By ANDREW DYER, KRISTINA DAVIS | The San Diego Union-Tribune | Published: April 18, 2021 SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Tribune News Service) Travis Horr was a sixth-grader in Maine when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. Ten years later, he was a 21-year-old Marine lance corporal in Afghanistan when the architect of the terrorist attack, Osama Bin Laden, was killed. The endgame seemed to be in sight. That s what we believed the whole mission was, recalls Horr. But the hunt for bin Laden and defeat of the Taliban turned into a nation-building effort one that perhaps infantry riflemen were not equipped to handle, and that was far more challenging than leaders envisioned.
From 2005 to 2014, U-T photojournalist Nelvin C. Cepeda traveled regularly to Afghanistan embedded with Marines from Camp Pendleton. He looks back on what it was like seeing the war unfold abroad and at home.
President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that all remaining U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, left Horr, now 32, buoyed by the possibility of finality but with an unavoidable sense of déjà vu.
“We’ve been here before,” said Horr, the director of government affairs for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a national organization that provides resources for and advocates on behalf of post-9/11 veterans.