US government lied about success in Afghanistan..

A US soldier in Afghanistan. Yahoo News/Reuters.

A new document release shows how the US government lied about the war in Afghanistan through three administrations. Yahoo News. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released a report called "Lessons Learned" which detailed the problems and waste the war caused. SIGAR reviewed and interviewed hundreds of people including Americans, Afghanistan officials and even NATO allies. One of the major findings is that President Bush lost interest in Afghanistan in the build up to the Iraq War and even later in his term Afghanistan was on the back burner. President Obama did no better by announcing both a troop surge and a withdrawal date and based the surge on fighting al-Qaeda, which was largely eliminated at that point. 

The Obama era officials also lied about what they were accomplishing to the point that claiming that suicide bombings were a sign of desperation from the Taliban and that U.S. casualties were a sign of progress. The report also detailed how much of the $1 trillion was wasted, such as failing to control heroin production and wasting money on schools that didn't have teachers and were even converted into bomb making factories for the Taliban. 

The Washington Post report is here.

My Comment:

With the duel competing stories of the impeachment scandal and the FISA report this release is falling by the wayside. However, this is a huge deal and has been compared to the Pentagon Papers. That too was a study that was released to the media and detailed how a major war was a failure. Under normal circumstances this would be by far the largest story in the world. 

I also have to say this is a rare case of a major journalistic outlet actually spending some time doing investigations. The Washington Post used to be putting out this quality of journalism regularly but since Jeff Bezos bought them out it's been a joke. Perhaps this is going to be a return to actual journalism? 

I think the criticism of the Bush and Obama administrations were largely correct. Though I think the war was justified it's clear that President Bush mismanaged the war. The invasion of Iraq, which was a mistake, distracted from Afghanistan. If we hadn't invaded there we could have focused on defeating al-Qaeda and then pulling troops out. 

That didn't happen but even later under Bush's second term the focus wasn't there. Bush was too busy trying to put out the Iraq fire and did not focus on pulling troops out. At this point al-Qaeda was defeated and we could have pulled out even if the Taliban wasn't gone. Our goal changed from defeating al-Qaeda to defeating both the Taliban and nation building and that was a recipe for disaster. 

President Obama didn't do much better. Instead of doubling down on trying to defeat the Taliban or focus on withdrawal Obama tried to both and in both cases he failed. He left a mess for President Trump and though he inherited a mess with Afghanistan and Iraq, he handled the situation extremely poorly. Honestly, Afghanistan was one of the better outcomes as though we wasted billions of dollars and lives at least ISIS didn't end up taking over like they did in Iraq, Syria and Libya. 

A common thread with both Presidents Bush and Obama was that they were downplaying how badly things were going in Afghanistan. They always sounded confident that we would win in Afghanistan, when they bothered to talk about it at all. In truth, we were losing and badly.

As for President Trump, I think he was a bit more honest about it. He's fired some of the people responsible for Afghanistan largely for the lack of results. Though Trump rarely admits any failure I think you could get him to acknowledge that the war in Afghanistan is not working. 

I do think that President Trump is at least trying something different. It remains to be seen if he will succeed but instead of ignoring the problem like President Bush did or use half measures like President Obama. Instead he is trying for a peace resolution with the Taliban. It has already fallen apart once before but it's a new approach that could lead to troops coming home. 

Unfortunately, President Trump is dealing with domestic issues, such as the impeachment and trade negotiations. I think he would love to be able to focus on pulling troops out but he just can't. And he is facing major resistance from the Pentagon and even members of his own party on the issue who seem to want to keep troops in Afghanistan forever. 

I do have to say that it is long past time for us to pull out of Afghanistan. We have wasted countless lives and $1 trillion for what? We defeated al-Qaeda years ago and the only real threat left is ISIS and I think that the Taliban and the Afghan government can handle it. We need to pull out and this new release shows that we should have done it years ago.