberal discourse failed. Rhodes confessed that amid the wave of “public pressure” generated by the military promoters, “it felt as though I had little ability to control anything other than the inevitable speech that Obama would give” on increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 117

In October, Obama agreed to add troops. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta set the course of a debate on October 9. A seasoned politician, Panetta noted the “political reality” created by the robust liberal narrative: “We can't leave, and we can't accept the status quo.” 118 He proposed increasing troops narrowly targeted at al-Qaeda, not nation-building. Gates agreed, saying that “the public and the politicians could easily understand” that mission, meaning that it fit well with the robust anti-terrorism narrative. 119 Obama capitulated. 120 His second decision to expand the U.S. war in Afghanistan was set. 121

The 2011 killing of al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, was viewed across the United States as a major victory in the fight against terrorism (i.e., a positive event in the trauma framework). Combined with the quelling of terrorist activity in Iraq from the so-called Sunni Awakening (i.e., decreased negative events), the frequency and severity of trauma-generating events declined into the early 2010s. As expected by the strategic-narrative argument, the anti-terrorism narrative weakened, especially around Iraq. Counter to the interests of military leaders, President Obama found political space at home to summarily withdraw all forces from Iraq (a decision that 71 percent of Americans agreed with) and worked to re-narrate the terror challenge as nonexistential, something to which Americans had overreacted. 122

This initiative to change the narrative was largely ineffective, though, especially from mid-2014 onward when the swift rise of the Islamic State re-traumatized the United States. Mirroring the first decade of the 2000s, the liberal narrative again surged. The trauma began in June when ISIS forces seized Mosul (Iraq's second largest city) and Tikrit, declared a caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and later beheaded two U.S. journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Obama acknowledged the need to respond but also worked to calm the nation. 123

Consequently, other leading figures (mostly Republicans) began to refer back to the prevailing anti-terrorism story that proved the right fit for the event-driven context of external trauma. “The next 9/11 is in the making as I speak,” said Senator Graham in June. 124 More than half of congressional floor statements described ISIS in existential terms. 125 Many Democrats joined the chorus. “ISIS violates everything we believe in,” noted Representative James Moran (D-VA), “They are opposed to democratic governance and, certainly, to an inclusive society.” 126 Promoters in Congress nested the 2014 events within the larger story. More than half referenced September 11 and other attacks such as those in London and Madrid. The narrative's lesson was strong too; 76 percent of congressional speakers discussed the need to confront/destroy ISIS. “We need to do everything we can together to ensure that ISIS will be stopped,” said Senator Chris Coons (D-DE). 127 Blame was also evident. More than half of all congressional statements (and approximately 80 percent of GOP statements) criticized both the Iraq troop withdrawal as well as Obama calling ISIS the “jayvee [junior varsity] team” of terrorism and admitting that he had no strategy to counter ISIS. “President Obama is going back to a pre-9/11 mentality,” one member said. 128 Some implored Obama to not repeat the mistake of withdrawing forces from Iraq with a withdrawal from Afghanistan. 129

As expected, the story also showed up in other indicators. Editorials around the events from June to September reflected a robust anti-terrorism narrative. 130 For instance, 85 percent of editorials across approximately fifty newspapers rejected Obama's cautious language, framing the threat in existential terms (e.g., “Islamic extremism,” “nihilistic ideology”). The events “horrified the civilized world,” said one, calling ISIS “beyond anything that we've seen.” 131 More than 50 percent of editorials drew parallels to terrorist attacks since September 11. Another 84 percent echoed the lesson to get active, nearly half of which discussed or endorsed criticisms of Obama's policies. Polls also reflected this trend. Over 50 percent of respondents disapproved of Obama's handling of terrorism and considered the 2011 Iraq drawdown to be a mistake. 132

In the two years that followed the ISIS rise, the frequency of ISIS-inspired attacks—Sydney, Paris, Tripoli, Tunis, Yemen, Damascus, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Bangladesh, Brussels, Kabul, and Cairo—reinforced the anti-terrorism narrative. 133 Take, for example, the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people. “Everyone back home had lost their minds,” said Obama, who was abroad at the time. 134 Among the promoters in Congress, nearly 90 percent framed the Paris attacks in existential terms and advocated continued or expanded vigor to combat terrorism. Ninety editorials from sixty different U.S. newspapers found that 88 percent framed Paris in existential terms (“the urgency of defeating this nihilism,” “attack … on freedom”). 135 Fifty percent linked Paris to 9/11 or other similar events, and 83 percent called for continued vigilance (i.e., the narrative's lesson). 136

Finally, candidates for the White House in 2016 appealed to the narrative to woo voters. Trump promised more toughness: “Anyone who cannot condemn the … violence of Radical Islam lacks the moral clarity to serve as our president.” Trump blamed Obama for ISIS, pledging a quick victory if elected and a commitment to never give up “hard-fought sacrifices and gains” in places like Iraq with “a sudden withdrawal.” 137 He repeatedly linked his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, to Obama's policies. Clinton countered with her own narrative-based appeals, promising to use more force than Obama. 138 Overall, the jabbing back and forth testified again to narrative robustness. Much as the strategic narrative constrained Obama's options, it also affected Trump's policy on Afghanistan.

trump and the 2017 troop increase

As expected by the strategic-narrative argument, the mid-2010s surge in the anti-terrorism narrative shaped Obama's fall 2014 decision to recommit troops to Iraq and, fearing being blamed for “losing” Afghanistan, led him to abandon his plan for a full withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. A poll found that 61 percent of respondents supported the move to pause the drawdown. 139 These same narrative-based constraints affected Trump early in his presidency.

From the start, Trump wanted out of Afghanistan. He called the war “a total disaster,” advocated withdrawal (on at least fifteen occasions during the campaign), and he exploded when the Pentagon requested more troops in 2017. 140 In the end, however, Trump did the exact opposite of what he wanted. On August 18, he agreed to send 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Why? The politics of strategic narratives help answer this question.

Throughout 2017, promoters built a robust liberal discourse around Afghanistan. Republicans in Congress, in particular, talked about the dangers of terrorism from Afghanistan and encouraged a tougher stance than Obama's. Many praised Trump for reversing “the unwise and unsound policies by the Obama administration” with early 2017 moves that included use of high-yield bombs against ISIS in Afghanistan and air strikes to punish Syria for using chemical weapons, the latter in contrast to Obama's response in Syria. 141 The liberal discourse also showed up in a Senate debate over ending the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution passed by Congress in 2001. Critics of the measure relied on the terrorism theme: “Terrorist organizations continue to … promote a radical ideology to recruit new fighters and plot violent attacks as part of their jihad against the United States of America and all that we stand for,” said Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) echoed the same sentiment: “Sixteen years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, our enemies are not gone.” 142 The measure failed by a 61–36 margin. Overall, nearly 60 percent of congressional statements on Afghanistan in this period focused on the lesson to fight terrorism. 143

Other measures reveal the same strategic-narrative discourse. In summer 2017, 85 percent of newspapers supported more troops for anti-terrorism reasons. 144 More than half opposed a drawdown from Afghanistan or drew parallels to Obama's mistakes in Iraq. “He's right to broaden the U.S. role in Afghanistan,” noted a Chicago Tribune editorial, “Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 left that country in a state of chaos, and the Islamic State rose from the ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq.” 145 Polls in 2017 also captured the robust anti-terrorism discourse. While the war in Afghanistan was not generally popular, 76 percent of respondents agreed that “security here in the United States” depended upon Afghanistan, and 71 percent agreed that ISIS would strengthen if the United States were to withdraw. Consistent with the strategic-narrative argument, the public saw the war's value when it was tied to terrorism. 146

Internally, promoters pressed narrative themes, elevating costs of inaction. Though not public per se, this messaging from current and former military leaders mirrored that of the Obama period. As Afghanistan deteriorated in the spring, National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Max Dunford repeatedly warned of another September 11. Promoters claimed that Obama's retreat was losing Afghanistan. They hammered themes such as the lost capacity to track al-Qaeda, a growing ISIS threat, and potential risks to the “civilized world” with another September 11. By early summer, McMaster proposed an additional 3,000–5,000 troops to carry out a new “counterterrorism-centric plan.” 147

As these events unfolded, promoters reminded Trump repeatedly of his narrative-based language on the campaign trail, intentionally playing on Trump's political concern to look tough. “We're losing big in Afghanistan,” Trump said, reflecting worries of looking weak, “It's a disaster.” Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis took advantage of this opportunity to challenge Trump's desire for withdrawal. “The quickest way out is to lose,” Mattis said, before pressing the need for increased troops. “I'm tired of hearing that,” Trump responded. 148

Not surprisingly, given his ties to the military, Senator Graham was aware of the debate inside the administration. He met with Trump in May and used the robust anti-terrorism narrative to reiterate costs of inaction. “Do you want on your resume that you allowed Afghanistan to go back into darkness and the second 9/11 came from the very place the first 9/11 did?” Graham said, “Listen to your generals. General Obama was terrible … General Trump is going to be no better.” 149 Graham knew that the pressure around terrorism and Obama could be effective. That spring, Trump took several steps to enhance his public image, such as striking al-Qaeda in Yemen, expanding action to “annihilate” (rather than just “contain,” in the words of Obama) ISIS, and launching “red line” strikes against Syrian chemical weapons that Obama refused to take. 150 “Obama, he's … weak,” Trump told Graham after the Syrian strike, “He would've never done that.” 151

The final decision to escalate came at a meeting with advisers on August 18, 2017, at Camp David. Costs of inaction for not falling in line with the anti-terrorism narrative played a determining role. Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened the meeting with an appeal for restraint. He proposed complete withdrawal. In a plan hatched by Sessions and former adviser Steve Bannon (a leading moderator), CIA Director Mike Pompeo detailed a strategy for increased covert operations in lieu of troops. In a move that frustrated his moderator cohorts, Pompeo ultimately and unexpectedly quashed the plan. Prior to the meeting, CIA officials told Pompeo that the covert-operations-only approach would likely fail and, more ominously, that he [Pompeo] would be held accountable. 152

Once Pompeo relented, promoters (e.g., McMaster, Dunford, and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly) began to discuss how to prevent al-Qaeda from reaching the homeland. “I'm tired of hearing that,” Trump responded, “I want to get out.” Mattis argued that to leave would result in a “vacuum for al Qaeda to create a terrorist sanctuary leading to 9/11.” Mattis then highlighted audience costs of inaction: “What happened in Iraq under Obama with the emergence of ISIS will happen under you.” In the days prior to Camp David, Graham issued a similar warning. “It becomes Iraq on steroids … The next 9/11 will come from where the first was and you own it,” Graham said, “The question is are you going to go down the Obama road, which is to end the war and put us all at risk … ?” 153 The domestic costs of looking weak on terrorism were apparent to Bannon, who told reporter Bob Woodward that the generals briefed Trump repeatedly on the dangers of another 9/11, so that “if the threat materialized, they would leak to the Washington Post and New York Times that Trump had ignored the warnings.” 154 The political implications of that would be devastating for Trump, given elevated national concerns about terrorism and his campaign promises to be “tough.” The potential of a narrative-based public backlash hung over the entire debate.

Costs of inaction ultimately proved too much for Trump. “You're telling me I have to do this, and I guess that's fine,” Trump responded to Mattis on August 18, “but I still think you're wrong.” 155 Afterward, Trump called Graham to inform him of his decision—an indication of the domestic political dynamics that mattered most to Trump. 156 Three nights later, Trump leaned on narrative themes to explain the troop increase publicly. Admitting “his original instinct was to pull out,” Trump noted, his mind changed because “a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists … would fill, just as happened before September 11.” Trump then quickly pivoted to Obama: “And as we know, in 2011, America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq … We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq.” 157 The speech resonated broadly: Fifty-one percent of Americans supported increased troops in Afghanistan, and 71 percent agreed that ISIS would gain if the United States withdrew. 158

An ideological rival's debilitating defeat and/or the absence of rival attacks on ideological kin for an extended period are the most likely events to cause a liberal narrative to weaken. In the late 2010s, both happened. As expected, the anti-terrorism narrative lost salience nationally, audience costs of inaction decreased, and political space opened for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The centerpiece to narrative weakening in the late 2010s was the defeat of the ISIS caliphate in Iraq/Syria along with the continued weakening of al-Qaeda. By late 2018, the ISIS caliphate collapsed (i.e., positive event)—Raqqa and Rawa fell in 2017, ending ISIS territorial control in Iraq, and Hajin (the last ISIS-held town in Syria) fell in 2018. As of 2022, ISIS is a shell of its former self. Al-Qaeda is too, having suffered major setbacks after U.S.-led counterterrorism operations decimated its leadership. 159 The ISIS/al-Qaeda decline has also resulted in a major reduction in terrorist attacks. No ISIS-generated mass casualty events have occurred after 2016. Globally, terrorist attacks in 2019 were 59 percent lower than at their peak in 2014, and terrorism deaths fell in 2019 for the fifth consecutive year. 160

Neither terrorist organization is entirely gone, of course. Terrorist cells have migrated to other places, primarily in Yemen and parts of Africa. The focus of these groups is increasingly more regional than international, however, meaning that the United States and its Western democratic allies, in particular, have become much less of a target. 161 The theory would predict that a robust liberal narrative should have been sustained throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, which the pattern in figure 1 shows was the case (see also the online appendix). In the 2000s, frequent/severe attacks capable of sustaining a robust liberal narrative were a function of how often (at least one attack every two or three years) instead of how many attacks occurred against liberal states. Moreover, an especially traumatic direct attack like September 11 extended the narrative-supporting effects in the years that followed. 162 Regarding the 2018–2021 period, the frequency of ISIS/al-Qaeda attacks against “free” states or the citizens of free states abroad substantially declined relative to the mid-2010s. While these attacks did not completely stop (i.e., Austria 2020, with four casualties), the trend toward reduced negative events, coupled with the even more impactful positive event of the ISIS defeat, marks a distinct shift below the threshold of severe/frequent events necessary to sustain a robust liberal narrative across time. In fact, the event-context of recent years resembles the early 2010s when Obama withdrew troops from Iraq and began withdrawal from Afghanistan. This period was marked by a major positive event—the killing of Osama bin Laden (2011)—and a reduction in negative events with the absence of any attacks on Western democracies from 2008 to 2014. 163

Isis and al-Qaeda Attacks on Free Countries, 2001–2021

SOURCE: Global Terrorism Index 2022: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism (Sydney: Institute for Economics and Peace, March 2022), Vision of Humanity, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GTI-2022-web_110522-1.pdf ; and Cameron Glenn et al., “Timeline: The Rise.”

The decrease in severe/frequent events from the late 2010s onward affected the narrative landscape in predicted ways. As expected, it augmented moderator stories of restraint, which appeared in leading narrative indicators. From his bully pulpit as president, Trump was a leading moderator. The fall of Raqqa “represents a critical breakthrough in our worldwide campaign to defeat ISIS and its wicked ideology,” he said in 2018, “the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight.” 164 He called for retrenchment and said it was “time to come home and rebuild.” 165 Trump repeated these themes through 2020. Democratic presidential candidates did too. In fact, during the 2020 campaign, no candidates aspired to look tough on terrorism, especially in ongoing Middle East wars. 166 Instead, both as a reflection of and a contributing factor to the weakened liberal narrative, candidates competed mostly over credit for reduced terrorist threats and the best strategy to bring troops home. “Trump's secret plan to defeat ISIS—you remember that—secret plan to defeat ISIS was just to keep doing what we [Obama-Biden administration] had put in place,” Biden claimed during an Iowa campaign stop. 167 Like others, he also repeatedly associated reduced threats and winding down U.S. wars in the Middle East. The need is to “end forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” Biden said. 168

At the time of these statements, many experts debated whether terrorism remained a major threat to the United States. Those who warned about the threat of terrorism carried little weight, though, which the strategic-narrative argument would expect. In times of reduced severity/frequency, promoters lose salience and moderators gain salience.

Not surprisingly, then, broad narrative measures indicate that moderator storytelling both fueled and reflected a general decrease in the anti-terrorism narrative starting in 2018. Core elements of the anti-terrorism narrative were almost completely absent among the discussions on Capitol Hill about the following major terrorism/Afghanistan events: the ISIS defeat (March 2019), the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (October 2019), the Afghan peace deal (February 2020), and Trump's October 2020 Afghanistan withdrawal pledge. 169 Collectively, in the weeks following these events, less than 5 percent of congressional statements mentioned existential dangers of terrorism, and only 15 percent connected current developments to those like September 11, at the heart of the anti-terrorism narrative. Only 35 percent openly advocated continued aggression abroad and/or continued troop deployments to protect against renewed terrorist strikes.

