US Mislead Public on Afghanistan.

[Paranoid Android]

Ok first off I am giving you highlights or tweets by the Post and not full article. I admit I have not read the full article and all that it encompasses as to any devastating news by any administration.

People who are familiar with the Pentagon Papers will find a very similar comparison to this report on Afghanistan and what was withheld through the 3 administrations of Bush, Obama and Trump.

Exclusive: U.S. officials systematically misled the public about the war in Afghanistan, according to internal documents obtained by The Post.

These are The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.

For nearly two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. leaders have sounded a constant refrain: We are making progress.

They were not, documents show, and they knew it.

A cache of government interviews and memos reveals that U.S. officials admitted they adopted contradictory strategies and unattainable goals, based on flawed assumptions about a country they didn’t understand.

As part of an ongoing, three-year legal battle, The Post has obtained notes, transcripts and audio recordings from more than 400 government interviews and compiled them into a comprehensive database.

In stark language, the documents reveal that people who were directly involved in the war could not shake their doubts about the strategy and mission, even as three U.S. presidents told the American people it was necessary to keep fighting.

Again, this seems that overall it our policy our maybe the whole occupation or being in Afghanistan was for naught. Maybe we should have withdrawn awhile ago? Moving forward I don't know if the US will change it's policy or look for an actual withdrawal. 18 years in a country with failed policy should be something we look at and the cover up.

[Skroe]

This was a blockbuster report. It's going to win a Pulitzer.

We should have left Afghanistan no later than 2005. The US failed when it decided to turn a narrowly focused counter-terrorism mission against Al Qaeda into a wider nation building mission against the Taliban. We never should have turned it into a war against the Taliban. Because that meant we had to fundamentally change the regional political dynamics, which require resources far in excess of what the US was willing to give.

The sad part is, for those of us old enough to remember, we had a legitimate national conversation about how to avoid exactly that outcome. And we did it anyway.

The original sin of the war on terror is the US government not being particular in discerning who-did-what on the otherside, and
taking appropriate, targeted action towards specific wrong doers. A maximalist approach was doomed to failure.

As for Afghanistan, we should leave by the end of 2021, no ifs ands or buts. Afghanistan will go to hell, but we've given then 20 years, a trillion dollars and a thousands of lives. It is a distraction and resource sink in the face of security threats going forward. All we're doing is finding how deep the sunk cost fallacy goes.

We lost the war in Afghanistan. We lost the War in Iraq. We lost the War on Terror. Osama bin Laden achieved the strategic victory of his dreams and America helped him do it. The last 20 years have seen a disastrous and reckless act of imperial overreach on the scale of Napoleon marching into Russia. The geopolitical consequences of that is that our relative power vis a vis China, our chief geopolitical rival, has been slashed in half. For what exactly? The entire war has been in vain. Every servicemember since 2005 has died for a mistake and a lie.

Nations lose wars, but that is not the end. We lost Vietnam and went on to win the Cold War 15 years later. The British lost the American Revolutionary War, but dramatically expanded its power and wealth in the 19th century.

Having accepted we lost Afghanistan, the question will necessarily move to what is the center of US security as we go into the third and fourth decades of the 21st century. And we must resolve never again to find ourselves in a mess like that. Because America, like history, will go on. And it will have to adapt.

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The US Army is building up about the same reputation as the French when it comes to military successes... which is usually what happens when you allow too much money to be thrown at something and let civilian money-grabbers / oil dollar cronies determine your military decisions.

A military designed to demolish the armies of industrialized powers (and did so with great effect in Iraq in 2003) is fundamentally different than the one that is designed to do counter insurgency, and transitioning from one to the other, or as a matter of national policy doing COIN, is never easy and never wise.

The US should stay in its lane - build and sustain an armed forces designed for maintaining global security and keeping autocratic forces at bay. It should focus on deterring China and Russia and destroying armies, navies and air forces. It should focus on fate-of-the-free-world geopolitical issues, and not small-ball in unimportant corners of the earth.

