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The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War
A Washington Post Best Book of 2021
The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock.
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: 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 become 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 “fast-paced and vivid” ( The New York Times Book Review ) 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 meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that 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 “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.
The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock.
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: 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 become 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 “fast-paced and vivid” ( The New York Times Book Review ) 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 meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that 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 “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.
408 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2021
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About the author
Craig Whitlock
4 books99 followersCraig Michael Whitlock is a journalist working for The Washington Post, where he is responsible for covering the Pentagon and national security. He has worked as a staff writer for the Post since 1998, and covered the Maryland Statehouse in Annapolis and the Prince George's County police department for almost six years, Whitlock served as the paper's Berlin bureau chief and covered terrorism networks in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. He has reported from over 50 countries. Before working for The Washington Post, he served as a reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer.
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September 4, 2021
The Curse of American Idealism
Craig Whitlock is an outstanding journalist. He has done something remarkable in this book by bringing together first person reports from soldiers, administrators, and politicians about US involvement in Afghanistan since 2001. The material he has gathered from a number of little known archives describes 20 years of error, misconception, and deceit throughout the military, the government, and in communication to the public and the world.
The most disturbing aspect of Whitlock’s reporting, however, is that the American experience in Afghanistan appears virtually identical to its experience in VietNam and to the previous Russian experience in Afghanistan which the Americans had sworn to avoid.* But like a good journalist, Whitlock sticks to the facts - who screwed up, who was responsible for collecting and disseminating false information, and the slow slide into strategic and tactical confusion as lives and money flowed into the country never to return.
For me, Whitlock’s tale begs a question: why do Americans do this? And so consistently? Is there a flaw in the American system of government that allows such egregious error and apparent incompetence to dominate their actions? Or does a possible flaw lie elsewhere, in national culture or character perhaps? And if the latter, why isn’t the flaw - governmental or cultural - something they debate seriously rather than merely using these kinds of gross failures in partisan point scoring?
I would like to extend Whitlock’s journalistic narrative beyond what he is able to report professionally, therefore. Here are some ideas about the source of what are really global disasters imposed by the United States on the rest of the world:
There’s little doubt about it: Americans are indeed idealists. But this is in no way a virtue. Idealists do very stupid and destructive things. And when those things become to much to bear or pay for, they move on to other ideals in order to repeat the cycle. They never realise that the problem they have is not the execution of this or that ideal, but the idea of the ideal itself. Eventually all ideals trap and control the idealist.
Idealists believe that the key to realising success is the precise and complete articulation of the state of affairs that should be achieved. As a matter of principle idealists are taught to ignore the details of the current situation as these interfere with a vision for the future. Impediments to the realisation of the ideal are dealt with as they arise of course. But it would be inefficient to consider these in advance. Ignorance of other cultures, possible constraints on action, and persistence in the face of resistance are idealists virtues. Besides, mere articulation and presentation of what are considered self-evident ideals to them should enrol all sincere people into its realisation. The rest can be subdued by power.
Idealists love power. After all the power necessary to achieve an ideal is implied by the ideal itself. Therefore idealists will use increasing amounts of power - military, economic, political - until resources are entirely depleted or until the ideal is reconsidered as ill-advised (a rare occurrence). American idealists seem constitutionally unable to admit that any particular ideal was badly formulated. However, upon achieving any ideal, they progress to further idealisation as a mark of success. Idealism is the foundation for terrorism in all its manifestations. This suggest some inability to learn from experience.
Idealists are, indeed, constitutionally unable to learn. Commitment to an ideal implies that those involved must be prepared to hold to it steadfastly while it is being pursued. But when ideals prove inadequate for the situation, they provide no guidance for future ideals since ideals by their nature are irrational (or perhaps extra-rational) phenomena. They exist not as a matter of necessity or appropriateness but of pure will. Consequently any failure of idealistic effort requires a replacement of the failed ideal with no impact at all on the commitment to idealism. Failed ideals may also be resurrected when their failure is no longer noted in popular culture (that is to say, among the electorate)
Idealists lie and believe themselves justified in doing so. Whether in government or Silicon Valley, Americans lie as part of the programme to promote a particular ideal and consider lying toward this end virtuous. Since any serious ideals are rarely achieved easily, lying is essential to maintain the commitment of those enrolled in the ideal. Progress is exaggerated; setbacks minimised, and, if ideals are subtly modified, changes are simply hidden. It helps, of course, if the original ideals were only vaguely formulated in order to allow rather free interpretation and wiggle-room for change without discussion (known in military circles as mission creep).
Idealists, in fact, hate the political process of discussion and compromise. Consequently they tend to rather conceptually define their ideals - freedom, for example, or democratic government, or women’s rights - and then exclude many other possible ideals as interference and irrelevant to the cause - like honesty, integrity, and solidarity say. How dare anyone suggest that there should be compromise of an ideal once accepted! This is heresy among Americans. In fact, there are an infinite number of extraneous ideals that are necessarily excluded from idealist thinking. These excluded ideals are not even considered as constraints but are ignored entirely. It is usually these ignored ideals that are diagnosed as the cause of failure.
But idealism prevails despite repeated failures, not just in war but in domestic politics in which idealism has become a rampant disease paralysing the body politic at all levels. This shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, in a country founded on ideals, and whose children are educated that pragmatic idealism is an obviously superior philosophy to any other, and whose adult population engages continually in idealist promotion from a vast number of pulpits, advertisements, and sources of political propaganda. Whether on the Left or Right, among the Believers or the Atheists, idealism is the name of the game in America. Perhaps that’s where the problem that Whitlock documents, yet again, actually lies.
* Just two of the many books which tell the story of American involvement in VietNam that could read just as fluidly and accurately if Afghanistan replaced that country’s name: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Craig Whitlock is an outstanding journalist. He has done something remarkable in this book by bringing together first person reports from soldiers, administrators, and politicians about US involvement in Afghanistan since 2001. The material he has gathered from a number of little known archives describes 20 years of error, misconception, and deceit throughout the military, the government, and in communication to the public and the world.
The most disturbing aspect of Whitlock’s reporting, however, is that the American experience in Afghanistan appears virtually identical to its experience in VietNam and to the previous Russian experience in Afghanistan which the Americans had sworn to avoid.* But like a good journalist, Whitlock sticks to the facts - who screwed up, who was responsible for collecting and disseminating false information, and the slow slide into strategic and tactical confusion as lives and money flowed into the country never to return.
For me, Whitlock’s tale begs a question: why do Americans do this? And so consistently? Is there a flaw in the American system of government that allows such egregious error and apparent incompetence to dominate their actions? Or does a possible flaw lie elsewhere, in national culture or character perhaps? And if the latter, why isn’t the flaw - governmental or cultural - something they debate seriously rather than merely using these kinds of gross failures in partisan point scoring?
I would like to extend Whitlock’s journalistic narrative beyond what he is able to report professionally, therefore. Here are some ideas about the source of what are really global disasters imposed by the United States on the rest of the world:
There’s little doubt about it: Americans are indeed idealists. But this is in no way a virtue. Idealists do very stupid and destructive things. And when those things become to much to bear or pay for, they move on to other ideals in order to repeat the cycle. They never realise that the problem they have is not the execution of this or that ideal, but the idea of the ideal itself. Eventually all ideals trap and control the idealist.
Idealists believe that the key to realising success is the precise and complete articulation of the state of affairs that should be achieved. As a matter of principle idealists are taught to ignore the details of the current situation as these interfere with a vision for the future. Impediments to the realisation of the ideal are dealt with as they arise of course. But it would be inefficient to consider these in advance. Ignorance of other cultures, possible constraints on action, and persistence in the face of resistance are idealists virtues. Besides, mere articulation and presentation of what are considered self-evident ideals to them should enrol all sincere people into its realisation. The rest can be subdued by power.
Idealists love power. After all the power necessary to achieve an ideal is implied by the ideal itself. Therefore idealists will use increasing amounts of power - military, economic, political - until resources are entirely depleted or until the ideal is reconsidered as ill-advised (a rare occurrence). American idealists seem constitutionally unable to admit that any particular ideal was badly formulated. However, upon achieving any ideal, they progress to further idealisation as a mark of success. Idealism is the foundation for terrorism in all its manifestations. This suggest some inability to learn from experience.
Idealists are, indeed, constitutionally unable to learn. Commitment to an ideal implies that those involved must be prepared to hold to it steadfastly while it is being pursued. But when ideals prove inadequate for the situation, they provide no guidance for future ideals since ideals by their nature are irrational (or perhaps extra-rational) phenomena. They exist not as a matter of necessity or appropriateness but of pure will. Consequently any failure of idealistic effort requires a replacement of the failed ideal with no impact at all on the commitment to idealism. Failed ideals may also be resurrected when their failure is no longer noted in popular culture (that is to say, among the electorate)
Idealists lie and believe themselves justified in doing so. Whether in government or Silicon Valley, Americans lie as part of the programme to promote a particular ideal and consider lying toward this end virtuous. Since any serious ideals are rarely achieved easily, lying is essential to maintain the commitment of those enrolled in the ideal. Progress is exaggerated; setbacks minimised, and, if ideals are subtly modified, changes are simply hidden. It helps, of course, if the original ideals were only vaguely formulated in order to allow rather free interpretation and wiggle-room for change without discussion (known in military circles as mission creep).
Idealists, in fact, hate the political process of discussion and compromise. Consequently they tend to rather conceptually define their ideals - freedom, for example, or democratic government, or women’s rights - and then exclude many other possible ideals as interference and irrelevant to the cause - like honesty, integrity, and solidarity say. How dare anyone suggest that there should be compromise of an ideal once accepted! This is heresy among Americans. In fact, there are an infinite number of extraneous ideals that are necessarily excluded from idealist thinking. These excluded ideals are not even considered as constraints but are ignored entirely. It is usually these ignored ideals that are diagnosed as the cause of failure.
But idealism prevails despite repeated failures, not just in war but in domestic politics in which idealism has become a rampant disease paralysing the body politic at all levels. This shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, in a country founded on ideals, and whose children are educated that pragmatic idealism is an obviously superior philosophy to any other, and whose adult population engages continually in idealist promotion from a vast number of pulpits, advertisements, and sources of political propaganda. Whether on the Left or Right, among the Believers or the Atheists, idealism is the name of the game in America. Perhaps that’s where the problem that Whitlock documents, yet again, actually lies.
* Just two of the many books which tell the story of American involvement in VietNam that could read just as fluidly and accurately if Afghanistan replaced that country’s name: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
October 20, 2021
The Afghanistan Papers is a shocking account of what went wrong in the USA’s 20 year-long war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public, year after year, about America’s longest war, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock.
This book is based on files that Whitlock and his newspaper managed to obtain after long legal battles with the US government. The sources include memos and interviews of senior defense staff, generals, politicians, intelligence agents, diplomats, and contractors from both the US and NATO countries. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling 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 a straightforward 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.
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.
The book covers all the reasons that lead the Afghanistan War to a colossal failure that should have been ended years ago. From the missed opportunities of diplomacy in 2001 to the lack of a clear strategy or goal for the war or even the lack of understanding of Afghanistan as a country and its culture. The failed campaigns to destroy the poppy and drug trade and the rampant corruption of the new Afghan government and its police and army and the nexus with corrupt contractors, this book covers it all in excruciating detail.
Overall, The Afghanistan Papers is a grim account of criminal incompetence and a never-ending cycle of lies and failure, which lead to even worse failures. Coincidentally, this book was published right around the time US troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took over the country in a matter of days. If you ever wondered, what went wrong for the US in Afghanistan, this book is a timely read.
Many thanks to the publishers Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC.
This book is based on files that Whitlock and his newspaper managed to obtain after long legal battles with the US government. The sources include memos and interviews of senior defense staff, generals, politicians, intelligence agents, diplomats, and contractors from both the US and NATO countries. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling 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 a straightforward 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.
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.
The book covers all the reasons that lead the Afghanistan War to a colossal failure that should have been ended years ago. From the missed opportunities of diplomacy in 2001 to the lack of a clear strategy or goal for the war or even the lack of understanding of Afghanistan as a country and its culture. The failed campaigns to destroy the poppy and drug trade and the rampant corruption of the new Afghan government and its police and army and the nexus with corrupt contractors, this book covers it all in excruciating detail.
Overall, The Afghanistan Papers is a grim account of criminal incompetence and a never-ending cycle of lies and failure, which lead to even worse failures. Coincidentally, this book was published right around the time US troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took over the country in a matter of days. If you ever wondered, what went wrong for the US in Afghanistan, this book is a timely read.
Many thanks to the publishers Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC.
August 24, 2021
The failure of the war in Afghanistan, an immensely costly and brutal two-decade long project of the American elite, reveals much about the way that the U.S. government functions today. This book is a jaw-dropping account of the North Korea-level lying engaged in by U.S. officials at the highest levels, telling stories they knew to be completely false about the progress of the war, concealing massive financial corruption, and killing huge numbers of Afghan civilians while denying it til the last possible moment.
This book is based on files that Whitlock sued the government to receive from its internal Afghanistan war watchdog agency. What it reveals is shocking. The U.S. attempted to impose a political and security order on Afghanistan without even the most basic understanding of the country and its people, let alone who they were there to fight or what their ultimate goals were. In the end the endeavor just became about throwing gigantic amounts of money down a black hole, much of it funnelled to connected Afghan insiders who were the unsavory allies of America on the ground, but the lion's share to contractors who made a fortune off the war as it dragged on senselessly for twenty years.
By this time, with Kabul having fallen to the Taliban one week after the U.S. withdrawal, you probably know the story about Afghanistan in broad strokes. But the minute details of the years of deceit, failure, and criminality that led to this moment must be read to be believed. The U.S. government is dysfunctional on a level that cannot be overstated. It is hard to trust anything that its officials say after reading the Afghanistan Papers. The slapdash, lying, expensive, and brutal manner in which they governed Afghanistan has become a metaphor for how they today govern around the world, including at home. Whether you are interested in the war or not, reading this book will teach you something important about the people who run the world today.
This book is based on files that Whitlock sued the government to receive from its internal Afghanistan war watchdog agency. What it reveals is shocking. The U.S. attempted to impose a political and security order on Afghanistan without even the most basic understanding of the country and its people, let alone who they were there to fight or what their ultimate goals were. In the end the endeavor just became about throwing gigantic amounts of money down a black hole, much of it funnelled to connected Afghan insiders who were the unsavory allies of America on the ground, but the lion's share to contractors who made a fortune off the war as it dragged on senselessly for twenty years.
By this time, with Kabul having fallen to the Taliban one week after the U.S. withdrawal, you probably know the story about Afghanistan in broad strokes. But the minute details of the years of deceit, failure, and criminality that led to this moment must be read to be believed. The U.S. government is dysfunctional on a level that cannot be overstated. It is hard to trust anything that its officials say after reading the Afghanistan Papers. The slapdash, lying, expensive, and brutal manner in which they governed Afghanistan has become a metaphor for how they today govern around the world, including at home. Whether you are interested in the war or not, reading this book will teach you something important about the people who run the world today.
February 16, 2022
4.5 ☆ rounded up
In late 2021, I experienced many "what-the-hell" moments while watching the news footage of the US military officially leaving Afghanistan. I picked up The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War to gain some understanding of how the ignominious departure and the return of the Taliban to the capital of Kabul had transpired.
After seven years as a beat reporter for The Washington Post covering the US military, author Craig Whitlock wanted to answer the big picture question:
Whitlock pondered these questions in 2016, five years before the US military's calamitous exit from Afghanistan. Reading The Afghanistan Papers is the chance to be in "the room where it happened." Whitlock delved through thousands of pages of candid interviews, most of them conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction ("SIGAR"). SIGAR's objective was to diagnose the US' policy failures by distilling conversations with hundreds of participants (both civilian and military) about the war into "Lessons Learned."
And a lot of lessons were not learned, even fundamental ones that are taught in military strategy curriculums. During 20 years in Afghanistan, the US had deployed more than 775,000 troops. Approximately 2,400 personnel died while 21,000 returned injured. The financial toll hasn't been finalized but estimates exceed $1 trillion (that's 12 zeros before the decimal point!). Before the US invaded Afghanistan in response to the terrorist 9/11 attacks, the Taliban ruled this poor landlocked nation. They were ousted but soon returned to power one mere month after the withdrawal of US troops. Despite a great deal of effort, resources, and money which had been thrown at Afghanistan, there is precious little to boast about other than a thriving opium trade and rampant corruption. [Okay, yes, Osama bin Laden had been killed and this was the original goal. He had been eliminated in 2011.] As Richard Boucher, a senior US diplomat, observed in 2015:
Granted, Whitlock probably highlighted the interviews that he wanted to demonstrate the consistent narrative of American ineptitude and error. But the truth of the matter was that the US government had lied to its citizens regarding the realities in Afghanistan.
