Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Source: Getty Summary: The president has spoken. All U.S. forces will be out of Afghanistan by September 11âthe twentieth anniversary of the attacks that forever changed America and the world. Related Media and Tools If you enjoyed reading this, subscribe for more! Thank you! Check your email for details on your request. Afghanistan has been a presence in my life for decades. As a high school student at a Department of Defense school in Turkey, I read James A. Michener’s Caravans. I was enchanted. It seemed the ultimate in distant, exotic, hard-to-reach places. Just a few years later, I was there, as a college student joining the wave of world travelers wandering through Asia. Afghanistan did not disappoint, from the first night in a 25-cent hotel room in Herat to the last day traversing the storied Khyber Pass via Kandahar, Bamyan, and Kabul. I promised myself that I would be back.