On Sept. 14, 2001 — just days after three airplanes burrowed into Manhattan's World Trade Center and the Pentagon building outside Washington, D.C. — the United States House of Representatives voted 420-1 on a resolution that "authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against" any country involved in the attacks on 9/11.
That resolution, which flew through the Senate without a single vote against, quickly established itself as the foundational doctrine for what would just weeks later become Operation Enduring Freedom. The effort is now better known as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, the decades-long war which this weekend ended with the rapid implosion of the Western-backed Afghan government and the reclamation of the country by fundamentalist Taliban forces.
