A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
I've long said that I never got a feel for the war given the lack of heavy press coverage on a daily basis. One week I'd read credible complaints and the next I'd read credible defenses of the war effort.
But I'm not sure this is as damning as the article says. If top civilian and military decision-makers understood the true situation, and the basic publicly available data was accurate, I'm not necessarily upset that the information was spun in public. That is part of the war effort to encourage our side, discourage the enemy, and refrain from acting as the enemy intelligence agency to identify our weaknesses.
Perhaps too much of that was done. But I'm not sure what the balance is between leveling with the American public and refusing to provide an enemy with useful information they can use to win the war. I think there was enough information to realize there were successes and failures in the war.
And I think the key issue is whether top leadership knew the correct information and whether it was using that information to make good decisions, or whether that top leadership was hiding behind spin to avoid making difficult decisions that could help the war effort. I don't know the answer to that question.
As for the war itself, I never had high objectives for Afghanistan:
Truth be told, when we hit Afghanistan, my only goal was to wreck al Qaeda and not overthrow the Taliban. I did not foresee the success of of destroying the Taliban regime with our support for locals with money, special forces and CIA operators, and air power.
And since Afghan Moslems aren't really part of the main problem with Saudi-style Islamism, I was willing to rely on a policy that kept whatever friendly regime in power as long as it kept Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists again.
And after we hit Iraq, I was even less interested in nationbuilding in Afghanistan as long as we kept the place from being a terrorist haven. I didn't figure we'd spend the time necessary to have much of an impact on that tribal society nor did I think it was worth the effort. I was far more interested in the far more important question of winning in Iraq.
At that point we were doing better than I dared hope.
Certainly, I was skeptical of a major effort in Afghanistan given the source of support for jihadis coming from Pakistan. And that long-predated my concerns over the Obama "mission accomplished" routine for Afghanistan:
I've long noted that one problem with securing Afghanistan is that no matter how much we pound down the jihadis in Afghanistan, the threat will loom as long as the jihadis have a safe haven in North Waziristan inside Pakistan.
I was skeptical of the Obama surge orders and I certainly didn't expect we could make Afghanistan a modern country after the first of two surges was brought up:
The Afghan Surge will take place this year. I am not convinced we need it or should risk it, but it will happen, beginning in 2009. Adding four more combat brigades will put us to seven, I think. We should know from our Iraq Surge experience that adding troops isn't as important as using them correctly for the current situation. ...
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves). ...
Remember, at this point our real "Afghanistan problem" lies in Pakistan. Even a successful surge in Afghanistan means a post-surge Afghanistan will face the Pakistan problem once again. Like I've argued, in these circumstances I think we can do well enough in Afghanistan without a surge. Which doesn't mean that a surge can't accomplish our minimal objectives a bit faster or even achieve more. But it also means that we risk more--lives, treasure, and national prestige--by trying to achieve more results with more effort.
Not that such a surge can't achieve real objectives, but it is risky and potentially raises our objectives in Afghansitan beyond what national security requires--a stable Afghanistan with a government that rules well but lightly and doesn't abuse its own population or serve as a base for jihadis to attack us.
And it was during the Obama era that the clear majority of our military deaths in Afghanistan--over 1700 of 2400--occurred. What really upsets me is whether Obama escalated not to win but to pretend he wanted to defend America.
But I am skeptical of the idea that the reason we haven't won is that we didn't "understand" the Afghan people and society. I think we need to understand an enemy enough to kill them. Not that I dismiss the value of getting a handle on the "human terrain"--that is valuable--but I truly think that is overrated unless you think we really "understood" the Japanese in World War II, who we defeated decisively.
And despite the damning interviews, we have not lost the war. We built up Afghan security forces from scratch. We've kept the place from being a launching pad to attack our country. And Afghan security forces on our side continue to fight and kill jihadis every day with our help. Despite years of saying that their casualty rate is unsustainable, Afghan forces keep sustaining it. I'm pretty sure the enemy casualty rate is worse. [UPDATE: This is what I was thinking about: six years ago there were worries about sustaining the casualty rate. They have. And the enemy loses more.]
Is the war any more unwinnable for us than it is for the Taliban and other jihadis?
And is walking away and risking a Taliban victory there to reestablish Afghanistan as a haven for jihadi terrorists the best alternative? Do we really think we can trust the Taliban to keep foreign jihadis out of Afghanistan?
No war is unwinnable. If losing is unacceptable we must continue to fight. Luckily, fighting the war means supporting Afghan forces who are doing the fighting, for the most part. We may rightly regret that we failed to win outright despite 2,400 dead, but we achieved something for that cost and the cost going forward for defending what we gained is minimal. Would we walk away only to find that, like we did with Iraq, that we had to re-enter the war to restore what we lost after walking away?
Remember, those interviews took place when we were doing most of the fighting and were suffering more deaths. Would those participants be in favor of walking away now?
If we can't win with what we are doing, work the problem and figure out how to win. If the revelations from the Washington Post can help us do that, this is great. Victory can die in darkness.
If the story is just an effort to relive the glories of The Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War--noted in the Post article--to lose this war, that is horrible. Victory can die in partisanship, too.
But hey, I've long known the "good war" would become bad.
UPDATE: There was no war on the truth in Afghanistan. I won't stand with everything the author writes, but I agree with the lead point.
UPDATE: I could put up with claims that the Afghanistan war proves we failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam except for the fact that we defeated the Viet Cong (and what was there was just astro-turfed North Vietnamese manning the units) before we left, and South Vietnam fell to a conventional North Vietnamese invasion after we cut defense aid below the level the military we built there needed to fight and refused to provide air support.
