#12 of 14

Operation Enduring Freedom – Largest Op Since 2000

On October 7, 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and Operation Enduring Freedom began. Its goal was to utterly defeat the Taliban, bring Afghanistan back into the family of nations as a legitimate government and country and, oh yeah… hunt down and kill Osama bin-Laden. While it’s debatable whether the first two items can really be checked off, at least we finally got bin-Laden. Years later. In Pakistan. But I digress. Enduring Freedom is one of the biggest operations of the 21st century by a wide margin. Probably all anyone needs to know about how big this war has been for the 21st century is that, since 2014, the U.S. has only maintained about 10,000 ground troops (not including Navy and Air Force support) in that country. Only. We once had upwards of 60,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan way back in 2009. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did again before 2019.