Afghanistan War 'Pentagon Papers' Reveal Vast Coverup
Documents from an internal government study and Department of Defense memos released through Freedom of Information Act requests tell the story of 18 years of deception by U.S. officials about the war in Afghanistan.
Nine separate stories were published by the Washington Post on Monday morning, incorporating more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials, along with hundreds of pages of previously classified memos by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the Afghan war from 2001-2006.
The bottom line revealed in the reporting is that assurances by presidents, military commanders and diplomats regarding progress in Afghanistan were at best misleading, hiding unmistakable evidence that the war was unwinnable.
There were winners, namely corrupt officials throughout the region, along with the companies selling equipment and services paid for by taxpayers to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, not counting money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Upwards of 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan since 2001, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures. Casualties among private contractors topped 3800, with NATO allies losing another 1145 personnel.
Afghan security forces report more than 64,000 dead; 43,000+ civilians have died, and the Taliban/insurgent forces have lost an estimated 42,100 troops.
There’s lots to read there, I doubt--as was true with the Pentagon Papers--most Americans will take the time to wade through all the reporting.
Here are links to the nine parts of the Post’s reporting.
Key insiders speak bluntly about the failures of the longest conflict in U.S. history
Hear candid interviews with former ambassador Ryan Crocker and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.
Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.
Despite vows the U.S. wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building,” it has wasted billions doing just that
The U.S. flooded the country with money — then turned a blind eye to the graft it fueled
Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were dogged by incompetence and corruption
The U.S. war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn
As a public service I’m quoting some of the most remarkable passages from the overview published by the Washington Post, indicated by italics. Portions underlined in these excerpts lead to the source documents.
“We don’t invade poor countries to make them rich,” James Dobbins, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan under Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. “We don’t invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan.”
***
“They thought I was going to come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live,” an unnamed former adviser to an Army Special Forces team told government interviewers in 2017. “It took several conversations for them to understand that I did not have that information in my hands. At first, they just kept asking: ‘But who are the bad guys, where are they?’ ”
***
One unidentified contractor told government interviewers he was expected to dole out $3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan district roughly the size of a U.S. county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back home: “He said hell no. ‘Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.’ ”
The gusher of aid that Washington spent on Afghanistan also gave rise to historic levels of corruption.
***
“We stated that our goal is to establish a ‘flourishing market economy,’ ” said Douglas Lute, the White House’s Afghan war czar from 2007 to 2013. “I thought we should have specified a flourishing drug trade — this is the only part of the market that’s working.”
***
“It was impossible to create good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture,” the senior NSC official told government interviewers in 2016. “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”
Even when casualty counts and other figures looked bad, the senior NSC official said, the White House and Pentagon would spin them to the point of absurdity. Suicide bombings in Kabul were portrayed as a sign of the Taliban’s desperation, that the insurgents were too weak to engage in direct combat. Meanwhile, a rise in U.S. troop deaths was cited as proof that American forces were taking the fight to the enemy.
***
“I do think the key benchmark is the one I’ve suggested, which is how many Afghans are getting killed,” James Dobbins, the former U.S. diplomat, told a Senate panel in 2009. “If the number’s going up, you’re losing. If the number’s going down, you’re winning. It’s as simple as that.”
Last year, 3,804 Afghan civilians were killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
That is the most in one year since the United Nations began tracking casualties a decade ago.
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