Tuesday, August 31, 2021

The Morning: The longest war is over

Plus: Ida's aftermath in Louisiana

Good morning. America's longest war is over.

Taliban fighters watching a C-17 military transport plane leave Kabul at sunset yesterday.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The end

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States and its allies needed less than four years to vanquish their fascist enemies. After the secession of Southern states in 1860 and 1861, the U.S. spent slightly more than four years defeating the rebellion. After the first battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the colonies took about eight years to beat the British and create a new nation.

The war in Afghanistan — which ended yesterday, as the final U.S. troops left — lasted 19 years and 47 weeks, dating to the first bombing of the Taliban on Oct. 7, 2001. It is America's longest war, far longer than the country's great victories and longer even than its previous protracted defeat in Vietnam or stalemate in Korea.

Over the past two decades, the U.S. has been able to claim some accomplishments. American troops killed Osama bin Laden (albeit in Pakistan, not Afghanistan) and captured or killed other architects of the 9/11 attacks. Afghanistan temporarily turned into a democracy where schools improved and women could live more freely than before.

Yet the main accomplishments proved fleeting.

For all of the bravery and sacrifice of the Afghan and American troops who fought together, their leaders failed to create an enduring government or functioning military. Despite two decades of work and a couple of trillion dollars spent, the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in a matter of days. The regime was evidently no more enduring than it had been five years ago, 10 years ago — or on Dec. 22, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's first post-9/11 leader.

Across the span of American history, it's hard to think of another failed project that lasted so long or cost so much. There have been worse injustices and tragedies in this country, but they were usually deliberate. The U.S. has been attempting to win in Afghanistan for nearly the entire 21st century.

Biden certainly could have overseen a more successful exit than he did, especially if he and his aides had taken more seriously the chances of a rapid Taliban takeover. I also understand that some people believe that an unending, low-level war in Afghanistan was worth the trade-offs. These advocates argue that the number of American soldiers killed each year had fallen into the single digits, while the financial cost was below $20 billion a year (which, by comparison, is a little more than half the country's foreign-aid budget). In exchange, the U.S. likely could have prevented a complete Taliban takeover and the chaos of the past few weeks.

But it's worth emphasizing that this option really did mean unending war. After nearly 20 years and no apparent progress toward an Afghan government that could stand on its own, America's longest war would have continued. It would not have resembled the ongoing U.S. presence in Korea, Japan and Western Europe, where no enemies are launching regular attacks and no American troops are being killed.

It would have involved continued fighting, which has been killing more than 10,000 Afghan troops and more than 1,000 civilians every year. On Sunday, an errant U.S. drone missile may have killed 10 more civilians, including seven children. Continuing the war indefinitely also would have required Biden to renege on Donald Trump's promise, likely causing the Taliban to intensify its attacks and perhaps raising both the human and financial costs.

Instead, for better and worse, America's longest war is over.

More perspectives

Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe has made the case for staying in Afghanistan, citing rising literacy, falling infant mortality rates and more: "All this was being sustained in recent years, and the Taliban was being held at bay, with just a relative handful of U.S. troops to provide intelligence, logistics, and air support."

Ross Douthat of The Times's Opinion section disagrees: For years, the U.S. failure was "buried under a Vietnam-esque blizzard of official deceptions and bureaucratic lies."

Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal laments Bush's decision to focus on an invasion of Iraq rather than capturing bin Laden when he was cornered in the Tora Bora region: "What a richly consequential screw-up it was, and how different the coming years might have been, the whole adventure might have been, if we'd gotten it right."

Alissa Rubin — a Times reporter who covered the war — considers another counterfactual: What if the U.S. had accepted the Taliban's offer of conditional surrender in 2001? (In a recent Fresh Air interview, the author Steve Coll highlighted the same moment.)

Nearly 2,500 American troops have died fighting in Afghanistan. Here are their names. (That list does not include the 13 killed last week.)

Afghanistan news

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Queens cheer: Mets fans booed their players. The team booed them back.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Aretha Franklin during a recording session in Manhattan in 1969.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Finding the real Aretha

Throughout her career, Aretha Franklin remained fairly unknowable to the public. "I didn't make a dent in her armor," David Ritz, a biographer, once lamented.

