Last week, American troops left their main base in Afghanistan, bringing an effective end to a two-decade war in which more than 3,500 international troops and 100,000 civilians were killed. They leave behind an unstable region, which some fear could descend into civil war. And they join tens of thousands of veterans back home who will continue an internal battle for decades to come.

We asked veterans who served in Afghanistan to share their perspectives as America’s longest war comes to a close. They shared feelings of grief for the friends they lost, relief after 20 years of conflict and uncertainty over what comes next, both in Afghanistan and at home.

Here are some of their responses, lightly edited.

Nivardo Gonzalez

Marine Corps | Served in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013

When I got out of the service, I thought I was done fighting.

I thought that my time in the war was over, so I was done being a warrior or fighter. But in reality, that’s exactly when the fight started, and the fight is always going to continue.

I know that Biden is withdrawing the troops, but the fight is going to continue. There’s still a terrorist threat out there and there’s still going to be some hard chargers out there eliminating them. For us back home, the fight continues with our mental health – the battle that’s going on between our ears.

When I got out, it was just a matter of going through my life and trying to continue to move forward. I started going to school. But in 2016, one of the buddies from my squad died by suicide. And that really affected me. I knew I had to do something different.

At that point in my life, I wasn’t in a good place. It looked good from the outside looking in: going to school and just trying to be positive and move forward with my life after the Marine Corps. But, you’re being dragged down by these emotions and these internal issues that you don’t really know how to put into words.

So when that happened, that’s when I asked for help. I went through a veteran center and I started seeing a therapist, and to be honest with you, if there’s anything that I could say to any other veteran out there, it’s that if you’re struggling with your mental health, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I didn’t understand that before, though.

“When I got out of the service, I thought I was done fighting.”

Marissa Readinger

Army | Served in Afghanistan in 2012

I think, as a whole, America’s influence and impact around the globe is and forever will be important. I don't believe that it needs to be warfare and combat necessarily, but I think the fact that there can be a positive side of what we do and how we can help, influence and coach. That being my perspective, looking at Afghanistan, and understanding from my meager little measly position, I'm not sure that the combat operations and the war that we’re technically still in is the best way in which we can influence positive outcomes in that part of the world.

With the women of the region where we were – we were in a very remote region of the country – and we held a women’s clinic for one day. We were able to bring in a doctor and support, so that was a nice experience. Again, I think to toggle it into a larger picture, the concern is, ‘OK, that was one day and that was like Tylenol to cure a woman that has cancer.’ And that's just not sustainable for any party – us or them – because we're obviously not going to help her long term.

The question then becomes ‘what are we doing? Is this worth anyone’s while in the long run?’

Before I deployed, I certainly would have been one to agree that we need to stick it out and finish the fight. But having been there – and again, I am like low man on any totem pole of power – but the perspective on the ground is like, ‘I'm just not sure.’

The sustainability, the effect of this, the real impact, I don't know.

That's why I say it’s nuanced, it’s like I get it, it’s not easy, but I don’t know that staying there forever and a day is the right thing either. 

“The question then becomes ‘what are we doing? Is this worth anyone's while in the long run?’”

Matthew Gibbs

Military Intelligence | Served in Afghanistan in 2012

The troop withdrawal is long overdue. I deployed nearly a decade ago, and the war was nearly a decade old then. I’m glad leadership has finally decided it’s time to stop sending Americans to kill and be killed for...what?

We had tenuous reasons, at best, at the start of the war, but then once the second decade of the war came around, it seemed like it was just a sunken cost fallacy and nobody wanted to be the one to give up and say, you know, there is no endgame here. We’re not going to win.

I know a few years ago when they said that it was going to be the end of combat operations in Afghanistan. My friends, people I went to school with, they didn’t even know we were still over there. Most Americans had moved on.

And we were just cogs in the machine and it didn’t make a difference and our friends died. And what was it for?

“Our friends died and what was it for?”

Peter Martuneac

Marine Corps | Served in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013

I would say it’s past time for the war to end, frankly, because we never really had any end state set up. In wars past, there’s always an end state. In World War Two it was the surrender of the Nazi and the Japanese empires. And this time, even the top general has a hard time saying what victory is supposed to look like. And if you can’t tell us what victory even looks like, how can there ever be a victory? If you don’t really have a path to ending a war, then you just have to end it. You’ve got to put a stop to it, regardless of whether you think you won or not.

