In 2021 alone, 10,000 military troops from 36 different countries, including the United States, Germany, and even countries that aren't members of NATO, such as Australia and Mongolia, were sent into Afghanistan to participate in the 20-year ongoing fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This decision was made by the Resolute Support Mission or RSM. RSM, which NATO founded in 2015, was created to assist Afghan defense and protect civilians inside Kabul. On top of that, RSM also aimed at keeping the main objective of the war on terror, initially declared by George W. Bush, "A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them" (National Archives). 

So was the United States and NATO right to depart from Afghanistan after two decades of vicious warfare? Is it fair to run away from the Taliban and leave the Afghan military to fight independently after considerable progress in the country's development? Or should the United States have even been involved with the Taliban in the first place? There are many different sides to this unforgiving conflict. The impact of the withdrawal of foreign military in Afghanistan has shown its terror and will continue to for years to come.

A reason why some find NATO's exit from Afghanistan unreasonable and cruel towards the Afghan people is the significance of having military forces fighting the Taliban to protect Kabul and other Afghan regions. Others might even criticize how Joseph Biden's administration handled the leave, almost as if he decided that it wasn't his problem to deal with. "The U.S. is learning for the second time in half a century that the will to fight trumps western military training, technological superiority and money" (Lang). As seen in the retreat from Saigon in 1973 and Afghanistan, the "will to fight" is a more powerful force than a 2 trillion dollar spending budget. As said by former British prime minister Tony Blair, Joe Biden was "in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars,' as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even 10 years ago" (Pylas Pan). 

Blair's claim about the intensity and involvement that the West has had in Afghanistan does hold some truth on the surface, at least in how seemingly important it is in recent years. However, the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan would say otherwise about the "engagement" that NATO has had throughout America's longest war. As I previously stated, there were around 10,000 people deployed in Afghanistan in 2021, a similar number to the one in 2002, a year after 9/11, when the United States' presence in the Middle East was more widely known. As a whole, sending unwanted foreign military into countries has never worked out. Turning cities like Baghdad and Tripoli into battlegrounds at the cost of the lives of innocent citizens while seizing oil wells to gain global power and influence is one of the reasons civil warfare in the Sahara, Sahel, and Middle East is so common. For example, Libya, a country that, in 2011, used to be the fourth wealthiest country in Africa and by far the richest in North Africa. Four years later, in 2015, it was only the 7th richest. Now in 2022, it isn't even in the top ten. So what happened between 2011 and now? Long story short, America got involved. This so unimportant fight that remains relatively unknown eventually led to where Libya is currently and indirectly caused the slave trade of sub-Saharan immigrants.

Coming back to the Afghanistan departure, I believe that while the United States had a level of responsibility to keep the Taliban from taking control of Afghanistan and continuing to fight Al-Qaeda. However, In my opinion, I felt like Joe Biden accurately described the reason for the withdrawal when he stated, "our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be about nation-building." (Lang). Fighting and exterminating Al-Qaeda was the initial reason for the invasion of Afghanistan. Still, in the same year as the deployment of the U.S. military, the Taliban leadership had already been toppled and replaced by a western-instated democracy. Not until ten years after the killing of Osama bin Laden did the U.S. leave the nation. All the while, the U.S. was influencing and participating in multiple other wars ongoing in other Middle-Eastern countries. Such as the invasion of Libya that I mentioned previously.

Overall, though there are many different opinions on this conflict, for the most part, it seems as if the debate of whether to stay or leave Afghanistan came down to who was more valuable. Is it the many army recruits forced to fight and risk their lives for more meaningful and influential people, making decisions from an air-conditioned office building in Virginia? Or is it the millions of women and children in Afghanistan whose lives are now threatened by the Taliban? For the ten years after Osama bin Laden, it seemed as if it had been the former, but it looks as if their decision had changed.