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.
The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.
The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.
$900 Billion wasted. 147,000 dead. And, nothing to show. As I mentioned in my TPC column this week, the Taliban is winning, bigly.
Yet 18 years later, after the U.S. spent nearly $900 billion and more than 147,000 people died, the Taliban are growing more confident of returning to power. The militant group controls or contests half of the country, more territory than any time since they were toppled in 2001. And they’ve come close to a deal with the U.S. that could give them even more power, even after President Donald Trump abruptly put the talks on hold.
Is this really just now occurring to our military leaders?
The fight in Afghanistan is at a stalemate, and the significant number of Afghan troop deaths in the war is not sustainable, the Marine officer nominated to command U.S. forces in the Middle East told lawmakers on Tuesday.
Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie warned the Senate Armed Services Committee against an abrupt withdrawal of American forces or change in strategy despite frustration over the status of the 17-year conflict. He said he doesn’t know how long it will take to develop an Afghan force capable of defending its own country.
You don’t say? Just 17 years and we are precisely nowhere. Imagine where we’ll be after 34 or 100?
Were my debt-trimentalplan from the previous post enacted and followed, there would theoretically be money for everything under the sun: Universal Healthcare; universal income; welfare unending; chickens on pot; a starship to get me to a saner planet, and; funding for wars the world over.
As is the wars (and all that other spending) are bankrupting the country. There are also funny, lingering Constitutional issues, holdovers from when the Old Parchment meant something.
Rand Paul is about the only man left in D.C. who still throws around the “C” word, the dirtiest 12 letters in the English language. Today he again pushed the antiquated idea of Congress, not the White House, declaring war:
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan push for a new war authorization against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, electing to let the White House rely on a 16-year-old law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as the legal basis to send U.S. troops into combat.
Senators voted 61-36 scuttle an amendment to the annual defense policy bill by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have allowed war authorizations, created in the wake of al-Qaida’s 9/11 strikes, to lapse after six months. Paul, a leader of the GOP’s noninterventionist wing, said Congress would use the time to debate an updated war authority for operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere before the old ones expired.
Paul criticized his colleagues ahead of the vote, urging them to embrace their war-making responsibility instead of surrendering their power to the White House. He and senators who backed his amendment said former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have used the war authorizations from 2001 and 2002 for military operations in countries that Congress never voted to support.
“We are supposed to be a voice that debates and says, ‘Should we go to war?’ It’s part of doing our job,” Paul said. “It’s about grabbing power back and saying this is a Senate prerogative.”
Debates? Doing their job? The Constitution? Such craziness.
All know that the purpose of the Senate is to collude with assist the House with cobbling together “budgets” for the spending of money we don’t have. The wise executive apparatchiks handle the details – “healthcare” for the kiddies, billion$ for banks, and wars without end.
And the wars are really going so well. Rand is in an irrational dizzy about Afghanistan. Why? We’re having so much fun there, we’ve made it a multi-decade party.
Then, there’s the … whatever kind of meddling it is … in Syria. A Christian Bishop from Syria (yes Alabama, there are and have been Christians in the Middle East) explains the sheer brilliance of U.S. policy in his country:
acma2000/YouTube.
The man seems a little distressed about something. Calm down, Padre. They’re raising the debt ceiling!
And, you. You keep a votin’ for all this. Doing such a swell job.
His first inclination, he said, was to cut the losses. Then, after meeting with the generals, Trump was convinced to carry on America’s longest war:
President Donald Trump opened the door to an increase in U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan on Monday night as part of a new strategy for the region, arguing against a hasty withdrawal from America’s longest military conflict.
Trump, in a prime-time televised address, said his new approach was aimed at preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Islamist militants bent on attacking the United States. He also laid out a tougher approach to U.S. policy toward Pakistan.
The Republican president overcame his own doubts about the war that began in October 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He said repeatedly on the campaign trail last year that the war was too costly in lives and money.
Maybe another 16 years. Or 60. Not feeling to good about this. He did make some good upfront points about national reconciliation. There’s a thought – fix this country first…
In totally unrelated news I shot a video during the Solar Eclipse. That may come forth soon – it’s not that spectacular. It was maybe like early dusk? Meh.
So, sometime today we will hear just where the nearly 16-year-old War in Afghanistan is going next.
President Donald Trump has made a decision on the United States’ strategy for Afghanistan after a “sufficiently rigorous” review process, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Sunday.
However, Mattis did not provide details on when the White House would make an announcement or what the decision was on Afghanistan, where fighting still rages more than 15 years after U.S. forces invaded and overthrew a Taliban government.
Soon after taking office in January, the Trump administration began a review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan, which has expanded into a broader South Asia review.
“I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous and did not go in with a pre-set position,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him aboard a military aircraft to Jordan. “The president has made a decision. As he said, he wants to be the one to announce it to the American people.”
We’re waiting.
Sixteen years and Taliban insurgents still control half the country. Imagine Hitler still controlling half of Germany and occupied Europe – in 1957… Of course, then, we had a declaration and goals.
Mattis knows. We’ll know soon. Eric Vidal/Reuters.
The decision will be important and should shed some light on where all foreign policy is going in the years to come. I fear that minding our own business may not be an option. I hope I’m wrong.
“We aren’t winning,” Trump complained, according to these officials. “We are losing.”
One official said Trump pointed to maps showing the Taliban gaining ground, and that Mattis responded to the president by saying the U.S. is losing because it doesn’t have the strategy it needs.
The White House declined to comment on internal deliberations.
The President says we are losing and the SecDef admits it is so – because strategy.
Lindsey Graham says Trump needs to listen to the generals “who have been in the fight” or else “Afghanistan is going to collapse.” I think he means listen to the same guys with(out) the strategy which has led to our losing which is kind of like a collapse. Of course, with Graham it’s hard to tell what the hell he’s talking about or thinking on anything.