This wasn't an easy book to read, not because of a deficiency in writing quality, but because the revelations were so d*** disheartening and dumbfounding. But if you want to understand what had actually happened and what our government did as opposed to what previous administrations had falsified, then The Afghanistan Papers is a must read.
In late 2021, I experienced many "what-the-hell" moments while watching the news footage of the US military officially leaving Afghanistan. I picked up The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War to gain some understanding of how the ignominious departure and the return of the Taliban to the capital of Kabul had transpired.
After seven years as a beat reporter for The Washington Post covering the US military, author Craig Whitlock wanted to answer the big picture question:
How had the war degenerated into a stalemate with no realistic prospect for an enduring victory? [Especially given that the] United States and its allies had initially crushed the Taliban and the al-Qaeda in 2001. What went wrong?
Whitlock pondered these questions in 2016, five years before the US military's calamitous exit from Afghanistan. Reading The Afghanistan Papers is the chance to be in "the room where it happened." Whitlock delved through thousands of pages of candid interviews, most of them conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction ("SIGAR"). SIGAR's objective was to diagnose the US' policy failures by distilling conversations with hundreds of participants (both civilian and military) about the war into "Lessons Learned."
And a lot of lessons were not learned, even fundamental ones that are taught in military strategy curriculums. During 20 years in Afghanistan, the US had deployed more than 775,000 troops. Approximately 2,400 personnel died while 21,000 returned injured. The financial toll hasn't been finalized but estimates exceed $1 trillion (that's 12 zeros before the decimal point!). Before the US invaded Afghanistan in response to the terrorist 9/11 attacks, the Taliban ruled this poor landlocked nation. They were ousted but soon returned to power one mere month after the withdrawal of US troops. Despite a great deal of effort, resources, and money which had been thrown at Afghanistan, there is precious little to boast about other than a thriving opium trade and rampant corruption. [Okay, yes, Osama bin Laden had been killed and this was the original goal. He had been eliminated in 2011.] As Richard Boucher, a senior US diplomat, observed in 2015:
"If you look at it after fifteen years, we could have taken a thousand [Afghan] schoolchildren in ... fifth grade and taken them to get educated and trained in Indian schools and colleges... Then we could have brought them back on an airplane by now and said, 'Okay, you guys run Afghanistan' ... Better than having a bunch of Americans going in and saying, 'We can build it for you.'"
Granted, Whitlock probably highlighted the interviews that he wanted to demonstrate the consistent narrative of American ineptitude and error. But the truth of the matter was that the US government had lied to its citizens regarding the realities in Afghanistan.
[By 2007,] the US military sank deeper into a pattern of deceiving the public about many facets of the war, from discrete events to the big picture. What began as selective, self-serving disclosures hardened into willful distortions, and eventually, flat-out fabrications. ... it was common in the field, at military headquarters in Kabul, at the Pentagon and at the White House to skew statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
This wasn't an easy book to read, not because of a deficiency in writing quality, but because the revelations were so d*** disheartening and dumbfounding. But if you want to understand what had actually happened and what our government did as opposed to what previous administrations had falsified, then The Afghanistan Papers is a must read.
July 29, 2022
An insightful look into the Afghanistan war and how three administrations misled the public. Whitlock depicts how Bush, Obama and Trump, lacked an essential understanding of the conflict leading to failed policies, often quite similar, and how the policy of disinformation manifested itself in all three. We get the private observations of key players from Whitlock’s unique set of sources which are the basis of the book. My notes follow.
Whitlock’s analysis relies on three primary sources. The first was interviews with soldiers and senior officials in a project called Lessons Learned conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to diagnose policy failures. The study used diplomatic cables, decision making memos and intelligence reports in addition to the interviews. After a three-year legal battle and suits filed by Whitlock’s newspaper, The Washington Post, in 2020 he got the 7,000-page study. In it many senior officials shared their private views that were the opposite of the official view at the time. Second were the “snowflakes”, memos dictated by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld containing instructions and comments. Totaling 59,000 pages, the snowflakes were obtained by another FOIA request. Third were the interviews of 600 soldiers, primarily junior officers, who served in Afghanistan conducted by the Army’s Operational Leadership Project. Whitlock also used interviews of soldiers from other organizations. We learn what government officials and soldiers actually believed about the war in their own words, which was very different from what the three administrations put out to the American people.
“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan” Donald Rumsfeld told his intelligence chief two years after the war began. The first months of the war the clear enemy was al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda was quickly driven away. Who was the enemy then? The U.S. started attacking the Taliban, but they were indistinguishable from the local population. The U.S. turned to nation building, establishing a central government, an impossible task in a land always dominated by tribal leaders. A central government meant nothing to most Afghans. Michael Metrinko, head of the US embassy political section in 2002, said “Much of what we call Taliban activity was really tribal or it was rivalry or it was feuding. I had this explained to me over and over and over again by tribal elders.” What was the plan for post war occupation? What defined success? Bush wasn’t worried. He felt the war was won and he started thinking about Iraq. When Rumsfeld asked Bush if he wanted to meet General McNeil in October 2002, Bush asked “Who is General McNeil?” Rumsfeld told him he was the general in command of US forces in Afghanistan. Bush said, ”Well I don’t need to meet with him.”
On May 1, 2003 six weeks following the invasion of Iraq president Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln declaring “mission accomplished”. That same day Rumsfeld was in Kabul claiming ”The bulk of the country is permissive, it’s secure.” Privately Rumsfeld was not optimistic saying in a snowflake “…it will be a long hard slog.” Special forces officer Lt. Col. Mark Schmidt in Afghanistan in 2003 said “Quite frankly, we were just going around killing people. There was still plenty of fighting…We’d fly in, do a mission…fly out – and of course the Taliban would just flow right back in.” In September 2004 Bush said that the Taliban was “no longer in existence.”
Whitlock highlights interviews that showed training of Afghan soldiers and police was a mess. American trainers were ill prepared. They didn’t understand Afghan norms, culture and language. Trainees were often illiterate with no exposure to Western equipment and values which they often could not comprehend including ones essential to a modern army such as timeliness and discipline. Whitlock uses documents and interviews of US military and diplomatic officials to show the confusion they had about Pakistan’s role. Pakistani president Musharraf, raking in U.S. billions, played both sides allowing the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) to help the Taliban while providing visible help to the Americans.
In 2006/7 the Taliban were coming back with tactics adopted from Iraq, suicide bombings and roadside bombs. Bush, Rumsfeld and generals towing the line engaged in a disinformation campaign saying the Taliban were losing citing whatever statistics they could make up to prove their point. But at the same time reports to their desks painted a bleak picture. Facing a dismal situation in Iraq, Bush did not want to admit Afghanistan was also rapidly deteriorating. The Army had sent retired General Barry McCaffrey to Afghanistan in May 2006 to review the situation. His report made it back to Rumsfeld noting that the war was “deteriorating”, the Taliban were “very aggressive and smart”, armed “with excellent weapons”, the Afghan army was “miserably under-resourced”, the Afghan police ”in a disastrous condition: badly equipped, corrupt, incompetent, poorly led and trained, riddled by drug use.”, “the Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out…and the whole thing will again collapse into mayhem.” Rumsfeld’s trusted advisor Marin Strmecki sent Rumsfeld a report in August 2006 after visiting Afghanistan corroborating McCaffrey’s dark picture noting ”It is not that the enemy is so strong but that the Afghan government is so weak.” Also in August US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann sent a cable stating bluntly “We are not winning in Afghanistan”. Two weeks later three-star General Karl Eikenberry said on ABC News “We are winning [in Afghanistan]”. That fall Rumsfeld issued talking points “Afghanistan: Five Years Later.” Stating that “Five years on, there is a multitude of good news.” On January 9, 2007 Afghan forces training commander Major General Robert Durban said “We are prevailing”. On January 29, 2007 10th Mountain Division commander Major General Benjamin Freakley said “We’re winning.” and making “great progress” and “defeated the Taliban…at every turn.” All in contradiction to what was well known to military and civilian officials.
In May 2006 British General David Richards took command of the 35,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. The coalition could not agree on a strategy. In later interviews Richards said “There was no coherent long-term strategy…but instead we got a lot of tactics.” Robert Gates replaced Rumsfeld in December 2006. He advised Bush to forget nation building, narrow his mission in Afghanistan and focus on Iraq. Bush was focused almost entirely on Iraq, but still doubled down on Afghanistan stating in February 2007 he would turn Afghanistan into “a stable, moderate, democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens.” Adding “We’ve made real progress.” In 2007 US General Dan McNeil replaced General Richards. In a later interview he said ”In 2007, there was no NATO campaign plan, a lot of verbiage and talk, but no plan.” In the spring of 2007 Bush made General Douglas Lute the White House “war czar”. In a later interview Lute said “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – We didn’t know what we were doing.” In February 2008 Bush said “The Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies are on the run.” But privately he was very worried.
In 2009 Barack Obama became president. He kept Bob Gates at Defense and announced he would leave Iraq and focus on Afghanistan. The current Afghan commander General David McKiernan in May publicly called the war “stalemated” and “a very tough fight”, an unforgivable case of honesty. He was quickly replaced by General Stanley McChrystal who specialized in counterinsurgency tactics. Obama added 30,000 troops and McChrystal tried to repeat his Iraq playbook. Through the whole history of the war the mistake of thinking that what worked in Iraq would work in Afghanistan was made time and again and this time was no different. Many Afghans preferred the Taliban to their other options unlike in Iraq where Sunnis were frightened by the emergence of ISIS leading to their cooperation. In 2010 McChrystal mocked Obama in a Rolling Stone interview and was replaced by his mentor General David Petraeus who embraced the same strategy.
In December 2009 Obama announced raising the US troop total in Afghanistan to 100,000, a threefold increase since taking office. He would allocate $17 billion to reconstruction in 2010. The money largely went into the pockets of corrupt officials with the remainder building mostly useless projects. A school built where farmers required their children to herd goats went unused. In other cases, there were no teachers available. The Taliban converted some to bomb factories. Whitlock lists many more examples. A good slice of the money ended up in the hands of the Taliban who had their members embedded in the right places to get it. Afghan police were corrupt from top to bottom. The commanders stole funds intended to fund their force and the lowest tier simply took it from ordinary people. It was a grand protection racket. Afghan army commanders profited by inflating the number of troops they had to meet quotas then took the money intended for the missing soldiers. Afghan bank administrators ran their banks as a Ponzi scheme and eventually they went bust. The Karzai family and top officials ran the country as a kleptocracy. Whitlock references recordings and documents to show that US civilian and military leaders were well aware of the massive corruption but chose to do nothing about it because it was too massive to bring under control and exposing it would have completely disrupted the war effort.
The disinformation under the Obama administration was just as bad as it had been in the Bush administration. After the killing of bin Laden the rhetoric was particularly elevated. In June 2011 Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a TV interview ”We’ve made a lot of progress…From a strategy standpoint it really appears to have worked as we hoped.” In March 2012 US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General John Allen said to the Senate Armed Services Committee “The progress is real and, importantly, its sustainable…We have severely degraded the insurgency.” His successor General Joseph Dunford, Jr. said in Kabul in 2013 ”I firmly believe we are on a path to win.” General Michael Flynn (whatever you think of him), who was intelligence chief in Afghanistan, later noted “…they all said when they left they accomplished that mission. Every single commander. Not one commander is going to leave Afghanistan…and say ‘You know what, we didn’t accomplish our mission.’” Like General Flynn, US intelligence agencies did not buy in to the “progress” being made. Defense Intelligence Agency director General Ronald Burgess said to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2012 that the Afghan government was consumed by “endemic corruption”, the army and police suffered from “persistent qualitative deficiencies”, the Taliban were “resilient” and “confident of eventual victory.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in the same hearing why military commanders were so optimistic and intelligence agencies so pessimistic. He said “I served as an analyst briefer for General Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1966. I kinda lost my professional innocence…when I found out that operational commanders sometimes don’t agree with [intelligence officials about] their view of success of their campaign.” I think that comparison to Vietnam puts in a nutshell what we can understand about the quality of information the public was getting.
December 2014 marked what Obama called a “milestone for our country”. Obama declared the end of the “combat mission” in Afghanistan seemingly fulfilling his promise to end the war, but in reality, nothing had changed. It was just posturing. U.S. troops in Afghanistan had been reduced to under 11,000. These were still allowed to engage in “counter terrorism operations” and engage al-Qaeda and “associated forces” and aid Afghan forces. Aircraft still bombed and launched missiles on a regular basis. Obama promised to bring home the remaining troops by the end of his term but 8,400 remained when he left office in 2017. ISIS fighters in Afghanistan had complicated things, but even without them there was no way for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan without a resulting debacle.
Trump took over in 2017. He had campaigned that “Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home.” But in his first speech as president addressing Afghanistan on January 21, he said ”We will fight to win. From now on, victory will have a clear definition.” However, his policies pretty much mimicked those of the past two administrations. What differed was his arrogant, dismissive style. In a special briefing on Afghanistan with the Joint Chiefs set up by his defense secretary General James Mattis, Trump ended up telling the generals “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” Attendees Mattis, General Dunford, and White House national security adviser General H.R. McMaster were dumbfounded. All had extensive service in Afghanistan and irrespective of public remarks, had a pretty good understanding of the situation. But they learned how to push Trump’s buttons by touting their recommended policies as not like Obama’s. The generals learned that to influence Trump they had to emulate Trump’s style, talk about winning and claim Trump’s policies were different. But they weren’t. Trump increased the number of troops, took restrictions off their engagements and dramatically increased bombing. It made no difference. The Taliban continued to gain ground. As Trump’s term ended, he reduced the number of troops just like Obama and like Obama and Bush, he neither won the war nor left Afghanistan.
Biden took over in 2021 and he did leave Afghanistan. He had visited Afghanistan as a Senator in 2002 and followed it closely as Obama’s Vice President. He had advised Obama against the surge and counterinsurgency strategy, both of which had failed. He was and remained skeptical of what the U.S. could accomplish in Afghanistan. On April 14 Biden announced his decision for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by September 11, twenty years after America was attacked. Biden said “So when will it be the right time to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more years? What conditions must be met to depart? I’m not hearing any good answers to those questions. And if you can’t answer them, in my view, we should not stay.”
Whitlock’s analysis relies on three primary sources. The first was interviews with soldiers and senior officials in a project called Lessons Learned conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to diagnose policy failures. The study used diplomatic cables, decision making memos and intelligence reports in addition to the interviews. After a three-year legal battle and suits filed by Whitlock’s newspaper, The Washington Post, in 2020 he got the 7,000-page study. In it many senior officials shared their private views that were the opposite of the official view at the time. Second were the “snowflakes”, memos dictated by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld containing instructions and comments. Totaling 59,000 pages, the snowflakes were obtained by another FOIA request. Third were the interviews of 600 soldiers, primarily junior officers, who served in Afghanistan conducted by the Army’s Operational Leadership Project. Whitlock also used interviews of soldiers from other organizations. We learn what government officials and soldiers actually believed about the war in their own words, which was very different from what the three administrations put out to the American people.
“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan” Donald Rumsfeld told his intelligence chief two years after the war began. The first months of the war the clear enemy was al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda was quickly driven away. Who was the enemy then? The U.S. started attacking the Taliban, but they were indistinguishable from the local population. The U.S. turned to nation building, establishing a central government, an impossible task in a land always dominated by tribal leaders. A central government meant nothing to most Afghans. Michael Metrinko, head of the US embassy political section in 2002, said “Much of what we call Taliban activity was really tribal or it was rivalry or it was feuding. I had this explained to me over and over and over again by tribal elders.” What was the plan for post war occupation? What defined success? Bush wasn’t worried. He felt the war was won and he started thinking about Iraq. When Rumsfeld asked Bush if he wanted to meet General McNeil in October 2002, Bush asked “Who is General McNeil?” Rumsfeld told him he was the general in command of US forces in Afghanistan. Bush said, ”Well I don’t need to meet with him.”
On May 1, 2003 six weeks following the invasion of Iraq president Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln declaring “mission accomplished”. That same day Rumsfeld was in Kabul claiming ”The bulk of the country is permissive, it’s secure.” Privately Rumsfeld was not optimistic saying in a snowflake “…it will be a long hard slog.” Special forces officer Lt. Col. Mark Schmidt in Afghanistan in 2003 said “Quite frankly, we were just going around killing people. There was still plenty of fighting…We’d fly in, do a mission…fly out – and of course the Taliban would just flow right back in.” In September 2004 Bush said that the Taliban was “no longer in existence.”
