Afghanistan Anamnesis: A Historian’s Early Reflections on the End of America’s Longest War

From October 2020 to April 2022, UW History Professor John W. Hall—then a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve—served as a special historian to the commander of U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL. In this capacity, he had an opportunity to observe operational planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the execution of the largest aerial non-combatant evacuation in history—as well as the subsequent congressional hearings on the subject.