We should stay out of the counter insurgency game all together. And if we have to do something, pay the locals to do it and selectively use special operations. But keep it light, small, covert and cheap.

More carriers and stealth bombers, no more occupations. We should stay in our lane.

[Kokolums]

Proponents of the War on Terror will argue that the US course of action led to a timeline where another 911 scale attack did not occur. If you alter the timeline and do something like pull out of Afghanistan in 2005, maybe there is another 911. Some judge it on that alone. There was never another 911, so the time and money were well spent. Its total mission accomplished to those with that view.

One thing we see in the polling data is a large drop in trust in the system among republicans when democrats turned against the War on Terror. Before they turned, republican trust hovered around 50%. When democrats turned against the war, we see a sharp drop to around 30% and trust never recovers.

There was critical damage to the cohesiveness of US culture. It wasn't the final blow, but it was a massive one. It definitely helped lead to the election of Trump.

And that is really the legacy of the democrats turn against the war. It helped give rise to the alt right and Trump. Republicans realized when they couldn't even prosecute a war without massive rejection by the democrats, there was no nation to fight for anymore. And they began rejecting everything in earnest and here we are today with a nation tearing itself apart.

[Monster Hunter]

The US Army is building up about the same reputation as the French when it comes to military successes... which is usually what happens when you allow too much money to be thrown at something and let civilian money-grabbers / oil dollar cronies determine your military decisions.

I'm gonna be blunt, we were taking the piss out of America's military track record in the primary school playground in the UK long before Afghanistan.

Nam and the bay of pigs were the death of any reputation america had as competent warriors. After that the impression has always been one of big, dumb, trigger happy brutes with very little brain power but an awful lot of ammo.

I'm not trying to offend, I'm just being honest and letting you know what the perception was/is where I live, I make no comment on if the stereo type is deserved or not.

I do remember one person telling me its funny how the French get stick yet America is the one that's never won a war on its own.

[Breccia]

This was a blockbuster report. It's going to win a Pulitzer.

Coming from you, that's damn near a mandate to read up on it.

I'll be honest, I just kind of expected W and Obama to lie about Afghanistan. I assumed saying "the war is going badly, and everyone there hates us, please give us more tax money to continue" is something Presidents just aren't supposed to say. I'm not endorsing such behavior, fuck no, I just assumed it was happening.

It does not match well with Trump's pre-election rhetoric and post-election troop increases, however. Nobody should be surprised at all that Trump lied about XXX. But the rabid fanbase should feel betrayed to that Trump is not just part of the problem, he's actively working to make it worse. Including, yes, inviting the Taliban to picnic on the White House lawn.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

How shocking is that...

[Breccia]

THAT'S the thing you are going after Trump on? Trying to end a pointless war after almost two decades?

Um, clearly, you neither read the article nor my post about it. Trump's not trying to end it. He said he would, he lied, he escalated. The only reason this isn't a bigger issue is W and Obama more or less did the same thing, so it's not like he was breaking new ground.

And yes, I will also go after him for intentionally attempting to negotiate with the Taliban, because there is no set of circumstances in which that's okay. That was breaking new ground.

[Mayhem]

A military designed to demolish the armies of industrialized powers (and did so with great effect in Iraq in 2003) is fundamentally different than the one that is designed to do counter insurgency, and transitioning from one to the other, or as a matter of national policy doing COIN, is never easy and never wise.

The US should stay in its lane - build and sustain an armed forces designed for maintaining global security and keeping autocratic forces at bay. It should focus on deterring China and Russia and destroying armies, navies and air forces. It should focus on fate-of-the-free-world geopolitical issues, and not small-ball in unimportant corners of the earth.

We should stay out of the counter insurgency game all together. And if we have to do something, pay the locals to do it and selectively use special operations. But keep it light, small, covert and cheap.

More carriers and stealth bombers, no more occupations. We should stay in our lane.

And maybe, just for consistency become a signatory to the rome statute?

[Thekri]

This was a blockbuster report. It's going to win a Pulitzer.

