evidence: The mission to kill Zawahiri comes almost exactly a year after Biden ended the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. "I made the decision that, after 20 years of war, the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm," he said at the White House. "And I made a promise to the American people that we'd continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond. We've done just that."