The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about the longest war in American history by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military became mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and …
The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about the longest war in American history by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military became mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public's understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war, from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government's strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn't know the name of his Afghanistan war commander and didn't want to make time to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted he had "no visibility into who the bad guys are." His successor, Robert Gates, said: "We didn't know jack shit about al-Qaeda." The Afghanistan Papers is a shocking account that will supercharge a long overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered. - Publisher.
There are a lot of lessons to be taken from this book, many of which should have been learned after Vietnam which shares many of the same characteristics as the war in Afghanistan. The fact that so many generals and lawmakers were ignorant (willfully or not) of the many similarities and the inevitable outcomes is both depressing and infuriating. The same hubris, ignorance, and wishful thinking that ran through both conflicts resulted in billions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted.
After fighting for access to thousands of documents, including Donald Rumsfeld's memos, notes from interviews with more than a thousand people who played direct roles in the Afghanistan war, as well as Defense and State department cables, memos, and reports, Whitlock has created a narrative of one of the biggest boondoggles in our country's history.
Through three administrations, the Afghanistan war was an unqualified mess. A complete non-understanding and failure to learn about the Afghan people and their culture, plus massive disagreements and non-communication between the agencies and departments involved, meant the U.S. was never going to win this war. Many of the billions of dollars we poured into Afghanistan ended up in the hands of corrupt contractors and Afghan government officials, and the heroin trade flourished during our time there.
Despite the criticism Biden received for withdrawing our troops, leaving a war that you've lost is always messy, and …
After fighting for access to thousands of documents, including Donald Rumsfeld's memos, notes from interviews with more than a thousand people who played direct roles in the Afghanistan war, as well as Defense and State department cables, memos, and reports, Whitlock has created a narrative of one of the biggest boondoggles in our country's history.
Through three administrations, the Afghanistan war was an unqualified mess. A complete non-understanding and failure to learn about the Afghan people and their culture, plus massive disagreements and non-communication between the agencies and departments involved, meant the U.S. was never going to win this war. Many of the billions of dollars we poured into Afghanistan ended up in the hands of corrupt contractors and Afghan government officials, and the heroin trade flourished during our time there.
Despite the criticism Biden received for withdrawing our troops, leaving a war that you've lost is always messy, and we're lucky we got out as well as we did. Too bad it was 17 or 18 years too late. This is a fascinating, if disturbing, factual account of a piece of history that we should all be ashamed of.