Sure. When the Washington Post does it gets a Pulitzer, when the Onion and Duffleblog do it gets chuckles.

Here is a Duffleblog Article from 2018, saying the same thing in a Parody format.

Here is a gem from 2017: Pentagon wins National Book Award for fictional account of Afghan War

Here is one from 2015.

Here is a particularly poignant one from 2012, titled "Hearts & Minds: Actual Strategy In Afghanistan War Replaced With Great PR"

I could go on and on. This is the least secret thing about the whole conflict. Everyone has been aware that US Officials have been spinning this conflict harder then Fox News spins a Trump golf trip. We have been making non-stop jokes about it for at least 16 years now.

The original sin of the war on terror is the US government not being particular in discerning who-did-what on the otherside, and
taking appropriate, targeted action towards specific wrong doers. A maximalist approach was doomed to failure.

Sure, I broadly agree with all of that, including the stuff I didn't quote because it was wordy. But none of it touches on the actual problem. The "Original sin" was not targeting. It was fighting a conflict around election cycles, the bane of every democracy throughout history.

The Military has worshiped at the alter of "Targeting" on again and off again over the last few decades. It has many fervent acolytes to this day, that continue to preach the gospel that if you just drop bombs on the right people you can win any war. This is such an unfalsifiable pile of ballcrap that it is barely better then a conspiracy theory. Now granted, this is talking about tactical targeting, not strategic targeting which is what you are referring too, but the same truths apply.

It doesn't work, and it will never work. Bush's original rhetoric, to "Destroy terrorists everywhere, and those who harbor them" was fundamentally sound. America understood the problem statement, and it understood the solution. It did not understand the scale. As the war(s) dragged on, Bush coopted the original purpose of these wars to his own personal gain, as he manipulated events to drive his own reelection, dooming both Iraq and Afghanistan in the process. In doing so he set the precedent for what this "Bombshell" report is talking about, but everyone already knew. Thereafter the war was a talking point in American politics and nothing more. Low level officials were encouraged to twist reports to constantly show "progress", they then transferred jobs and ignored the fact that all that progress was a lie.

The process went like this:
The State Department (Or any other agency) appoints a new official to oversee some aspect of Afghan development. Lets say clean water availability. This newly appointed official for clean water goes down to the tactical forces fighting the conflict, and tells them to focus effort on digging wells and water purification. So they do, we spend millions of dollars and hundreds of tactical missions to give clean water to the whole area, under the idiotic belief that this will curb conflict.

After a year or so of this, the military unit goes home, and the official, having brought clean water to the region, is now promoted and reassigned, a job well done. The new unit is told that clean water is very important when they arrive, but since clean water is not a pressing issue, and no official is driving it, it is ignored. Now there is a new official for Women's rights, and she is driving to build girls schools everywhere. At the end of the next year, there are girls schools everywhere, but nobody maintained the clean water systems, so that is all gone now. The year after that, all the girls schools have been bombed or burned (Usually with the girls inside), but now everyone has WiFi. The year after that, the WiFi towers have all been stripped and the electronics sold to Pakistan, but we are rebuilding the clean water system again.

Every single one of those officials, and the military unit they were partnered with, "Succeeded" at their mission. None of them had any lasting impact on Afghanistan.

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It is good for the children who were raped repeatedly after the US-backed Karzai government legalized paedophilia, a practice the Taleban had ruthlessly eliminated. It is good for people who fight heroin trafficking after the Karzai government legalized it, again something the Taleban had specifically outlawed. It is good for those who were suffering from the Karzai government's systemic corruption, which again, was not as much of a factor under the Taleban.

It is good for those who support international law, the right of self-determination of individual states, and oppose any form of imperialism.

The Taleban are not angels, they have particulary horrific views about women, but they are "better" for want of an alternative phrase, than the bastards you put in charge.

Not this bullshit conspiracy again. The Afghan government did no such thing. The Taliban never eliminated it, or even attempted to eliminate it. Corruption under the Taliban was every bit as rampant, as was pedophilia.

