At just short of 20 years, the now-ending U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan was America's longest war.... Ordinary Americans tended to forget about it, and it received measurably less oversight from Congress than the Vietnam War did.... But its death toll is in the many tens of thousands....

In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, a Marine with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit( MEU) carries a baby as the family is processed through the evacuation control center at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug.... Victor Mancilla/ U.S. Marine Corps via AP)( AP)--U.S. military planes have carried the last U.S. service members and diplomats from Kabul's airport, ending America's longest war.... But Americans often tended to forget about the Afghanistan w

William Bee felt flying into southern Afghanistan on Christmas Day 2001: purely lucky.... “ To be the dudes that got to open it up first.” In the decade that followed, three more deployments in America's longest war scoured away that lucky feeling. For Bee, it came down to a night in 2008 in Afghanistan's Helmand province.... In 2005, fewer than 1 in 4 Afghans had access to electricity....