Late in 2001, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, American-led military forces invaded Afghanistan with the goal of dismantling the al-Qaeda terrorist network and overthrowing the Taliban government.
The Iraq War, often referred to throughout the United States as Operation Iraqi Freedom, began in 2003 with an invasion of Iraq intended to discover fugitive Al-Qaeda terrorists and undisclosed Weapons of Mass Destruction and included several years of fighting between the occupying forces and an Iraqi insurgency.