Whitlock highlights interviews that showed training of Afghan soldiers and police was a mess. American trainers were ill prepared. They didn’t understand Afghan norms, culture and language. Trainees were often illiterate with no exposure to Western equipment and values which they often could not comprehend including ones essential to a modern army such as timeliness and discipline. Whitlock uses documents and interviews of US military and diplomatic officials to show the confusion they had about Pakistan’s role. Pakistani president Musharraf, raking in U.S. billions, played both sides allowing the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) to help the Taliban while providing visible help to the Americans.
In 2006/7 the Taliban were coming back with tactics adopted from Iraq, suicide bombings and roadside bombs. Bush, Rumsfeld and generals towing the line engaged in a disinformation campaign saying the Taliban were losing citing whatever statistics they could make up to prove their point. But at the same time reports to their desks painted a bleak picture. Facing a dismal situation in Iraq, Bush did not want to admit Afghanistan was also rapidly deteriorating. The Army had sent retired General Barry McCaffrey to Afghanistan in May 2006 to review the situation. His report made it back to Rumsfeld noting that the war was “deteriorating”, the Taliban were “very aggressive and smart”, armed “with excellent weapons”, the Afghan army was “miserably under-resourced”, the Afghan police ”in a disastrous condition: badly equipped, corrupt, incompetent, poorly led and trained, riddled by drug use.”, “the Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out…and the whole thing will again collapse into mayhem.” Rumsfeld’s trusted advisor Marin Strmecki sent Rumsfeld a report in August 2006 after visiting Afghanistan corroborating McCaffrey’s dark picture noting ”It is not that the enemy is so strong but that the Afghan government is so weak.” Also in August US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann sent a cable stating bluntly “We are not winning in Afghanistan”. Two weeks later three-star General Karl Eikenberry said on ABC News “We are winning [in Afghanistan]”. That fall Rumsfeld issued talking points “Afghanistan: Five Years Later.” Stating that “Five years on, there is a multitude of good news.” On January 9, 2007 Afghan forces training commander Major General Robert Durban said “We are prevailing”. On January 29, 2007 10th Mountain Division commander Major General Benjamin Freakley said “We’re winning.” and making “great progress” and “defeated the Taliban…at every turn.” All in contradiction to what was well known to military and civilian officials.
In May 2006 British General David Richards took command of the 35,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. The coalition could not agree on a strategy. In later interviews Richards said “There was no coherent long-term strategy…but instead we got a lot of tactics.” Robert Gates replaced Rumsfeld in December 2006. He advised Bush to forget nation building, narrow his mission in Afghanistan and focus on Iraq. Bush was focused almost entirely on Iraq, but still doubled down on Afghanistan stating in February 2007 he would turn Afghanistan into “a stable, moderate, democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens.” Adding “We’ve made real progress.” In 2007 US General Dan McNeil replaced General Richards. In a later interview he said ”In 2007, there was no NATO campaign plan, a lot of verbiage and talk, but no plan.” In the spring of 2007 Bush made General Douglas Lute the White House “war czar”. In a later interview Lute said “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – We didn’t know what we were doing.” In February 2008 Bush said “The Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies are on the run.” But privately he was very worried.
In 2009 Barack Obama became president. He kept Bob Gates at Defense and announced he would leave Iraq and focus on Afghanistan. The current Afghan commander General David McKiernan in May publicly called the war “stalemated” and “a very tough fight”, an unforgivable case of honesty. He was quickly replaced by General Stanley McChrystal who specialized in counterinsurgency tactics. Obama added 30,000 troops and McChrystal tried to repeat his Iraq playbook. Through the whole history of the war the mistake of thinking that what worked in Iraq would work in Afghanistan was made time and again and this time was no different. Many Afghans preferred the Taliban to their other options unlike in Iraq where Sunnis were frightened by the emergence of ISIS leading to their cooperation. In 2010 McChrystal mocked Obama in a Rolling Stone interview and was replaced by his mentor General David Petraeus who embraced the same strategy.
In December 2009 Obama announced raising the US troop total in Afghanistan to 100,000, a threefold increase since taking office. He would allocate $17 billion to reconstruction in 2010. The money largely went into the pockets of corrupt officials with the remainder building mostly useless projects. A school built where farmers required their children to herd goats went unused. In other cases, there were no teachers available. The Taliban converted some to bomb factories. Whitlock lists many more examples. A good slice of the money ended up in the hands of the Taliban who had their members embedded in the right places to get it. Afghan police were corrupt from top to bottom. The commanders stole funds intended to fund their force and the lowest tier simply took it from ordinary people. It was a grand protection racket. Afghan army commanders profited by inflating the number of troops they had to meet quotas then took the money intended for the missing soldiers. Afghan bank administrators ran their banks as a Ponzi scheme and eventually they went bust. The Karzai family and top officials ran the country as a kleptocracy. Whitlock references recordings and documents to show that US civilian and military leaders were well aware of the massive corruption but chose to do nothing about it because it was too massive to bring under control and exposing it would have completely disrupted the war effort.
The disinformation under the Obama administration was just as bad as it had been in the Bush administration. After the killing of bin Laden the rhetoric was particularly elevated. In June 2011 Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a TV interview ”We’ve made a lot of progress…From a strategy standpoint it really appears to have worked as we hoped.” In March 2012 US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General John Allen said to the Senate Armed Services Committee “The progress is real and, importantly, its sustainable…We have severely degraded the insurgency.” His successor General Joseph Dunford, Jr. said in Kabul in 2013 ”I firmly believe we are on a path to win.” General Michael Flynn (whatever you think of him), who was intelligence chief in Afghanistan, later noted “…they all said when they left they accomplished that mission. Every single commander. Not one commander is going to leave Afghanistan…and say ‘You know what, we didn’t accomplish our mission.’” Like General Flynn, US intelligence agencies did not buy in to the “progress” being made. Defense Intelligence Agency director General Ronald Burgess said to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2012 that the Afghan government was consumed by “endemic corruption”, the army and police suffered from “persistent qualitative deficiencies”, the Taliban were “resilient” and “confident of eventual victory.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in the same hearing why military commanders were so optimistic and intelligence agencies so pessimistic. He said “I served as an analyst briefer for General Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1966. I kinda lost my professional innocence…when I found out that operational commanders sometimes don’t agree with [intelligence officials about] their view of success of their campaign.” I think that comparison to Vietnam puts in a nutshell what we can understand about the quality of information the public was getting.
December 2014 marked what Obama called a “milestone for our country”. Obama declared the end of the “combat mission” in Afghanistan seemingly fulfilling his promise to end the war, but in reality, nothing had changed. It was just posturing. U.S. troops in Afghanistan had been reduced to under 11,000. These were still allowed to engage in “counter terrorism operations” and engage al-Qaeda and “associated forces” and aid Afghan forces. Aircraft still bombed and launched missiles on a regular basis. Obama promised to bring home the remaining troops by the end of his term but 8,400 remained when he left office in 2017. ISIS fighters in Afghanistan had complicated things, but even without them there was no way for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan without a resulting debacle.
Trump took over in 2017. He had campaigned that “Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home.” But in his first speech as president addressing Afghanistan on January 21, he said ”We will fight to win. From now on, victory will have a clear definition.” However, his policies pretty much mimicked those of the past two administrations. What differed was his arrogant, dismissive style. In a special briefing on Afghanistan with the Joint Chiefs set up by his defense secretary General James Mattis, Trump ended up telling the generals “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” Attendees Mattis, General Dunford, and White House national security adviser General H.R. McMaster were dumbfounded. All had extensive service in Afghanistan and irrespective of public remarks, had a pretty good understanding of the situation. But they learned how to push Trump’s buttons by touting their recommended policies as not like Obama’s. The generals learned that to influence Trump they had to emulate Trump’s style, talk about winning and claim Trump’s policies were different. But they weren’t. Trump increased the number of troops, took restrictions off their engagements and dramatically increased bombing. It made no difference. The Taliban continued to gain ground. As Trump’s term ended, he reduced the number of troops just like Obama and like Obama and Bush, he neither won the war nor left Afghanistan.
Biden took over in 2021 and he did leave Afghanistan. He had visited Afghanistan as a Senator in 2002 and followed it closely as Obama’s Vice President. He had advised Obama against the surge and counterinsurgency strategy, both of which had failed. He was and remained skeptical of what the U.S. could accomplish in Afghanistan. On April 14 Biden announced his decision for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by September 11, twenty years after America was attacked. Biden said “So when will it be the right time to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more years? What conditions must be met to depart? I’m not hearing any good answers to those questions. And if you can’t answer them, in my view, we should not stay.”
July 31, 2022
An easy to read account of many flaws and misstakes made in managing the war in Afghanistan. Lack of cultural understanding and a certain amount of arrogance, or at least a staunch belief in the malleability of foreign countries, form the root cause for these errors
It’s not that the enemy is so strong, but that the Afghan government is so weak
Great progress is a catchphrase that constantly is used by officials quoted in The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Another recurring quote, from Rumsfeld amongst others, two years after the start of the war, is: I have no visibility on who the bad guys are in Afghanistan
The statement We are woefully deficient in human intelligence seems hardly unjustified in this context.
Initial expectations were that the war would end quickly, with facilities being installed late and sparingly in Kandahar. Toppling the Taliban and Al-Qaida, helped by early successes through the use of air superiority and special units, expanded to full on nation building.
The way Craig Whitlock writes is accessible and full of, in retrospect, genuinely embarrassing quotes. One critique I do have is the number of time he mentions the sources (various interview rounds), this becomes rather overwhelming and distracting.
Over USD 85 billion of investment was poured into modernizing the Afghan army along Western standard, while recruits were between 80% and 90% illiterate. In police training the US spend 10x as much as Germany, who was formally responsible, but again achieved little to nothing.
A lack of real understanding of the surroundings, and people rotating in for a quarter to a half year, makes any money rather useless, not even to speak of the massive corruption on the ground.
Arab language training, since Iraq and Afghanistan were thought of the same in American predeployment training, and complete non-understanding of Islam in training, are other examples.
A shaved American soldier being hit-on as youngsters (since pederasty was deemed acceptable in some regions of Aghanistan) is another more hilarious cultural example.
In the end over 25% of troops ended up being send to Afghanistan 5 times or more, showing the strain on the US army to find resources.
The lack of focus on Afghanistan, with Iraq being at the forefront of everyone's mind is another topic that comes back a lot in the book. The so called "War tzar" of Bush spend only 85% of his time to Iraq and only 15% to Afghanistan.
Another failed attempt is getting the warlords behind the new centralised regime, with some of them receiving USD 70.000 per month from the CIA, but Karzai become more and more suspicious of his American allies because of these payments facilitating warlord armies being build up.
Aid money, to coax the civilians into supporting the government, is massively wasted. Over USD 775 million was spend on a dam in Kandahar, which while being operational would always need foreign subsidies. In the Obama era over USD 11 billion a year was allocated to the Afghan army, USD 3 billion dollar more than Pakistan, a nuclear nation, spend.
It is a sad story of massive mismanagement, no long-term strategy (and transient people involved) and lack of cultural sensitivity. All the money (almost literally) in the world couldn't compensate for this. Still I feel the account this books gives, shows a lot of believe in malleability. I highly doubt that even with all these factors addressed, the nation building would have been successful. It is another kind of overestimation of the ultimate usefulness of military capabilities, which make me appreciate this book a bit less - 3.5 stars rounded down.
It’s not that the enemy is so strong, but that the Afghan government is so weak
Great progress is a catchphrase that constantly is used by officials quoted in The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Another recurring quote, from Rumsfeld amongst others, two years after the start of the war, is: I have no visibility on who the bad guys are in Afghanistan
The statement We are woefully deficient in human intelligence seems hardly unjustified in this context.
Initial expectations were that the war would end quickly, with facilities being installed late and sparingly in Kandahar. Toppling the Taliban and Al-Qaida, helped by early successes through the use of air superiority and special units, expanded to full on nation building.
The way Craig Whitlock writes is accessible and full of, in retrospect, genuinely embarrassing quotes. One critique I do have is the number of time he mentions the sources (various interview rounds), this becomes rather overwhelming and distracting.
Over USD 85 billion of investment was poured into modernizing the Afghan army along Western standard, while recruits were between 80% and 90% illiterate. In police training the US spend 10x as much as Germany, who was formally responsible, but again achieved little to nothing.
A lack of real understanding of the surroundings, and people rotating in for a quarter to a half year, makes any money rather useless, not even to speak of the massive corruption on the ground.
Arab language training, since Iraq and Afghanistan were thought of the same in American predeployment training, and complete non-understanding of Islam in training, are other examples.
A shaved American soldier being hit-on as youngsters (since pederasty was deemed acceptable in some regions of Aghanistan) is another more hilarious cultural example.
In the end over 25% of troops ended up being send to Afghanistan 5 times or more, showing the strain on the US army to find resources.
The lack of focus on Afghanistan, with Iraq being at the forefront of everyone's mind is another topic that comes back a lot in the book. The so called "War tzar" of Bush spend only 85% of his time to Iraq and only 15% to Afghanistan.
Another failed attempt is getting the warlords behind the new centralised regime, with some of them receiving USD 70.000 per month from the CIA, but Karzai become more and more suspicious of his American allies because of these payments facilitating warlord armies being build up.
Aid money, to coax the civilians into supporting the government, is massively wasted. Over USD 775 million was spend on a dam in Kandahar, which while being operational would always need foreign subsidies. In the Obama era over USD 11 billion a year was allocated to the Afghan army, USD 3 billion dollar more than Pakistan, a nuclear nation, spend.
It is a sad story of massive mismanagement, no long-term strategy (and transient people involved) and lack of cultural sensitivity. All the money (almost literally) in the world couldn't compensate for this. Still I feel the account this books gives, shows a lot of believe in malleability. I highly doubt that even with all these factors addressed, the nation building would have been successful. It is another kind of overestimation of the ultimate usefulness of military capabilities, which make me appreciate this book a bit less - 3.5 stars rounded down.
November 28, 2021
There is nothing in this book to cheer about. I didn't know whether to read it with interest or throw it across the room.
Larry Matthews, The Washington Independent Review of Books
I agree with Matthews. While Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock provides the reader with an eye-opening and alarming analysis of America's twenty-year war in Afghanistan, it's a frustrating and, at times, exasperating read.
Whitlock uses a wide array of sources to document this expose. These include the Lessons Learned Project, a database of hundreds of interviews compiled by the federal office of Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and private memos of Donald Rumsfeld.
According to Whitlock, the war began as a response to 9/11. Its goal was to find and punish al-Qaeda. However, Bush administration bureaucrats conflated the Taliban with al-Qaeda, and the mission shifted to dismantling the Taliban and nation-building.
Whitlock believes that American hubris and lack of understanding of Afghani history and culture were crucial to America's failure. Afghanistan is a decentralized society governed by clans.
The bureaucrats of the Bush Administration tried to rebuild the Afghan nation by superimposing the centralized structures of the U.S. government.
The recruitment and training of the Afghani military stood out as a case in point. Military bureaucrats failed to realize the impact of long-term poverty and war on Afghani education. As a result, many of the recruits lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills, yet the military attempted to train them using power-point presentations. They also failed to build on many of the recruits' skills developed through years of fighting.
The Afghanistan Papers chronicles the bungles, missteps, and misunderstandings of the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations in Afghanistan. The book is well written, impressively researched, and thoroughly depressing. I recommend it if you want to get a deeper understanding of all that went wrong.
Larry Matthews, The Washington Independent Review of Books
I agree with Matthews. While Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock provides the reader with an eye-opening and alarming analysis of America's twenty-year war in Afghanistan, it's a frustrating and, at times, exasperating read.
Whitlock uses a wide array of sources to document this expose. These include the Lessons Learned Project, a database of hundreds of interviews compiled by the federal office of Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and private memos of Donald Rumsfeld.
According to Whitlock, the war began as a response to 9/11. Its goal was to find and punish al-Qaeda. However, Bush administration bureaucrats conflated the Taliban with al-Qaeda, and the mission shifted to dismantling the Taliban and nation-building.
Whitlock believes that American hubris and lack of understanding of Afghani history and culture were crucial to America's failure. Afghanistan is a decentralized society governed by clans.
The bureaucrats of the Bush Administration tried to rebuild the Afghan nation by superimposing the centralized structures of the U.S. government.