Because of this privacy, it's tough for onscreen portrayals of Franklin to fully capture the artist. The most recent attempt — the film "Respect," starring Jennifer Hudson — sticks "too closely to Franklin's own self-image, a narrative that she tightly controlled," Salamishah Tillet writes in The Times.

The Sydney Pollack documentary "Amazing Grace," on the other hand, would not have made it to screens if it were up to Franklin, who repeatedly sued to block its release. Filmed in 1972 over two nights in a Los Angeles Baptist church, the movie was released after Franklin's death. The film, Tillet writes, is "all gospel, a cinematic capturing of spiritual ecstasy and religious exaltation, and a Franklin who surrenders her voice to God, and is at her most sublime." — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

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Mountains, wildflowers, moose: A hike through the Teton Range in Wyoming offers stunning views.

Now Time to Play

The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were annihilation and inhalation. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: "Very funny" (four letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

Correction: Yesterday's newsletter incorrectly stated that 13 U.S. soldiers died in last week's bombing in Kabul. Only one was an Army soldier; the others were Marines and a Navy medic.

P.S. The Washington Post profiled Maggie Haberman, who went from moonlighting as a bartender to covering the Trump White House.

"The Daily" is about America's final hours in Afghanistan.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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Monday, August 30, 2021

Last Call for Tomatoes and Corn

The end of summer is in sight, so make all the hot-weather recipes on your to-do list.

Last Call for Tomatoes and Corn

Good morning. It's been a harrowing end to the month. Most of New Orleans woke up without power after Hurricane Ida pummeled the coast of Louisiana, and it seems especially cruel after a summer already rife with climate-related disasters. Wherever you are, stay safe and take care of yourself and your loved ones. We'll be here when you're ready to cook again.

This last week of August marks the traditional (if not official) end of summer. Although corn and tomatoes won't just disappear after Labor Day, it sort of feels that way. Which means it's time to take stock, and ask yourself some essential produce-related questions.

Have you eaten enough tomato sandwiches this summer? How about corn on the cob? If not, now is the time to set things straight. I'd start with this clever cacio e pepe variation (above) by Emily Fleischaker, which is on my urgent to-do list.

Or you can cut your corn off the cob and use it to make Lidey Heuck's speedy crab and corn pasta, which will eliminate the need for dental floss immediately after your meal. There's also Vallery Lomas's elegant take on succotash, with sausage and shrimp. The recipe calls for okra, which I've never added to succotash but sounds divine. And okra takes a star turn in Yewande Komolafe's bright and limey sazón-spiced shrimp and okra. For okra aficionados, the playful slipperiness is part of its appeal. Here's an okra secret: Sometimes, when I'm slicing okra pods, I'll dip them in salt and eat them raw. Try it before you knock it.

August is nearly over and I still haven't made Sam's tomato and watermelon salad, a summer tradition of mine since he first wrote about it in 2013. You can even skip the feta. It's nice if you have some on hand, but not essential. To me, the genius part of the recipe is the electric shock of sherry vinegar, which is exactly what all that juicy sweetness needs to stay in line.

And speaking of juicy sweetness, are you a peach person or a nectarine person? I used to be team nectarine, but recently I've gone head over heels for the mini white doughnut peaches I've been buying at the farmers' market. You need to eat at least three of them at a time to get their full effect, so I buy them by the quart rather than the pint.

You could also use them — or any kind of stone fruit — to make Alexa Weibel's new kale and peach salad with crispy cornbread croutons. And David Tanis's nectarine-raspberry cobbler with ginger biscuits is a fine thing to do with any overly ripe fruit that might be leaking all over your counter. Making Yossy Arefi's blueberry-speckled nectarine galette is another.

And of course, stone fruit also pair well with chicken (hi chicken, I see you). So grill some chicken and peaches, the thighs marinated in balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and ginger until they get a little sticky, the peaches brushed with honey and thyme. For a stone-fruitless chicken dinner, there's Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's classic chicken with caramelized onion and cardamom rice from their cookbook, "Jerusalem."

Or choose something entirely different from our vast collection at New York Times Cooking. You'll have to subscribe to get to them all. But you won't need to pay a thing to check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Leave a comment so we know you were there. If you'd rather email us directly, you can also do that at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Get in touch if you run into any kind of cooking problem; we've got your back!

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