The Afghanistan Papers reveal U.S. leadership's public distortions and internal doubt over 18-year campaign (1 Viewer)

[superchuck500]

An extensive six-part Wash Post report released, in first part on Monday has a very 1971 feel to it - as the problems and themes regarding the U.S.'s prosecution of war in Afghanistan strike a familiar chord for those who remember the fallout over the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
. . .
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

The interviews, through an extensive array of voices, bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan.

With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.

The first part of the Wash Post report is found here, and extremely well done an cross-referenced. https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...apers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

 

[SaintForLife]

Yet another reason why we have no business getting involved in wars unless we are directly threatened. All wars going forward need to be voted on by Congress. The executive has taken way too much power in regards to wars the last few decades. It's time Congress took back their power.

 

[Maxp]

Yet another reason why we have no business getting involved in wars unless we are directly threatened. All wars going forward need to be voted on my Congress. The executive has taken way too much power in regards to wars the last few decades. It's time Congress took back their power.

I agree with you, but this war was voted on by Congress in 2001.

 

[MT15]

What is most disheartening is that we never seem to learn from history. We told ourselves after Vietnam that we would never allow that to happen again. It’s just the same old crap.

 

[Beach Friends]

Yet another reason why we have no business getting involved in wars unless we are directly threatened. All wars going forward need to be voted on by Congress. The executive has taken way too much power in regards to wars the last few decades. It's time Congress took back their power.

We agree that we have been too quick to commit our military to these wars and I don't disagree about seeking Congressional approval.

I just don't know how much it will help. There is a lot of money flowing to our defense contractors, etc. General officers are tempted to argue in favor of them as they help their careers and often give them plush post retirement second careers.

Tusli is a patriot for calling for us to end these wars, but in the modern day Mccarthyism she is labeled a Russian asset based on the stupid rationale that Russia doesn't want us in these wars either.

 

[MT15]

To be fair, I don’t think she is called a Russian asset by lots of people. And I think her failure to criticize Assad had more to do with criticism of her than her stance on foreign wars.

 

[Archies Ghost]

This is the thread where everyone agrees for the most part.

Refreshing.

Lets not let it get sidetracked so it can be a monument for all time.

Maybe a mod should close it to preserve it.