Afghanistan

THE U.S. WAR IN AFGHANISTAN HAS FINALLY ENDED.

The Afghan government collapsed, the Afghan military dissolved, U.S. troops returned home, and the Taliban are in control of the country. But there remains stark disagreement—or at least confusion—about what lessons are most important for U.S. policymakers to internalize from the nearly 20-year war.

The stakes are high. Elements of the U.S. war in Afghanistan are echoed in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and other counterterrorism deployments in dozens of other countries around the world. Properly assessing what went wrong is critical to avoiding the costly mistakes that husbanded this failure.

Defense Priorities organized this symposium to stimulate thinking about the most important lesson U.S. strategists and decisionmakers should take away from America’s longest war. Below are responses from scholars and experts who—unlike the architects and proponents of the 20-year war—were right about U.S.-Afghanistan policy.