By contrast, moderator discourse abounded, as nearly 60 percent of congressional statements hailed the gains against terrorists. Many talked of the benefits to democracy and civilization, whereas others advocated full withdrawal from the Middle East. Finally, to the extent that the anti-terrorism story of old was being told at all, it was not being told that often. Collectively, there were only sixty-six congressional statements in the weeks and months following these events from 2019 to 2020 compared with eighty U.S. congressional statements (with strong storytelling on all narrative elements) in just five days after the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris. 170

The effects of decreased severity/frequency on the anti-terrorism narrative showed up on editorial pages too. In each of the three years prior to Biden's April decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, references to “terrorism” on U.S. editorial pages declined by 21 percent (2018–2019), 40 percent (2019–2020), and 66 percent (2020–2021) relative to the annual average number of references over the nine-year period between April 2009 and April 2018, when the anti-terrorism narrative was especially robust. Editorial-page references to “Afghanistan” showed a similar pattern in 2020–2021, with a 60 percent decrease from the annual average between 2008 and 2018. Finally, combining these two terms, references in U.S. editorials to “Afghanistan and terrorism” decreased by 44 percent (2018–2019), 47 percent (2019–2020), and 86 percent (2020–2021) relative to the annual average across the 2008 to 2018 period. 171 This trend is significant: By April 2021, the nationwide discussion found on editorial pages about terrorism and Afghanistan had fallen to its lowest level since 2000, the year before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

More focused editorial surveys also confirm this narrative weakening. After the collapse of the ISIS caliphate and the death of al-Baghdadi, there were only sixteen editorials from ten U.S. newspapers in the month following each event. Compare that with the number of editorials in just ten days after the 2015 Paris (90) and 2008 London (100) terrorist attacks. 172 Moreover, the old anti-terrorism story of existential danger was replaced by the moderator theme of major victory or gains against terrorism (63 percent). The Chicago Tribune called the defeat of ISIS “a milestone in the long, arduous fight against post-9/11 extremism.” 173 Papers referred to al-Baghdadi's death as a “force disrupter,” “important victory for America's antiterror strategy,” and a “victory for civilization.” 174 While many (75 percent) supported continuing the fight against terrorism, a collection of editorials that spanned a greater time period showed that talk of the lesson of the anti-terrorism narrative was weak as well. In the sixteen months prior to Biden's troop-withdrawal announcement, only 32 percent of approximately 130 U.S. editorials about al-Qaeda or ISIS echoed the anti-terrorism narrative's lesson, to keep up fighting against terrorists. Furthermore, fewer than 1 percent in this broader array of editorials talked of terrorism as a present existential danger (i.e., a challenge to freedom, democracy, or civilization) and only 11 percent (all from the Wall Street Journal ) linked current events in a foreboding way to past events at the center of the anti-terrorism story. 175 Polls show the same trends. While Americans still worry about terrorism, a 2019 survey found that, relative to other challenges, only 1 percent considered terrorism or ISIS to be the greatest future threat to the United States. 176

Finally, these same patterns of liberal narrative weakness were evident around the question of Afghanistan specifically. Only ten editorials appeared in U.S. newspapers in the two months after the 2020 announcement of a peace deal and only fourteen in the three months after Trump's 2020 announced withdrawal. 177 With ISIS defeated and the frequency of attacks declining (see figure 1 ), the story came rarely to the fore. In 2009 and 2017, talk of a military drawdown in Afghanistan would have sparked a mighty narrative-based outburst: worries about another 9/11, dangers to Western democracy, and the like. But this did not occur in 2020. After Trump's 2020 announcement of withdrawal, no editorials framed events in existential terms, and only one of the twenty-four editorials connected the present development to past narrative-based events.

Instead, moderator themes dominated. While many noted the challenges to a peaceful settlement, eighteen of twenty-four editorials welcomed the Taliban peace deal, and more than a third unequivocally supported near-term or immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The Trump administration was right to open negotiations with the Taliban and … reduce the number of U.S. forces,” noted the Los Angeles Times . 178 Another called the deal “a ticket out of Afghanistan for American troops who've been there far too long,” adding that “recognizing when a fight has become useless is the right thing to do.” 179 Many criticized Trump's approach, especially his push for a hasty 2020 withdrawal (nine of fourteen editorials opposed this approach, in fact). Reflecting the narrative moment, though, the reasons given included the need for a careful policy review first, potential damage to the peace process, or the need to leave the decision to Biden rather than to fight terrorism (i.e., the liberal narrative).

Polls also showed the narrative trends around Afghanistan policy. Figure 2 tracks the annual average of public opinion support for maintaining or increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2021 (see the online appendix). Changes over time reflect what the strategic-narrative argument would expect. For the 2018–2021 period, as severity/frequency of events decreased because of ISIS/al-Qaeda's decline and reduced attacks on free countries, public support for troop presence in Afghanistan dropped substantially as well. Support fell below 50 percent in 2019—the year after the ISIS defeat and the second year of reduced attacks ( figure 1 )—then plunged to around 30 percent in 2020 and 2021. “Americans are in a sour mood,” the Wall Street Journal observed in 2020, “The desire to come home is understandable.” 180 In sum, at the same time that events weakened the anti-terrorism narrative, national support for the war in Afghanistan fell as well, in line with the strategic-narrative argument.

Public Opinion Support to Maintain or Increase Troops in Afghanistan

SOURCE: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, iPoll Database (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University), https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/ . See the online appendix for a list of specific polls.

Earlier trends in figure 2 also support the strategic-narrative argument. As discussed previously, amid a robust liberal narrative sustained by severe/frequent attacks, public support for troops in Afghanistan was close to 60 percent in 2009. Support remained around 50 percent through April 2011 (see 2011a in figure 2 ), before dropping sharply, as expected, following the May death of bin Laden (i.e., positive event) and reduced frequency of attacks into the early 2010s. After bin Laden's death, 55 percent said they were “not worried” that troop withdrawals from Afghanistan would make the United States “more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.” 181 Unsurprisingly for this narrative context, Obama announced a timetable in 2012 for a complete withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. 182 As expected, opinion shifted again with the mid-2014 resurgence of the anti-terrorism narrative amid the severe/frequent attacks by ISIS. Change actually came mid-year, tracking closely (as expected) with the surge in the anti-terrorism narrative following ISIS gains in Iraq/Syria—support for troops in Afghanistan jumped from 29 percent in early 2014 to 53 percent by December. Poll numbers remained around 50 percent until 2019.

In general, the evidence presented here offers strong support for the strategic-narrative argument. Overall, by early 2021, the anti-terrorism narrative, with its worries of another September 11 stemming from Afghanistan, was largely gone, a casualty of de-traumatizing events. In its place was “public apathy,” according to commentators, meaning that regarding Afghanistan, “many Americans … lost track of what this war … is, or was, about.” 183

biden's 2021 withdrawal

President Biden's decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan is not explained by a realpolitik calculation of the national interest. Biden's two immediate predecessors believed that the national interest dictated withdrawal. What allowed Biden to follow through in ways that Obama and Trump could not? The objective national interest argument cannot answer this puzzle. Narrative politics can, however.

When a liberal narrative weakens, the discourses that form around it tend to be weak as well. In turn, space opens up and pressure sometimes builds for greater military restraint and retrenchment—audience costs of inaction decline and costs of action rise. Such developments occurred in early 2021 around the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, helping explain Biden's decision for withdrawal.

After taking office, Biden did not face the liberal-narrative pressure that his two predecessors had experienced. There was little public discourse by promoters leading up to his decision on Afghanistan: only two statements (one prowar, one antiwar) in the Congressional Record , and just nine editorials (four from the Wall Street Journal ) on Afghan policy. 184 Talk of another September 11 or threats to democracy (i.e., narrative components) were nonexistent. Many pundits acknowledged popular sentiments to leave and, in bowing to that sentiment, endorsed doing so eventually. “Americans are understandably eager to move on,” conceded the traditionally hawkish Wall Street Journal , “The question is not whether the U.S. will leave Afghanistan but whether it will do so responsibly.” 185 In February 2021, 79 percent of Americans considered continued U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan mostly or very unfavorably. 186

In internal debates, military promoters continued to press for staying in Afghanistan. In late March meetings with the president, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and others issued a bleak post-withdrawal forecast, warning of Taliban and al-Qaeda resurgence and deriding “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism. 187 Unlike during the Obama and Trump years, military leaders did not plan to go public because they knew they had nothing to go public with. Senator Graham, the longtime promoter who worked closely with the military to orchestrate past narrative-based pressure campaigns, openly admitted in an interview that “I hate Joe Biden for this.” 188 He then added, “I think the Taliban is going to give safe haven to people that will come after us.” 189 Yet in sharp contrast to his advice to Petraeus and McChrystal in 2009, he conceded that the new political/narrative reality left him and other military promoters with no leverage. “The American people want us to come home,” Graham confessed, “People are tired.” 190

Milley admitted to the tipping effect that this narrative shift had on the civil-military balance. Biden would fire any military brass (“they're going to be gone”) 191 who went public, Milley said, which was a move that Obama was highly unlikely to have made (or threaten) in 2009, amid a different narrative context (and, thus, a different civil-military balance). 192 Milley further explained that because the military used tactics to expand what became a progressively unpopular war in Afghanistan early in the Obama administration, military leaders were subsequently excluded from major decisions (such as withdrawal from Iraq and troop reductions in Afghanistan). He wanted no repeat of that. “We don't box in a president,” he said. 193 Biden intentionally worked to avoid a repeat of this dynamic as well. He chose Austin as secretary of defense because, based on his service under Obama, Biden trusted Austin to keep promoters in the military from making public statements. Throughout the 2021 debate on Afghanistan, Austin prevented the Joint Chiefs of Staff from “going rogue,” according to one official. In the end, and in sharp contrast to 2009, no top military brass went public. 194 The weakened anti-terrorism narrative had left military promoters no other choice. In essence, a weak liberal discourse in public kept costs of inaction low, leaving Biden (and other civilian policy experts) more political space—something Obama preferred but never found—to choose a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Afghan debate was extensive—four NSC and ten deputy-level meetings—with much attention centered on the terror threat from Afghanistan. 195 Biden and his closest advisers eventually concluded that the threat was “relatively small” or “manageable” (in fact, back to pre-9/11 levels) for the foreseeable future. 196 Regarding the strategic-narrative argument, Biden deemed it unlikely that severe or frequent attacks (i.e., those capable of re-traumatizing the nation and increasing politically damaging costs of inaction) would develop any time soon. According to officials, Biden talked often about the “lessons of Iraq” under Obama. Specifically, Biden concluded that the weak Afghan terror threat meant that offshore methods were sufficient to avoid a repeat of the domestic political damage that Obama faced with the rise of ISIS after the 2011 Iraq drawdown. For Biden, potential low severity and frequency moving forward meant a weak liberal discourse moving forward as well. With low future costs of inaction, Biden found, again, more space for withdrawal. In fact, as opinion crystalized around modest future threats from terrorism, Biden focused increasingly on his campaign promises, reminding his advisers that like his two predecessors, he pledged to end the war in Afghanistan. 197

As the strategic-narrative argument expects, Biden felt (again, in a way that his predecessors did not) that he would also face considerable audience costs of action if he chose not to fulfill his campaign pledge to leave Afghanistan. The Taliban curtailed all attacks on U.S. forces after the February 2020 peace deal, resulting in no U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in the year before Biden's inauguration. The administration concluded that staying in Afghanistan after May 1, with no plan to leave, would inevitably mean a resumption of fighting and increased casualties. A senior official noted that “if we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear exit plan, we will be back at the war with the Taliban.” 198 If so, Biden would then need to go one step further and increase troops because 3,000 was, according to expert opinion, insufficient to fight the Taliban. 199 For a president who not only promised to end the war but also now faced (unlike his predecessors early in their terms) narrative-driven public opposition to the war, costs of action were simply too high. “New U.S. casualties after a one-year hiatus under Trump could be a political disaster,” noted an insider, “That was the last thing Biden wanted.” 200 It would mean “staying in Afghanistan forever,” said one Biden aide, alluding to the dangers of these costs. 201

Finally, it is worth noting that, in sharp contrast to the Obama/Trump cases, moderators (all civilians) played an outsized role under Biden. According to administration sources, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan—both longtime aides of Biden and critics of the war (especially Sullivan)—were “truly running the Pentagon,” with the “Pentagon [i.e., promoters] not making these decisions.” According to a lawmaker familiar with the process, “The civilian leaders essentially overruled the generals on this.” 202 Such an outcome is to be expected in a policymaking context marked by a weak liberal discourse.

In an April 14 public statement, Biden explained his decision in narrative-based terms that the nation understood. “Our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear,” Biden said, “We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened twenty years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.” 203 Editors at the Washington Post called Biden's decision to leave the “easy way out of Afghanistan.” 204 They were right. When a long-standing liberal narrative collapses as a lodestar for costly endeavors like war, politicians often choose the easy way. They leave. To do otherwise simply costs too much.

For nearly two decades, U.S. foreign policy was locked in the iron cage of a robust liberal narrative, centered around anti-terrorism. Born out of the trauma of September 11 and sustained by terrorist attacks in the years after, the narrative and politics around U.S. foreign policy kept audience costs of inaction high, which prevented withdrawal from Afghanistan and brought U.S. forces back to Iraq and into Syria. Presidents Obama and Trump calculated that withdrawal was rational or strategic, but the pressure of narrative politics foreclosed that option. From 2018 to 2021, the severity/frequency of terrorist attacks declined significantly, the anti-terrorism narrative weakened, audience costs of inaction declined, and costs of action rose. Only in these narrative-driven conditions did Trump (late in his presidency) and Biden find space to draw down from Afghanistan. In sum, the strategic-narrative argument offers a strong account for both the length and end of the war in Afghanistan, especially against other leading arguments in international relations.

For the United States (and its allies) moving forward, these findings point to two important strategic implications—one in the direction of continued vigilance abroad, the other in the direction of restraint. First, as the United States shifts attention away from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and focuses more on great power competition (i.e., China and Russia), U.S. policymakers cannot turn their backs on terrorism. 205 Doing so risks a resurgence of ISIS/al-Qaeda that will re-traumatize the U.S. public, reanimate the anti-terrorism narrative, and create the kind of costs-of-inaction politics that led to the decades-long, overly expansive U.S. military engagements in the Middle East. Continued vigilance against terrorism is vital, then, to keep the home front quiet and, with that, to avoid strategic overstretch (such as the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq) and to maintain focus on the more pressing matter today of great power politics.

Second, the findings here also point to new standards that the United States should apply to counterterrorism operations going forward. When it comes to narrative-animating terrorist strikes—the kinds that are most likely to push U.S. leaders toward expansive military action—U.S. citizens do not care about any and all forms of terrorism. In fact, they are quite discriminating. As a recent example, consider the ISIS-K (Islamic State-Khorasan Province) attack at the Kabul airport during the U.S. evacuation in August 2021. The attack caused a major uproar across the United States, contributing to the negative opinion that most U.S. citizens had of Biden's handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But, as polls demonstrated, that Kabul attack (and other developments, like the Taliban victory in Afghanistan) did not generate a resurgence in the anti-terrorism narrative and with that a reversal of Biden's drawdown decision. 206 The reason? ISIS-K is almost exclusively a local threat, focused on Afghanistan primarily. It has no capacity (or will, for that matter) to strike the United States or its liberal democratic allies, especially those in the West. U.S. citizens understand this. U.S. policymakers need to do the same, and on this basis, show greater restraint in developing counterterrorism policy.

To this end, terrorists of global reach—meaning those with both the will and the means to strike liberal states beyond the territories that they currently occupy—can and should become the central focus of U.S. counterterrorism policy. These kinds of terrorists represent the real threats to U.S. security, both materially and in their narrative-generating potential. The global-reach standard is at the center of President Biden's post-Afghan over-the-horizon counterterrorism strategy. The same standard needs to be applied more broadly.

