Instantly iconic imagery now bookends the lost war in Afghanistan, telling a poignant tale of a just venture born out of national tragedy ending in a chaotic US retreat on President Joe Biden's watch.
On September 14, 2001, President George W. Bush stood on a twisted concrete pyre at Ground Zero in New York and vowed through a bullhorn: "The people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon."
On Monday, 19 years and 11 months later, desperate Afghans fleeing the Taliban reinstatement, a decade after the US won its revenge against Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan, clung to a departing US cargo aircraft at Kabul airport. Several apparently fatally fell to earth after takeoff, hauntingly recalling those who leapt to their deaths from the Twin Towers rather than burn in the inferno set off by airliners hijacked by the Taliban's terrorist guests -- al Qaeda -- on September 11, 2001.
