2020 promises to be a watershed year for American foreign policy. In February, the United States struck a deal with the Taliban that would withdraw troops from Afghanistan, ending America's longest and most expensive war. A month earlier, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel American soldiers from the country. With the potential departure of U.S. forces from these countries, it is important to ask about the American legacy. How will the United States be remembered in the Middle East: as a destructive interloper or, as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in a speech at the American University in Cairo in 2019, "a force for good"? We know that Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced American hard power, but how receptive are they to American soft power? A review of the countries' national higher education contexts, international exchanges, and American universities provides insights into the power of attraction in these post-conflict settings.