Longest war: Were America’s decades in Afghanistan worth it?

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press

As the United States ends the nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan and as the Taliban recapture much of the country, Americans are asking if the longest war in their history was worth the cost. A U.S. Marine who served four deployments in Afghanistan says he’s convinced that even a handful of Afghan villages isn’t worth the life of single more dead Marine. But in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, a 21-year-old woman talks of growing up under the protection of U.S. troops, and of a life that’s far better than her mother’s. While the U.S. war broke up al-Qaida in its early years, the Taliban advance is threating to roll back any gains of the conflict’s final years.