It is amazing how far people go to be edgy, in that they claim the actual Taliban are somehow the good guys here. You have no idea the sort of people you are talking about. It rather reminds me of the reaction some of those Meme wielding internet Nazi's showed up at rallies with actual Nazis, only to discover that they are not the same thing at all...

[Skroe]

Coming from you, that's damn near a mandate to read up on it.

I'll be honest, I just kind of expected W and Obama to lie about Afghanistan. I assumed saying "the war is going badly, and everyone there hates us, please give us more tax money to continue" is something Presidents just aren't supposed to say. I'm not endorsing such behavior, fuck no, I just assumed it was happening.

It does not match well with Trump's pre-election rhetoric and post-election troop increases, however. Nobody should be surprised at all that Trump lied about XXX. But the rabid fanbase should feel betrayed to that Trump is not just part of the problem, he's actively working to make it worse. Including, yes, inviting the Taliban to picnic on the White House lawn.

It all stems from the fact that we've had three Presidents and dozens of Generals who weren't man enough to tell the American people that we fucked up, we need to move on, and it's not the end of the world.

Like there is no win condition anymore in Afghanistan. There hasn't been since 2005. It's not like if the country suddenly became a Jeffersonian Democracy in 2022, suddenly it will have all been worth it. The exact same lessons will apply. The exact same bullshit and failure ill have happened. The Afghan people will be better off, but from the American angle, it will have been a fucking sideshow and failure regardless how it turns out.

The only way out of this is to cut it off and focus on the most important priorities of US Security, which in soon the third decade of the 21st century is not islamic terrorism. It's resurgent authoritarianism, mainly Chinese via designs on supplanting the liberal world order.

The problem we have though is we have an entire generation of Americans who hate muslims and hate terrorism to the point of dehumanization. TO the point they readily excuse potential violation of their human rights because they think they deserve it (and in doing so, undermine any kind of claim of respect for the Constitution and US legacy of human rights in the world).

We can't leave Afghanistan because a commanders and civilian leaders in and around the military who have fought this war for two decades, and a lot of foreign policy and national security people whose careers have revolved around the War on Terror are unable to move past their personal feelings on the matter and the implication that in leaving, it will have all been for nothing, which is absolute true.

We lost this game. Badly. Osama bin Laden won the War on Terror. And it wasn't even close. And now we need to transition to a new game, one where we can win, and whose outcome is far more important. Because the fate of the free world does not hinge on the outcome of our 2000s brushfire conflicts, that have cost us dearly. The fate of the free world very much does depend on the outcome of the coming geoconflict with China that the War on Terror deadenders are having a hard time admitting.

Recall something the Trumphadis said early on in Trump's reign of error, that faded away in time. They wanted to strike up an anti-terror alliance with Russia. This in the closing years of the second decade of the 21st century, over 15 years removed from 9/11. Is there a greater symbol of some American's missed priorities? Hell, let's remind ourselves our momentary national psycosis over ISIS. Oooooohhh... Ahhhhh.... an army of rapists and murderers confined to some highways and remote cities in Syria, on the other side of the planet. No threat to global security. Regional problem for sure. But they weren't going to rape people's daughters in Tulsa and Topeka. Except a hell of a lot of Americans think they were.

That is how badly we have lost the war on terror. We started to imagine little distractions and towering giants. Remember when Trump tried to celebrate Al-Baghdadi dying. Yeah.... because that mattered.

The War on Terror is over. America lost. The end. Now we have to pivot to things that actually matter and resolve never to be so stupid again.

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And maybe, just for consistency become a signatory to the rome statute?

No. Never. The International Criminal Court is a farce. The US was right about it from the get go. I wrote about it extensively a few years ago. I can drag it up if you'd like.

To be clear, I'm not talking about international justice, or the concept of an "international court for criminals and war crimes". I'm talking about the specific Rome Statue and the ICC body. It turned out to be exactly what the US said it would be 20 years ago, and it was prescient we had nothing to do with it in a positive manner. It's fantastic the thing is basically an impotent pile of burning tires.