There is much work to do. Global-reach terrorist organizations are fewer and far less potent than they were in the early 2010s. The decimation of the central leadership of al-Qaeda and ISIS has resulted in a decentralization of both organizations, which includes turning away from global objectives and targets and focusing more on “parochial grievances and the promotion of … local interests,” according to one study. In sum, “The deck is heavily stacked against transnational jihadi groups.” 207

Unfortunately, U.S. policy has not fully adjusted to this reality. Above all else, too little distinction is made today in U.S. policy circles between local and global terrorists. Consequently, the United States finds itself involved in an expansive web of relatively low-level counterterrorism operations across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia that involve everything from special forces raids to joint military exercises and air/drone strikes. 208 Some of this activity—such as repeated strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the 2010s and perhaps even against ISIS in Syria in 2022—is justified by global-reach standards. Much of it is not, however. For all its brutality, Boko Haram in Nigeria, for instance, is a terror organization with local interests only. This does not mean, of course, that the United States should ignore Boko Haram and others like it—after all, local threats can sometimes become global. Surveillance, intelligence sharing, and sometimes counterterrorism training with local partners and governments are important. But the United States should pare back its direct use of force against local terrorist groups. In these instances, force contributes little to U.S. security and runs the risk of escalation in ways that (like in Afghanistan) drain valuable strategic resources. 209

The lessons learned from a deeper understanding of strategic narratives point to the need for a robust counterterrorism program today, that is, by the same token, far less expansive and militaristic than that of the past two decades. Striking this counterterrorism balance—that is, not too little, not too much—will help manage narrative politics at home and, in turn, allow the United States to not only maintain its own security but also contribute in positive ways to order and stability in a world marked by the exigencies of renewed great power competition.

The author appreciates comments from Mark Haas, John Owen, and the anonymous reviewers, as well as research support from Megan Kilduff. The online appendix for this article is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/82RNG7 .

Cited in Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), pp. 121–122.

On restraint, see Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014); and Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018).

Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions , p. 18. Walt attributes the label “the Blob” for the U.S. foreign policy establishment to former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.

On collective ideas and narratives, see Ronald R. Krebs, Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Andrew Yeo, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).

C. William Walldorf Jr., To Shape Our World for Good: Master Narratives and Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1900–2011 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. 5–14.

The liberal narrative and grand strategies—like liberal internationalism—are distinct social phenomena. Leaders may consider narratives in building grand strategies, but those narratives are not, in and of themselves, grand strategies. See ibid., pp. 5–13.

The absence of this narrative does not imply an “illiberal” narrative space for the United States; rather, it means that the nation values less those policies that actively advance or protect liberal order abroad, meaning that the nation is more exemplarist than vindicationist, to use Jonathan Monten's description. Jonathan Monten, “The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy,” International Security , Vol. 29, No. 4 (Spring 2005), pp. 112–156, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2005.29.4.112 .

Michael Tomz, “Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach,” International Organization , Vol. 61, No. 4 (2007), p. 821, https://doi.org/10.1017/S002081_8307070282 .

James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 88, No. 3 (1994), pp. 577–592, https://doi.org/10.2307/2944796 .

Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

Stephen M. Walt, “How Not to Leave Afghanistan,” Foreign Policy , February 23, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/23/how-not-to-leave-afghanistan/ ; and Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions , pp. 255–292.

Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security , Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 7–44, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2007.32.2.7 . Other counterarguments (e.g., economic strength, COVID-19, and the Iraq surge) also fare poorly.

Ronald R. Krebs, “Pity the President,” National Interest , No. 148 (March/April 2017), p. 37, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26557376 ; and Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine: A New ‘Global War on Terror,’” Atlantic , April 2016, p. 75.

For an extended discussion, see Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 17–19, 226 n. 57.

Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions ; and Patrick Porter, “Why America's Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security , Vol. 42, No.4 (Spring 2018), pp. 9–46, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00311 .

For a survey, see Peter D. Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,” International Security , Vol. 35, No. 4 (Spring 2011), pp. 90–97, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00033 .

For a more expanded discussion, see Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 19–24.

Krebs, Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security , pp. 31–65, 269–274; and Stacie E. Goddard and Ronald R. Krebs, “Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy,” Security Studies , Vol. 24, No. 1 (2015), pp. 5–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.1001198 .

Neil J. Smelser, “Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma,” in Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity , p. 44.

Ibid., pp. 36, 44; and Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity , pp. 1, 10. These kinds of challenges to national identity, values, and events—whether big (an invasion) or small (a bombing in a café)—can traumatize a nation.

Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations , Vol. 12, No. 3 (2006), pp. 342, 345–346, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106067346 .

Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” p. 10. Agents may include authoritative figures such as politicians, priests, intellectuals, policy elites, or moral activists.

Ibid., p. 10; and Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 118–123, 130.

Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” p. 11.

Ibid., p. 15; and Smelser, “Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma,” pp. 41–42, 45.

Arthur G. Neal, National Trauma and Collective Memory: Major Events in the American Century (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 5, 23, 201; and Smelser, “Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma,” pp. 38–53.

Ron Eyerman, “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity,” in Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity , p. 63.

On trauma theory and nation-states, see Emma Hutchison, “Trauma and the Politics of Emotion: Constituting Identity, Security, and Community after the Bali Bombing,” International Relations , Vol. 24, No. 1 (2010), p. 66, https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809348712 .

Neal, National Trauma and Collective Memory , pp. 17, 22, 69–71; and Neil J. Smelser, “Epilogue: September 11, 2001, as Cultural Trauma,” in Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity , p. 270.

Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), p. 1161, https://doi.org/10.2307/1960861 .

John M. Owen IV, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 31–52; and Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 4–40.

See, for example, Smelser, “Epilogue: September 11, 2001.”

Social psychologists and others call this “distant survivor syndrome.” See Robert Jay Lifton, “Americans as Survivors,” New England Journal of Medicine , Vol. 352, No. 22 (2005), p. 2263, https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp058048 .

Threat involves geopolitics plus identity, similar to what is found in Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics ; Owen, The Clash of Ideas ; and Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 1–50.

Liberal narratives may focus on protection against counter-ideologies or promotion of liberal order, similar to Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics .

Indirect attacks here gain immediate salience because of an already robust narrative, such as in Hutchison, “Trauma and the Politics of Emotion,” pp. 73–80.

Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 94, No. 2 (2000), pp. 251–267, https://doi.org/10.2307/2586011 .

Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 109–114.

Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951), p. 246.

Presidents can be important promoters, too, in the right event-driven conditions. For example, see Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 83–87.

Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences,” p. 583.

On the narrowness of the executive-commitment framework, see Jack Snyder and Erica D. Borghard, “The Cost of Empty Threats: A Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 105, No. 3 (2011), pp. 437–456, https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305541100027X .

On discourses, see Stephen Ellingson, “Understanding the Dialectic of Discourse and Collective Action: Public Debate and Rioting in Antebellum Cincinnati,” American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 101, No. 1 (1995), p. 107, https://doi.org/10.1086/230700 .

On ideas augmenting agents, see Stacie E. Goddard, “The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler's Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39,” Security Studies , Vo. 24, No. 1 (2015), pp. 95–130, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1001216 .

Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs (New York: Scribner, 2011), p. 92. The narrative made Kennedy's campaign pledge salient—no narrative discourses, no audience costs.

For more on these choices, see Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 35–36.

Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2012), pp. 386–390, 401–405, 422–425.

Sarah E. Kreps, “The 1994 Haiti Intervention: A Unilateral Operation in Multilateral Clothes,” Journal of Strategic Studies , Vol. 30, No. 3 (2007), pp. 449–474, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390701343441 .

Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen, Causal Case Study Methods: Foundations and Guidelines for Comparing, Matching, and Tracing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), pp. 227–301.

Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 22.

For example, see Jeffrey W. Legro, “Whence American Internationalism,” International Organization , Vol. 54, No. 2 (2000), p. 256, https://doi.org/10.1162/002081800551172 ; Krebs, Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security , pp. 195–197; and Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 48–52. Unless otherwise noted, editorial (upwards of sixty different newspapers nationwide) and Congressional Record surveys span ten days after major events. See the online appendix.

Because the point at which public opinion polls capture collective ideas such as narratives is uncertain, I follow the lead of other ideational scholars and use polls in tandem with established measures of collective ideas (e.g., editorials). See Olick, The Politics of Regret , p. 22; Legro, “Whence American Internationalism,” p. 280; Goddard, “The Rhetoric of Appeasement,” pp. 121, 125; and Krebs, Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security , pp. 135–136.

Beach and Pedersen, Causal Case Study Methods , pp. 286–287.

Walldorf, To Shape Our World for Good , pp. 167–198.

“Time Out to Deal with Trauma,” San Francisco Chronicle , September 13, 2001.

Amy Zalman and Jonathan Clarke, “The Global War on Terror: A Narrative in Need of a Rewrite,” Ethics and International Affairs , Vol. 23, No. 2 (2009), p. 101, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2009.00201.x .

Congresswoman Lee (D-CA), speaking on H.J. Res 64, 107th Cong., 1st sess., 2001, Vol. 147, pt. 12, p. 16774.

Representative Gephardt (D-MO), speaking on H.J. Res. 64, 107th Cong., 1st sess., 2001, Vol. 147, pt. 12, p. 16763.

“Harris Interactive Survey #07: Terrorism,” Harris Interactive, September 27–28, 2001, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu ; and “Wirthlin Worldwide Poll: September 2001,” Wirthlin Worldwide, September 21–26, 2001, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu .

“Timeline—Major Attacks by al Qaeda,” Reuters, May 2, 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-56711920110502 . Several bombs targeted commuters on the London transit system, killing more than 50 and injuring approximately 700. The Madrid bombings occurred on four commuter trains, killing nearly 200 and injuring approximately 1,800.

“Terrorists Win If We Give into Fear,” Cincinnati Enquirer , July 8, 2005.

“Editorial,” Journal and Courant [Indiana], March 16, 2004.

Congressman Hyde (R-IL), 109th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 151 (July 13, 2005), p. H5766.

Congressman Linder (R-GA), 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 150 (March 11, 2004), p. E354.

Congresswoman Jackson Lee (D-TX), 97th Cong, 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 150 (March 16, 2004), p. H1906.

Congressman Gingrey (R-GA), Congressman Lantos (D-CA), and Congressman Royce (R-CA), 109th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 151 (July 13, 2005), pp. H5746 and H5766; and Senator McConnell (R-KY), 109th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 151 (July 11, 2005), p. S7946.

ProQuest search, “Madrid AND bomb∗,” March 11–21, 2004, N572, 37 newspapers; and ProQuest search, “London AND bomb∗,” July 7–17, 2005, N5100, 53 newspapers. See the online appendix.

“Spain's 3/11: A Horrifying Reminder that the War on Terror Is Not Over,” Wall Street Journal , March 12, 2004.

“This Week, ‘Madrid Became Manhattan,’” San Antonio Express , March 13, 2004; “Ground Zero, Madrid,” New York Times , March 12, 2004; and “Terror in London: A Reminder to the World that War of 9/11 Is Not Over,” San Francisco Chronicle , July 8, 2005.

“Fox News Poll: July 2005,” Fox News , July 13–15, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu .

Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (New York: Anchor, 2013), pp. 428–430.

Congressman Westmoreland (R-GA), speaking on H. Con. Res. 63, 111th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 153 (February 16, 2007), p. H1797.

Congressman Frank (D-MA), H. Con. Res. 63, 111th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 153 (February 16, 2007), pp. H1797–1798.

Congressman Waxman (D-CA) and Congresswoman Clarke (D-NY), H. Con. Res. 63, 111th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 153 (February 16, 2007), pp. H1810, H1812.

Congressman Becerra (D-CA), H. Con. Res. 63, 111th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 153 (February 16, 2007), p. H1797.

Derek Chollet, The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America's Role in the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), p. 68; and Barack Obama, A Promised Land (New York: Crown, 2020), pp. 48, 83–89. Terrorism connected with voters, Obama said.

Dan Balz, “Obama Says He Would Take Fight to Pakistan,” Washington Post , August 2, 2007.

Ben Rhodes, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (New York: Random, 2018), pp. 8, 12–15.

Tim O'Brien and S. Writer, “The Blog House,” Star Tribune [Minneapolis], August 4, 2007.

Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. 70.

Ibid., pp. 79–89.

ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” January 20–February 22, 2009, N520, 20 newspapers.

“The Afghan Challenge,” Washington Post , January 29, 2009.

Lymari Morales, “Americans See Afghanistan as Still Worth Fighting,” Gallup , February 19, 2009, https://news.gallup.com/poll/115270/Americans-Afghanistan-War-Worth-Fighting.aspx ; and “Barack Obama and Congress/Economy/War on Terrorism,” CNN , February 18–19, 2009, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu .

Rhodes, The World as It Is , p. 62.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 80.

Ibid., pp. 96–98; and Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Vintage, 2015), pp. 337–340.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 96.

Karen DeYoung, “Obama Ok's Adding Troops in Afghanistan,” Boston Globe , February 18, 2009; and “Barack Obama and Congress/Economy/War on Terrorism,” CNN , February 18–19, 2009, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ .

“Salvaging Afghanistan,” New York Times , February 20, 2009.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 134–135.

Gates, Duty: Memoirs , pp. 349–350.

This pledge was not linked to the robust liberal narrative; hence, there were no audience costs and little policy salience.

Obama, A Promised Land , pp. 432–433; and Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 167–169.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 155–156.

Ibid., p. 156.

Michael Gerson, “In Afghanistan, No Choices but to Try,” Washington Post , September 4, 2009.

Bob Woodward, “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure,’” Washington Post , September 21, 2009.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 158, 172, 180–181, 193.

Senator Lieberman (D-CT), 113th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 155 (September 6, 2009), p. S9471; and Congressman Stearns (R-FL), speaking on Cong. Res. 155, 113th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 155 (September 22, 2009), p. H9742.

“President Obama's Remarks on a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan,” New York Times , March 27, 2009.

Congressman Johnson (D-TX), speaking on Cong. Res. 155, 113th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 155 (September 23, 2009), p. H9810; and Senator Bond, 113th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 155 (September 24, 2009), p. S9766.

“Let Mission Dictate,” Orlando Sentinel , October 8, 2009.

Only 19 percent opposed additional troops. ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” August 1–October 15, 2009, N595, 55 newspapers.

“Wavering on Afghanistan?” Washington Post , September 22, 2009; “Obama and the General,” Wall Street Journal , October 7, 2009; “Not Just ‘More Troops,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , October 7, 2009; and “Our View: Peace Laureate Must Rethink War,” Santa Fe New Mexican , October 10, 2009.

“Fox News Opinion Dynamics,” Fox News , September 15–16, 2009, https://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/092109_poll1.pdf ; “NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll,” NBC/Wall Street Journal , October 2–4, 2009, iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu ; “A Year Out, Widespread Anti-Incumbent Sentiment,” Pew Research Center, November 11, 2009, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/11/11/a-year-out-widespread-anti-incumbent-sentiment/ ; “4/27: Majority Approves of Obama's Job Performance,” Marist Poll , April 27, 2009, http://maristpoll.marist.edu/427-majority-approves-of-obamas-job-performance/ ; and Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 248.

Cited in Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 105–106.

Cited in ibid., p. 123.

Ibid., pp. 161–163; and Obama, A Promised Land , p. 433.

Cited in Woodward, Obama's Wars , pp. 161–168.

Rhodes, The World as It Is , pp. 66–67.

Ibid., p. 76.

Obama, A Promised Land , pp. 433, 436.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 195. See also Gates, Duty: Memoirs , p. 378; and Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” p. 75.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 186.

Gates, Duty: Memoirs , pp. 368–369.

Rhodes, The World as It Is , pp. 73–75.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 247; and Leon Panetta, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace (New York: Penguin, 2015), pp. 253–255.

Cited in Gates, Duty: Memoirs , p. 375.

Woodward, Obama's Wars , p. 224.

Ibid., pp. 224–420.

“Gingrich Is New Fave, Voters Approve of Iraq Withdrawal, President Beats All Comers,” PublicMind Poll , Fairleigh Dickinson University, December 7, 2011, http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/newfave/ ; and Krebs, “Pity the President,” p. 37.

Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL,” statement on the state floor in Washington, D.C., September 10, 2014, White House, Office of the Press Secretary, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/Statement-president-isil-1 ; and Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” p. 75.

Senator Graham (R-SC), 115th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 160 (June 12, 2014), p. S3630.

ProQuest search, “Islamic State,” “ISIS,” “ISIL,” June 11–22, 2014 (rise of ISIS) and September 1–October 1, 2014 (journalist beheadings), N5199.

Congressman Moran (D-VA), 115th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 160 (September 10, 2014), p. H7550.

