(单词翻译:单击)
It took four presidencies for America to finish abandoning Afghanistan.
美国历经了四任总统才放弃阿富汗。
George W. Bush’s attention wandered off soon after American Special Forces rode horseback through the northern mountains and the first schoolgirls gathered in freezing classrooms.
美国特种部队骑马穿过北部山区，第一批女学生聚集在冰冷的教室里，此后，乔治·布什的注意力很快就分散了出去。
Barack Obama, after studying the problem for months, poured in troops and pulled them out in a single ambivalent gesture whose goal was to keep the war on page A13.
巴拉克·奥巴马在研究了这个问题几个月后，在那里投入了大量军队，并以一种矛盾的姿态撤出了军队，他的目标是让战争继续留在A13页上。
Donald Trump cut a deal with the Taliban that left the future of the Afghan government, Afghan women, and al Qaeda to fate.
唐纳德·特朗普与塔利班达成了一项协议，将阿富汗政府、阿富汗妇女和基地组织的未来留给了命运。
By then most Americans were barely aware that the war was still going on.
那时，大多数美国人几乎没有意识到战争仍在进行。
It fell to Joe Biden to complete the task.
完成这项任务的重任落到了乔·拜登的肩上。
Sam Ayres, a law student and former Army Ranger who had served three tours in Afghanistan as an enlisted infantryman, sent a letter to several people he knew in the administration, explaining why the issue mattered so personally to many veterans.
萨姆·艾尔斯是一名法律系学生，曾是陆军游骑兵，曾作为步兵在阿富汗服役过三次。他给政府中认识的几个人写了一封信，解释为什么这个问题对许多退伍军人个人如此重要。
He wrote that the faces and voices of individual interpreters stayed with American troops long after they returned home.
他写道，美国士兵回国后，口译员的面孔和声音一直伴随着他们。
He described driving past Dover Air Force Base, where the caskets of two of his Army teammates had arrived in 2018 and 2019.
他描述了开车经过多佛空军基地的情景，他的两名陆军队友的棺材分别于2018年和2019年运抵那里。
“For the next couple hours of my drive, I was thrust back into the ongoing debate in my mind about whether our service—and the loss of teammates, American and Afghan—was all a waste,” Ayres wrote.
艾尔斯写道:“在接下来的几个小时里，我脑海中一直在争论我们的服役——以及失去的队友，美国人和阿富汗人——是否都是一种浪费。”
“Many of us veterans will spend the rest of our lives grappling with this question.
“我们中的许多退伍军人将在余生中努力解决这个问题。
At the very least, I hope we’ll be able to feel we did something honorable over there in our small corner of the war. That would provide some solace.
至少，我希望我们能够感觉到我们在战争的小角落里做了一些光荣的事情。这将提供一些安慰。
But coming to that conclusion will be even harder if the Afghans who went out on missions with us are left to die at the hands of our onetime enemies.”
但是，如果和我们一起执行任务的阿富汗人战死在我们曾经的敌人手中，我们就更难得出这个结论了。”
The letter received a pro forma response.
这封信得到了回复，只是形式上的回复。
During the final withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden’s main—at times, it seemed, his only—focus was on keeping the number of American casualties as close to zero as possible.
在最后一次从阿富汗撤军的过程中，拜登的主要关注点——有时似乎是他唯一的关注点——是将美国的伤亡人数尽可能地保持在零。
He didn’t reckon with the invisible harm of adding moral injury to military failure.
他没有考虑到在军事失败的基础上又加了精神创伤的无形危害。
Within the administration, a few indicators were starting to flash red.
在政府内部，一些指标开始亮起红灯。
By July the CIA, which had given the Afghan government a year back in April, now judged that it might fall in a matter of weeks.
今年4月，美国中央情报局给了阿富汗政府一年的时间，但到了7月，中央情报局判断阿富汗政府可能会在几周内垮台。
As it moved out of its bases around the country, the CIA decided to keep open a base called Eagle, near the Kabul airport,
随着美国中情局撤出其在阿富汗全国各地的基地，中情局决定继续开放喀布尔机场附近一个名为鹰的基地，
as a transit point in the event that the agency’s counterparts in the Afghan National Directorate of Security, along with their families, had to be evacuated quickly.
在阿富汗国家安全局的相关人员及其家属不得不迅速撤离的情况下，将该基地作为中转站。
