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President Joe Biden is set to mark the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks at the Pentagon, a year after he ended the long and costly war in Afghanistan that the U.S. and allies launched in response to the terror attacks.
In ending the Afghanistan war, the Democratic president followed through on a campaign pledge to bring home U.S. troops from the country’s longest conflict. But the war concluded chaotically in August 2021, when the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in the face of a countrywide Taliban advance that returned the fundamentalist group to power. A bombing claimed by an Afghanistan-based extremist group killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at Kabul’s airport, where thousands of desperate Afghans gathered in hopes of escape before the final U.S. cargo planes departed over the Hindu Kush.