Senator Coons (D-DE), 115th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 160 (September 10, 2014), p. S5534.

Senator Graham (R-SC), 115th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 160 (June 17, 2014), p. S3692.

Ibid. Many argued that Obama's decision to completely withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 opened the door for instability and the rise of ISIS, which put the United States and its allies at risk. They claimed that the lesson of Iraq, then, was to leave troops in Afghanistan.

ProQuest search, “Islamic State,” “ISIS,” “ISIL,” June 11–22, 2014, and August 20–September 12, 2014, N591, 37 newspapers.

“The Time for Action Is Now,” Daily Press [Newport News], August 21, 2014; and “A Necessary Response to ISIS,” New York Times , August 25, 2014.

“June Poll—Bowe Bergdahl/Benghazi Attack/Healthcare Services for Veterans,” June 25–27, 2014, Gallup , iRoper, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ .

Cameron Glenn et al., “Timeline: The Rise, Spread, and Fall of the Islamic State” (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 2019), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/timeline-the-rise-spread-and-fall-the-islamic-state .

Cited in Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” p. 82.

“The Price of Fear,” New York Times , November 21, 2015; and “Our View: West Needs Unity to Fight Terrorists,” Santa Fe New Mexican , November 18, 2015.

ProQuest search, “Paris” and “terror,” November 14–24, 2015; and ProQuest search, “Brussels” and “terror,” March 22–April 1, 2016, N549. After Brussels, thirty newspapers demonstrated the same pattern: 69 percent existential, 73 percent post-9/11 narrative events, and 65 percent lesson.

Donald Trump, “Full Text: Donald Trump's Speech on Fighting Terrorism,” Politico , August 16, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-terrorism-speech-227025 .

“Comparing Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's Different Approaches to ISIS,” PBS News Hour , August 16, 2016, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/comparing-hillary-clintons-donald-trumps-approaches-isis .

Rhodes, The World as It Is , pp. 296–313; Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 395–396; and “Fox News Poll: March 2015,” Fox News , iRoper Center, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ .

Anonymous, A Warning (New York: Twelve, 2019), pp. 46–47; Senator Paul (R-KY), speaking on H.R. 2810, 117th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 163 (September 12, 2017), p. S5199; Peter Bergen, Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos (New York: Penguin, 2019), pp. 128, 132, 147–148, 150; and Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , pp. 115–125, 221–222.

Senator Barrasso (R-WY), 117th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 163 (April 27, 2017), p. S2572.

Senator McCain (R-AZ), speaking on H.R. 2810, 117th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 163 (September 13, 2017), p. S5263; and Senator McConnell (R-KY), speaking on H.R. 2810, 117th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record , Vol. 163 (September 13, 2017), p. S5244.

ProQuest Congressional, “Afghanistan,” January 20 and September 15, 2017, N531.

ProQuest search, “Trump AND Afghanistan AND troop∗,” June 1–August 31, 2017, N541, 29 newspapers.

“Why Afghanistan Matters,” Chicago Tribune , August 22, 2017.

Dana Blanton, “Fox News Poll: 27 Percent Favor Senate GOP Health Care Plan, as Vote Gets Delayed,” Fox News , June 28, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-27-percent-favor-senate-gop-health-care-plan-as-vote-gets-delayed ; Dana Blanton, “Fox News Poll: Candid? Yes. Presidential? Not So Much. Voters Describe Trump,” Fox News , September 19, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-candid-yes-presidential-not-so-much-voters-describe-trump ; and Dana Blanton, “Fox News Poll: Tax Reform Important to Voters, but Most Doubt It Will Happen,” Fox News , September 25, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-tax-reform-important-to-voters-but-most-doubt-it-will-happen .

Bergen, Trump and His Generals , pp. 133–140; and Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , pp. 115–121.

Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , pp. 124–126.

Ibid., p. 122.

Bergen, Trump and His Generals , pp. 111–115, 118; and Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , pp. 51–73, 146–150. With each of these policy steps, Trump wanted to appear tougher than Obama.

Cited in Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , p. 151.

Ibid., pp. 256–258; and Bergen, Trump and His Generals , p. 157. Steve Bannon left the White House in mid-August.

All cited in Woodward, Fear: Trump and the White House , pp. 255–256.

Ibid., p. 254.

Cited in ibid., pp. 256–257.

Ibid., p. 259.

Donald Trump, “Full Transcript: Trump's Speech on Afghanistan,” speech at Fort Myer military base in Arlington, Virginia, New York Times , August 21, 2017.

John Merline, “Trump's Approval Rating Climbs after ‘Terrible’ August; Most Say Confederate Statues Should Stay: IBD/TIPP Poll,” Investor's Business Daily , September 5, 2017, https://www.investors.com/politics/trump-approval-rebounds-from-lows-after-charlottesville-harvey-confederate-statues-ibdtipp-poll/ .

Glenn et al., “Timeline: The Rise.”

Global Terrorism Index 2020: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism (Sydney: Institute for Economics and Peace, November 2020), Vision of Humanity, https://visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GTI-2020-web-1.pdf .

Al-Qaeda attacks in Iraq (not in figure 1 because Freedom House does not code Iraq as “free”) mattered, too, given the heavy U.S. investment in a liberalizing mission there. These attacks in Iraq totaled fifteen (2005), twenty-two (2007), and twenty-one (2008).

The three attacks in 2010 and 2011 occurred in Mali, a non-Western democracy, which coupled with the Osama bin Laden killing made them less impactful on the anti-terrorism narrative. Unlike Iraq, the United States was not actively engaged in a democracy-building mission in Mali, and thus those attacks garnered almost no U.S. news coverage.

Gordon Lubold and Jessica Donati, “Trump Orders Big Troops Reduction in Afghanistan,” Wall Street Journal , December 20, 2018.

Michael Crowley, “Trump's Campaign Talk of Troop Withdrawals Does Not Match Military Reality,” New York Times , October 11, 2020. Reflecting the weakened narrative, this public posturing about terrorism was intentional and meant to appeal to voters.

Stephen Gruber-Miller, “‘Trump Sold Them Out’: Joe Biden Hits the President over Syria Troop Withdrawal in Iowa Speech,” Des Moines Register , October 16, 2019.

Crowley, “Trump's Campaign.”

ProQuest search, “ISIS,” “Islamic State,” or “ISIL,” March 23–April 30, 2019; ProQuest search, “Al-Baghdadi,” or “Al Baghdadi,” October 27–November 30, 2019; ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” February 28–April 30, 2020; and ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” October 7, 2020–January 19, 2021. See the online appendix for search details.

ProQuest search, “ISIS,” “Islamic State,” or “ISIL,” March 23–May 15, 2019, and October 27–November 30, 2019; and ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” February 28–May 31, 2020, and October 7, 20202–January 19, 2021. See the online appendix for search details.

ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” annually from April 13, 2009, through April 13, 2021; ProQuest search, “terrorism,” annually from April 13, 2009, through April 13, 2021; and ProQuest search, “Afghanistan and terrorism,” annually from April 13, 2009, through April 13, 2021.

ProQuest search, “Islamic State,” “ISIS,” or “ISIL,” March 23–April 30, 2019; and ProQuest search, “Al Baghdadi,” October 27–November 27, 2019. See the online appendix for search details.

“Islamic State's Caliphate Is Dead. The Threat Endures,” Chicago Tribune , March 29, 2019.

“The U.S. Delivers Justice to al-Baghdadi,” Chicago Tribune , October 28, 2019; “The Lessons of Baghdadi,” Wall Street Journal , October 28, 2019; and “The Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” USA Today , October 29, 2019.

ProQuest search, “Al-Qaeda,” “Islamic State,” “ISIS,” or “ISIL,” December 1–April 13, 2021, N5132, 25 newspapers.

Laura Silver, Kat Devlin, and Christine Huang, “U.S. Views of China Turn Sharply Negative Amid Trade Tensions,” Pew Research Center, August 13, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/08/13/u-s-views-of-china-turn-sharply-negative-amid-trade-tensions/ . Twenty-four percent of respondents cited China or Russia.

ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” February 28–April 30, 2020, N510, 8 newspapers and October 7, 2020–January 19, 2021, N514, 10 newspapers.

“Deal with the Taliban the Price to Pay,” Los Angeles Times , February 29, 2020.

“A War Without Winners Winds Down,” New York Times , March 2, 2020.

“The Afghan Withdrawal Deal,” Wall Street Journal , March 1, 2020.

Jeffrey M. Jones, “In U.S., Fears of Terrorism after Afghanistan Pullout Subside,” Gallup , June 29, 2011, https://news.gallup.com/poll/148331/Fear-Terrorism-Afghanistan-Pullout-Subside.aspx .

Malkasian, The American War , pp. 395–396. Again, as expected, Obama reversed this with the rise of ISIS.

Sarah Kreps and Douglas Kriner, “In or Out of Afghanistan Is Not a Political Choice,” Foreign Affairs , March 22, 2001, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-03-22/or-out-afghanistan-not-political-choice ; and Charles Lane, “An Afghan Exit with Shades of Vietnam,” Washington Post , December 3, 2020.

ProQuest search, “Afghanistan,” January 20–April 13, 2021, N59, 6 newspapers.

“Leaving Afghanistan the Right Way,” Wall Street Journal , February 10, 2021.

Mohamed Younis, “China, Russia Images in U.S. Hit Historic Lows,” Gallup , March 1, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/331082/china-russia-images-hit-historic-lows.aspx .

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021), pp. 377–379.

Cited in ibid., p. 389.

Ibid. Going back to at least the Obama administration, Lindsey Graham was always in close contact with military leaders, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Woodward and Costa, Peril , p. 335.

Ibid., pp. 386–387.

Ibid., p. 387.

Lara Seligman et al., “How Biden's Team Overrode the Brass on Afghanistan,” Politico , April 15, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/pentagon-biden-team-overrode-afghanistan-481556 .

Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan, “With Afghanistan, Biden Restores Foreign Policymaking Process that Trump Abandoned,” Washington Post , April 18, 2021; David Ignatius, “History Will Cast a Shadow over Biden's Decision to Withdraw from Afghanistan,” Washington Post , April 13, 2021; and Jennifer Rubin, “Afghanistan Requires More Humility—from Everyone,” Washington Post , April 14, 2021.

Rubin, “Afghanistan Requires More Humility”; Seligman et al., “How Biden's Team Overrode”; and Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung, “Biden Will Withdraw All U.S. Forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2001,” Washington Post , April 13, 2021.

Stephen Collinson and Maeve Reston, “Biden Starts to Execute on Policies Trump Abandoned by Crossing off Another Campaign Promise,” CNN , April 15, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/joe-biden-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/index.html .

Ryan and DeYoung, “Biden Will Withdraw All.”

“The Way Forward in Afghanistan,” Wall Street Journal , March 15, 2021. The Afghan Study Group recommended an increase of troops.

Woodward and Costa, Peril , p. 384.

Ignatius, “History Will Cast a Shadow.”

All cited in Seligman et al., “How Biden's Team Overrode.”

Joe Biden, “Remarks by President Biden on the Way Forward in Afghanistan,” remarks from the Treaty Room, White House, April 14, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/14/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-way-forward-in-afghanistan/ .

“Biden Takes the Easy Way Out of Afghanistan. The Likely Result Is Disaster,” Washington Post , April 13, 2021.

Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, “How the U.S. Plans to Fight from Afar after Troops Exit Afghanistan,” New York Times , September 28, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/us/politics/united-states-al-qaeda-afghanistan.html . Biden appears keen to the fact that vigilance against terrorism is important.

Ted Van Green and Carroll Doherty, “Majority of U.S. Public Favors Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal; Biden Criticized for His Handling of Situation,” Pew Research Center, August 31, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/31/majority-of-u-s-public-favors-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal-biden-criticized-for-his-handling-of-situation/ .

Barak Mendelsohn and Colin Clarke, “Al-Qaeda Is Being Hollowed to Its Core,” War on the Rocks , February 24, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/02/al-qaeda-is-being-hollowed-to-its-core/ .

Stephanie Savell, United States Counterterrorism Operations, 2018–2020 (Providence, R.I.: Watson Institute, Brown University, 2021), https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/US%20Counterterrorism%20Operations%202018-2020%2C%20Costs%20of%20War.pdf .

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The U.S. War in Afghanistan: How It Started, and How It Ended

The U.S. military departed the country on Aug. 30, a day ahead of schedule, ending a 20-year occupation and leaving Afghanistan in the Taliban’s hands.

By David Zucchino

The American mission in Afghanista n has come to a tragic and chaotic end.

The U.S. military departed the country on Aug. 30, a day ahead of schedule, ending a 20-year occupation and leaving Afghanistan in the Taliban’s hands. As the last evacuation flight departed, it left behind at least 100,000 people, by one estimate , who might be eligible for expedited U.S. visas.

A ferocious summertime offensive had delivered victory to the Taliban on Aug. 15, hours after the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country. Taliban leaders took his place in the presidential palace, driving tens of thousands of people to the country’s borders. Others flooded to the international airport in Kabul, where crowds scrambled to be part of the evacuations of foreign nationals and their Afghan allies.

Days of chaos at the airport were punctuated by a suicide attack on Aug. 26 that killed as many as 180 people, including 13 American troops. It was one of the deadliest attacks of the war , and the troops were the first American service members to die in the country since February 2020.

The collapse of the Afghan government, after the United States spent billions to support it and the Afghan security forces, was a crushing and violent coda to the U.S. military mission in America’s longest war .

That combat mission dogged four presidents, who reckoned with American casualties, a ruthless enemy and an often confounding Afghan government partner, as well as a nominal ally, Pakistan, which supplied and supported the Taliban while providing the militants a safe haven.

How did the U.S. withdrawal go?

In mid-April, President Biden, declaring that the United States had long ago accomplished its mission of denying terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan , announced that all American troops would leave the country by Sept. 11. He later moved the date up to Aug. 31.

Mr. Biden said that after nearly 20 years of war , it was clear that the U.S. military could not transform Afghanistan into a modern, stable democracy.

Responding in July to critics of the withdrawal, the president asked: “Let me ask those who wanted us to stay: How many more? How many thousands more of America’s daughters and sons are you willing to risk?”

The United States had planned to leave behind about 650 troops to secure its embassy in Kabul. But the sudden and shocking Taliban victory forced the embassy into a swift, panicked shutdown as staffers shredded and burned sensitive documents before a makeshift embassy compound was set up at the Kabul airport.

With Taliban gunmen controlling the streets of Kabul and other cities, dread has set in across the capital and elsewhere in Afghanistan .

In Kabul, Taliban gunmen have gone door-to-door in some neighborhoods, searching for anyone who had supported the government or the American effort. And despite public promises by Taliban leaders of a more moderate approach to governing, restrictions have been imposed on women, and the Taliban have cracked down on some independent journalists.

“This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Aug. 16, adding that he stood by his decision to end American military involvement in Afghanistan .

Why did the United States invade Afghanistan?

Weeks after Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, President George W. Bush announced that American forces had launched attacks against the terrorist group and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bush said the Taliban, which then governed most of Afghanistan, had rejected his demand to turn over Al Qaeda leaders who had planned the attacks from bases inside Afghanistan. He said he intended to bring Al Qaeda leaders to justice, adding, “Now the Taliban will pay a price.”

“These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime,” the president said.

Even then, the president warned that Operation Enduring Freedom would entail “a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.”

By December 2001, Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and other top commanders had fled to safety in Pakistan, a nominal U.S. ally. American forces did not pursue them, and Pakistan ultimately evolved into a safe haven for Taliban fighters, who in subsequent years crossed the border to attack American and Afghan forces.

Inside Afghanistan, American troops quickly toppled the Taliban government and crushed its fighting forces.

In December 2001, the Taliban’s spokesman offered an unconditional surrender , which was rejected by the United States. In May 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced an end to major combat operations in the country.

How did the mission in Afghanistan evolve?

After routing the Taliban, the United States and NATO turned to rebuilding a failed state and establishing a Western-style democracy, spending billions trying to reconstruct a desperately poor country already ravaged by two decades of war, first during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and then during a civil war.

There were early successes. A pro-Western government was installed. New schools, hospitals and public facilities were built. Thousands of girls, barred from education under Taliban rule, attended school . Women, largely confined to their homes by the Taliban, went to college, joined the work force and served in Parliament and government. A vigorous, independent news media emerged.

But corruption was rampant, with hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction money stolen or misappropriated . The government proved unable to meet the most basic needs of its citizens. Often, its authority evaporated outside major cities.

