Here are the signs that America's longest war is finally ending

08-19-2014 • globalpost.com

Arriving here for the sixth time since 2010, I've never seen Kandahar Airfield as quiet as it is now. Most of the roaring diesel generators are gone, and the buildings they once powered are either abandoned or demolished. What was once a flood of traffic with huge armored convoys jockeying against trash trucks and fuel tankers on the airfield's narrow streets has slowed to a trickle.

Every detail about this latest journey to Afghanistan speaks to the drawdown, the fading of America's longest war into the dust of time that coats the landscape here. The signs of war are often subtle, but for someone whose entire adult life has revolved around the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I pick up on them automatically.