RISE AND FALL

‘Kabul, Afghanistan, I love my job!” Nicole L. Gee, a 23-year-old marine from California posted on her Instagram on August 21, holding up a photo of herself cradling an Afghan newborn. The image also made it onto the U.S. Department of Defense’s social media pages.

Six days later, this young and promising woman died in a suicide bomb attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The blast was claimed by ISIS-K, a radical terrorist organization in Afghanistan. Altogether, 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghanistan civilians lost their lives either in the explosion or the ensuing gunfire by U.S. soldiers.

It is a hugely painful fact that Gee and her colleagues died in a terrorist incident just a few days before the conclusion of the two-decade U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

The year 2021 marks the 20th