George W. Bush

November 13, 2001 · 1,000 total casualties

The fall of Kabul seemed to validate the 'light footprint' approach — a few hundred CIA officers and Special Forces, combined with air power and local proxies, had destroyed a government in weeks. The lesson drawn — that America could topple regimes cheaply — directly enabled the decision to invade Iraq 16 months later. What seemed like a model of efficiency was actually concealing a critical failure: the Taliban had melted away, not been destroyed.

December 6–17, 2001 · 300 total casualties

Tora Bora was one of the most consequential failures in US military history. The decision not to deploy sufficient US forces to seal the border allowed the entire Al-Qaeda leadership to escape. Bin Laden would not be killed for another decade. The Taliban's senior leadership similarly escaped to Pakistan, where they reconstituted. The decision to rely on Afghan proxies at the decisive moment cost the US the war's best opportunity to end the conflict quickly.

August 15, 2021 · 500 total casualties

The fall of Kabul was one of the most jarring televised moments in modern American history. The images of Afghans falling from aircraft recalled Saigon in 1975. The collapse raised fundamental questions about what 20 years of war had achieved, about the limits of military power to build nations, and about whether the US understood the countries it chose to occupy. The Taliban, who had been in power in 1996, were back in power in 2021 — and the Afghan government proved to have no popular legitimacy at all.