AP Photo

Four months after the Sept. 11 attacks, with the Taliban on the run from invading U.S. forces, then-Sen. Joe Biden was the first U.S. elected official to arrive in Kabul. Biden was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his first meeting, even before seeing President Hamid Karzai, was with Afghanistan's education minister.

Biden asked how the United States could help, certain that the reply would include funding requests to rebuild war-damaged schools and money for equipment, desks, even pencils. The minister surprised Biden by saying he needed just three things: security, security, security. Without it, he argued, parents wouldn't allow their children to walk the streets to go to school, nor would older students and teachers feel safe enough to drive the roads to...