In 2003, with 8,000 American troops in Afghanistan, the United States began shifting combat resources to the war in Iraq, started in March of that year.

What happened on the battlefield?

Despite the presence of American and NATO troops and air power, the Taliban rebuilt their fighting capabilities.

In 2009, President Barack Obama began deploying thousands more troops to Afghanistan in a “surge” that reached nearly 100,000 by mid-2010. But the Taliban only grew stronger, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan security forces.

In May 2011, a U.S. Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he had been living for years near a military training academy. In June, Mr. Obama announced that he would start bringing American forces home and hand over security duties to the Afghans by 2014.

By then, the Pentagon had concluded that the war could not be won militarily and that only a negotiated settlement could end the conflict — the third in three centuries involving a world power. Afghan fighters defeated the British army in the 19th century and the Russian military in the 20th century.

With the war at a stalemate, Mr. Obama ended major combat operations on Dec. 31, 2014, and transitioned to training and assisting Afghan security forces.

Nearly three years later, President Donald J. Trump said that although his first instinct had been to withdraw all troops, he would nonetheless continue to prosecute the war . He stressed that any troop withdrawal would be based on combat conditions, not predetermined timelines.

But the Trump administration also had been talking to the Taliban since 2018, leading to formal negotiations that excluded the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani.

Ahead of the planned withdrawal in August, the Taliban ’s summer-long military campaign had forced widespread surrenders and retreats by beleaguered Afghan government forces. In many cases, they gave up without a fight , sometimes following the intercession of village elders dispatched by the Taliban. At the same time, civilian casualties soared to some of the highest levels of the two-decade old war.

What about the peace talks last year?

In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban that called for all American forces to leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, though Mr. Biden would later extend that deadline . In return, the Taliban pledged to cut ties with terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, reduce violence and negotiate with the American-backed Afghan government.

But the agreement included no mechanisms to enforce the Taliban commitments. And the exclusion of the Afghan government from the deal strained its relations with the United States.

After the deal was signed, the Taliban stopped attacking American troops and refrained from major bombings in Afghan cities. The United States reduced air support for government forces.

The primary objectives of the 2020 deal were for Afghan leaders and the Taliban to negotiate a political road map for a new government and constitution, reduce violence and ultimately forge a lasting cease-fire.

But the government accused the Taliban of assassinating Afghan government officials and security force members, civil society leaders, journalists and human rights workers — including several women shot in broad daylight.

Because of their strong battlefield position and the U.S. troop withdrawal, the Taliban maintained the upper hand in talks with the Afghan government, which began in September in Doha, Qatar, but eventually stalled. The Pentagon has said the militants did not honor pledges to reduce violence or cut ties with terrorist groups.

Why were Afghan security forces unable to hold off the Taliban?

Military and police units in Afghanistan have been hollowed out by desertions, low recruitment rates, poor morale and the theft of pay and equipment by commanders. They have suffered high casualty rates, which American commanders have said were not sustainable.

How the Taliban Captured Afghanistan

The brutal campaign by the Taliban to recapture Afghanistan gained ground earlier this year, when officers in rural outposts began to surrender. It picked up steam almost immediately after American troops began to withdraw on May 1 and on Sunday, the Taliban swiftly captured Kabul, seizing control over the country.

August 16, 2021

October 1, 2017

May 5, 2021

Mazar-i-Sharif

Pul-i-Khumri

Some of the

major cities

the Taliban

Afghanistan

Lashkar Gah

Taliban-controlled districts

Contested districts

Government-controlled

Status unknown

Taliban-controlled districts Contested districts Government-controlled Status unknown

Even though the United States has spent at least $4 billion a year on the Afghan military, a classified intelligence assessment presented to the Biden administration this spring said Afghanistan could fall largely under Taliban control within two to three years after the departure of international forces.

The fall was much swifter than that.

“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country,” Mr. Biden said, accusing the military of laying down their arms after two decades of U.S. training.

As Taliban fighters took over provincial capitals, government counterattacks fought to retake a handful of bases and districts. Some former Afghan warlords mobilized private militias , while other Afghans joined volunteer militias, many of them armed and financed by the government.

But the Taliban still overtook a string of provincial capitals before moving into Kabul — a frightening development for many who thought that they could build a life under the protection of their American allies.

Once in power, the Taliban said that they would ensure order and public safety, and that they were seeking relations with other global powers , including Russia and China, in part to receive economic support.

Jacey Fortin , Carlotta Gall and Alan Yuhas contributed reporting.

David Zucchino is a contributing writer for The New York Times.  More about David Zucchino

The lessons of the Afghanistan Papers

Subscribe to the center for middle east policy newsletter, tamara cofman wittes and tamara cofman wittes former brookings expert @tcwittes kevin huggard kh kevin huggard senior research assistant - center for middle east policy @kevinhuggard.

December 18, 2019

The war in Afghanistan is nearing the end of its second decade, although its failure long ago became inevitable, Tamara Cofman Wittes and Kevin Huggard write. When future U.S. leaders decide to undertake ambitious, complicated projects abroad, they should be able to explain to the American public how and when they will choose to pull the plug. This piece originally appeared in The Atlantic .

The Afghanistan Papers, published a week ago by The Washington Post, offer vivid details and sometimes shocking assessments, but few surprising insights. The hundreds of interviews collected by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) and obtained by the Post show clearly that the United States has been fighting a long, costly war that remains far from success and offers no clear path for getting there. That this miserable impasse could sustain itself for 18 years represents a failure of political leadership, and also a lack of honest public conversation. But if our only response is cynicism, we risk learning the wrong lessons from the Afghanistan Papers.

The degree of misrepresentation by military and civilian leaders of that effort in claiming success, and the specific details of those misrepresentations, should drive accountability as well as lessons for the future. But even extensive oversight mechanisms cannot guarantee the reversal of failing policy, if no one in a position of responsibility is willing to bite the bullet.

As the  Post  notes, SIGAR was created by Congress precisely to make independent assessments of the nearly trillion-dollar effort by successive U.S. administrations to transform Afghanistan. SIGAR has published nine reports so far in its “ Lessons Learned ” series, including an unsparingly critical report  on stabilization and reconstruction that we launched in May 2018 at the Brookings Institution, where we work. The  Post  sued to obtain the interviews and other documents underlying the project through the Freedom of Information Act.

The interviews published by the  Post  provide a starker version of SIGAR’s previous analysis, but in many ways, they tell the same story. In its reports and testimony before Congress, SIGAR has revealed  waste ,  abuse , and questionable judgment in a host of Afghanistan programs and projects. The interviews are stripped of the dry inspector-general verbiage and also of the strategic context within which judgments were made; senior officials frankly assess their failures to produce security, stability, or transparent and effective governance in Afghanistan. Those failures are documented in SIGAR’s reports.

But the extensive oversight mechanisms created for this massive project were not enough to force a rethink in the face of inertia, sunk costs, and short-term political calculations. SIGAR’s extant analysis of failures and missteps should have prompted a greater reckoning some time ago—if not within the executive branch, then within Congress, which regularly authorized and appropriated funds for the ongoing campaign.

This attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan was embarked on by one president and embraced, at least for a time, by two more. Each one, when faced with the decision, chose to continue down this doomed road, believing it less risky and more palatable than his available alternatives. What the Post reporting reveals is that, while this path may have been easier, it was a road that would never reach its stated destination.

The U.S. effort in Afghanistan was an undertaking of breathtaking ambition: to oust a Taliban regime that gave haven to international terrorists; to defeat those terrorists and their allies and supporters in a counterinsurgency campaign; to set up and sustain a democratic government in a society riven by years of factional war; and to promote human development, human security, and basic human rights in a country where religious extremists, drug lords, and tribal chiefs had long ruled over (and fought for control of) a beleaguered populace. The overarching result seems to be a sort of D-minus—some degree of visible achievement, but still a failing grade.

The  Post ’s reporting is unsparing in its depiction of “ second-guessing and back-biting ” among U.S. government officials about their work in Afghanistan. Field staff argued that higher-ups didn’t understand the realities they faced on the ground, didn’t give them enough leeway to be effective, or cut off resources at the wrong time. Senior staff questioned strategies chosen by their superiors or determined in internal debates in which they participated. These concerns, voiced mostly in confidential interviews with SIGAR, were no doubt honestly felt, and had real foundations.

The existence of such doubts and concerns, however, does not necessarily reveal the roots of the Afghanistan failure. This kind of second-guessing is endemic in any large organization undertaking a long-term, complex project. Field staff close to on-the-ground implementation often question how their work is valued or prioritized by central decision makers, or question how their contribution fits into the wider strategy; central decision makers often fail to see the reality of implementation on the ground, and focus their energies on the policy battles they’ve won and lost around the interagency table.

Most successful projects would reveal such concerns and complaints along the way, if they were also investigated. But successful projects don’t usually get this kind of attention, nor do those who achieve that success usually focus on their own complaints about the project in post hoc interviews. Conversely, a decision not to attempt reconstruction in Afghanistan, but merely to oust the Taliban and leave, would likewise have been accompanied by internal recriminations and warnings, some of which might well have proved correct.

Rebuilding a country after 30 years of civil war is an enormously complex challenge, in which failure is possible even when everyone involved agrees on the goals and means and when their execution is flawless. So we must ask whether there was some earlier fork in the road that we should have seen and taken but missed. Should we find ourselves on such a road again, we must learn to recognize signs of trouble more quickly, so we can call a halt before we’ve gone so far.

The insights produced by SIGAR’s work, and made vivid by the Afghanistan Papers, should produce a much-needed national reckoning. Was a better grade than a D-minus ever realistic? If not, was the D-minus worth the price? This is an essential question for the military and civilian agencies involved in Afghanistan, for Congress and for the American public—and most especially for those now aspiring to the role of commander in chief.

In the current cynical environment, with public  trust  in institutions at an all-time low and political  polarization  high, we fear for the way in which Afghanistan will feature in the upcoming presidential campaign. The politically easy responses to the “Lessons Learned” project are to say “This shows why we need to bring all our troops home  now ,” or “This shows why we should never use force abroad,” or even “This shows why we should never attempt to promote democracy or women’s rights or good-governance policies in countries that aren’t already like us.”

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But such simplistic conclusions sidestep both the reasons the United States embarked on the Afghan War, and the reasons three American presidents kept us there. To make those easy answers the lessons we learn would be to repeat the failure of responsibility that we’ve seen over the past 18 years, and to overcorrect in ways that could leave us asking a different “Why?” a few years or decades from now.

In some ways, the cynicism of these responses is understandable. The bitter experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has undercut public faith in those entrusted with making and implementing American foreign policy. That’s a legacy Washington’s senior officials and foreign-policy hands must work to overcome, whether or not they or their favored political party were on the “right” side of these projects. No one should expect public applause for having only a minority stake in a national catastrophe.

Part of regaining lost trust must involve a greater willingness to recognize, own, and correct mistakes, something the  Post ’s report makes clear American policy makers have not done in Afghanistan. SIGAR’s reports were not enough to get the ball rolling. Even if they had, it’s far from clear that more active follow-through from Congress could have forced policy changes that would have delivered anything like success in Afghanistan.

It’s always foolish for an American president to launch an ambitious foreign-policy project on the assumption of success. That was George W. Bush’s mistake in Iraq. In Afghanistan, success was not assumed. But when failure became inevitable, U.S. leaders didn’t look for an acceptable off-ramp, and the public didn’t pressure them to do so. No doubt a future president will confront the question of whether to launch an ambitious project abroad with uncertain hopes of success. By then, Americans need leaders who can tell them how and when they will decide to pull the plug.

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‘The Afghanistan Papers’ exposes the U.S.’s shaky Afghanistan strategy

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-afghanistan-papers-exposes-the-u-ss-shaky-afghanistan-strategy

Despite American presidents and military leaders providing years of positive assessments that the U.S. was winning the war in Afghanistan, behind the scenes there were clear warnings of an unsuccessful end. Those stories of failure, corruption and lack of strategy are the focus of Craig Whitlock's discussion with Judy Woodruff and his new book "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War."

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Judy Woodruff:

Despite American presidents and military leaders providing years of positive assessments that the U.S. was winning the war in Afghanistan, behind the scenes, there were clear warnings that things were headed in another direction.

Those harbingers, stories of failure, corruption and lack of a clear strategy, are the focus of Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock's new book, "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War."

And Craig joins us now.

Thank you so much for being here. Congratulations. This is a definitive book.

Craig Whitlock, you interviewed over 1,000 people and you had access to documents that your newspaper, The Washington Post, had to sue to get. And they tell a very different story in many cases from what the public has been told over the last 20 years, don't they?

Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post:

Yes, these documents were interviews with — the core of them, with more than 400 officials who played a key role in the war.

And this is from White House officials, to generals, diplomats, aid workers, and also Afghans. And they really — they thought these were confidential interviews the government had conducted, and they thought that — their assessments were brutal.

They said that the U.S. government didn't know what it was doing in Afghanistan, it didn't have a strategy, and it misled the American people of how the war was going for 20 years. So, it was a complete opposite of the message that was being delivered in public year after year, that the U.S. was making progress, that victory was around the corner.

And this goes back to the very beginning.

President Bush goes into the U.S. goes into Afghanistan initially to get Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks, but it very quickly changes to nation-building. And you have a lot of behind-the-scenes information from then on about what was going on and how what was being assessed was different from what people were being told.

Craig Whitlock:

Well, and one of earliest examples of this is, President Bush gave a speech in April of 2002 to the Virginia Military Institute.

At that time, the Taliban had been defeated, al-Qaida was on the run. But Bush was addressing concerns already that Afghanistan could turn into a quagmire, like Vietnam, or like what had happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan or the British in the 19th century. And he was dismissing these concerns, saying, don't worry, we won't get bogged down. This isn't going to happen to us.

On that very same day Bush gave the speech, his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, dictated a memo to several of his generals and top aides at the Pentagon. And he said the exact opposite. He expressed his real fear that we could get bogged down. He said, if we don't come up with a plan to stabilize Afghanistan, we will never get the troops out.

And he ended the memo with one word. It said, "Help!" on the very same day.

And that was Donald — the late Donald Rumsfeld.

But you write about a number of instances during the Obama administration, then, of course, into Trump, and just this new administration.

That's right. I mean, this happened with all the presidents.

People may recall, back in 2014, President Obama said that the war was coming to a conclusion. There was actually a ceremony in Kabul at NATO headquarters, in which the U.S. officials said that the combat mission for U.S. troops was over. And yet, behind the scenes, the Pentagon and Obama all knew that U.S. troops were still going to be in harm's way and people were still dying in combat for the duration of the war.

More than 100 people died in Afghanistan, U.S. troops, after Obama said that mission was coming to an end.

And, Craig Whitlock, you cite one military leader after another. I'm thinking of General David Petraeus, who's been out very critical lately of President Biden, saying that he should have realized that the Afghan military was helping fight off ISIS and al-Qaida.

But you cite him and other military leaders telling Congress again, as you're saying now, that things were going well, when they weren't.

That's right.

We heard this month after month, year after year under Bush, Obama and Trump, that the Afghan army and police forces were capable of defending their own country, that they no longer needed U.S. troops to fight the Taliban in ground combat. And yet, in these interviews in "The Afghanistan papers," U.S. military trainers and other officials were sending up highly critical reports of the Afghan forces.

They said they couldn't shoot straight, they were illiterate, their leaders were corrupt. And they expressed real doubt that they could stand up in a fight to the Taliban.

So the Pentagon has known this for many years. And yet, again, as you said, in public, they kept telling the American people that this — everything was going according to plan.

And when people try to understand what went wrong over all these years, I mean, you have got a chapter on corruption. You have got another chapter on the opium trade, the poppies that so many the farmers were growing, and again on the military that — the Afghan military, how hard it was, with change in leadership after change, how hard it was to get the results that Americans were looking for.

And I think most Americans, they knew the war wasn't going well. But they always assumed there was a plan, that there was a strategy that was in place that was maybe just tough to carry out.

But in these interviews in "The Afghanistan Papers," generals, ambassadors, other people, they were very blunt. They said, we didn't know what we were doing in Afghanistan. They literally would say this. We never understood the country. In their early years, there was no strategy.

So it really was worse than people thought.

And what about the role of Pakistan next door? It's been hard for many Americans to understand what that has been really all about, the connection between Pakistan and the Taliban.

And this is something the U.S. government has never really figured out what to do.

