Five years have passed since the chaotic retreat of U.S. forces from Kabul, an event that marked the end of the Nato-backed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Launched in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC, the campaign is now widely viewed as a failure. The conflict claimed the lives of more than 2,400 U.S. troops, 450 British soldiers, and tens of thousands of civilians, with the exact toll of the latter remaining unknown. Despite routing al-Qaida, the U.S. departure in 2021 saw the Taliban return to power, reimposing a repressive and misogynistic regime. Afghanistan has since become a symbol of failed nation-building and the archetype of the "forever war," a phrase first coined during the Vietnam era.
The lessons of that conflict were intended to serve as a deterrent against rash, open-ended military interventions without just cause, defined aims, or an exit strategy. However, the U.S. and UK disregarded these warnings in 2003 by invading Iraq, a war that caused immense harm for little benefit before ending in 2011. Now, critics fear that Donald Trump’s decision to engage Iran is following the same disastrous pattern. Described by the president as a "little excursion," the conflict is entering its sixth month and shows signs of rapid escalation, manifesting the same "forever" characteristics as previous engagements.
Carter Malkasian, a National War College professor and former civilian adviser in Helmand and Kabul, argues that the premise for the 20-year Afghan occupation—the fear that the country would otherwise revert to being a safe haven for international terrorism—was fundamentally flawed. Malkasian notes that in the five years since the U.S. withdrawal, not a single act of terrorism against the U.S. has been carried out by a group based in Afghanistan. Despite this, Washington spent roughly $1tn and deployed over 775,000 service members to counter a threat he characterizes as exaggerated. Malkasian warns that the greatest danger today is not a return of terrorist safe havens, but a "collective forgetting" of the human, financial, and geopolitical costs of such conflicts.
The Iraq invasion was similarly built on false assumptions, specifically regarding George W. Bush’s 2002 claim that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was seeking a nuclear bomb. Furthermore, the claim from then-vice-president Dick Cheney that Iraq "aids and protects" al-Qaida also proved untrue. According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, direct post-9/11 violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan resulted in an estimated 940,000 deaths between 2001 and 2023, with indirect deaths reaching as high as 3.8 million.
Observers suggest that fear, insecurity, and political hubris drive these interventions. Like George W. Bush before him, Donald Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have been accused of knowingly exaggerating the existential nature of the Iranian threat. Despite these claims, Iran possesses no nuclear weapons, and there is zero firm evidence it is trying to acquire them. The current situation is further complicated by the erosion of U.S. diplomacy, accelerated under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and a lack of effective UN mediation. Critics argue that Trump’s ego and refusal to admit error are fueling a conflict that risks thousands more civilian lives and further destabilizes the Middle East, ultimately defining his presidency by an "abysmal Iranian catastrophe."
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