The recruitment and training of the Afghani military stood out as a case in point. Military bureaucrats failed to realize the impact of long-term poverty and war on Afghani education. As a result, many of the recruits lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills, yet the military attempted to train them using power-point presentations. They also failed to build on many of the recruits' skills developed through years of fighting.
The Afghanistan Papers chronicles the bungles, missteps, and misunderstandings of the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations in Afghanistan. The book is well written, impressively researched, and thoroughly depressing. I recommend it if you want to get a deeper understanding of all that went wrong.
September 11, 2021
”You have all the clocks, but we have all the time”.
This is a timely publication about the release of candid interviews with many military personnel of various ranks and influence in the Afghanistan war about their views. The people being interviewed thought they were giving an account for historical purposes not journalistic, so the reactions and opinions are less diplomatic and much more forthright. And what is the general gestalt of one of the longest running wars in American history? Unmitigated disaster.
Whitlock gives us a beautiful chronology of the misinformed decision to start the war up until the recent disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Under the pretense of fighting Al Qaeda, the US made war within the country only to be utterly confused about who their enemies actually were after they quickly weakened the terrorist organization. Because the Taliban gave sanction to Al Qaedea, apparently they were the enemy too and needed to be eradicated. Little problem: they couldn’t tell the difference between not only the different factions of the Taliban but the Taliban and Afghani civilians. Right from the get go, US policy was to have zero diplomacy with the Taliban, something that would prove to be an enormous mistake.
Bush had no exit strategy. Period. He started a foolhardy war as a knee jerk reaction and everyone at the time supported him. Despite Bush and Obama denials, the US spent more on “nation building” in Afghanistan than ever before. What they did in essence was create a puppet Afghan government, mired by incompetence and corruption which was wholly dependent on the US military to even survive. The US tried to install a central government in a culture that had never even seen a government like that before. They tried training military and paramilitary operations upon people that didn’t know how to drive trucks, use a urinal, know the difference between left and right shoes or even know that rising tides was a natural phenomenon. I don’t say these things to disparage the Afghani people but US policy. The US tried to force a way of life and government onto a people that were entirely unaccustomed and recalcitrant. You can’t just go into a country and make a government within 18 months, or 5 years of whatever ridiculous terms were set by Bush, Obama and Trump.
Pakistan completely played the US: taking money while helping the Taliban and lying about it. The US tried diplomacy with a host of warlords who had zero allegiance to anyone. So then the US just threw a bunch of money at the problem, spending billions of dollars building roads, bridges and schools in a nation that had no means of maintaining such infrastructure. In the year 2000, the Taliban banned growing poppy in Afghanistan and it worked. As soon as the US came, it was seen widely as a legitimate way to have an income. Once the Taliban were gone, Afghan farmers supplied about one third of the world's opium. The US then paid farmers to destroy their crops which resulted in them growing even more poppy to sell and then make money off of destroying the crops, playing both sides.
Bush, Obama and Trump oversaw a culture of fabricating metrics, downplaying military involvement and continually propping up a failed puppet government that they created. The sheer amount of hubris and incompetence is staggering. After 20 years, the US destroyed a nation and left it in the very hands of those they fought, the Taliban. And if anyone finds partisan solace in blaming Biden, sorry Trump literally wanted Taliban leaders to come to DC for a photo op and planned on withdrawing all US troops by May 2021. The Afghanistan war was very on brand for the US empire.
The bottom line is that this is what the US does: unfettered global war and terrorism with impuntiy. The US has been doing this for at least the last 80 years, destabilizing countries and leaving them to rot. How can the US “bring democracy” to other countries when the US itself is nothing even close to a democracy? What Whitlock doesn’t answer is: who profited from the war? Who was subcontracted? What companies were hired and what government officials had financial interest in those companies? I suspect I know the answer. There is no doubt in my mind that a handful of people made a tremendous amount of money off of the Afghanistan war.
This is a timely publication about the release of candid interviews with many military personnel of various ranks and influence in the Afghanistan war about their views. The people being interviewed thought they were giving an account for historical purposes not journalistic, so the reactions and opinions are less diplomatic and much more forthright. And what is the general gestalt of one of the longest running wars in American history? Unmitigated disaster.
Whitlock gives us a beautiful chronology of the misinformed decision to start the war up until the recent disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Under the pretense of fighting Al Qaeda, the US made war within the country only to be utterly confused about who their enemies actually were after they quickly weakened the terrorist organization. Because the Taliban gave sanction to Al Qaedea, apparently they were the enemy too and needed to be eradicated. Little problem: they couldn’t tell the difference between not only the different factions of the Taliban but the Taliban and Afghani civilians. Right from the get go, US policy was to have zero diplomacy with the Taliban, something that would prove to be an enormous mistake.
Bush had no exit strategy. Period. He started a foolhardy war as a knee jerk reaction and everyone at the time supported him. Despite Bush and Obama denials, the US spent more on “nation building” in Afghanistan than ever before. What they did in essence was create a puppet Afghan government, mired by incompetence and corruption which was wholly dependent on the US military to even survive. The US tried to install a central government in a culture that had never even seen a government like that before. They tried training military and paramilitary operations upon people that didn’t know how to drive trucks, use a urinal, know the difference between left and right shoes or even know that rising tides was a natural phenomenon. I don’t say these things to disparage the Afghani people but US policy. The US tried to force a way of life and government onto a people that were entirely unaccustomed and recalcitrant. You can’t just go into a country and make a government within 18 months, or 5 years of whatever ridiculous terms were set by Bush, Obama and Trump.
Pakistan completely played the US: taking money while helping the Taliban and lying about it. The US tried diplomacy with a host of warlords who had zero allegiance to anyone. So then the US just threw a bunch of money at the problem, spending billions of dollars building roads, bridges and schools in a nation that had no means of maintaining such infrastructure. In the year 2000, the Taliban banned growing poppy in Afghanistan and it worked. As soon as the US came, it was seen widely as a legitimate way to have an income. Once the Taliban were gone, Afghan farmers supplied about one third of the world's opium. The US then paid farmers to destroy their crops which resulted in them growing even more poppy to sell and then make money off of destroying the crops, playing both sides.
Bush, Obama and Trump oversaw a culture of fabricating metrics, downplaying military involvement and continually propping up a failed puppet government that they created. The sheer amount of hubris and incompetence is staggering. After 20 years, the US destroyed a nation and left it in the very hands of those they fought, the Taliban. And if anyone finds partisan solace in blaming Biden, sorry Trump literally wanted Taliban leaders to come to DC for a photo op and planned on withdrawing all US troops by May 2021. The Afghanistan war was very on brand for the US empire.
The bottom line is that this is what the US does: unfettered global war and terrorism with impuntiy. The US has been doing this for at least the last 80 years, destabilizing countries and leaving them to rot. How can the US “bring democracy” to other countries when the US itself is nothing even close to a democracy? What Whitlock doesn’t answer is: who profited from the war? Who was subcontracted? What companies were hired and what government officials had financial interest in those companies? I suspect I know the answer. There is no doubt in my mind that a handful of people made a tremendous amount of money off of the Afghanistan war.
November 10, 2021
Words fail me about the downright incompetence of so many involved in this war which we poured billions of dollars into, with a loss of human life and accomplished nothing.
After twenty years, and a disastrous pullout, we have nothing to show for it, except the realization that greed, greed, graft, dishonesty, and a lack of understanding and education always works to undermine whatever you hope to do. The mistakes, missteps and downright stupidity of all the administrations during this war, was truly appalling. Instead a learning from history, from France and Russia's disasters there, our government went ahead with a level of lies, deceit, and billions spent that were horrifying. Knowing the war was a fail, the generals, presidents, and their advisors kept up the fabrications pouring billions into failed projects, payoffs, and a level of corruption that was unprecedented.
Every program, every nation building idea ended in total failure, with a loss of life and money that went into the hands of the corrupt and decadent war leaders and government in Afghanistan. Honestly, it made my blood boil, with the thoughts of the men and women who lost their lives, and the billions of dollars wasted that could have been spent at home. When will this country ever learn that we need first and foremost to take care of our own? Stop throwing money into lost causes.
I definitely recommend this well done book to those who need to know what lies we were told and the total waste that our soldiers encountered without even knowing what was our ultimate goal. I am beyond horrified.
After twenty years, and a disastrous pullout, we have nothing to show for it, except the realization that greed, greed, graft, dishonesty, and a lack of understanding and education always works to undermine whatever you hope to do. The mistakes, missteps and downright stupidity of all the administrations during this war, was truly appalling. Instead a learning from history, from France and Russia's disasters there, our government went ahead with a level of lies, deceit, and billions spent that were horrifying. Knowing the war was a fail, the generals, presidents, and their advisors kept up the fabrications pouring billions into failed projects, payoffs, and a level of corruption that was unprecedented.
Every program, every nation building idea ended in total failure, with a loss of life and money that went into the hands of the corrupt and decadent war leaders and government in Afghanistan. Honestly, it made my blood boil, with the thoughts of the men and women who lost their lives, and the billions of dollars wasted that could have been spent at home. When will this country ever learn that we need first and foremost to take care of our own? Stop throwing money into lost causes.
I definitely recommend this well done book to those who need to know what lies we were told and the total waste that our soldiers encountered without even knowing what was our ultimate goal. I am beyond horrified.
November 2, 2021
I was just in elementary school when word of 9/11 found its way into our classroom via another teacher saying to turn on our TV. I don't remember hearing an adult sound so outwardly frightened before. That stuck with me, along with fragmented images of the Twin Towers burning. Fear is powerful--why it enables our brains to recall our most terrifying moments in uncanny. Then came the anger, another powerful emotion.
At the time, it seemed like a justifiable reaction when the U.S. military entered Iraq and Afghanistan to make sure the people who attacked us couldn't do that again. It was straightforward, our mission to get in, do the job of targeting the terrorist masterminds responsible for 9/11, and then getting out quickly. Craig Whitlock, an investigative journalist with The Washington Post, argues that when nation-building came into the equation, that's when straightforward turned chaotic, deadly, and disorganized.
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War (2021) chronicles how the U.S. overextended itself on two fronts: Iraq and Afghanistan (with a focus on Afghanistan, of course). Early on, the Afghanistan mission was neglected in favor of Iraq. With most U.S. attention and resources focused on Iraq, Afghanistan's counterterrorism strategy suffered. Constant turnover of personnel on the ground didn't help matters.
First, the mission was targeting the 9/11 foes of terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. Then it became a war against terror itself--with the definition of the enemy constantly expanding to groups like the Taliban, and anyone who seemed aligned against the Americans. And how better to make sure the U.S. was never threatened again than by bringing about stability and prosperity, conditions less likely to spawn terrorism?
Following that reasoning, money was thrown at all sorts of problems designed to improve people's lives and the standing of the U.S.-backed democratic government. The problem was that hardly any accountability was happening as to who, what, where, when, and why and money often disappeared into the coffers of insurgent forces and corrupt government officials. Corruption never bodes well for the long-term viability of a democracy.
As the problems mounted, a simple mission turned into a 20-year quagmire. Because no one wants to admit failure--it's a political liability, especially in the U.S. system, one that also seems to frown on changing stances based on experience or new information--three administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) took turns spouting overly optimistic and patently false assessments of how things in Afghanistan were going.
Behind the scenes, firsthand accounts of American officials were entirely different, revealing the extent of government dishonesty that was made clearly--and painfully--visible in the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan this past summer, the astonishing speed with which the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban filled in the power vacuum.
A sobering account of how things went so terribly and how we got to the present moment, The Afghanistan Papers is powerful investigative journalism that is worth the read.
-Cora
Find this book and other titles within our catalog.
At the time, it seemed like a justifiable reaction when the U.S. military entered Iraq and Afghanistan to make sure the people who attacked us couldn't do that again. It was straightforward, our mission to get in, do the job of targeting the terrorist masterminds responsible for 9/11, and then getting out quickly. Craig Whitlock, an investigative journalist with The Washington Post, argues that when nation-building came into the equation, that's when straightforward turned chaotic, deadly, and disorganized.
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War (2021) chronicles how the U.S. overextended itself on two fronts: Iraq and Afghanistan (with a focus on Afghanistan, of course). Early on, the Afghanistan mission was neglected in favor of Iraq. With most U.S. attention and resources focused on Iraq, Afghanistan's counterterrorism strategy suffered. Constant turnover of personnel on the ground didn't help matters.
First, the mission was targeting the 9/11 foes of terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. Then it became a war against terror itself--with the definition of the enemy constantly expanding to groups like the Taliban, and anyone who seemed aligned against the Americans. And how better to make sure the U.S. was never threatened again than by bringing about stability and prosperity, conditions less likely to spawn terrorism?
Following that reasoning, money was thrown at all sorts of problems designed to improve people's lives and the standing of the U.S.-backed democratic government. The problem was that hardly any accountability was happening as to who, what, where, when, and why and money often disappeared into the coffers of insurgent forces and corrupt government officials. Corruption never bodes well for the long-term viability of a democracy.
As the problems mounted, a simple mission turned into a 20-year quagmire. Because no one wants to admit failure--it's a political liability, especially in the U.S. system, one that also seems to frown on changing stances based on experience or new information--three administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) took turns spouting overly optimistic and patently false assessments of how things in Afghanistan were going.
Behind the scenes, firsthand accounts of American officials were entirely different, revealing the extent of government dishonesty that was made clearly--and painfully--visible in the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan this past summer, the astonishing speed with which the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban filled in the power vacuum.
A sobering account of how things went so terribly and how we got to the present moment, The Afghanistan Papers is powerful investigative journalism that is worth the read.
-Cora
Find this book and other titles within our catalog.
January 28, 2024
کتاب “اسناد افغانستان” بر اساس اسناد طبقه بندی شدهای که واشنگتن پست با توجه به قانون آزادی اطلاعات، توانست از طریق شکایت از اداره بازرسی به دست بیاورد و همچنین گفتگو با بیش از هزار نفر که به صورت مستقیم در برپایی جنگ افغانستان نقش داشتند نوشته شده است. در این کتاب رویکردهای اشتباهی که طی دو دهه توسط روسای جمهور و مقامات مختلف آمریکایی و ناتو اتخاذ شد تا در نهایت منجر به شکست آمریکا شود به خوبی تصویر کشیده شده است. البته نویسنده کتاب ،کریگ ویتلاک، در کنار اطلاعات خوبی که در زمینه جنگ افغانستان میدهد به صورت خواسته یا ناخواسته خط مشی مقامات آمریکایی را هم به خواننده نشان میدهد. اگر به مطالعه در این زمینه علاقه مندید با توجه به چاپ کتاب در سال ۲۰۲۱ و اطلاعات بهروزی که دارد گزینه بسیار خوبی میتواند باشد.
January 31, 2025
The war in Afghanistan was directed by those who failed to try to understand Afghan culture and that was their downfall. Our objective was to prevent the country from becoming an Al Qaeda base but they did it by ousting the Taliban and imposing a US style democracy alien to Afghanistan. America's mistakes in Vietnam were repeated: especially in propping up a corrupt unpopular regime, killing civilians thought to be insurgents, and not being bothered to learn of Afghan culture. Craig Whitlock says all this could have been avoided if we took out Al Qaeda first and negotiated with the Taliban first. The US failed to see that Al Qaeda had different goals: Al Qaeda was an international terrorist group and the Taliban wanted to rule Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden wanted America to get into a quagmire like Afghanistan and he succeeded. What really enraged me was our government spent a trillion dollars on this project including infrastructure that Afghans did not need and would have been better spent in our own country. Craig Whitlock is a good journalist who backs up his findings with great research into this fiasco of a war.
June 10, 2021
Wow, what an eye-opening book. I feel I could roughly give an overview of what happened in Afghanistan and why, and who the key players are but this book really fills in the details in a spectacular way.
Furthermore, it shows what an outright tragedy it remains. A military escapade built on blunder and ignorance, mismanagement and idiocy. Whitlock's work will make it clear to you that this is a comedy of errors, and one on a massive deadly scale. It's hard to miss the connection to Vietnam. The sheer ignorance of our military and executive branch really frustrated me; at times making me walk away from reading and to come back later.
My only criticism is that I would have like Whitlock to take the last few pages a step further- where does it seem to be going? What are the consequences of the US leaving vs staying?
To be sure, it's easy to look back on history and see the screwups, but it's another thing that it was so blatantly obvious at the time. Once again, American exceptionalism seems to have gotten the better of us (and continues to do so). If you want an great overview of the quagmire, read this.
Furthermore, it shows what an outright tragedy it remains. A military escapade built on blunder and ignorance, mismanagement and idiocy. Whitlock's work will make it clear to you that this is a comedy of errors, and one on a massive deadly scale. It's hard to miss the connection to Vietnam. The sheer ignorance of our military and executive branch really frustrated me; at times making me walk away from reading and to come back later.