It took the Bush administration several years to really come to the realization that the government of Pakistan was — on one hand, it was fighting al-Qaida, but it was lending support secretly to the Taliban. It took them a while to sort of accept that Pakistan was playing a double game.

During the Obama administration, I think they recognized that, but they were really dependent on Pakistan for supply routes to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. So they really couldn't get that tough on the Pakistanis. Same under Trump. There was all this tough talk about getting the Pakistan to clamp down on the Taliban. But we never really had an effective strategy to deal with that.

And when we hear President Biden today saying, among other things, that he really had no choice, that President Trump had negotiated this withdrawal date, and he really couldn't change it, and that the alternative was to escalate, is that the whole story here?

I don't think it's the whole story.

I mean, certainly, President Biden was not obligated to accept Trump's deal with the Taliban. He could have tried to modify it or take a different approach.

But I think he's right in one respect, that this was not a winnable war, and the Taliban had held off on attacking U.S. troops since Trump cut his deal with them in February 2020. So I think he's right.

If we were going to try and have a military victory over the Taliban, which was highly dubious, we would have had to commit more troops and double down on the fighting there. And that was something that Biden didn't want to do.

Can you come away with all this research and reporting you have done, Craig Whitlock, with lessons for future American leaders, when we are tempted to go into another country to fix a problem, to fight an enemy?

Well, and that's right. And the parallels to Vietnam are very strong.

But the irony here is, we don't learn these lessons from history. At the beginning of the war, Bush and Rumsfeld and others, again, they said, we learned our lesson from Vietnam. We're not going to do that again.

So they knew about it, but it still happened. And I think, sometimes, we turn a blind eye to history, and we forget. And we had a lot of hubris in Afghanistan, that we thought we could do something that clearly, in retrospect, failed.

Were there particular truth-tellers who stood out to you in all your research?

I think, in these interviews, which the government tried to keep a secret from the American people, there were truth-tellers.

People admitted that the strategy was a failure and…

After the fact.

After — and not too many. I wish there have been more people that spoke up.

There was one in particular. General David McKiernan was the war commander during the end of Bush's term and the beginning of Obama's. And he was the one general who said in public that the war wasn't going well, that things were going south. He was fired in the Obama administration.

And there was really no concrete reason given, but he the first war commander relief since Douglas MacArthur in Korea. In the documents we obtained, there are military officials who said McKiernan knew that he was getting in trouble for telling the truth about how things weren't going well, and that was the reason.

And, finally, based on what you have learned about the Taliban, what is your expectation about what's going to happen now in Afghanistan?

Well, this is really fascinating.

We fought this war on the assumption that the Taliban was the enemy. Right now, the Taliban, they have gotten everything they wanted to kick out the foreign forces, but they crave diplomatic recognition from the United States. They want humanitarian aid and other assistance to flow in.

I think the Biden administration is going to be slow to recognize a diplomatic — give diplomatic recognition to the Taliban, but they have already started to do business with them militarily. And you may recall that the CIA director, Bill Burns, made a visit to Kabul recently to meet with the Taliban leadership.

So I think, on counterterrorism operations against groups like the Islamic State, I think the U.S. and the Taliban will probably work together fairly closely. They just may keep it hidden from the public.

Which is what so much of the book is about, just a remarkable book, as we say, I — definitive, in my view, "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War."

Craig Whitlock, thank you very much.

Thank you, Judy.

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What the War in Afghanistan Could Never Do

Twenty years ago, Americans sought to feel as strong and invincible as they had the day before the towers fell.

E ven in the context of war, attacking fleeing civilians is a depraved act. The Islamic State’s attack on Kabul’s airport during the American evacuation of Afghanistan, which killed nearly 200 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. service members protecting the facility, was bound to draw a military response. “The Kabul airport massacre compounds the humiliation of the botched Afghan withdrawal and will further embolden jihadists,” The Wall Street Journal editorialized .

Days later, the U.S. executed a drone strike on what it said was an ISIS operation that threatened the final evacuations out of Kabul—a strike General Mark Milley called “righteous.” Several weeks later, General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. apologized, acknowledging that the strike had killed 10 civilians. “I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” McKenzie said on September 17 . In early September, Ahmad Fayaz, a relative of one of those killed, told The Washington Post that the U.S. “always says they are killing [the Islamic State], al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but they always attack civilian people and children … I don’t think they are good people.”

The two events were themselves a microcosm of two decades of war, in which the U.S. military responded to a genuine threat with a heavy hand that undermined whatever goodwill it was trying to generate. “When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils,” the former U.S.-military interpreter Baktash Ahadi wrote in The Washington Post . They were also the first acts of a war that will continue past the Afghanistan withdrawal, a war more modest in objectives, but one in which the U.S. maintains the authority to use lethal force anywhere in the world.

Eliot A. Cohen: A dishonorable exit

The U.S. reliance on airpower has been motivated by an attempt to strike what it believes to be enemy targets while avoiding American casualties. That reliance has also meant that, far more frequently than the U.S. acknowledges, innocent people pay the price for American security concerns. It also provides the opportunity for swift retaliation, not simply to meet military objectives but to stave off what the Journal described as “humiliation.”

The Pentagon’s most recent error involves the inherent difficulties of determining who and where their enemy is. But it’s also a reflection of an American foreign policy preoccupied with “humiliation” and its avoidance. Ironically, it is this very obsession with humiliation that has led the U.S. to wage indefinite wars in pursuit of impossible objectives, employing self-defeating means. The compulsion to win grand, sweeping victories that exemplify American strength and power has prevented realistic judgments about what is achievable. And when politicians prove unable to present their voters with the triumphs that were promised, they choose to lie instead, maintaining the illusion until the wars can be passed on to a successor. At least, until Joe Biden made a different choice.

T he realities of the withdrawal seem to have come as a shock to much of the country. Biden and Donald Trump did not agree on much, but Biden’s decision to honor Trump’s withdrawal deal with the Taliban drew the ire of the defense establishment, whose retired luminaries flocked to broadcast outlets where reporters echoed their criticisms. Afghanistan coverage on cable news in August 2021, Matt Gertz writes , exceeded that of any full year since 2010, when then-President Barack Obama ordered an increase in troops. Trump, for his part, described the exit he himself had negotiated as “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in American history.

Mike Jason: What we got wrong in Afghanistan

Biden drew harsh and sometimes justified criticism for the withdrawal itself, as the U.S. evacuated more than 100,000 people but, U.S. officials acknowledge, left some Afghan allies and U.S. citizens behind. These legitimate criticisms, though, have become a vehicle for those who planned and administered nearly two decades of stalemate and Taliban revival to cast the withdrawal itself as the debacle, in an effort to hide their own years of failure preceding it. Humiliation, in this case, has many parents, but none wish to claim paternity.

People all over the world were justly horrified by the Taliban’s rapid advance, and what seems like the certain reimposition of a cruel and authoritarian system that will deprive Afghans, women in particular, of their fundamental human rights. Irrespective of its early protestations, the Taliban remains repressive and authoritarian, intent on forcing its austere interpretation of religious law on the Afghan population through brutal means. Unlike the civilian casualties of the past two decades, more recent images of suffering in Afghanistan—crowds chasing planes on the runway, masses of Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s return, the hard faces of Taliban fighters as they grip their firearms—are far more readily accessible to American eyes.

But there is also a detectable undercurrent of imperial narcissism—where the suffering of Afghans is primarily important because of how it makes Americans feel about not being invincible. It is sometimes difficult to discern whether people are afraid for Afghans, or are simply nostalgic for the fantasy that the United States, or the West generally, could remake whole societies through force of arms.

A New York Times analysis—the label denoting opinion pieces by reporters on the news side—offered that the “political danger for Mr. Biden may be that the chaotic exit provides fodder for a broader Republican argument that he is not up to the job and has left the United States humiliated on the world stage.” The NBC News host Chuck Todd argued , “Yes, Americans in both parties supported an end to this 20-year ‘forever war.’ But they also want security, and no one likes to see America humiliated.” Yascha Mounk contended in The Atlantic that Biden would pay for the “scenes of national humiliation now playing on television and social media,” invoking the specter of “humiliation” four times in a single essay.

The right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt, who supported the withdrawal when Trump supported it and opposed it once Biden began executing it, lamented , “My adult life has included fall of Saigon, Iran hostage crisis, Beirut bombing, KA007, Iran-Contra affair, 9/11, escape of bin Laden, the Iraq WMD and occupation, JCPOA, Putin and Georgia and Ukraine, Hong Kong. This is the worst, not in loss of life, but in deep damage to soul.” Even if the war in Afghanistan could not be won, it seems that Biden was wrong to withdraw because of the damage that has been done to American self-esteem.

As Mounk argues, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aided Trump’s rise by allowing him to portray American leadership as feckless. It does not follow, though, that foreign wars should be pursued indefinitely so that America’s political leadership can continue to feign competence, or that doing so would prevent someone like Trump from exploiting the sense of humiliation that results from the failure of American colonial projects.

In fact, the causality is backwards. As Spencer Ackerman writes , it was precisely two decades of war nationalism and the state of exception they produced that eroded American democracy. Those conditions also set the stage for a racist demagogue whose primary criticism of American wars was that they were incompetently managed because feckless American elites were insufficiently murderous . And yet not even the war-crime enthusiast Trump could slaughter his way to victory in Afghanistan—another national humiliation Trump rushed to ameliorate with an exit toward the end of his term.

T his reaction—the fixation on humiliation above any of the material realities of the mission in Afghanistan—may be difficult to understand for Americans who were not alive on 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of al-Qaeda’s act of mass murder, millions of Americans were seized with a sense of missionary purpose.

“Does anybody but me feel upbeat, and guilty about it?” David Brooks wrote in The Weekly Standard less than a month after the carnage in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. “I feel upbeat because the country seems to be a better place than it was a month ago. I feel guilty about it because I should be feeling pain and horror and anger about the recent events. But there’s so much to cheer one up.”

Read: The Taliban’s return is catastrophic for women

Real American values had been revived by the War on Terror. “To me this whole event has been like a national Sabbath, stripping away the hurly-burly of normal life and reminding people of nation, faith, and ideals,” Brooks wrote. He exulted that even “the most reactionary liberals amongst us are capable of change,” noting that Bruce Springsteen recently had sung a tribute to the NYPD, despite previously having written a song criticizing the killing of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by police who said they believed he was armed; he had been holding his wallet .

Although the country remained closely divided—George W. Bush’s reelection was  narrow—the years after 9/11 felt to many Americans like a period of conservative cultural and political dominance. During the Obama administration, when Glenn Beck held his “9/12 March,” it was an expression of nostalgia for national unity on right-wing terms. The sense of purpose and unity was also attractive to liberal hawks, who were drawn to the sense of national mission and the opportunity to marginalize radicals who embarrassed them and, in their view, weakened the Democratic Party’s political fortunes .

A few years earlier, Brooks had written about the need for a “National Greatness Conservatism,” calling for Americans to embrace a new “national mission” along the lines of “settling the West, building the highway system, creating the post-war science faculties, exploring space, waging the Cold War, and disseminating American culture throughout the world.” In other corners of the right, this neoconservative idealism took on a darker cast.

Writing in The Atlantic , Christopher Hitchens sneered that left-wing war skeptics were “the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.” Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, he announced in The Nation that “the United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age.” In National Review in 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq War, Jonah Goldberg approvingly quoted his colleague Michael Ledeen, who said that “every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” That the people who live in those countries might object, or might have the capacity to resist such arbitrary demonstrations of American power, was an afterthought.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration undertook the task of remaking the world in America’s image, at gunpoint. The War on Terror was the New Cold War, the New New Deal. To express skepticism about this national mission—not even opposition, but merely skepticism—was to side with the terrorists, to be the kind of person who would not lift a finger to save their own child. It was to abandon America, and Americans.

As a national mission, this crusade was far less successful than the New Deal, or even the Cold War. The New Deal expanded the American welfare state and empowered workers against their bosses. The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Two decades and four administrations later, the War on Terror finds jihadist groups arguably more widespread, dangerous, and influential than they were prior to 9/11.

The roots of its failure are not simply conceptual but lie in the zeal that could not suffer scrutiny or recognize error. Al-Qaeda had not only murdered thousands of people here at home, but questioned American resolve and American strength. Simply protecting the country, defeating those responsible on the battlefield, or even destroying al-Qaeda’s leadership would not be enough.

American leaders sought to purge the fear and humiliation many felt with violence, by turning Afghanistan into a utopia where groups like al-Qaeda could not exist. “Our War on Terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” Bush told Congress and the nation nine days after the attacks. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” America’s new purpose, he said, was to “answer these attacks and rid the world of evildoers.”

A cting on that impulse , the Bush administration was not satisfied with simply defeating the Taliban in 2001. It drew up plans to invade Iraq in order to continue the glorious national mission, but it also sowed the seeds in Afghanistan for the Taliban’s revival. “From the very beginning, the U.S. had the idea that there’s only unconditional surrender; there was no surrender with amnesty,” the former New Yorker correspondent Anand Gopal told MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem . “You had a one-sided war in those years, between 2001 and 2004, where the U.S. was fighting an enemy that didn’t exist, and innocent people were the ones who were suffering. That really is what created the Taliban’s resurgence.”

Even if you believe Gopal’s description is oversimplified—the Taliban was still launching cross-border attacks from Pakistan in those years—there’s a great deal of evidence for the argument that American policy strengthened the Taliban after its initial defeat.

A comprehensive report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) shows that the operation was a failure almost from the beginning, an attempt to impose America’s will on a nation whose economic, cultural, and political dynamics American leadership never respected or understood. Although the most crucial mistakes were likely made during the Bush administration , devastating errors were made across four administrations, both Democratic and Republican.

Tom Nichols: Afghanistan is your fault

The U.S. attempt to revive the Afghan economy with foreign aid created a weak state dependent on outside support, but failed to reduce unemployment or poverty. Reconstruction projects were unused, abandoned, or destroyed. The cash infusion, combined with corruption, “created new grievances and exacerbated old ones, as some groups benefited from the war and others were alienated and driven toward the insurgency,” the SIGAR report said; the winners “committed major crimes with impunity, creating a kind of mafia rule.” U.S. projects “unwittingly supported one powerbroker or interest group at the expense of another, thereby stoking local conflicts and creating an opportunity for insurgents to form an alliance with the disaffected party.” American leaders relied on “strongmen and warlords to build a nascent bureaucracy,” an approach that undermined the Afghan government’s legitimacy rather than establishing it. In a classic example of bureaucratic failure, “evaluations intentionally obfuscated the truth,” because no one wanted to lose funding or support for their assignment.

In one telling anecdote from 2009, according to SIGAR, General Stanley A. McChrystal ordered the construction of two large diesel generators to provide electricity to 650,000 Kandahar residents, believing that “expanding access to electricity would improve the Afghan government’s legitimacy.” But the fuel costs proved too high to sustain, and the “resulting widespread power outages exposed the project as a bridge to nowhere.” The reporter Azmat Kahn wrote in 2015 that despite American claims, more than 1,000 U.S.-built schools in Afghanistan had been abandoned but were still being funded, with cash ending up “in the pockets of brutal warlords and reviled strongmen, which sometimes soured the local population on the U.S. and the Afghan government.” The Afghan army would collapse 12 years later in the face of the Taliban advance, when deprived of U.S. military and contractor support. Everything the U.S. built in Afghanistan was a sandcastle.

As the Afghan government foundered, commentators ignored these fatal flaws, indulging the fantasy that the war might have been successful if the military had simply killed more of the enemy. The Soviet Union pursued its invasion of Afghanistan with unrestrained brutality —that didn’t work, either. According to Craig Whitlock’s 2021 book, The Afghanistan Papers , by 2018 the Taliban had “swollen to about 60,000 fighters, up from 25,000 seven years earlier,” and had gained so much territory that the U.S. “stopped tracking territorial control altogether.” By July 2018, the U.S. estimated that the Taliban controlled or contested half of Afghanistan . This happened despite the Trump administration removing Obama-era restraints on air strikes.

Few asked why, if the American presence was so unconditionally benevolent, the Taliban managed to rise from the ashes of its early defeat. A farmer south of Kabul told the journalist Emran Feroz last year that he hoped the peace talks would be successful, because “​we can live in poverty but not without peace.”

