America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan reopens old wounds that never really healed.

Memories of people I miss flash through my mind.

Maj. Phil Ambard raised five great kids and climbed from enlisted basic training at Lackland Air Force Base to a professorship at the Air Force Academy.

Great guy, always wore a smile. An expert in languages, he was picking up the many tongues of Afghanistan while training the fledging Afghan Air Force.

One of his trainees, influenced by religious calls to holy war, shot Phil dead in Kabul.

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Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin Griffin was a father of two from Laramie, Wyo. He was tough and smart. On the outside he was gruff and capable of delivering criticism that would make trainees melt before him. But on the inside, he carried an enduring love for his soldiers.

You could see it on the training grounds of Fort Carson, where he would quietly encourage troops when they were having a tough time.

Griffin was on his way to a meeting with local leaders in Asadabad when a suicide bomber killed him.

Staff Sgt. Vernon Martin was just 25 but was seen as an old man by his soldiers. Through training at Fort Carson, he taught his troops hard lessons he’d learned over multiple combat tours.

“I would have followed that man straight to hell,” one of his soldiers said at his funeral.

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Martin died when his position in the Korengal Valley was attacked by more than 300 Taliban fighters.

I sat through their funerals, professionally documenting their lives. I am a hardened old journalist, but seeing the anguish of their families brought a tear to my eye — still does when those memories flood back.

The three died trying to bring freedom to a nation that never really understood the gift. They helped ensure a brief window of democracy, women’s rights and advancement.

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That window is now closing for Afghanistan, but it’s not that we didn’t try hard enough.

Fort Carson’s Clint Romesha, Ty Carter and Flo Groberg earned the Medal of Honor trying to deliver that freedom. They survived this war and their deeds are still something that amaze me. If their bravery is the yardstick, I’ll never measure up.

And now, almost 20 years after Americans raced to war to avenge the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it’s over.

It is not a victory.

Taliban troops are going from town to town, driving back Afghanistan’s army and reasserting their theocratic control.

The fall of Kabul has been predicted.

And a nation that so many Americans fought to envelop in the light of liberty could again plunge into medieval darkness. 

Afghanistan was America’s first generational war. Fathers and mothers who fought there later sent their sons and daughters.

Nearly 2,400 Americans died there, more than 20,000 suffered physical wounds and we’ll never know how many troops deal daily with the mental wounds inflicted by that war.

Leaving Afghanistan hurts. It feels like failure.

But one thing that lessens the blow: It’s not America’s failure.

The people of Afghanistan were given a choice. It is time for them to make it.

One thing has been proven these past 20 years: American blood and bravery can’t fix what’s broken in Afghanistan.

The American troops who died there and those who made it home are heroes who valiantly tried to bring peace to that troubled place.

But it is long past time for Afghanistan to discover its own heroes.