My only criticism is that I would have like Whitlock to take the last few pages a step further- where does it seem to be going? What are the consequences of the US leaving vs staying?
To be sure, it's easy to look back on history and see the screwups, but it's another thing that it was so blatantly obvious at the time. Once again, American exceptionalism seems to have gotten the better of us (and continues to do so). If you want an great overview of the quagmire, read this.
February 6, 2022
Thoughts soon.
February 17, 2022
This is a non-fic based on hundreds of interviews that tries to answer “why the US superpower failed in Afghanistan?” and it answers it in great detail. I read it as a part of monthly reading for February 2022 at Non Fiction Book Club group and I want to thank all members of the group, who took part in the discussion with their great comments.
First of all about sources – I seriously envy the wealth of information collected by the US state and private institutions. Here, the main bunch of texts are from interviews made by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), that interviewed hundreds of participants in the war for a project titled Lessons Learned, which was intended to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes in the future. The fed agency ‘to save the face’ made a boring paper out of it, but with all interviews intact, journalist were able to get to the raw stories. It is supported by two more sources: internal memos by Rumsfeld for 2001-2006, dubbed “snowflakes”, the memos are brief instructions or comments that the Pentagon boss dictated to his underlings, often several times a day (an estimated 59,000 pages). the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research institute based at George Washington University got them and shared them with researchers. Finally, there are several oral-history interviews that the nonprofit Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training conducted with officials who served in the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
Now to the story. The USA assumed Afghanistan an easy walk, second-rating it say to Iraq war, and initially, they were right in a sense – they got a country without a lot of fight or causalities. The problem was that they had no idea what to do with it, what are their goals, what can be considered a job well done, a victory? They were even unsure whether they start a ‘nation building’ there or not. So, after a few years, their causalities started to grow, as well as the pay bill.
There is a lot of information, from arrogance
In 2005, Maj. Daniel Lovett, a field artillery officer with the Tennessee National Guard, reported for pre-deployment training at Camp Shelby, a sprawling base in southern Mississippi that dated to World War I. During cultural awareness class, the instructor opened the PowerPoint presentation by saying, “All right, when you get to Iraq.” Lovett interrupted to say his unit was headed to the other war, but the instructor responded: “Oh, Iraq, Afghanistan. It’s the same thing.”
Of not understanding Afghans
Major Woodring, the Alaska National Guard officer, said man-love Thursday came as a shock when he embedded with the Afghan army for a year as a trainer. “Just understanding the whole lifestyle of the Afghans” was a challenge, he said. U.S. soldiers had a hard time reconciling how Afghan men could hold extremely conservative views about women, yet flirt with other men and flaunt having sex with boys.
“You really have to put your feelings aside and understand that this is not your country,” Woodring said. “You have to accept what they do and don’t interject your personal feelings about their culture. Looking at women is forbidden. Even if a young 17-year-old stares at a woman he can be killed for that. We weren’t taught any of that, though, in any of our training. You need to understand that people might hit on you.”
When it came to being propositioned, risk factors included a youthful appearance and a clean shave—traits that applied to most U.S. troops (nearly 90 percent were men).
Maj. Randy James, an aviation intelligence officer, recalled a tense encounter in 2003 when an Afghan man approached a baby-faced male American soldier in his unit and declared, “You’re my wife.” Luckily, the incident didn’t erupt into violence.
Of throwing money left and right
Authorized by Congress, CERP allowed military commanders in the field to bypass normal contracting rules and spend up to $1 million on infrastructure projects, though the cost of most projects was less than $50,000 each.
Commanders were under so much pressure to spend that they blindly copied CERP paperwork from past projects, knowing that it was unlikely anyone would notice. One military officer said a photo of the same health clinic appeared in about a hundred different project reports for clinics around the country.
Of massive opium trade and often failed ways to fight it
Between 2002 and 2017, Afghan farmers more than quadrupled the acreage devoted to growing opium poppies, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. During the same period, the production of opium resin—the raw ingredient for heroin—nearly tripled, from 3,200 metric tons to 9,000. Harvests and production tailed off in 2018 and 2019, but the U.N. attributed the decreases to market factors and growing conditions instead of actions taken by U.S. or Afghan officials.
There are much more facts and stories, often mind-blowing in a sense – after all the USA has access to a lot of great brains and they have funds to do wonders, from the atom bomb to COVID-19 vaccine, but they failed miserably, lost men and money and have reached almost nothing.
First of all about sources – I seriously envy the wealth of information collected by the US state and private institutions. Here, the main bunch of texts are from interviews made by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), that interviewed hundreds of participants in the war for a project titled Lessons Learned, which was intended to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes in the future. The fed agency ‘to save the face’ made a boring paper out of it, but with all interviews intact, journalist were able to get to the raw stories. It is supported by two more sources: internal memos by Rumsfeld for 2001-2006, dubbed “snowflakes”, the memos are brief instructions or comments that the Pentagon boss dictated to his underlings, often several times a day (an estimated 59,000 pages). the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research institute based at George Washington University got them and shared them with researchers. Finally, there are several oral-history interviews that the nonprofit Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training conducted with officials who served in the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
Now to the story. The USA assumed Afghanistan an easy walk, second-rating it say to Iraq war, and initially, they were right in a sense – they got a country without a lot of fight or causalities. The problem was that they had no idea what to do with it, what are their goals, what can be considered a job well done, a victory? They were even unsure whether they start a ‘nation building’ there or not. So, after a few years, their causalities started to grow, as well as the pay bill.
There is a lot of information, from arrogance
In 2005, Maj. Daniel Lovett, a field artillery officer with the Tennessee National Guard, reported for pre-deployment training at Camp Shelby, a sprawling base in southern Mississippi that dated to World War I. During cultural awareness class, the instructor opened the PowerPoint presentation by saying, “All right, when you get to Iraq.” Lovett interrupted to say his unit was headed to the other war, but the instructor responded: “Oh, Iraq, Afghanistan. It’s the same thing.”
Of not understanding Afghans
Major Woodring, the Alaska National Guard officer, said man-love Thursday came as a shock when he embedded with the Afghan army for a year as a trainer. “Just understanding the whole lifestyle of the Afghans” was a challenge, he said. U.S. soldiers had a hard time reconciling how Afghan men could hold extremely conservative views about women, yet flirt with other men and flaunt having sex with boys.
“You really have to put your feelings aside and understand that this is not your country,” Woodring said. “You have to accept what they do and don’t interject your personal feelings about their culture. Looking at women is forbidden. Even if a young 17-year-old stares at a woman he can be killed for that. We weren’t taught any of that, though, in any of our training. You need to understand that people might hit on you.”
When it came to being propositioned, risk factors included a youthful appearance and a clean shave—traits that applied to most U.S. troops (nearly 90 percent were men).
Maj. Randy James, an aviation intelligence officer, recalled a tense encounter in 2003 when an Afghan man approached a baby-faced male American soldier in his unit and declared, “You’re my wife.” Luckily, the incident didn’t erupt into violence.
Of throwing money left and right
Authorized by Congress, CERP allowed military commanders in the field to bypass normal contracting rules and spend up to $1 million on infrastructure projects, though the cost of most projects was less than $50,000 each.
Commanders were under so much pressure to spend that they blindly copied CERP paperwork from past projects, knowing that it was unlikely anyone would notice. One military officer said a photo of the same health clinic appeared in about a hundred different project reports for clinics around the country.
Of massive opium trade and often failed ways to fight it
Between 2002 and 2017, Afghan farmers more than quadrupled the acreage devoted to growing opium poppies, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. During the same period, the production of opium resin—the raw ingredient for heroin—nearly tripled, from 3,200 metric tons to 9,000. Harvests and production tailed off in 2018 and 2019, but the U.N. attributed the decreases to market factors and growing conditions instead of actions taken by U.S. or Afghan officials.
There are much more facts and stories, often mind-blowing in a sense – after all the USA has access to a lot of great brains and they have funds to do wonders, from the atom bomb to COVID-19 vaccine, but they failed miserably, lost men and money and have reached almost nothing.
December 21, 2025
Thank you, NetGalley, for granting me a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
Based on thousands of interviews, reports, and documents uncovered by The Washington Post in 2019, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War provides an in-depth look at America's longest war that is nevertheless still accessible, nuanced, and even sympathetic. Craig Whitlock takes what could have easily been a dry and confusing tome—an expectation that has undoubtedly dissuaded many curious readers from picking it up—and instead delivers a straightforward analysis of the twenty-year military conflict, beginning in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and ending with President Biden's announcement for a complete withdrawal in 2021.
Focusing most heavily on the Bush years, Whitlock's reporting makes it clear how deep in over their heads the Americans were, not only with eradicating potential security threats in Afghanistan, but also in preventing chaos from ravaging the country upon leaving. None of the four presidents who oversaw operations in Afghanistan—Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—had ever served in uniform, and all found themselves taking inspiration from military leaders who had spent most of their careers determined to win this war. Rather than greed or hubris, Whitlock attributes the USA's blusters to idealism and naivety. Wave after wave of efforts were made to connect with the Afghan people and help establish a functioning democracy in place of Afghanistan's tribal war lords, typically to no avail. The frustration was endless: the longer the military stayed in Afghanistan, the more demoralizing a potential withdrawal became. This sunk-cost fallacy kept the war going for two decades, even as it became ever more clear that the cultural divide between the two nations was too great to bridge.
Each successive president grew more desperate to leave Afghanistan behind, and the sections on each man's tenure are, in turn, shorter than the last. This unfortunately causes the last third of The Afghanistan Papers to feel rushed and not nearly as thorough as the earlier chapters. How operations in Afghanistan failed under Bush and Obama are explored in great detail, but the process that led to its conclusion is not given as much analysis (nor does the book cover the chaotic and controversial withdrawal itself). Regardless, Whitlock does a marvelous job of taking political minutiae and turning it into something we the audience can easily understand. The Afghanistan Papers is an excellent resource for anyone yearning to know what went wrong during our greatest forever war, and why it took the United States so long to finally accept defeat.
Based on thousands of interviews, reports, and documents uncovered by The Washington Post in 2019, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War provides an in-depth look at America's longest war that is nevertheless still accessible, nuanced, and even sympathetic. Craig Whitlock takes what could have easily been a dry and confusing tome—an expectation that has undoubtedly dissuaded many curious readers from picking it up—and instead delivers a straightforward analysis of the twenty-year military conflict, beginning in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and ending with President Biden's announcement for a complete withdrawal in 2021.
Focusing most heavily on the Bush years, Whitlock's reporting makes it clear how deep in over their heads the Americans were, not only with eradicating potential security threats in Afghanistan, but also in preventing chaos from ravaging the country upon leaving. None of the four presidents who oversaw operations in Afghanistan—Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—had ever served in uniform, and all found themselves taking inspiration from military leaders who had spent most of their careers determined to win this war. Rather than greed or hubris, Whitlock attributes the USA's blusters to idealism and naivety. Wave after wave of efforts were made to connect with the Afghan people and help establish a functioning democracy in place of Afghanistan's tribal war lords, typically to no avail. The frustration was endless: the longer the military stayed in Afghanistan, the more demoralizing a potential withdrawal became. This sunk-cost fallacy kept the war going for two decades, even as it became ever more clear that the cultural divide between the two nations was too great to bridge.
Each successive president grew more desperate to leave Afghanistan behind, and the sections on each man's tenure are, in turn, shorter than the last. This unfortunately causes the last third of The Afghanistan Papers to feel rushed and not nearly as thorough as the earlier chapters. How operations in Afghanistan failed under Bush and Obama are explored in great detail, but the process that led to its conclusion is not given as much analysis (nor does the book cover the chaotic and controversial withdrawal itself). Regardless, Whitlock does a marvelous job of taking political minutiae and turning it into something we the audience can easily understand. The Afghanistan Papers is an excellent resource for anyone yearning to know what went wrong during our greatest forever war, and why it took the United States so long to finally accept defeat.
March 10, 2025
Az USA 20 végtelen esztendeig húzódó Afganisztán-projektje iskolapéldája annak, hogy hiába vagy te a legkigyúrtabb macsó a vidéken, ha nincsen világosan megfogalmazott hosszú távú stratégiád, ráfaragsz. Pedig amikor Bush szeptember 11. traumáját meglovagolva beküldte a tengerészgyalogosokat Afganisztánba, úgy festett, minden rendben lesz: a közhangulat kívánta a háborút, a tálibok reguláris ereje pedig látszólag nem tudott megállni a bőrnyakúak előtt, gyakorlatilag napok alatt omlottak össze. Csak a bajok pont itt kezdődtek. Hogy az amerikaiak ott álltak az ölükbe hullott országgal, és fogalmuk sem volt, mihez kezdjenek vele. Nem ismerték annak kultúráját, hagyományait, nem értették a tálibokat, de ugyanúgy nem értették azokat az afgán érdekcsoportokat sem, akiket szövetségesként határoztak meg. Nem léteztek valódi stratégiai irányvonalaik - volt egy vázlatos elképzelésük arról, hogy 1.) államelnököt csinálnak egy Karzai nevezetű törzsi vezetőből, aki jól mutat a képernyőn 2.) retek sok pénzt öntenek az afgán infrastruktúrába és hadseregbe 3.) és ezzel párhuzamosan lőnek mindenre, ami terroristagyanús. Csak hát mindegyik megvalósításába hiba csúszott.
Kezdjük hátulról: hiába voltak az amerikai katonák a felszerelést tekintve abszolút fölényben, ha egyszerűen nem tudták, ki ellenség és ki nem. Ez egyfelől a gerillaháborúk szokásos problémája: marha nehéz olyasvalaki ellen harcolni, aki - amint eldobja a kalasnyikovot - nem különböztethető meg egy kecskepásztortól. Ilyen esetben a hivatásos katona helyzete kilátástalan, hisz ő köteles viselni az egyenruhát (ami remek céltáblává teszi), ellenfele viszont a civilek közé rejtőzik, mintegy őket használva pajzsnak - és paradox módon minden egyes civil, akit helyette lőnek le, a megszállók elleni dühöt srófolja fel, ezzel pedig a gerillát igazolja. Másfelől az amerikaiak már ott is hibát követtek el, hogy nem határozták meg, pontosan ki ellen harcolnak: az Al-Káida ellen, vagy tálibok ellen. Ami Washingtonban egykutyának tűnt, de Ázsia közepén egyáltalán nem mellékes kérdés.
És hát ugye ott voltak a súlyos milliárdok, amiket az USA számolatlanul hajigált Afganisztán feneketlen kútjába. Maga az elképzelés tulajdonképpen dicséretes volt: iskolákat, sportpályákat építeni, és nem mellesleg kiképezni azt az afgán fegyveres testületet, ami akkor is rendet tud majd tartani, ha Amerika már hazatért. De túl gyorsan akartak túl sok mindent megoldani, miközben nem vették figyelembe a helyi társadalom jellemzőit - például hogy a leendő rendőröket először számolni kéne megtanítani, mielőtt fegyvert adnak a kezükbe. Nem látták át azt sem, hogy ilyen mennyiségű pénz egyszerűen túl nagy kísértés egy olyan országban, ahol a korrupció a normális ügymenet része.
És hát itt van az elnök, Hámid Karzai. Aki, meglehet, még a legjobb opció volt a számba jöhető államfő-jelöltek közül - csak hát olyasvalamit vártak el tőle, amit nem tudott megtenni. Például hogy legyen amerikai értelemben vett államelnök egy olyan országban, ahol az átlag paraszt sose hallott még a kormányról, és amelyet mindig is a törzsi kapcsolatok összetett rendszere működtetett. Neki kellett egyensúlyoznia az amerikai érdekek és saját választóinak elvárásai között - jóban kellett lennie a kétcsillagos tábornokokkal éppúgy, mint a különböző régiókat uraló drogbáró-hadurakkal, akik egész országrészeket irányítottak saját hűbérbirtokként. És hát igaz, ami igaz, Karzai is lopott, mintha nem lenne holnap, ő is a családnak meg az egyéb csókosoknak szórta ki a javadalmakat - Amerika meg amíg lehetett, elnézte neki, mi mást tehetett volna. Viszont a vezetők nyilvánvaló korruptsága meg az általános káosz oda vezetett, hogy a társadalom jelentős része egyáltalán nem tartotta riasztónak, hogy a tálibok visszatérjenek a hatalomba. Mert akkor legalább rend lesz. Szigorú rend, véres rend, de rend.
