A month after that, I got an assignment to go to northern Afghanistan. Their soldiers had repelled a Taliban offensive in 1997, and massacred thousands of the Taliban prisoners they had captured. Air Force flights from as far away as Germany were dropping American military and humanitarian food packets in an effort to win hearts and minds. This was taken aboard the ferry connecting the east and west sides of the American military base. Even as the American war in Afghanistan ends in both ignominy and relief, the conflicts there and in dozens of other places continue.

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