We will never join that godforsaken shit show, thank fuck. That's not to say there shouldn't be a court, but what's there is by its own actions illegitimate.

[Edge-]

So it really IS our generations Vietnam, minus the draft.

A war that may have sounded good at first, that nobody ended up really being behind, that dragged on forever, that multiple administrations lied about, that justified throwing money at the war machine for the sake of throwing money at the war machine, that killed largely poor peoples kids so it's all alright.

Excellent. Most excellent.

[GreenJesus]

It's time to leave. This whole thing has been a complete disaster. The problem is then the media hysterics would come in and say "He/she is doing what Putin wants!" I can picture it now. "Trump is leaving Afghanisatan and handing it over to Putin". The corporate media has been trying to warp public perception to keep us there. Just look at Syria. Although it was too fast a pullout, in the grand scheme of things we shouldn't have been there in the first place. Since we are exporters of oil now and we are heading towards more renewable sources of energy, the middle east can just go sink back to that region that no one cares about again. "Democracy" doesn't work in the middle east because they don't want it. Why do we keep trying?

[Thekri]

From Wikipedia:

During the Afghan Civil War (1996–2001), bacha bazi carried the death penalty under Taliban law.[10] The practice of dancing boys is illegal under Afghan law, but the laws are seldom enforced against powerful offenders and police have reportedly been complicit in related crimes.[11][12]

A controversy arose after allegations surfaced that U.S. government forces in Afghanistan after the invasion of the country deliberately ignored bacha bazi.[13] The U.S. military justified this by claiming the abuse was largely the responsibility of the "local Afghan government."[14]

Is that enough evidence or do you want to go through the examples of US soldiers who were thrown out of the US army for trying to fight this disgusting practice?

Your apology is expected and appropriate unless you are deliberately helping cover up industrial-scale levels of child rape.

Even the thing you posted says that it is illegal in Afghanistan. It was illegal under both the Taliban and the current government, and neither enforced it. Because no laws are enforced in Rural Afghanistan, federal enforcement mechanisms to not exist. Rural afghans do not pay taxes for the same reason.

Always the same stupid dancing around the goalposts. Next you are going to use dumb analogies like "Functionally legalized" which is what happened in the last thread. Then you are going to grossly misinterpret some legal cases against US Troops (Which were dismissed anyway). Then you are going to reroll another forum account and start again.

There is no "industrial scale child rape" that is not the exact same behavior that has existed for thousands of years. It persisted through the Soviets, through the Taliban, and now through the NATO occupation.

Not that you care, but I want to make it clear to anyone reading your nonsense that this is pure edgy propaganda, and it is not based in any sort of fact.

[Kiri]

It's time to leave. This whole thing has been a complete disaster. The problem is then the media hysterics would come in and say "He/she is doing what Putin wants!" I can picture it now. "Trump is leaving Afghanisatan and handing it over to Putin". The corporate media has been trying to warp public perception to keep us there. Just look at Syria. Although it was too fast a pullout, in the grand scheme of things we shouldn't have been there in the first place. Since we are exporters of oil now and we are heading towards more renewable sources of energy, the middle east can just go sink back to that region that no one cares about again. "Democracy" doesn't work in the middle east because they don't want it. Why do we keep trying?

At this point, that wouldn't exactly be hysteria. The US would still give Russia more influence in the region, much like the Syria pullout did. Just because some outlets would jump at any chance to make Trump look bad doesn't change that. Just like the Trump supporting media praising the decision wouldn't change it. It's just what it is.
The whole media debacle would probably just be furthered by Trump trying to frame the retreat as the biggest victory ever, thus just strengthening the divide. The man needs to always win. I definitely can't see him giving a calm, collected reasoning for it without any embellishments, which will then spur his opponents into action.

