I served in Afghanistan as a young Army officer. I went because my father was in the Pentagon on 9/11, and like many in my generation, I believed in the mission to deny terrorists safe haven and to give Afghans a chance at freedom.
In the years after international intervention, Afghanistan saw real, if fragile, progress for women and girls. Schools reopened their doors to daughters as well as sons. Women reentered the workforce and even held seats in parliament. The 2003 constitution enshrined equal rights, and in 2009, the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law marked a landmark step forward. Yet discrimination remained pervasive. By 2011, Afghanistan was still ranked the most dangerous country in the world to be a woman. And yet, amid these contradictions, hope persisted—a generation of girls dared to believe their future could be brighter than their mothers’ past.
That is why August 2021 was not just the end of America’s longest war. It was the extinguishing of possibility, especially for women and girls.
I do not argue that America should have stayed in Afghanistan indefinitely. After twenty years, the mission had become blurred, sustained more by inertia than strategy. We built institutions in appearance only, mistaking form for substance. We propped up a government that functioned on paper but not in practice.
It was a house of cards, and when we pulled out, it collapsed. But collapse was not inevitable. It was the consequence of years of unexamined assumptions, strategic drift, and political expediency.
The United States lost credibility. Thirteen brave American service members lost their lives at Abbey Gate. But one of the heaviest and most enduring prices has been borne by Afghan women and girls.
For them, the lights quite literally went out. Schools closed. Jobs disappeared. Dreams were suffocated. Women and girls have been told they cannot be seen or heard as draconian laws force them to remain covered, quiet, and confined. A generation raised with the promise of progress was forced back into the shadows, condemned once again to silence and subjugation.
We spent two decades telling Afghan women that their rights mattered. And then, in the moment of truth, we showed them they did not. That betrayal will echo for years, across Afghanistan and across the world.
The collapse in Afghanistan was not only humanitarian. It was geopolitical. Adversaries from Moscow to Beijing saw America retreat in chaos and drew conclusions about our staying power. Allies wondered if our word could be trusted. And oppressed peoples everywhere saw the message: American support for freedom is conditional.
But the greatest consequence remains with those who cannot speak freely about it: the women and girls now trapped in a regime where their very existence is controlled.
The lesson of Afghanistan is not that we should fight forever wars, nor that America must be everywhere. The lesson is that strategy matters—that ends, ways, and means must align. That we cannot build Potemkin governments and then act surprised when they collapse. And that abandoning the most vulnerable—those who trusted us most—comes at an immeasurable cost to our credibility and our conscience.
As a veteran, I honor the 13 who gave their lives at Abbey Gate. I honor every American and Afghan who served with courage and sacrifice. But remembrance is not enough.
We must ensure that when America engages, it does so with clarity, coherence, and moral purpose. And that, when we make promises to women and girls living under oppression, we keep them.
Because when the lights went out in Afghanistan, the whole world grew darker. And the only way to honor that loss is to ensure we never again repeat it.