I have an 8-year-old and a 3-year-old. And once becoming a father, seeing the war go on and on, I always worried, are my kids going to end up fighting in the same country that I did? The war was old when I was there. I worried about seeing them forced into the same exact country that I was.

“I wondered, are my kids going to end up fighting in the same country I did?”

Jeffrey Chapdelaine

Army | Served in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011

It’s 2021. There are kids – I know they’re legally adults – but they’re 18, 19 years old and they’re over there. They weren’t even conceived when 9/11 happened. When I served, many of us knew where we were when that happened; we knew we knew the moment, the time, what classroom we were sitting in, or what room in our homes. It’s outrageous that we have kids who didn’t even know the political climate of the time when we started this endeavor.

The fact that President Biden said we need to draw this to a close, part of it felt like it was the first time any real major attention has been brought to the conflict in so long. It’s a place that has been occupied time and time again by multiple Western powers. We trained Afghani police and the Afghan army. The men and women born and raised in Afghanistan are the fruit of that land. They stepped up and they said they wanted to see change and they wanted to protect what was dear to them.

It just seems that all we focus on is our coalition’s casualties when there’s collateral damage and that collateral damage is people.

“It felt like it was the first time any real major attention has been brought to the conflict in so long.”

Aaron Green

Navy | Served in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2013

Like a lot of people, I didn’t really know what we were doing there. I was working at a small unit attached to the State Department. We were liaisons between military forces there and diplomatic forces. I got to see both sides of the war, so to speak. A lot of good things happened, but for the most part, it was a waste. As soon as we leave, it’s going to go back to the way it was.

From what I understand – I’m not a policymaker by any means, just an enforcer – from trying to get the Taliban out and keep them from having a foothold, it turned into not thinking it’s our responsibility. And I don’t think that we did a very good job of it.

For example, we built a base for the Afghan army and we built it to U.S. standards with these elaborate kitchens and stainless steel products and propane. And these guys were used to cooking in clay pots. Without us there to use it, they wouldn’t use it either, they just aren’t accustomed to it. Trying to impose our standards on people who are unfamiliar and unwilling to accept them is just futile.

I wanted to adopt a girl from an orphanage there, but I couldn’t because I’m not Muslim. There are all these kids in the orphanages because their mothers were in jail and their dads died because of the war. Their moms had to work or steal just to survive – and women can’t work in some places. So they’d go to jail with the kids, but these orphanages go and rescue them. It’s mind-boggling to see.

I was in a very unique unit. We drove all around. It was just me and my battle buddy, we didn’t go in a convoy. We just did whatever we needed to do, a lot of guardian angel work. We noticed the street kids around our different routes, they’re always hanging around. So we’d always carry candy, water, and sometimes change and American money to give to them. And it always broke my heart when I would offer them chocolate or candy and they would say no and point to the water. They just want clean water.

“As soon as we leave, it’s going to go back to the way it was.”

John Byrnes

Army and Marine Corp | Served in Afghanistan in 2008

It’s just such a waste. I’ve lost close to a dozen friends and comrades to the war in Afghanistan, which is especially tough that we’re still there more than 20 years later. We’ve lost trillions of dollars there. You may have seen some of the waste that we’ve expanded there, some of the equipment that we’ve lost. I was a non-commissioned officer (NCO), a staff sergeant, and I was part of a training team training Afghan National Police and sometimes Afghan National Army soldiers. I had a commanders operating fund we call ‘foo money’ and I disbursed tens of thousands of U.S. dollars a month on literally graveling over pieces of the desert for parking lots to keep dust settling. You multiply that by 20 years, by literally thousands and thousands of NCOs. You start to see what we spent a trillion dollars on: gravel in the desert. Things like that started to pile up in my mind.

It’s a nation-building effort. We’ve been doing it for 19 of the 20 years we’ve been there and we’re building a nation that remains pretty much where it was culturally and technologically 20 years ago. So when we talk about opportunity costs, the opportunity cost of some of the money that could have gone toward education or infrastructure, and the lives that were lost that could have been the next Einstein or the next Freud, it’s just crazy.

I’m proud that I served, but I’m also very proud that I’m now part of a movement to question our thinking on foreign policy and to really to support the last two presidents’ push to get us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

“We’re building a nation that remains pretty much where it was culturally and technologically 20 years ago.”