Instead of entering the talks inspired by goodwill, and respecting Yemen’s sovereignty and bridging points of view between the various parties, Saudi Arabia further polarized and torpedoed the nearly year-long National Dialogue Conference, which was meant to bring Yemen’s various factions to a consensus on how to address the country’s most pressing issues.

That isn’t to say the Afghan war alone drove our decline. But it does stand as a relic of a past age, a manifestation of a folly that left us weaker than we were before. After all this time, after all this blood, there is only one thing left to do: Bring the troops home.