T his backlash to the failure of the national mission undertaken after 9/11 explains why American leaders lied to the public for so long about the progress of the war. No president wanted to be the president who lost Afghanistan, and no general wanted to be the general who brought American forces home from a defeat. “For those millions of Americans who demanded vengeance for 9/11, and then for the United States’ compounded misfortunes in seeking it, the Forever War brought only the pain and humiliation of attaining neither peace nor victory,” Spencer Ackerman writes. So the war continued. It fell to Biden to deliver the bad news.

No one has made a compelling or coherent case for how the U.S. could actually have succeeded in Afghanistan after 20 years of failure. We have instead been treated to nonsense arguments that low American casualties during talks with the Taliban was the new normal, and that the risk for an American service member during a deployment to Afghanistan was comparable to being stationed in South Korea. But there are also no improvised explosive devices in Seoul, and soldiers don’t get to take their families with them to Kandahar. Afghanistan was not an easy assignment like being stationed in Berlin, where you get a housing allowance that will easily pay for a luxury apartment if you are not assigned on-base housing.

This argument elides the steep casualty rate of the Afghan army, and the inevitability that American force would eventually be needed to repel the Taliban advance, which would mean more American casualties. The only alternative to withdrawal was a resumption and escalation of the war the leaders of the U.S. government have quietly known for years was not winnable.

Last week, General Mark Milley testified that contrary to Biden’s public assertions , he advised the president to maintain a residual force in Afghanistan. But he also acknowledged that the U.S.-backed Afghan government could never have survived on its own , testifying, “the end state probably would have been the same no matter when you did it.”

Few American leaders—except for those with relatives in Afghanistan—and few American families, except for those whose loved ones deployed over and over to fight a battle their leaders knew they could not win, were concerned about the fate of Afghanistan until Biden injured their pride by withdrawing. Then, people unwilling to wear a mask inside or get vaccinated to protect others from a disease killing 1,000 Americans a week were suddenly seized with an eagerness to send other people’s fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters back to an unwinnable war so they could avert the shame of defeat, the realization that the national mission to forever purge the trauma of 9/11 through military might could not succeed.

Americans grow up being taught that America is invincible; the most popular film franchise of the current moment is a 12-year monument to commercial filmmaking in which a blue-eyed World War II veteran clad in an American flag leads a posse of demigods back through time to undo an allegorical representation of 9/11. Ardent nationalists are unused to accepting trade-offs or limitations on American power, and many prefer leaders who will paper over such trade-offs with belligerent fictions about American omnipotence.

Whether it is anger over the thought of impoverished Taliban fighters outlasting the world’s most expensive and powerful military or fears over the fate of those left under Taliban rule, the lives of Afghans are but chipped tiles in the mosaic of American nationalism. There was little public anguish in the United States over the Trump administration quietly increasing civilian casualties more than 300 percent from 2017 to 2020 by relaxing rules governing air strikes, because those deaths were not understood to illustrate the limits of American power. But when Americans suffered the sting of defeat in a war they had not spent five minutes thinking about over the previous five years, then, and only then, did Afghan lives start to matter to them.

But only to a point. In an echo of the Obama era’s aggressive deportation efforts, the Biden administration has proved exceedingly frightened of the backlash from reversing Trump-era immigration policies, keeping most of them in place without placating a single one of its critics. Soon after the evacuation began, ambitious conservative politicians and media figures began warning of an “invasion” of Afghan refugees. Trump released a statement accusing the Afghans scrambling to flee Taliban rule of being potential terrorists, and weeks later, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously to block assistance to them. In fact, Afghans are fleeing an American failure, and America should open its doors to them. This nation’s history of providing shelter to people from all over the world is far more consistent than its record of military victory.

In 1869, Frederick Douglass anticipated the growing wave of nativism in the United States by arguing , “In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds.” America’s mission, he argued, was to become the “perfect national illustration of the unit and dignity of the human family, that the world has ever seen.” If America wants to be great, there are other national missions besides war.

Those who opposed withdrawal cannot plausibly argue that the U.S. military was close to completing its mission, or that another 20 years would have made a difference. But they can use Americans’ wounded pride, and the echo of the sadness and despair they felt on 9/11, to raise the costs for Joe Biden of delivering the bad news. The preoccupation with American “humiliation” in Afghanistan is a form of mourning for something the invasion was never able to do—make Americans feel as strong and invincible as they did the day before the towers fell.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Remarks by President   Biden on the End of the War in   Afghanistan

State Dining Room

3:28 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan — the longest war in American history. 

We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety.  That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible.  No nation — no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history.  Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.

The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery, and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals. 

For weeks, they risked their lives to get American citizens, Afghans who helped us, citizens of our Allies and partners, and others onboard planes and out of the country.  And they did it facing a crush of enormous crowds seeking to leave the country.  And they did it knowing ISIS-K terrorists — sworn enemies of the Taliban — were lurking in the midst of those crowds. 

And still, the men and women of the United States military, our diplomatic corps, and intelligence professionals did their job and did it well, risking their lives not for professional gains but to serve others; not in a mission of war but in a mission of mercy.  Twenty servicemembers were wounded in the service of this mission.  Thirteen heroes gave their lives.

I was just at Dover Air Force Base for the dignified transfer.  We owe them and their families a debt of gratitude we can never repay but we should never, ever, ever forget.

In April, I made the decision to end this war.  As part of that decision, we set the date of August 31st for American troops to withdraw.  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.

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 I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality — even that one.  And that’s what we did. 

So, we were ready when the Afghan Security Forces — after two decades of fighting for their country and losing thousands of their own — did not hold on as long as anyone expected. 

We were ready when they and the people of Afghanistan watched their own government collapse and their president flee amid the corruption and malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy, the Taliban, and significantly increasing the risk to U.S. personnel and our Allies.

As a result, to safely extract American citizens before August 31st — as well as embassy personnel, Allies and partners, and those Afghans who had worked with us and fought alongside of us for 20 years — I had authorized 6,000 troops — American troops — to Kabul to help secure the airport.

As General McKenzie said, this is the way the mission was designed.  It was designed to operate under severe stress and attack.  And that’s what it did.

Since March, we reached out 19 times to Americans in Afghanistan, with multiple warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan — all the way back as far as March.  After we started the evacuation 17 days ago, we did initial outreach and analysis and identified around 5,000 Americans who had decided earlier to stay in Afghanistan but now wanted to leave.

Our Operation Allied Rescue [Allies Refuge] ended up getting more than 5,500 Americans out.  We got out thousands of citizens and diplomats from those countries that went into Afghanistan with us to get bin Laden.  We got out locally employed staff of the United States Embassy and their families, totaling roughly 2,500 people.  We got thousands of Afghan translators and interpreters and others, who supported the United States, out as well.

Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave.  Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan.

The bottom line: Ninety [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.

And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline.  We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.  Secretary of State Blinken is leading the continued diplomatic efforts to ensure a safe passage for any American, Afghan partner, or foreign national who wants to leave Afghanistan.

In fact, just yesterday, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel, freedom to leave.  And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.

It will include ongoing efforts in Afghanistan to reopen the airport, as well as overland routes, allowing for continued departure to those who want to leave and delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has made public commitments, broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan, on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans.  We don’t take them by their word alone but by their actions, and we have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.

Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.

My predecessor, the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated.  It included no requirement that the Taliban work out a cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government, but it did authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan.

And by the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.

The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces, but if we stayed, all bets were off.

So we were left with a simple decision: Either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren’t leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war.

That was the choice — the real choice — between leaving or escalating.

I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.  The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors — the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the service chiefs, and the commanders in the field.

Their recommendation was that the safest way to secure the passage of the remaining Americans and others out of the country was not to continue with 6,000 troops on the ground in harm’s way in Kabul, but rather to get them out through non-military means.

In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave.  Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport. 

Again, more than 5,500 Americans were airlifted out.  And for those who remain, we will make arrangements to get them out if they so choose.

As for the Afghans, we and our partners have airlifted 100,000 of them.  No country in history has done more to airlift out the residents of another country than we have done.  We will continue to work to help more people leave the country who are at risk.  And we’re far from done.

For now, I urge all Americans to join me in grateful prayer for our troops and diplomats and intelligence officers who carried out this mission of mercy in Kabul and at tremendous risk with such unparalleled results: an airma- — an airlift that evacuated tens of thousands to a network of volunteers and veterans who helped identifies [identify] those needing evacuation, guide them to the airport, and provided them for their support along the way.

We’re going to continue to need their help.  We need your help.  And I’m looking forward to meeting with you. 

And to everyone who is now offering or who will offer to welcome Afghan allies to their homes around the world, including in America: We thank you.

I take responsibility for the decision.  Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and “Couldn’t this have be done — have been done in a more orderly manner?”  I respectfully disagree.

Imagine if we had begun evacuations in June or July, bringing in thousands of American troops and evacuating more than 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war.  There still would have been a rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government, and it still would have been a very difficult and dangerous mission.

The bottom line is: There is no evacuatio- — evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, and threats we faced.  None.

There are those who would say we should have stayed indefinitely for years on end.  They ask, “Why don’t we just keep doing what we were doing?  Why did we have to change anything?” 

The fact is: Everything had changed.  My predecessor had made a deal with the Taliban.  When I came into office, we faced a deadline — May 1.  The Taliban onslaught was coming.

We faced one of two choices: Follow the agreement of the previous administration and extend it to have — or extend to more time for people to get out; or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war.

To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask: What is the vital national interest?  In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.

Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place?  Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on September 11th, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan.

We delivered justice to bin Laden on May 2nd, 2011 — over a decade ago.  Al Qaeda was decimated.

I respectfully suggest you ask yourself this question: If we had been attacked on September 11, 2001, from Yemen instead of Afghanistan, would we have ever gone to war in Afghanistan — even though the Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2001?  I believe the honest answer is “no.”  That’s because we had no vital national interest in Afghanistan other than to prevent an attack on America’s homeland and their fr- — our friends.  And that’s true today.

We succeeded in what we set out to do in Afghanistan over a decade ago.  Then we stayed for another decade.  It was time to end this war. 

This is a new world.  The terror threat has metastasized across the world, well beyond Afghanistan.  We face threats from al-Shabaab in Somalia; al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula; and ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and establishing affiliates across Africa and Asia.  The fundamental obligation of a President, in my opinion, is to defend and protect America — not against threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow.  That is the guiding principle behind my decisions about Afghanistan.  I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars a year in Afghanistan.  But I also know that the threat from terrorism continues in its pernicious and evil nature.  But it’s changed, expanded to other countries.  Our strategy has to change too. We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries.  We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.  We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed. We’ve shown that capacity just in the last week.  We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans. 

And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet.  As Commander-in-Chief, I firmly believe the best path to guard our safety and our security lies in a tough, unforgiving, targeted, precise strategy that goes after terror where it is today, not where it was two decades ago.  That’s what’s in our national interest.  And here’s a critical thing to understand: The world is changing.  We’re engaged in a serious competition with China.  We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia.  We’re confronted with cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation.  We have to shore up America’s competitive[ness] to meet these new challenges in the competition for the 21st century.  And we can do both: fight terrorism and take on new threats that are here now and will continue to be here in the future.  And there’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan. As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nat- — our nation the last two decades, we’ve got to learn from our mistakes. To me, there are two that are paramount.  First, we must set missions with clear, achievable goals — not ones we’ll never reach.  And second, we must stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interest of the United States of America. This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan.  It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.  We saw a mission of counterterrorism in Afghanistan — getting the terrorists and stopping attacks — morph into a counterinsurgency, nation building — trying to create a democratic, cohesive, and unified Afghanistan -– something that has never been done over the many centuries of Afghans’ [Afghanistan’s] history.  Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home. 

And for anyone who gets the wrong idea, let me say it clearly.  To those who wish America harm, to those that engage in terrorism against us and our allies, know this: The United States will never rest.  We will not forgive.  We will not forget.  We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and we will — you will pay the ultimate price.

And let me be clear: We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid.  We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability.  We’ll continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls, as we speak out for women and girls all around the globe.  And I’ve been clear that human rights will be the center of our foreign policy. 

But the way to do that is not through endless military deployments, but through diplomacy, economic tools, and rallying the rest of the world for support.

My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over.  I’m the fourth President who has faced the issue of whether and when to end this war.  When I was running for President, I made a commitment to the American people that I would end this war.  And today, I’ve honored that commitment.  It was time to be honest with the American people again.  We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan. 

After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago. 

After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan — a cost that researchers at Brown University estimated would be over $300 million a day for 20 years in Afghanistan — for two decades — yes, the American people should hear this: $300 million a day for two decades.

If you take the number of $1 trillion, as many say, that’s still $150 million a day for two decades.  And what have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities?  I refused to continue in a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people. 

And most of all, after 800,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan — I’ve traveled that whole country — brave and honorable service; after 20,744 American servicemen and women injured, and the loss of 2,461 American personnel, including 13 lives lost just this week, I refused to open another decade of warfare in Afghanistan. 

We’ve been a nation too long at war.  If you’re 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace. 

So, when I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation. 

Maybe it’s because my deceased son, Beau, served in Iraq for a full year, before that.  Well, maybe it’s because of what I’ve seen over the years as senator, vice president, and president traveling these countries.

A lot of our veterans and their families have gone through hell — deployment after deployment, months and years away from their families; missed birthdays, anniversaries; empty chairs at holidays; financial struggles; divorces; loss of limbs; traumatic brain injury; posttraumatic stress. 

We see it in the struggles many have when they come home.  We see it in the strain on their families and caregivers.  We see it in the strain of their families when they’re not there.  We see it in the grief borne by their survivors.  The cost of war they will carry with them their whole lives.

Most tragically, we see it in the shocking and stunning statistic that should give pause to anyone who thinks war can ever be low-grade, low-risk, or low-cost: 18 veterans, on average, who die by suicide every single day in America — not in a far-off place, but right here in America. 

There’s nothing low-grade or low-risk or low-cost about any war.  It’s time to end the war in Afghanistan. 

As we close 20 years of war and strife and pain and sacrifice, it’s time to look to the future, not the past — to a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure, to a future that honors those who served and all those who gave what President Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion.”

I give you my word: With all of my heart, I believe this is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America.

Thank you.  Thank you.  And may God bless you all.  And may God protect our troops.

3:54 P.M. EDT

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At war with the truth

U.s. officials constantly said they were making progress. they were not, and they knew it, an exclusive post investigation found..

Konar province, 2010 (Moises Saman/Magnum Photos)

The Pentagon, 2003 (David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

Fort Campbell, KY., 2014 (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

More stories

The Afghanistan Papers

Part 1: At war with the truth

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

Click any underlined text in the story to see the statement in the original document

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

This series is the basis for a book, “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock. The book can be ordered here.

The interviews, through an extensive array of voices, bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan.

See the documents More than 2,000 pages of interviews and memos reveal a secret history of the war.

Part 2: Stranded without a strategy Conflicting objectives dogged the war from the start.

Responses to The Post from people named in The Afghanistan Papers

With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.

The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.

The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.

Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans.

The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.

(Video by Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

AFGHANISTAN

TURKMENISTAN

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

The interviews are the byproduct of a project led by Sopko’s agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Known as SIGAR, the agency was created by Congress in 2008 to investigate waste and fraud in the war zone.

In 2014, at Sopko’s direction, SIGAR departed from its usual mission of performing audits and launched a side venture. Titled “Lessons Learned,” the $11 million project was meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes the next time it invaded a country or tried to rebuild a shattered one.

The Lessons Learned staff interviewed more than 600 people with firsthand experience in the war. Most were Americans, but SIGAR analysts also traveled to London, Brussels and Berlin to interview NATO allies. In addition, they interviewed about 20 Afghan officials, discussing reconstruction and development programs.

Drawing partly on the interviews, as well as other government records and statistics, SIGAR has published seven Lessons Learned reports since 2016 that highlight problems in Afghanistan and recommend changes to stabilize the country.

But the reports, written in dense bureaucratic prose and focused on an alphabet soup of government initiatives, left out the harshest and most frank criticisms from the interviews.

“We found the stabilization strategy and the programs used to achieve it were not properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians,” read the introduction to one report released in May 2018.

The reports also omitted the names of more than 90 percent of the people who were interviewed for the project. While a few officials agreed to speak on the record to SIGAR, the agency said it promised anonymity to everyone else it interviewed to avoid controversy over politically sensitive matters.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Post began seeking Lessons Learned interview records in August 2016. SIGAR refused, arguing that the documents were privileged and that the public had no right to see them.

The Post had to sue SIGAR in federal court — twice — to compel it to release the documents.