Egyszóval: Afganisztán egy ingovány, amivel egymást váltogató elnökök egyike sem tudott mit kezdeni. Hol odaküldték a katonákat, hol részlegesen kivonták őket, miközben igazából azt se tudták pontosan megmondani, mi kéne történjen ahhoz, hogy azt mondhassák: győztünk. Egyet tudtak tenni: hazudtak, mint a vízfolyás. Két évtizeden keresztül szajkózták, hogy a legjobb úton haladunk, nagy előrelépéseket tettünk, most már mindjárt vége lesz az egésznek - közben meg csak a levegőt püfölték. Aztán amikor végre feladták a meddő légboxot és hazamentek, a tálibok úgy vették vissza a hatalmat, mintha az eltelt két évtized amerikai jelenléte nem is történt volna meg. Csak egy halom pénz és egy csomó élet, az ment pocsékba.
Whitlock könyve a klasszikus oknyomozó újságírás terméke - tudjátok, ez az a dolog, ami miatt Moszkvában az embert ismeretlen elkövetők a saját házában lelövik, vagy rejtélyes körülmények között kizuhan az ablakon. Hajlamos vagyok azt gondolni, hogy az amerikai és az orosz rendszer közti különbségek közül ez az egyik legfontosabb - hogy Whitlock élhet és dolgozhat továbbra is. Bár az is igaz, hogy az oknyomozó újságírás csak egy dolog - a lényeg, hogy legyen olyan is, aki elolvassa. De nem azért olvassa el, mert már eleve van egy elképzelése a rendszerről, és boldog, ha ezt alátámasztja valami. Hanem mert tudni akarja az igazat, és arra is hajlandó, hogy véleményén vagy akár pártreferenciáján az új információk fényében változtasson. Az ilyen olvasók nélkül az oknyomozó újságírók csak Don Quijoték a szélmalommal.
September 1, 2021
This is like watching a movie when you already know the ending. Short, sweet, and to the point this book details the numerous missteps from successive American administrations. Craig Whitlock particularly gives attention to the missteps of the US military and often contradictory directives from the Pentagon. A belief in American Exceptionalism, ignorance of Islam, an alliance with warlords, creating a class of corrupt Afghan millionaires, and a poorly choreographed counterinsurgency strategy. These are just some of the problems Whitlock details in this book.
Whitlock also discusses a few issues I haven't seen American writers discuss in detail. First off a lot of Afghans liked and supported the Taliban as the deliverers
of peace and order. The Taliban ended the opium trade and the US couldn't after twenty years and a trillion dollars. The second issue Whitlock discusses that Americans often neglect to address is the US had the opportunity to negotiate with the Taliban and integrate them into the Afghan political system in 2002 and failed to do so thus unnecessarily extending conflict. However, even bigger than those two issues, Whitlock gives a detailed account of how the US got sucked into a nation-building project.
Yesterday the last US soldier left Afghanistan. When we arrived the Taliban were in power and now they've returned to power and appear to be stronger, wiser, and more competent. Oh, and by the way, Iraq is now politically-ran by a sectarian government with strong ties to Iran. I think we can officially say that whoever won the "War on Terror" it most certainly wasn't the United States of America.
George W. Bush got us into this mess. Barack Obama knew this was a war that couldn't be won and so did Donald Trump. It took Joe Biden to have the courage to finally pull the plug. If you think we were there for human-rights and leaving represents the abandoning of our values you really need to read this book.
Let's not repeat this mistake. Yeah, I know we will. Northern Virginia defense contractors and counter-terrorism strategists need to build more vacation homes and Tysons II needs an expansion.
Whitlock also discusses a few issues I haven't seen American writers discuss in detail. First off a lot of Afghans liked and supported the Taliban as the deliverers
of peace and order. The Taliban ended the opium trade and the US couldn't after twenty years and a trillion dollars. The second issue Whitlock discusses that Americans often neglect to address is the US had the opportunity to negotiate with the Taliban and integrate them into the Afghan political system in 2002 and failed to do so thus unnecessarily extending conflict. However, even bigger than those two issues, Whitlock gives a detailed account of how the US got sucked into a nation-building project.
Yesterday the last US soldier left Afghanistan. When we arrived the Taliban were in power and now they've returned to power and appear to be stronger, wiser, and more competent. Oh, and by the way, Iraq is now politically-ran by a sectarian government with strong ties to Iran. I think we can officially say that whoever won the "War on Terror" it most certainly wasn't the United States of America.
George W. Bush got us into this mess. Barack Obama knew this was a war that couldn't be won and so did Donald Trump. It took Joe Biden to have the courage to finally pull the plug. If you think we were there for human-rights and leaving represents the abandoning of our values you really need to read this book.
Let's not repeat this mistake. Yeah, I know we will. Northern Virginia defense contractors and counter-terrorism strategists need to build more vacation homes and Tysons II needs an expansion.
September 20, 2021
The cover-up of the failures of the United States in Afghanistan is monumental. General after general and president after president tried and then failed to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion and then proceeded to hide this from the public. The human and financial waste in America's longest war is painful because it was all for nothing now that the Taliban have once again taken control of the country.
Craig Whitlock painstakingly recounts every failure:
- the missed opportunities of diplomacy in 2001 when the Taliban was almost defeated and could have been brought to the negotiating table
- the lack of a clear strategy or goal for the war. Ever since George W Bush sent the first American troops into Afghanistan there was never a stated end point. This continued in the Obama and Trump presidencies as more US troops were sent to Afghanistan without any goals and how to achieve them
- the lack of understanding of Afghanistan as a country and its culture and people and the attempt to implement an American style system of government in a country which never knew what democracy was in its whole history
- the numerous failed campaigns to destroy the poppy and drug trade (using pesticide, bombs, fire, machines, paying off people etc.) which actually increased after the US invaded Afghanistan
-the rampant corruption of the new Afghan government and its police and army which many times proved to be worse and even more hated than the Taliban
- the spending of billions upon billions of dollars of massive infrastructure projects without any planning or understanding if they would be useful or not (most of this was wasted simply because the Afghans either did not need or did not understand what things like power plants, dams, roads or even schools can do for them and their traditional way of life)
- the failed attempt to build a professional army and police force in an extremely short time out of a population that was illiterate and split along tribal and ethnic lines (the Afghan soldiers usually sold their weapons, took drugs and had no motivation to fight the Taliban)
All these failures and more are sourced from the documents which the author and his newspaper managed to obtain after long legal battles with the US government. The sources include memos and interviews of senior defense staff, generals, politicians, intelligence agents, diplomats and contractors from both the US and NATO countries. These sources are absolutely priceless and show that the army and US government was fully aware of the disaster but chose to present a different side of the story to the public.
Craig Whitlock painstakingly recounts every failure:
- the missed opportunities of diplomacy in 2001 when the Taliban was almost defeated and could have been brought to the negotiating table
- the lack of a clear strategy or goal for the war. Ever since George W Bush sent the first American troops into Afghanistan there was never a stated end point. This continued in the Obama and Trump presidencies as more US troops were sent to Afghanistan without any goals and how to achieve them
- the lack of understanding of Afghanistan as a country and its culture and people and the attempt to implement an American style system of government in a country which never knew what democracy was in its whole history
- the numerous failed campaigns to destroy the poppy and drug trade (using pesticide, bombs, fire, machines, paying off people etc.) which actually increased after the US invaded Afghanistan
-the rampant corruption of the new Afghan government and its police and army which many times proved to be worse and even more hated than the Taliban
- the spending of billions upon billions of dollars of massive infrastructure projects without any planning or understanding if they would be useful or not (most of this was wasted simply because the Afghans either did not need or did not understand what things like power plants, dams, roads or even schools can do for them and their traditional way of life)
- the failed attempt to build a professional army and police force in an extremely short time out of a population that was illiterate and split along tribal and ethnic lines (the Afghan soldiers usually sold their weapons, took drugs and had no motivation to fight the Taliban)
All these failures and more are sourced from the documents which the author and his newspaper managed to obtain after long legal battles with the US government. The sources include memos and interviews of senior defense staff, generals, politicians, intelligence agents, diplomats and contractors from both the US and NATO countries. These sources are absolutely priceless and show that the army and US government was fully aware of the disaster but chose to present a different side of the story to the public.
August 3, 2024
Excellent investigative journalism. This should sicken every American to know how poorly the war and the rebuild / investment was handled, and how much Federal Agencies outright lied to Congress and the American people. Not a single person was held accountable for the lies, the mistreatment of the Afghani people, and the misappropriation of taxpayer dollars.
February 16, 2024
The war in Afghanistan can best be described as a wealth transfer from U.S tax payers to defense contractors.
There is an HBO mini series script residing in this book. It is not hyperbolic to say that the stories within this book are jaw dropping. However bad you thought the war in Afghanistan was, go in a room and think of the craziest shit you could write about the war. It would still not compare to the reality of the war. There is so much in here that I am mentally paralyzed figuring out where to start, how to convey this without you thinking that I am sensationalizing details. The level of corruption and stupidity that existed is something that leaves you dumbfounded, speechless, and questioning everything. After 9/11 we attack the Taliban who is residing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We somehow come to the conclusion of nation building? Building infrastructure for the citizens who can't maintain it nor who desire it. 20 years go by, over a 100 billion spent, estimates of 15-30% of those dollars went to the Taliban itself and yet the country implodes the moment we leave. This is the story I want to talk about. Under the Biden administration, The U.S finally leaves and Biden was politically annihilated for it. This is not a partisan review but a media critique on how the Washington bi partisan consensus paints all conflicts.
Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban hoping ending the war would help his re-election campaign (Spoiler it did not). Politically savvy enough to know that the war was unpopular from both voter bases and in desperate need of good news with the raging pandemic and sheer chaos embroiling his administration. He signed this peace treaty, immediately a story came out that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill U.S troops in Afghanistan. Bringing back Russia-gate arguments that never materialized into anything substantive except for record setting ratings on all networks.
When this story came out, I knew it only came out because of his attempt to end the war. We don't know for sure that Trump would have pulled troops out, its Trump after all. He does things on a whim and lies constantly. A political animal that will do whatever it takes to survive even if it means attempting a coup. The story was covered wall to wall on every network and Trump was annihilated for it. Foreshadowing what would soon happen to Biden who would get absolutely pillaged by the media class. The story is actually not true, in fact it was released by the U.S intelligence agencies who are filled with individuals who do plan on having a lucrative career working for defense contractor companies in life after the government. We understand the revolving door of Wall Street regulators turned into Wall Street executives. Wether it be a former Goldman executive, Gary Cohn in the Trump administration or Robert Rubin (also a former Gold man executive) in the Clinton administration. However this is not as clear as in the defense industry. Senator Nikki Haley was a former board member for Boeing, Lloyd Austin who is the current defense secretary was also a former board member of a private equity firm.
Whether it be democrat or republican, money, status and power show no biases to either side of the aisle. They ensnare everyone.
The media coverage frames the conflict as a bad guys vs good guys conflict. In fact the papers would reveal that the U.S military would often have no clue who the bad guys were. Signaling confusion from every level of command. The media portrays U.S influence as a moral one instead of an objective geopolitical goal used to serve U.S interests, many U.S conflicts are portrayed as the U.S military being the saviors of the conflict instead of orchestrating geopolitical order that benefits shipping lanes, the safety of oil transports and critical infrastructure like semi conductors.
When Biden left the conflict, the country imploded. The thing about the conflict that is not told to the American people is that 20, 15, 10, 5, 2, 1 years ago... The country was always on the verge of collapse. Nothing had changed and the fact that the country collapsed so quickly showed the media's complicity in its inability to challenge military actions, how monstrous the lies were told from the government and a complete lack of regard for the lives of the individuals stuck in the conflict.
That was not told in the coverage. When Biden left every single media organization criticized him with 2 weeks of 24 hour coverage, it did not matter if you were watching Fox News or MSNBC. Virtually every anchor had the same opinion "We left in the wrong way!", "We betrayed our allies!", "What message does this send to the world!". They even ran stories drawing on empathy for Afghan women and what would happen to these women. Which is obviously sad but notice that the use of morality is used to stay in war but never used to end a war. These networks supposedly caring about women, do they not know that we support the Saudi regime? Do they knew what they do to women there? Do they not know that over the years the U.S has supported far right dictators who's troops routinely raped and murdered women and civilians? Of course they know. For decades, lobbyist for defense contractors went on news networks not disclosing there ties and advocated for multiple wars. If you watched the republican debates this past year. Multiple candidates talked about engaging in 3 wars simultaneously. A war with Mexican cartel's, a war with Iran and another war with China. Turn on any mainstream channel and none of them call for peace, a ceasefire or even question the validity of any of the wars. It's almost astonishing how bipartisan pro war views are on the mainstream press. The majority of Americans want a ceasefire in Gaza but this is not reflected in the political and media classes. Thats a very dangerous place for democracy to be when the view of a minority override the view of the majority. It gets even more dangerous when the mainstream press create a world where the perception is the majority support the conflict and the minority oppose it. That is 1984. The Washington post ran an op ed from someone who condemned leaving Afghanistan without mentioning she was on the board of Raytheon. A lot of these individuals frame their concerns in morality or as citizens but never disclose the ties they have to these companies. Think about that.
This is manufacturing consent.
I don't care if it was a Republican or a Democrat that got us out of this war. I support the decision and Biden deserves credit for this (even though he is suppressing a democratic primary behind the scenes and running one of the worst re-election campaigns in modern political history but thats for another time). I support this decision, it was the right one.... an amazing story.
5 stars.
There is an HBO mini series script residing in this book. It is not hyperbolic to say that the stories within this book are jaw dropping. However bad you thought the war in Afghanistan was, go in a room and think of the craziest shit you could write about the war. It would still not compare to the reality of the war. There is so much in here that I am mentally paralyzed figuring out where to start, how to convey this without you thinking that I am sensationalizing details. The level of corruption and stupidity that existed is something that leaves you dumbfounded, speechless, and questioning everything. After 9/11 we attack the Taliban who is residing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We somehow come to the conclusion of nation building? Building infrastructure for the citizens who can't maintain it nor who desire it. 20 years go by, over a 100 billion spent, estimates of 15-30% of those dollars went to the Taliban itself and yet the country implodes the moment we leave. This is the story I want to talk about. Under the Biden administration, The U.S finally leaves and Biden was politically annihilated for it. This is not a partisan review but a media critique on how the Washington bi partisan consensus paints all conflicts.
Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban hoping ending the war would help his re-election campaign (Spoiler it did not). Politically savvy enough to know that the war was unpopular from both voter bases and in desperate need of good news with the raging pandemic and sheer chaos embroiling his administration. He signed this peace treaty, immediately a story came out that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill U.S troops in Afghanistan. Bringing back Russia-gate arguments that never materialized into anything substantive except for record setting ratings on all networks.
When this story came out, I knew it only came out because of his attempt to end the war. We don't know for sure that Trump would have pulled troops out, its Trump after all. He does things on a whim and lies constantly. A political animal that will do whatever it takes to survive even if it means attempting a coup. The story was covered wall to wall on every network and Trump was annihilated for it. Foreshadowing what would soon happen to Biden who would get absolutely pillaged by the media class. The story is actually not true, in fact it was released by the U.S intelligence agencies who are filled with individuals who do plan on having a lucrative career working for defense contractor companies in life after the government. We understand the revolving door of Wall Street regulators turned into Wall Street executives. Wether it be a former Goldman executive, Gary Cohn in the Trump administration or Robert Rubin (also a former Gold man executive) in the Clinton administration. However this is not as clear as in the defense industry. Senator Nikki Haley was a former board member for Boeing, Lloyd Austin who is the current defense secretary was also a former board member of a private equity firm.
Whether it be democrat or republican, money, status and power show no biases to either side of the aisle. They ensnare everyone.
The media coverage frames the conflict as a bad guys vs good guys conflict. In fact the papers would reveal that the U.S military would often have no clue who the bad guys were. Signaling confusion from every level of command. The media portrays U.S influence as a moral one instead of an objective geopolitical goal used to serve U.S interests, many U.S conflicts are portrayed as the U.S military being the saviors of the conflict instead of orchestrating geopolitical order that benefits shipping lanes, the safety of oil transports and critical infrastructure like semi conductors.
When Biden left the conflict, the country imploded. The thing about the conflict that is not told to the American people is that 20, 15, 10, 5, 2, 1 years ago... The country was always on the verge of collapse. Nothing had changed and the fact that the country collapsed so quickly showed the media's complicity in its inability to challenge military actions, how monstrous the lies were told from the government and a complete lack of regard for the lives of the individuals stuck in the conflict.