The issue is just the old adage: two wrongs don't make it right. Just because the US shouldn't have been there this long does not mean a retreat now wouldn't cause further issues. It's like with Syria. Should the US have stayed out of there to begin with? Probably. But they still did go there, they allied with local forces - and them suddenly withdrew their support without warning, probably for domestic reasons and certainly to focus on the oil. The withdrawal didn't right the situation, due to how it was done it probably just meant the US made two mistakes there.
Similarly, a badly handled retreat from Afghanistan could easily create even more problems. Even a well handled one would not exactly turn this mess into an overall success. And as the past few years have shown, Democrat or Republican, no president wanted to be the one who admits 'defeat', whether actual or just perceived.

[Thekri]

No, they definitely are not the good guys. But you STILL made thing worse.
Want to know who the good guys were in Afghanistan? The socialist government that eliminated all of those things you claim to hate, who made sure women got an education.

Who helped the religious extremists to overthrow those, remind me again?

We didn't make things worse then the Taliban. They were the worst that country has had so far, and that is saying something. Obviously we messed it up, but it was already horrific.

Oh, and stop glorifying the Russian invasion. That is what fucked that country up in the first place. The Communists destroyed the Republic of Afghanistan, and when they couldn't do anything the Soviets invaded to keep them in power. The Soviets made things worse, then the US backed Islamist groups to fight communists, and that made things even worse then that. Then the Soviets bailed, the Islamists took over, and that is the Taliban, and that is the worst it has gotten.

What we have now is horrible, but it is about the same level of horrible as the Soviet invasion was.

[GreenJesus]

At this point, that wouldn't exactly be hysteria. The US would still give Russia more influence in the region, much like the Syria pullout did. Just because some outlets would jump at any chance to make Trump look bad doesn't change that. Just like the Trump supporting media praising the decision wouldn't change it. It's just what it is.
The whole media debacle would probably just be furthered by Trump trying to frame the retreat as the biggest victory ever, thus just strengthening the divide. The man needs to always win. I definitely can't see him giving a calm, collected reasoning for it without any embellishments, which will then spur his opponents into action.

The issue is just the old adage: two wrongs don't make it right. Just because the US shouldn't have been there this long does not mean a retreat now wouldn't cause further issues. It's like with Syria. Should the US have stayed out of there to begin with? Probably. But they still did go there, they allied with local forces - and them suddenly withdrew their support without warning, probably for domestic reasons and certainly to focus on the oil. The withdrawal didn't right the situation, due to how it was done it probably just meant the US made two mistakes there.
Similarly, a badly handled retreat from Afghanistan could easily create even more problems. Even a well handled one would not exactly turn this mess into an overall success. And as the past few years have shown, Democrat or Republican, no president wanted to be the one who admits 'defeat', whether actual or just perceived.

That is very true too. Trump is the Trump administration's worst advocate. Always trying to frame something as a "win" and "200 IQ" chess move.

[caervek]

Nations lose wars, but that is not the end.

In fairness the last country to lose to Afghanistan did end as a result

[ipaq]

Nothing new. The US haven't won any war, ever. Look it up.

Ok first off I am giving you highlights or tweets by the Post and not full article. I admit I have not read the full article and all that it encompasses as to any devastating news by any administration.

People who are familiar with the Pentagon Papers will find a very similar comparison to this report on Afghanistan and what was withheld through the 3 administrations of Bush, Obama and Trump.

Exclusive: U.S. officials systematically misled the public about the war in Afghanistan, according to internal documents obtained by The Post.

These are The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.









Again, this seems that overall it our policy our maybe the whole occupation or being in Afghanistan was for naught. Maybe we should have withdrawn awhile ago? Moving forward I don't know if the US will change it's policy or look for an actual withdrawal. 18 years in a country with failed policy should be something we look at and the cover up.

[caervek]

And maybe, just for consistency become a signatory to the rome statute?

That's not gonna happen, if they sign up then they would have to face the possibility of an extradition request for GW Bush to answer for his war crimes

[Edge-]

Nothing new. The US haven't won any war, ever. Look it up.

I don't know. I think the US won the Civil War at the very least. Maybe the Revolutionary War, too.