“We don’t invade poor countries to make them rich. We don’t invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan.”

— James Dobbins, former U.S. diplomat Listen

The agency eventually disclosed more than 2,000 pages of unpublished notes and transcripts from 428 of the interviews, as well as several audio recordings.

The documents identify 62 of the people who were interviewed, but SIGAR blacked out the names of 366 others. In legal briefs, the agency contended that those individuals should be seen as whistleblowers and informants who might face humiliation, harassment, retaliation or physical harm if their names became public.

By cross-referencing dates and other details from the documents, The Post independently identified 33 other people who were interviewed, including several former ambassadors, generals and White House officials.

The Post has asked a federal judge to force SIGAR to disclose the names of everyone else interviewed, arguing that the public has a right to know which officials criticized the war and asserted that the government had misled the American people. The Post also argued the officials were not whistleblowers or informants, because they were not interviewed as part of an investigation.

A decision by Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington has been pending since late September.

The Post is publishing the documents now, instead of waiting for a final ruling, to inform the public while the Trump administration is negotiating with the Taliban and considering whether to withdraw the 13,000 U.S. troops who remain in Afghanistan.

The Post attempted to contact for comment everyone whom it was able to identify as having given an interview to SIGAR. Their responses are compiled in a separate article .

Sopko, the inspector general, told The Post that he did not suppress the blistering criticisms and doubts about the war that officials raised in the Lessons Learned interviews. He said it took his office three years to release the records because he has a small staff and because other federal agencies had to review the documents to prevent government secrets from being disclosed.

“We didn’t sit on it,” he said. “We’re firm believers in openness and transparency, but we’ve got to follow the law. . . . I think of any inspector general, I’ve probably been the most forthcoming on information.”

The interview records are raw and unedited, and SIGAR’s Lessons Learned staff did not stitch them into a unified narrative. But they are packed with tough judgments from people who shaped or carried out U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

From left, Gen. David H. Petraeus, Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., in 2009 as President Barack Obama publicly outlined his plans for a troop surge in Afghanistan. (Christopher Morris/VII/Redux)

To augment the Lessons Learned interviews, The Post obtained hundreds of pages of previously classified memos about the Afghan war that were dictated by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld between 2001 and 2006.

Dubbed “snowflakes” by Rumsfeld and his staff, the memos are brief instructions or comments that the Pentagon boss dictated to his underlings, often several times a day.

Rumsfeld made a select number of his snowflakes public in 2011, posting them online in conjunction with his memoir, “Known and Unknown.” But most of his snowflake collection — an estimated 59,000 pages — remained secret.

In 2017, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive , a nonprofit research institute based at George Washington University, the Defense Department began reviewing and releasing the remainder of Rumsfeld’s snowflakes on a rolling basis. The Archive shared them with The Post.

Together, the SIGAR interviews and the Rumsfeld memos pertaining to Afghanistan constitute a secret history of the war and an unsparing appraisal of 18 years of conflict.

Worded in Rumsfeld’s brusque style, many of the snowflakes foreshadow problems that continue to haunt the U.S. military more than a decade later.

The memo was dated April 17, 2002 — six months after the war started.

What they said in public April 17, 2002

“The history of military conflict in Afghanistan [has] been one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.”

— President George W. Bush, in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute

With their forthright descriptions of how the United States became stuck in a faraway war, as well as the government's determination to conceal them from the public, the Lessons Learned interviews broadly resemble the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's top-secret history of the Vietnam War.

When they were leaked in 1971, the Pentagon Papers caused a sensation by revealing the government had long misled the public about how the United States came to be embroiled in Vietnam.

Bound into 47 volumes, the 7,000-page study was based entirely on internal government documents — diplomatic cables, decision-making memos, intelligence reports. To preserve secrecy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara issued an order prohibiting the authors from interviewing anyone.

SIGAR’s Lessons Learned project faced no such restrictions. Staffers carried out the interviews between 2014 and 2018, mostly with officials who served during the Bush and Obama years.

About 30 of the interview records are transcribed, word-for-word accounts. The rest are typed summaries of conversations: pages of notes and quotes from people with different vantage points in the conflict, from provincial outposts to the highest circles of power.

Some of the interviews are inexplicably short. The interview record with John Allen, the Marine general who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, consists of five paragraphs.

In contrast, records of interviews with other influential figures are much more extensive. Former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker sat for two interviews that yielded 95 transcribed pages.

Unlike the Pentagon Papers, none of the Lessons Learned documents were originally classified as a government secret. Once The Post pushed to make them public, however, other federal agencies intervened and classified some material after the fact.

The State Department, for instance, asserted that releasing portions of certain interviews could jeopardize negotiations with the Taliban to end the war. The Defense Department and Drug Enforcement Administration also classified some interview excerpts.

The Lessons Learned interviews contain few revelations about military operations. But running throughout are torrents of criticism that refute the official narrative of the war, from its earliest days through the start of the Trump administration.

At the outset, for instance, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had a clear, stated objective — to retaliate against al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A joint artillery training session at a combat outpost in Jaghatu, in Wardak province, in 2012. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)

Yet the interviews show that as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the U.S. strategy took root inside the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.

Fundamental disagreements went unresolved. Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights. Still others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.

The Lessons Learned interviews also reveal how U.S. military commanders struggled to articulate who they were fighting, let alone why.

Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? What about the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, let alone the warlords on the CIA’s payroll? According to the documents, the U.S. government never settled on an answer.

As a result, in the field, U.S. troops often couldn’t tell friend from foe.

The view wasn’t any clearer from the Pentagon.

What they said in public Dec. 1, 2009

“The days of providing a blank check are over. . . . It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”

— President Barack Obama, in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

As commanders in chief, Bush, Obama and Trump all promised the public the same thing. They would avoid falling into the trap of "nation-building" in Afghanistan.

On that score, the presidents failed miserably. The United States has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II.

The Lessons Learned interviews show the grandiose nation-building project was marred from the start.

U.S. officials tried to create — from scratch — a democratic government in Kabul modeled after their own in Washington. It was a foreign concept to the Afghans, who were accustomed to tribalism, monarchism, communism and Islamic law.

Meanwhile, the United States flooded the fragile country with far more aid than it could possibly absorb.

During the peak of the fighting, from 2009 to 2012, U.S. lawmakers and military commanders believed the more they spent on schools, bridges, canals and other civil-works projects, the faster security would improve. Aid workers told government interviewers it was a colossal misjudgment, akin to pumping kerosene on a dying campfire just to keep the flame alive.

U.S. soldiers wounded by an IED are transported by medevac in Kandahar province in 2010. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Many aid workers blamed Congress for what they saw as a mindless rush to spend.

The gusher of aid that Washington spent on Afghanistan also gave rise to historic levels of corruption.

In public, U.S. officials insisted they had no tolerance for graft. But in the Lessons Learned interviews, they admitted the U.S. government looked the other way while Afghan power brokers — allies of Washington — plundered with impunity.

A banner depicting President Hamid Karzai in Kabul shortly after the country’s 2004 election. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

By allowing corruption to fester, U.S. officials told interviewers, they helped destroy the popular legitimacy of the wobbly Afghan government they were fighting to prop up. With judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes, many Afghans soured on democracy and turned to the Taliban to enforce order.

What they said in public Sept. 4, 2013

“This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day. And I think that’s an important story to be told across the board.”

— Then-Army Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, praising the Afghan security forces during a press briefing from Kabul. Milley is now a four-star general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.

In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”

None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable.

Afghan army recruits in Kabul in 2009. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

Meanwhile, as U.S. hopes for the Afghan security forces failed to materialize, Afghanistan became the world’s leading source of a growing scourge: opium.

The United States has spent about $9 billion to fight the problem over the past 18 years, but Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium poppies than ever. Last year, Afghanistan was responsible for 82 percent of global opium production, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In the Lessons Learned interviews, former officials said almost everything they did to constrain opium farming backfired.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks to U.S. troops in 2013 at Camp Bastion, in Helmand province. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

From the beginning, Washington never really figured out how to incorporate a war on drugs into its war against al-Qaeda. By 2006, U.S. officials feared that narco-traffickers had become stronger than the Afghan government and that money from the drug trade was powering the insurgency.

No single agency or country was in charge of the Afghan drug strategy for the entirety of the war, so the State Department, the DEA, the U.S. military, NATO allies and the Afghan government butted heads constantly.

The agencies and allies made things worse by embracing a dysfunctional muddle of programs, according to the interviews.

At first, Afghan poppy farmers were paid by the British to destroy their crops — which only encouraged them to grow more the next season. Later, the U.S. government eradicated poppy fields without compensation — which only infuriated farmers and encouraged them to side with the Taliban.

What they said in public Sept. 8, 2008

“Are we losing this war? Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.”

— Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, in a news briefing from Afghanistan

The specter of Vietnam has hovered over Afghanistan from the start.

On Oct. 11, 2001, a few days after the United States started bombing the Taliban, a reporter asked Bush: “Can you avoid being drawn into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?”

“We learned some very important lessons in Vietnam,” Bush replied confidently. “People often ask me, ‘How long will this last?’ This particular battlefront will last as long as it takes to bring al-Qaeda to justice. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a month from now, it may take a year or two. But we will prevail.”

In those early days, other U.S. leaders mocked the notion that the nightmare of Vietnam might repeat itself in Afghanistan.

“All together now — quagmire!” Rumsfeld joked at a news conference on Nov. 27, 2001.

But throughout the Afghan war, documents show that U.S. military officials have resorted to an old tactic from Vietnam — manipulating public opinion.

In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going — and especially when it is going badly — they emphasize how they are making progress.

For example, some snowflakes that Rumsfeld released with his memoir show he had received a string of unusually dire warnings from the war zone in 2006.

After returning from a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general, reported the Taliban had made an impressive comeback and predicted that “we will encounter some very unpleasant surprises in the coming 24 months.”

“The Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming few years — leaving NATO holding the bag — and the whole thing will collapse again into mayhem,” McCaffrey wrote in June 2006.

Two months later, Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Rumsfeld, gave the Pentagon chief a classified, 40-page report loaded with more bad news. It said “enormous popular discontent is building” against the Afghan government because of its corruption and incompetence. It also said that the Taliban was growing stronger, thanks to support from Pakistan, a U.S. ally.

Yet with Rumsfeld’s personal blessing, the Pentagon buried the bleak warnings and told the public a very different story.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, left, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in March 2002. (Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post)

In October 2006, Rumsfeld’s speechwriters delivered a paper titled “Afghanistan: Five Years Later.” Brimming with optimism, it highlighted more than 50 promising facts and figures, from the number of Afghan women trained in “improved poultry management” (more than 19,000) to the “average speed on most roads” (up 300 percent).

“Five years on, there is a multitude of good news,” it read. “While it has become fashionable in some circles to call Afghanistan a forgotten war, or to say the United States has lost its focus, the facts belie the myths.”

Rumsfeld thought it was brilliant.

“This paper,” he wrote in a memo, “is an excellent piece. How do we use it? Should it be an article? An Op-ed piece? A handout? A press briefing? All of the above? I think it ought to get it to a lot of people.”

His staffers made sure it did. They circulated a version to reporters and posted it on Pentagon websites.

Since then, U.S. generals have almost always preached that the war is progressing well, no matter the reality on the battlefield.

“We’re making some steady progress,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told reporters in September 2008, even as he and other U.S. commanders in Kabul were urgently requesting reinforcements to cope with a rising tide of Taliban fighters.

Two years later, as the casualty rate among U.S. and NATO troops climbed to another high, Army Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez held a news conference in Kabul.

“First, we are steadily making deliberate progress,” he said.

“And this includes the State Department, ambassadors, you know, down at the local level. Everybody did a great job. We’re all doing a great job. Really? So if we’re doing such a great job, why does it feel like we’re losing?”

— Michael Flynn, a retired three-star Army general Listen

In March 2011, during congressional hearings, skeptical lawmakers pelted Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, with doubts that the U.S. strategy was working.

“The past eight months have seen important but hard-fought progress,” Petraeus responded.

One year later, during a visit to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stuck to the same script — even though he had just personally dodged a suicide attack.

“The campaign, as I’ve pointed out before, I think has made significant progress,” Panetta told reporters.

In July 2016, after a surge in Taliban attacks on major cities, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the time, repeated the refrain.

“We are seeing some progress,” he told reporters.

What they said in public March 27, 2009

“Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.”

— Obama, in remarks from the White House

During Vietnam, U.S. military commanders relied on dubious measurements to persuade Americans that they were winning.

Most notoriously, the Pentagon highlighted “body counts,” or the number of enemy fighters killed, and inflated the figures as a measurement of success.

In Afghanistan, with occasional exceptions, the U.S. military has generally avoided publicizing body counts. But the Lessons Learned interviews contain numerous admissions that the government routinely touted statistics that officials knew were distorted, spurious or downright false.

The toll of war

Since 2001, an estimated 157,000 people have been killed in the war in Afghanistan.

Afghan security forces

Afghan civilians

Taliban fighters and other insurgents

U.S. contractors

U.S. military personnel

NATO and coalition troops

Humanitarian aid workers

Journalists and media workers

Note: U.S. military number is current through November 2019. The other figures and estimates are current as of October 2019.

Sources: Defense Department; Costs of War Project, Brown University; U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan; Committee to Protect Journalists

Journalists and media

Note: U.S. military number is current through November 2019.

The other figures and estimates are current as of October 2019.

Note: U.S. military number is current through November 2019. The other figures and

estimates are current as of October 2019.

Note: U.S. military number is current through November 2019. The other figures and estimates are current

as of October 2019.

A person identified only as a senior National Security Council official said there was constant pressure from the Obama White House and Pentagon to produce figures to show the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard evidence to the contrary.

Even when casualty counts and other figures looked bad, the senior NSC official said, the White House and Pentagon would spin them to the point of absurdity. Suicide bombings in Kabul were portrayed as a sign of the Taliban’s desperation, that the insurgents were too weak to engage in direct combat. Meanwhile, a rise in U.S. troop deaths was cited as proof that American forces were taking the fight to the enemy.

The remains of Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in August 2014. Greene was the first U.S. general killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

“It was their explanations,” the senior NSC official said. “For example, attacks are getting worse? ‘That’s because there are more targets for them to fire at, so more attacks are a false indicator of instability.’ Then, three months later, attacks are still getting worse? ‘It’s because the Taliban are getting desperate, so it’s actually an indicator that we’re winning.’ ”

“And this went on and on for two reasons,” the senior NSC official said, “to make everyone involved look good, and to make it look like the troops and resources were having the kind of effect where removing them would cause the country to deteriorate.”

In other field reports sent up the chain of command, military officers and diplomats took the same line. Regardless of conditions on the ground, they claimed they were making progress.

Upon arrival in Afghanistan, U.S. Army brigade and battalion commanders were given the same basic mission: to protect the population and defeat the enemy, according to Flynn, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer.

Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez arrives at Forward Operating Base Pasab in Kandahar province for a transfer-of-authority ceremony in 2011. (Mikhail Galustov for The Washington Post)

John Garofano, a Naval War College strategist who advised Marines in Helmand province in 2011, said military officials in the field devoted an inordinate amount of resources to churning out color-coded charts that heralded positive results.

But Garofano said nobody dared to question whether the charts and numbers were credible or meaningful.

Other senior officials said they placed great importance on one statistic in particular, albeit one the U.S. government rarely likes to discuss in public.

“I do think the key benchmark is the one I’ve suggested, which is how many Afghans are getting killed,” James Dobbins, the former U.S. diplomat, told a Senate panel in 2009. “If the number’s going up, you’re losing. If the number’s going down, you’re winning. It’s as simple as that.”

Last year, 3,804 Afghan civilians were killed in the war, according to the United Nations.

That is the most in one year since the United Nations began tracking casualties a decade ago.

Craig Whitlock

Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter who specializes in national security issues. He has covered the Pentagon, served as the Berlin bureau chief and reported from more than 60 countries. He joined The Washington Post in 1998.

About this story

Design and development by Jake Crump, Armand Emamdjomeh and Matt Callahan. Editing by David Fallis and Jeff Leen. Photo editing, research and document illustration by Nick Kirkpatrick. Graphics by Laris Karklis and Leslie Shapiro. Copy editing by J.J. Evans. Video by Joyce Lee. Senior video production by Tom LeGro. Audio editing by Ted Muldoon. Digital operations by María Sánchez Díez. Audience engagement by Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn and Ric Sanchez. Project management by Julie Vitkovskaya.

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