That was not told in the coverage. When Biden left every single media organization criticized him with 2 weeks of 24 hour coverage, it did not matter if you were watching Fox News or MSNBC. Virtually every anchor had the same opinion "We left in the wrong way!", "We betrayed our allies!", "What message does this send to the world!". They even ran stories drawing on empathy for Afghan women and what would happen to these women. Which is obviously sad but notice that the use of morality is used to stay in war but never used to end a war. These networks supposedly caring about women, do they not know that we support the Saudi regime? Do they knew what they do to women there? Do they not know that over the years the U.S has supported far right dictators who's troops routinely raped and murdered women and civilians? Of course they know. For decades, lobbyist for defense contractors went on news networks not disclosing there ties and advocated for multiple wars. If you watched the republican debates this past year. Multiple candidates talked about engaging in 3 wars simultaneously. A war with Mexican cartel's, a war with Iran and another war with China. Turn on any mainstream channel and none of them call for peace, a ceasefire or even question the validity of any of the wars. It's almost astonishing how bipartisan pro war views are on the mainstream press. The majority of Americans want a ceasefire in Gaza but this is not reflected in the political and media classes. Thats a very dangerous place for democracy to be when the view of a minority override the view of the majority. It gets even more dangerous when the mainstream press create a world where the perception is the majority support the conflict and the minority oppose it. That is 1984. The Washington post ran an op ed from someone who condemned leaving Afghanistan without mentioning she was on the board of Raytheon. A lot of these individuals frame their concerns in morality or as citizens but never disclose the ties they have to these companies. Think about that.
This is manufacturing consent.
I don't care if it was a Republican or a Democrat that got us out of this war. I support the decision and Biden deserves credit for this (even though he is suppressing a democratic primary behind the scenes and running one of the worst re-election campaigns in modern political history but thats for another time). I support this decision, it was the right one.... an amazing story.
5 stars.
September 10, 2021
In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision, that the U.S. government had not met “the heavy burden of showing justification for the enforcement” of prior restraint. The Court ordered the immediate end of the injunctions against publication which led to the dissemination of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times. The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force is a Defense Department history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Though Washington Post national security reporter Craig Whitlock’s new book, THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR does not rise to the level of the Pentagon Papers according to the author it is based on “interviews with more than a 1,000 people who played a direct part in the war. The Lessons Learned Interviews, oral histories and 59,000 Rumsfeld snowflakes comprise more than 10,000 pages of documents. Unedited and unfiltered, they reveal the voices of people – from those who made policy in Washington to those who fought in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan – who knew the official version of the war being fed to the American people was untrue, or aggressively sanitized at best.” (xx)
The publication of Whitlock’s monograph coincides with the disjointed American withdrawal from Afghanistan the last few weeks. The partisan debate that President Biden’s abrupt exit sparked creates the need for a more nuanced and objective analysis of the past 20 years since 9/11 and its is our good fortune as the war for America seems to have concluded a series of new historical monographs have emerged. Apart from Whitlock’s book readers can choose from Carter Malkasian’s THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: A HISTORY; David Loyn’s THE LONG WAR; Peter Bergen’s THE RISE AND FALL OF OSAMA BIN-LADIN; and Spencer Ackerman’s REIGN OF TERROR. There are also a number of works that have been written over the last decade that one might consult. The works of Steve Coll come to mind, GHOST WARS and DIRECTORATE S; also important are Dexter Filkins’ THE FOREVER WAR; Anand Gopal’s NO GOOD MEN AMONG THE LIVING; and Lawrence Wright’s THE LOOMING TOWER.
A great deal of Whitlock’s commentary is similar to the observations of previous authors. However, what separates Whitlock’s narrative, analysis, and insights is that they are based on documentation and interviews of key commanders, soldiers on the ground, government officials, and even important foreign players who had significant roles in the war. Whitlock’s monograph is written in a concise and clear manner and his conclusions point to the disaster the war had become after removing the Taliban and al-Qaeda in 2002. Whitlock astutely points out that military strategists are always taught to never start a war without having a plan to end it. From the outset, the Bush administration never articulated how the war would be ended. For years, the American people were told the war would be difficult but on an incremental basis we were always winning. The happy talk of the Bush, Obama, and lastly the Trump administrations never measured up to events on the ground.
Most historians and journalists agree the swift early American success in 2002 turned out to be a curse as it gave the Bush administration the confidence to change policy from hunting terrorists to nation building. Despite the arrogance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the war turned against the Americans with this change in strategy, a dominant theme that Whitlock develops as it seemed periodically Washington would change strategies and commanders on a regular basis. One of the major problems American troops faced was that they could not distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. For American troops Taliban and al-Qaeda were the same, a gross error in that the Taliban followed an extremist ideology and were Afghans, while al-Qaeda was made up of Arabs with a global presence who wanted to overthrow Middle Eastern autocrats allied with the United States. By 2002 the United States was fighting an enemy that had nothing to do with 9/11 which was the stated purpose of the war.
The early success would deteriorate as the Bush administration shifted its focus to Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Troops, supplies, and funding dissipated quickly as Whitlock quotes numerous individuals whose frustration with Rumsfeld and company for their lack of interest and refusal to provide the necessary equipment, troops, and funding to bolster the American effort in Afghanistan only providing the minimum level of support to keep the war going.
Whitlock organizes his narrative around American errors, the corruption of the Afghan government, and the refusal of American leadership to face the facts on the battlefield. Similar to the overall war strategy the nation-building campaign suffered from an obvious lack of goals and benchmarks. The idea of imposing an American style democracy on a country with no foundation or history of the elements of that type of governmental system was idiotic from the outset and no matter what fantasy the Bush administration could cobble together preordained its failure.
Whitlock presents a number of important chapters chief among them is “Raising an Army from the Ashes” in which he describes the issues in constructing an army from scratch. The entire episode portended the results witnessed a few weeks ago when a 300,000 man army collapsed and faded away when confronted by the Taliban. Other chapters point to the basic complaint by officers and troops of the lack of preparation in understanding Afghan culture which led to many disastrous decisions. Another key issue was the role of Pakistan which had its own agenda visa vie the Taliban and indirectly its fears of India. By creating a sanctuary for the insurgency, it made the American task very difficult. Whitlock’s insightful analysis mirrors that of Steve Coll’s DIRECTORATE S as it explains ISI duplicity and the fact that the Islamabad government knew how to play both ends against the middle to gain American financial and military support in return for very little.
American errors are numerous as recounted by Whitlock. Flooding the country with money for projects that were not needed or absorbable was very detrimental to the American mission. Support for Hamid Karzai and his corrupt regime, along with alliances with murderous warlords was self-defeating. Trying to eradicate the opium trade was high minded, but with no alternate source of income Afghan farmers and warlords learned to manipulate the American strategy to reduce the drug trade was very problematical.
Whitlock introduces the major players in the war from Rumsfeld, Cheney, McChrystal, Petraeus, Obama, and Trump with all of the flaws exhibited by their thinking that led to failure. Whether implementing counterinsurgency, huge infrastructure projects, building inside enemy territory, and Petraeus’ strategy of being “hellbent at throwing money at problems” was doomed to failure. The bottom line as Army Lt-General Douglas Lute, a Director of Operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon states is that “we were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan-we didn’t know what we were doing…What are we doing here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking…There is a fundamental gap of understanding on the front end, overstated objectives, an overreliance on the military, and a lack of understanding of the resources necessary.” (110)
The Trump administration would run into the same roadblocks in trying to ameliorate the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Trump’s tough talk about “winning,” increased bombing that resulted in higher death counts for civilians, and more happy talk did not accomplish much. It was clear once Trump’s promises “to deliver ‘clear cut victory’ had failed he ordered the state Department and Pentagon to engage in formal, face to face negotiations with the Taliban to find a way to extricate U.S. troops from Afghanistan without making it seem like a humiliating defeat.” (264)
For over a decade American policy makers and commanders knew that a lasting military defeat of the Taliban was not in the cards as they were a Pashtun-led mass movement that represented a sizable portion of the population and continued to gain strength. However, the Bush and Obama administrations made only half-hearted attempts to engage the Taliban, deferring to the Afghan government in the diplomatic process which they would paralyze. The U.S. would squander attempts at a negotiated settlement in 2001 by excluding the Taliban from the Bonn Conference, three years later they did not take advantage of the democratic election of Hamid Karzai as president to implement the diplomatic process. By 2009 the Obama administration took a hardline approach with its “reconciliation” requirements dooming any hope for talks to begin and progress as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other important policy makers believed that the Taliban would never desert al-Qaeda.
The Trump administration finally negotiated a deal whereby all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Like his predecessors Trump failed to make good on his promise to prevail in Afghanistan or bring what he mocked as “the forever war” to completion. Instead, he left an inheritance to Joe Biden who chose not to renege on Trump’s settlement with the Taliban to avoid further warfare. This provoked a firestorm among conservative Republicans and veteran’s groups, many of which had argued against continuing the war for a number of years. Many have chosen to blame Biden for an abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and a Taliban victory, however that result was because of two decades of obfuscation and a war strategy that was doomed to failure once we turned our attention to Iraq and took our foot off the pedal that drove the war in Afghanistan.
No matter what successes were repeatedly announced publicly by the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations spokespersons, in private they knew that Afghan security forces showed little progress in safeguarding the country, the Taliban retained safe havens in Pakistan, and corruption pervaded Afghan governments alienating and angering people. If there is one theme that dominates Whitlock’s analysis is that “U.S. leaders knew their war strategy was dysfunctional and privately doubted they could attain their objectives. Yet they confidently told the public year after year that they were making progress and that victory—winning was over the horizon.” (277) Whitlock makes it clear that “it was impossible to square negative trends with the optimistic public messaging about progress, so US officials kept the complete datasets confidential.” (205)
After reading Whitlock’s book it is clear that the US mission in Afghanistan was doomed to failure once we turned to nation building. Whitlock the first important synthesis of the most basic and essential elements that led to the American withdrawal. For those who need a quick primer or a thoughtful approach to the conduct of the war, Whitlock’s monograph is critical for our understanding as to what went wrong.
The publication of Whitlock’s monograph coincides with the disjointed American withdrawal from Afghanistan the last few weeks. The partisan debate that President Biden’s abrupt exit sparked creates the need for a more nuanced and objective analysis of the past 20 years since 9/11 and its is our good fortune as the war for America seems to have concluded a series of new historical monographs have emerged. Apart from Whitlock’s book readers can choose from Carter Malkasian’s THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: A HISTORY; David Loyn’s THE LONG WAR; Peter Bergen’s THE RISE AND FALL OF OSAMA BIN-LADIN; and Spencer Ackerman’s REIGN OF TERROR. There are also a number of works that have been written over the last decade that one might consult. The works of Steve Coll come to mind, GHOST WARS and DIRECTORATE S; also important are Dexter Filkins’ THE FOREVER WAR; Anand Gopal’s NO GOOD MEN AMONG THE LIVING; and Lawrence Wright’s THE LOOMING TOWER.
A great deal of Whitlock’s commentary is similar to the observations of previous authors. However, what separates Whitlock’s narrative, analysis, and insights is that they are based on documentation and interviews of key commanders, soldiers on the ground, government officials, and even important foreign players who had significant roles in the war. Whitlock’s monograph is written in a concise and clear manner and his conclusions point to the disaster the war had become after removing the Taliban and al-Qaeda in 2002. Whitlock astutely points out that military strategists are always taught to never start a war without having a plan to end it. From the outset, the Bush administration never articulated how the war would be ended. For years, the American people were told the war would be difficult but on an incremental basis we were always winning. The happy talk of the Bush, Obama, and lastly the Trump administrations never measured up to events on the ground.
Most historians and journalists agree the swift early American success in 2002 turned out to be a curse as it gave the Bush administration the confidence to change policy from hunting terrorists to nation building. Despite the arrogance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the war turned against the Americans with this change in strategy, a dominant theme that Whitlock develops as it seemed periodically Washington would change strategies and commanders on a regular basis. One of the major problems American troops faced was that they could not distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. For American troops Taliban and al-Qaeda were the same, a gross error in that the Taliban followed an extremist ideology and were Afghans, while al-Qaeda was made up of Arabs with a global presence who wanted to overthrow Middle Eastern autocrats allied with the United States. By 2002 the United States was fighting an enemy that had nothing to do with 9/11 which was the stated purpose of the war.
The early success would deteriorate as the Bush administration shifted its focus to Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Troops, supplies, and funding dissipated quickly as Whitlock quotes numerous individuals whose frustration with Rumsfeld and company for their lack of interest and refusal to provide the necessary equipment, troops, and funding to bolster the American effort in Afghanistan only providing the minimum level of support to keep the war going.
Whitlock organizes his narrative around American errors, the corruption of the Afghan government, and the refusal of American leadership to face the facts on the battlefield. Similar to the overall war strategy the nation-building campaign suffered from an obvious lack of goals and benchmarks. The idea of imposing an American style democracy on a country with no foundation or history of the elements of that type of governmental system was idiotic from the outset and no matter what fantasy the Bush administration could cobble together preordained its failure.
Whitlock presents a number of important chapters chief among them is “Raising an Army from the Ashes” in which he describes the issues in constructing an army from scratch. The entire episode portended the results witnessed a few weeks ago when a 300,000 man army collapsed and faded away when confronted by the Taliban. Other chapters point to the basic complaint by officers and troops of the lack of preparation in understanding Afghan culture which led to many disastrous decisions. Another key issue was the role of Pakistan which had its own agenda visa vie the Taliban and indirectly its fears of India. By creating a sanctuary for the insurgency, it made the American task very difficult. Whitlock’s insightful analysis mirrors that of Steve Coll’s DIRECTORATE S as it explains ISI duplicity and the fact that the Islamabad government knew how to play both ends against the middle to gain American financial and military support in return for very little.
American errors are numerous as recounted by Whitlock. Flooding the country with money for projects that were not needed or absorbable was very detrimental to the American mission. Support for Hamid Karzai and his corrupt regime, along with alliances with murderous warlords was self-defeating. Trying to eradicate the opium trade was high minded, but with no alternate source of income Afghan farmers and warlords learned to manipulate the American strategy to reduce the drug trade was very problematical.
Whitlock introduces the major players in the war from Rumsfeld, Cheney, McChrystal, Petraeus, Obama, and Trump with all of the flaws exhibited by their thinking that led to failure. Whether implementing counterinsurgency, huge infrastructure projects, building inside enemy territory, and Petraeus’ strategy of being “hellbent at throwing money at problems” was doomed to failure. The bottom line as Army Lt-General Douglas Lute, a Director of Operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon states is that “we were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan-we didn’t know what we were doing…What are we doing here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking…There is a fundamental gap of understanding on the front end, overstated objectives, an overreliance on the military, and a lack of understanding of the resources necessary.” (110)
The Trump administration would run into the same roadblocks in trying to ameliorate the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Trump’s tough talk about “winning,” increased bombing that resulted in higher death counts for civilians, and more happy talk did not accomplish much. It was clear once Trump’s promises “to deliver ‘clear cut victory’ had failed he ordered the state Department and Pentagon to engage in formal, face to face negotiations with the Taliban to find a way to extricate U.S. troops from Afghanistan without making it seem like a humiliating defeat.” (264)
For over a decade American policy makers and commanders knew that a lasting military defeat of the Taliban was not in the cards as they were a Pashtun-led mass movement that represented a sizable portion of the population and continued to gain strength. However, the Bush and Obama administrations made only half-hearted attempts to engage the Taliban, deferring to the Afghan government in the diplomatic process which they would paralyze. The U.S. would squander attempts at a negotiated settlement in 2001 by excluding the Taliban from the Bonn Conference, three years later they did not take advantage of the democratic election of Hamid Karzai as president to implement the diplomatic process. By 2009 the Obama administration took a hardline approach with its “reconciliation” requirements dooming any hope for talks to begin and progress as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other important policy makers believed that the Taliban would never desert al-Qaeda.
The Trump administration finally negotiated a deal whereby all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Like his predecessors Trump failed to make good on his promise to prevail in Afghanistan or bring what he mocked as “the forever war” to completion. Instead, he left an inheritance to Joe Biden who chose not to renege on Trump’s settlement with the Taliban to avoid further warfare. This provoked a firestorm among conservative Republicans and veteran’s groups, many of which had argued against continuing the war for a number of years. Many have chosen to blame Biden for an abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and a Taliban victory, however that result was because of two decades of obfuscation and a war strategy that was doomed to failure once we turned our attention to Iraq and took our foot off the pedal that drove the war in Afghanistan.
