Twenty years on and so many lives lost, and so many billions of dollars spent, what was it for?

The desire to stay at home and shut yourself away from a troubling world is completely understandable. There is no surprise that "America First" as a slogan had such resonance. George W Bush was not advocating that back in 2001 - but there were no US troops in Afghanistan or Iraq then. And that didn't keep America safe when early that morning, across those gin-clear blue skies passenger aeroplanes were hijacked and became al-Qaeda-guided missiles, flying into their targets killing thousands of people doing nothing more provocative than going about their daily lives. There's also a difference between enforcing your will as the world's policeman, and being a peacekeeper. Thousands of American troops are still stationed in South Korea - even though the Korean war was 70 years ago. The calculation of successive US presidents has been that a tense peace is better than a hot war or a destabilised region. Joe Biden was hoping his decision would result in headlines like "Afghan War Ends" or "America's longest war is over". But 20 years on, and the Taliban now re-establishing control with all that could flow from that, might historians in future judge that the 20th anniversary marked the start of the second Afghan war?

Jon Sopel 

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