We’re closing in on 16 years in Afghanistan. Four times as long as it took to beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan concurrently. Those countries had real militaries that fought back viciously. That’s also four times as long as it took Lincoln to defeat the Constitution CSA.
At this point the neo-Confederates have got to be liking their chances. So must the CALEXITers, Vermont Republicans, and anyone really looking forward to 2033.
Dave Granlund.
Amazingly, some in New York and DC still want a war with Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea, or all of them (plus maybe a few more) at the same time. A strategy (or lack thereof) that can’t beat the Taliban in a decade and a half has no hope whatsoever against Russia.
A better strategy for Asia and elsewhere might be to hang it up and start minding our own business. The troops might serve better at home rounding up central bankers, Senators, SJWs, MS-13, ISIS, and other criminals.
A suspected Islamic State (Isil) truck bomb tore through the diplomatic quarter of Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 90 people including a BBC driver and badly damaging the German embassy.
If confirmed that Isil was behind the bombing, it would mark a significant escalation of the jihadists’ violence in Afghanistan and the latest in a string of deadly attacks at the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The massive explosive was hidden inside a sewage tank on the back of a truck and went off during the morning rush hour, wounding around 400 people and leaving a large crater. The attack was one of the deadliest in Kabul since the US-led invasion in 2001.
Sixteen years of entanglement and this is what still happens – in the most secured part of the country.
The Telegraph.
I’m thinking a little closer to home. Not about the U.S. minding its own business but wondering when the car/truck bomb fad will hit America.
Good and evil exist and are on display every single day. Frequently they are violently juxtaposed. So it was in Turkey. Yesterday thousands gathered in Ankara for a pro-Kurdish peace rally. Judging by the event pictures those present were mostly idealistic young people, likely students interested in bettering their world.
The handful of those who know of Turkey and its capital (all my readers, undoubtedly) also know of the plight of the Kurds. War and oppression have followed this people for ages throughout the region. They have suffered particular aggression in Iraq – both from Saddam Hussein and in the wake of the disastrous U.S. imperial adventures in the Middle East.
Good people joined together in Ankara to support Kurdish peace. Those pictures showed faces both happy and loving. Then, evil inserted itself. Two bomb blasts rocked the event, killing more than ninety and wounding hundreds.
Moment of terror. Google.
The terrorism was likely the work of the Islamic State or some other group of demented satanists. Given the pitiful state of geo-political affairs anything is possible. The scale of the operation points to professional backing, state or otherwise.
The story I linked to features a video which captured the moment the first bomb went off. It shows the look of happiness on those young faces turn to horror.
Speaking of state sponsored terrorism and horror, the Empire is being characteristically tight-lipped about the hospital bombing in Afghanistan.
Last week the U.S. government changed its story no less than four times. No coherent explanation (or apology) came forth.
The U.S. military, whose own account of what took place changed in the initial days after the attack, has said that the hospital was “mistakenly struck” in an attempt to support Afghan security forces. But the military has declined to provide full details of the incident while its investigators examine what occurred in the worst example of errant U.S. air power in recent years.
Don’t expect a truthful account of what happened – ever. The U.S. explains nothing. The truth make come out one day but it will come from outside sources. And, it will come long after the zombified masses have moved on.
The bad news is this wickedness will continue until the end. The very good news is that good will continue to resist evil and, in the end, will prevail.
Are all murders equal? The short answer is, “yes.” All human killing in general is bad enough. Premeditated and unjustifiable killing is utterly deplorable whenever and wherever it happens. Most people understand the concept. Most, that is, except for the rodent political class.
“I would ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws and to save lives, and to let young people grow up. That will require a change of politics on this issue,” he said. “If you think this is a problem then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views.”
Shut up, Barry. Pay attention to the beam in your eye first. How about first condemning your hospital bombing in Kundez, Afghanistan this weekend. You know, the bombing so many are saying amounts to a war crime.
Nineteen are dead and 37 or more injured in the bombing (don’t forget the Afghan war ended last year…) and all the Whitehouse can do is issue a short statement: “‘The Department of Defense has launched a full investigation, and we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgment as to the circumstances of this tragedy,’ the President said.”
When it is politically expedient to exploit a domestic terror the political class immediately demands action. However, when they are responsible for the deaths, they want to wait before making any judgments. When some idiot murders another, they want to take away all of our guns. When they are the idiots who murder others, it’s just collateral damage. “Oops! Sorry we burned your kids alive. Won’t happen again.”
Again, most people see this glaring difference and inequity. Again, the pols just can’t. Their cover-up artists in the popular press can’t either. The best CNN can do combining the issues of gun violence and war/terrorism is to release a graph showing a disparity between the number of Americans killed between 2001 and 2013 by guns (406,496) and by terrorism (3,380). Their slant is obviously towards the Obama-ite view of changing gun laws and further restricting the freedoms of normal Americans.
Four hundred thousand deaths (taking their numbers for granted) in twelve years is terrible – that’s roughly 33,333 deaths per year. But, statistically speaking and with an eye towards liberty, what about the net effect? The government criminals and their media lackeys never talk about lives saved by guns. In America every year that number approaches somewhere close to 2.5 Million. That’s 30 Million lives saved by guns over twelve years! That’s 75 times as many lives saved as lost due to firearms.
Little of this matters to those degenerates who bomb hospitals full of helpless people. The rest of us are painfully aware that (although imperfect) an armed society is much safer than the alternative (see also the experiences of disarmed citizens faced with the likes of Hitler and Stalin). Least safe of all is an armed government. Yes, Barry, we need policy changes. We need common sense government control. Many lives depend on it.