No matter what successes were repeatedly announced publicly by the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations spokespersons, in private they knew that Afghan security forces showed little progress in safeguarding the country, the Taliban retained safe havens in Pakistan, and corruption pervaded Afghan governments alienating and angering people. If there is one theme that dominates Whitlock’s analysis is that “U.S. leaders knew their war strategy was dysfunctional and privately doubted they could attain their objectives. Yet they confidently told the public year after year that they were making progress and that victory—winning was over the horizon.” (277) Whitlock makes it clear that “it was impossible to square negative trends with the optimistic public messaging about progress, so US officials kept the complete datasets confidential.” (205)
After reading Whitlock’s book it is clear that the US mission in Afghanistan was doomed to failure once we turned to nation building. Whitlock the first important synthesis of the most basic and essential elements that led to the American withdrawal. For those who need a quick primer or a thoughtful approach to the conduct of the war, Whitlock’s monograph is critical for our understanding as to what went wrong.
October 10, 2021
Nonfiction writing at its best.
Easily, one of the best American nonfiction novels of the year. I didn't expect anything less from a very experienced investigative journalist with tremendous back up of powerful The Washington Post.
Extremely well researched and backed up with footnotes, extensive bibliography and in text descriptions of sources. This is a heaven for any sucker of detail data and clearly defined sources like myself. These days, many of so called nonfiction publications consider "acknowledgements" to be a "bibliography". There is a significant difference folks, as this book exemplifies having both.
Generally speaking it's about war in Afghanistan from the very beginning until the moment when Biden took over the office. Too bad the author didn't wait a bit longer to the "victorious" escape of Westerners from that country. Book describes military, political and social aspects of the war, which was clearly totally misunderstood by not only average Joe, but also by changing bipartisan leaders.
War era of Bush and Obama is pretty detailed but I wish there would be more about Tramp's office time. Also, I would appreciate more details about the contractors involved in massive spending programs and other NATO countries involved in this war. This is a purely American point of view. I guess that was the author's focus considering his background. I consider this book to be politically pretty well balanced and a must read for any American who wants to know where his/her hard earned tax money go to.
As far as the war is concerned.....the main difference between the third world countries and so called West, is not in a amount of money per se, but in a thinking simplicity or lack of such, created by money deficit or abundance.
If a dog comes to your home and bites you, first you check yourself for rabies and then you discipline the dog adequately to the damage done. You don't spent 20 years, trillion dollars, numerous lives of yours and his friends including innocent bystanders, to make him look like a cat, behave like a cat and meow like a cat.
Easily, one of the best American nonfiction novels of the year. I didn't expect anything less from a very experienced investigative journalist with tremendous back up of powerful The Washington Post.
Extremely well researched and backed up with footnotes, extensive bibliography and in text descriptions of sources. This is a heaven for any sucker of detail data and clearly defined sources like myself. These days, many of so called nonfiction publications consider "acknowledgements" to be a "bibliography". There is a significant difference folks, as this book exemplifies having both.
Generally speaking it's about war in Afghanistan from the very beginning until the moment when Biden took over the office. Too bad the author didn't wait a bit longer to the "victorious" escape of Westerners from that country. Book describes military, political and social aspects of the war, which was clearly totally misunderstood by not only average Joe, but also by changing bipartisan leaders.
War era of Bush and Obama is pretty detailed but I wish there would be more about Tramp's office time. Also, I would appreciate more details about the contractors involved in massive spending programs and other NATO countries involved in this war. This is a purely American point of view. I guess that was the author's focus considering his background. I consider this book to be politically pretty well balanced and a must read for any American who wants to know where his/her hard earned tax money go to.
As far as the war is concerned.....the main difference between the third world countries and so called West, is not in a amount of money per se, but in a thinking simplicity or lack of such, created by money deficit or abundance.
If a dog comes to your home and bites you, first you check yourself for rabies and then you discipline the dog adequately to the damage done. You don't spent 20 years, trillion dollars, numerous lives of yours and his friends including innocent bystanders, to make him look like a cat, behave like a cat and meow like a cat.
September 30, 2021
Mind-blowing story.
Cool-headed analysis, which doesn't make you feel that the author tries to smoothen some inconvenient facts.
Also, a good compromise between bringing only opinions (w/o underlying facts) and going too deeply into meaningless details (like all the operations performed by US Military).
What did I like most?
1. there's plenty of details I've never seen/heard on the news
2. a lot of input has been ingested - all the quoted interviews and sources - tens or even hundreds of thousands of materials - respect for that
3. local polical aspect is minimized
What didn't I like?
1. the moment of publishing was unfortunate, it feels like the book has lost its last chapter ...
2. I think it would make a lot of sense to add a bit more information about the past: e.g. why the British and USSR have lost in Afghanistan. Some details are mentioned occasionally, some you can deduct on the way, but I believe it would have helped in understanding what the US was encountering.
Nevertheless, it's a brilliant book, truly worth the time (of reading) and money. Both thumbs up.
Cool-headed analysis, which doesn't make you feel that the author tries to smoothen some inconvenient facts.
Also, a good compromise between bringing only opinions (w/o underlying facts) and going too deeply into meaningless details (like all the operations performed by US Military).
What did I like most?
1. there's plenty of details I've never seen/heard on the news
2. a lot of input has been ingested - all the quoted interviews and sources - tens or even hundreds of thousands of materials - respect for that
3. local polical aspect is minimized
What didn't I like?
1. the moment of publishing was unfortunate, it feels like the book has lost its last chapter ...
2. I think it would make a lot of sense to add a bit more information about the past: e.g. why the British and USSR have lost in Afghanistan. Some details are mentioned occasionally, some you can deduct on the way, but I believe it would have helped in understanding what the US was encountering.
Nevertheless, it's a brilliant book, truly worth the time (of reading) and money. Both thumbs up.
September 3, 2021
Probably needs to be read by all - and specifically by future and current military, policy makers, foreign politics students, and diplomats… so this never happens again. The general US citizen also needs to read it so we understand why are votes really matter - the vote we make can cause a war that will be hard to ever end and when it does end, it will never be able to end cleanly because it didn’t start with a clear plan and so it cant end with a clear plan
October 9, 2021
Seemingly caught between wanting to tell a comprehensive history of the war and to illuminate the misdeeds and lies of the americans, it fails to do either. Punches are regularly pulled or glossed over, and what should be an indictment of the entire American political system and war machine ends up being a tut-tutting over failed imperial ambition.
September 21, 2021
Emptiness, curled like a worm at the centre of being.
So, what then are the essential ingredients of evil?
Is it like mum’s chicken soup, the secret jealously guarded family recipe silently passed down with a nod & a wink, from hand to hand in desultory fashion in a darkened, airless room?
Conceit, cultural arrogance, blinkered worldview, power without accountability, lack of empathy ((artistic and otherwise), the inability to take others suffering seriously or as a matter of significance? Is it an acceptance of a form without substance-each new manifestation of an eternal devil turning another countenance round and round as if on a breaking wheel?
Arguably, this seems to have been a legacy of the United States since WWII as far as its military forays into other regions of the world are concerned.
Perhaps, even a view that” “winning” is no longer the prime consideration, nor are there still targets of value that are really worth a shit, or even whether there ever were. I am not a pacifist, I am neither right nor left, I believe in an “eye for an eye” and a see the advantage in that old adage: if you’re gonna hit him first, hit him hard enough to ensure that he doesn’t come around to knock on your door when you’re not in the mood for company.
These dark and conspiratorial thoughts beg more consideration from a deeper and more nuanced brain than mine-why indeed does the United States, a nation that is still so rich and powerful that it can march into almost any country in the world and change its regime without understanding much about it, repeat the same errors over and over again?
I never believed in “my country, right or wrong” but I always believed that my country had the responsibility to be mostly right and to do its damnedest to make it right whenever it went wrong.
Therefore, it is only natural for me to wonder what exactly is the basis of our standing ignorance and refusal to learn from history (our own and other nations’)?
Why do we keep making these attempts at nation building only to succeed in creating failed states? Why do we persist in dedicating untold wealth to create unimaginable destruction, devastation & death when we have had it in our power to make profound changes which might result in other outcomes?
This is a distressing, damning & depressing book.
A book that reveals much (thanks to the Freedom of Information Act) which is appalling, but precious little that is surprising, about the world’s wealthiest nation waging unsuccessful war against one of its poorest.
I wish that the reasons this book was written were untrue, I would like that a book like this could easily be shrugged off as conspiracy theorist paranoia by me.
It can’t.
Afghanistan has been called “The Graveyard of Nations” for a reason. The British were in there twice and lost. The Russians were in there for ten years and failed. America was over there for 20 years...and what? What did it accomplish?
Those in power when we first went in are in power now.
The credentials of the Taliban have now been well established. With 20 years of fighting the world’s premier military power, their credibility has been enhanced.
The Taliban’s vicelike hold on power has subsequently been increased in orders of magnitude.
As an extra-added bonus, an unexpected bonanza, the spoils of war left behind have recently replaced outdated weapon caches and upgraded them to state of the art military hardware weapon systems, courtesy of the American Taxpayer. Any tango’s wet dream .
These people must now be convinced that they’ve just been handed the celestial lottery through a beneficent gesture from Allah.
But there is more. This decision has put us, the USA, In the unenviable position where no other country can trust us when we offer our loyalty to it.
Promises of support, guarantees to be there when the going gets tough, claims of kinship on ethical, moral or humanitarian grounds will be responded to with a guffaw at best, or perhaps just a well-earned, bitter scepticism of any claims in the future to a moral high ground.
A blanket of cynicism has been tossed over any pretension to even the most mundane moral utterance.
This attitude will have a solid basis on previous experiences of our past military relationships and inconsistent political policies. This perception will have interminable long-term consequences for us as future power brokers.
The Afghanistan Papers is a chronicle of bewildering misconduct, corruption, malfeasance and dishonesty. It is the cataloging of criminal complacency, ignorance, stupidity, pointless death, waste, and a hydra’s head of other evils produced by America’s longest-standing war.
This is a document of dark reportage from an inescapable hell of past events. Highlighting the complete and utter pointlessness of it all. Herein the story of an astounding lack of planning, leadership, vision, discipline, responsibility and moral ownership.
It is a compendium offering up utter chaos, a chronology of the bloody ignorance, monumental stupidity, cynical dishonesty, blind foolishness & arbitrary emptiness of our bad conduct in Afghanistan.
But there is a question that this manuscript of misfortune does not furnish an answer for:
Why? An obvious question: “why, out of so many many of the other available options, did we choose such a path as this?”
So, what then are the essential ingredients of evil?
Is it like mum’s chicken soup, the secret jealously guarded family recipe silently passed down with a nod & a wink, from hand to hand in desultory fashion in a darkened, airless room?
Conceit, cultural arrogance, blinkered worldview, power without accountability, lack of empathy ((artistic and otherwise), the inability to take others suffering seriously or as a matter of significance? Is it an acceptance of a form without substance-each new manifestation of an eternal devil turning another countenance round and round as if on a breaking wheel?
Arguably, this seems to have been a legacy of the United States since WWII as far as its military forays into other regions of the world are concerned.
Perhaps, even a view that” “winning” is no longer the prime consideration, nor are there still targets of value that are really worth a shit, or even whether there ever were. I am not a pacifist, I am neither right nor left, I believe in an “eye for an eye” and a see the advantage in that old adage: if you’re gonna hit him first, hit him hard enough to ensure that he doesn’t come around to knock on your door when you’re not in the mood for company.
These dark and conspiratorial thoughts beg more consideration from a deeper and more nuanced brain than mine-why indeed does the United States, a nation that is still so rich and powerful that it can march into almost any country in the world and change its regime without understanding much about it, repeat the same errors over and over again?
I never believed in “my country, right or wrong” but I always believed that my country had the responsibility to be mostly right and to do its damnedest to make it right whenever it went wrong.
Therefore, it is only natural for me to wonder what exactly is the basis of our standing ignorance and refusal to learn from history (our own and other nations’)?
Why do we keep making these attempts at nation building only to succeed in creating failed states? Why do we persist in dedicating untold wealth to create unimaginable destruction, devastation & death when we have had it in our power to make profound changes which might result in other outcomes?
This is a distressing, damning & depressing book.
A book that reveals much (thanks to the Freedom of Information Act) which is appalling, but precious little that is surprising, about the world’s wealthiest nation waging unsuccessful war against one of its poorest.
I wish that the reasons this book was written were untrue, I would like that a book like this could easily be shrugged off as conspiracy theorist paranoia by me.
It can’t.
Afghanistan has been called “The Graveyard of Nations” for a reason. The British were in there twice and lost. The Russians were in there for ten years and failed. America was over there for 20 years...and what? What did it accomplish?
Those in power when we first went in are in power now.
The credentials of the Taliban have now been well established. With 20 years of fighting the world’s premier military power, their credibility has been enhanced.
The Taliban’s vicelike hold on power has subsequently been increased in orders of magnitude.
As an extra-added bonus, an unexpected bonanza, the spoils of war left behind have recently replaced outdated weapon caches and upgraded them to state of the art military hardware weapon systems, courtesy of the American Taxpayer. Any tango’s wet dream .
These people must now be convinced that they’ve just been handed the celestial lottery through a beneficent gesture from Allah.
But there is more. This decision has put us, the USA, In the unenviable position where no other country can trust us when we offer our loyalty to it.
Promises of support, guarantees to be there when the going gets tough, claims of kinship on ethical, moral or humanitarian grounds will be responded to with a guffaw at best, or perhaps just a well-earned, bitter scepticism of any claims in the future to a moral high ground.
A blanket of cynicism has been tossed over any pretension to even the most mundane moral utterance.
This attitude will have a solid basis on previous experiences of our past military relationships and inconsistent political policies. This perception will have interminable long-term consequences for us as future power brokers.
The Afghanistan Papers is a chronicle of bewildering misconduct, corruption, malfeasance and dishonesty. It is the cataloging of criminal complacency, ignorance, stupidity, pointless death, waste, and a hydra’s head of other evils produced by America’s longest-standing war.
This is a document of dark reportage from an inescapable hell of past events. Highlighting the complete and utter pointlessness of it all. Herein the story of an astounding lack of planning, leadership, vision, discipline, responsibility and moral ownership.
It is a compendium offering up utter chaos, a chronology of the bloody ignorance, monumental stupidity, cynical dishonesty, blind foolishness & arbitrary emptiness of our bad conduct in Afghanistan.
But there is a question that this manuscript of misfortune does not furnish an answer for:
Why? An obvious question: “why, out of so many many of the other available options, did we choose such a path as this?”
November 29, 2025
2025 is clearly the year for non-fiction books. Loved to hear the American side of this story, it’s clear that they didn’t know what they were doing or why they were there. It’s not entirely the true story as Afghanistan has a lot of resources and didn’t have a Rotschild controlled bank at the time, which of course they will claim is a conspiracy theory, just like 9/11 was an inside job organised by Israel because America needed an excuse to invade the middle east.
September 6, 2024
I'll say that while everything in this book is true (it's assembled entirely out of public FOIA documents and respectable oral histories), a lot is hard to believe and harder to read, mentally. The sums of money and effort wasted in the war are just inconceivable. Worth reading on the merits of the information alone; as a personal aside I also think it is worth reading out of a civic duty to ourselves, to the Americans who were sent to die in Afghanistan for 20 years, and most of all to the innocents of Afghanistan who have suffered a perpetual and frankly Biblical calamity for nearly fifty years.
May 10, 2025
I usually don't write reviews, but decided to make an exception for this one. Americans ought to know what those of us who deployed to Afghanistan have known for a long time. Our leaders consistently lied and deceived the American people about a war that was unwinnable. I say unwinnable, because there was no clearly defined description of what winning would look like. Whitlock effectively proves that the US government was complicit in hiding its failures and inept handling of the war from the general public. Because no one was willing to own their mistakes, thousands of US and coalition forces (and tens of thousands of Afghans) needlessly lost their lives.
My personal experience: In 2013 I was deployed in northern Helmand province. I was asked to write a paper describing what I thought would happen when the US pulled out of that area. my assessment was simple.The Taliban would quickly take over. My immediate superior officer agreed. But someone in our chain of command asked us to rewrite the paper because that wasn't the message they wanted to put out. We refused, because it was so obvious that the people in that part of the country preferred the Taliban to the corrupt and wicked government the US had installed.
My personal experience: In 2013 I was deployed in northern Helmand province. I was asked to write a paper describing what I thought would happen when the US pulled out of that area. my assessment was simple.The Taliban would quickly take over. My immediate superior officer agreed. But someone in our chain of command asked us to rewrite the paper because that wasn't the message they wanted to put out. We refused, because it was so obvious that the people in that part of the country preferred the Taliban to the corrupt and wicked government the US had installed.
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