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Story of Decade: Afghanistan Papers
Glenn Beck tells a story about a conversation that he had with President George W. Bush at the end of his time in office. Glenn was concerned that Barrack Obama was going to take over as commander-in-chief and mess up the recent progress in the Iraq war. Bush responds with, “Don’t 
worry. He’ll get the same intelligence I was given and the same options I was given and he’ll make the same decisions.” The. Same. Decisions.
A decade later, the Washington Post would print a story “The Afghanistan Papers” that I consider the story of the decade. This story was built on information (2000+ pages) obtained by WaPo through Freedom of Information requests and it shows that for most of the decade, the US military knew the strategies in Afghanistan were not working and that the culture of the military was to fake the metrics and to pretend that things were fine. The money kept being spent and the body count continued to climb and the message to the American people was that all was well-and-good and that we should stay the course. The article says, “Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.” The financial cost of the Afghanistan debacle is at least $0.97 trillion. That is a lot of blood and treasure for a backward land-locked country half a world away.
This is my choice for the story of the decade because it entails all the other big stories of the decade:
* The costly war on terror
* The muscle of the bureaucratic state
* The national debt
* The devolution of reporting
* Partisan rage
* The rise of Trump
The War on Terror was kicked into overdrive after the horrific terror attack of 9/11. Passion and patriotism were high and American people were out for blood. The people could have blamed the FBI for failing to follow up on good leads before 9/11. Or, the people could have blamed the CIA for failing to notice a long-running multi-national terror ring that infiltrated the homeland. Those were clearly huge failures in the missions of the two agencies that exist to stop such things the American people might have rightly demanded a housecleaning of those agencies. Instead, the bureaucrats redirected the outrage of the people into regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq. To date, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost 16,256 lives of U.S. and allied military personnel and contractors. The financial cost of the War in Terror to the US, so far, is $6.4 trillion.
The bureaucratic state managed to turn a horrific failure into a massive expansion of budget and power. This was accomplished through a fear campaign in the media by national security leaders and war hawks about WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and Congress, which is always eager to expand a budget. It took months of propaganda, but the American people and Congress eventually signed off on invading Afghanistan (to turn some pre-industrial goat-herdering narco-state into a feminist-friendly Western-style democracy) and then Iraq (based on sketchy intelligence about secret WMD programs from some Iranian guy nick-named “curveball”). The bureaucratic state went from helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iran in 1988 to using Iranian disinformation to take out the Saddam Hessian regime while ignoring the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11. The National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, in a CNN interview on Sept 8th, 2002 said: “We know that he [Saddam] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon and we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought — maybe six months from a crude nuclear device. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” A. Mushroom. Cloud.
Thus began America’s longest and costliest war; a war that was manufactured and perpetuated by the bureaucratic state. The war in Iraq had another cost. The pro-war side actively questioned the patriotism of those against the war. This was unfair as the intelligence was truly questionable. I believe these unfair charges of calling good Americans “unpatriotic” severed the country in a way that shows as partisan rage today. The interaction of the Left and Right (the Dems and GOP) went from policy-centered debate to the hurling of hateful insults: “unpatriotic”, “racist”, “sexist”, “anti-American”, … Those started with the Afghanistan War and festered and grew under Obama while the war muddled on under the lies of progress. If the Afghanistan War had not been perpetuated, would partisanship be more cordial today?
Barrack Obama was elected to end the wars and he failed. The bureaucratic state got powerful and rich along with their crony corporations, while taxpayers got a weak economy and a lot of debt. Presumably, the bureaucratic state never gave him the option of ending the costly wars. The national debt went from $11.9 trillion (82.5% of GDP) to $23.1 trillion (106.7% of GDP) during the decade of 2010-2019. More than half of that debt was spending from the War on Terror. At the end of the decade, Afghanistan is still a pre-industrial goat-herding narco-state, Iraq is an Iranian controlled country torn by civil war, and the bureaucratic state is more powerful than ever.
The failure of Bush (R) and Obama (D) to finish the wars perpetrated by insiders led to the election of the ultimate outsider and the rise of Trump, who was elected on his promise to end the “endless” wars. The perpetuation of the wars by the insiders was enabled by a feckless media that was easily manipulated into tearing down Trump the outsider that threatened the power of the bureaucratic state. How dare he change the policy of spending in Ukraine and question the corruption of the State Department! Reporting has gone from a skill that was akin to mining for nuggets of gold by working connections, asking tough questions, and tracking leads with a pretense of being non-partisan at the start of the decade to a merely a shell of its former self. The news industry is not profitable and has devolved to writing up hot takes of things seen on Twitter with a business model of “clickbait and hate”, which furthers the partisan rage we see daily. The “Afghanistan Papers” is a rare news story that proves just how much the news industry has decayed and that along with the truths revealed is why it is my story of the decade.
Published in Journalism
We never experienced a 9/11 and I can still recall every detail of the day, and weeks and months after. I believe those agencies, specifically the CIA and FBI failed to pick up on a 5 year plan by the terrorists. I also think some blame goes to Clinton, who handed off the baton to Bush, who had less than 9 months to come up to speed. The departing Clinton/ Gore bunch deliberately made things difficult, citing that election year. We survived and I thank God Gore was not at the helm.
I think Bush had it in for Saddam who threatened Bush 41. There are parts of the world that will never accept democracy, freedom, and the blessings that we have always known. Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea seem to be tainted ground – no peace. The past is the past – and Trump is a leader for the new Century. He doesn’t buy the old school thinking, and isn’t afraid to think out of the box, make mistakes, or try new approaches. It’s all we can hope for. I liked Bush 43. The entire Obama administration was a nightmare that Trump is trying to undo – piece by piece. So far he has made many strides, trying to restore some principles and values, rule of law, restore our faith in the American Dream, which has been an inspiration to other countries, and who still seek it.
No president is perfect, nor should we expect it, but results we do expect. History will write their chapters, and as long as we have a vote, we will continue to use it, and expect truth from the results of those votes, whether national, state or local.
Bush(43)’s main problem was some sense of noblesse oblige Presidential that kept him from communicating effectively. He also tried making his reasons for Iraq much more complex than they needed to be.
Yes, one of the conditions of the conditional ceasefire was that Saddam demonstrably dismantle his WMD programs, which he did not do. He was also regularly firing on our planes, etc. during the Clinton Administration and upped his bounty paid to the families of suicide bomber terrorists.
Meanwhile, the NYT would have pieces about “Where are the WMD?” on one page while detailing where the WMD went on a page several pages (or sections) further back.
I’ll happily back you in saying there should be no attempts at nation building, but we had good reasons for both wars that our news media has been hiding ever since the wars started, if not before.
@dong I wish this could go straight to Main Feed, kind of disappointed in number of comments. This is a huge, underreported and remarked upon story. Fine job on the narrative and facts presents. That cost of lives, blood and treasure for so little/non-existent improvement is inexcusable.
I was guilty of painting those who questioned the cost/mission initially of being unpatriotic but as this has ground on and on with really very little improvement, as many players, companies and bureaucracies became larger and more enriched, the farce has revealed itself.
I started to become disillusioned when the numbers of trained Afghan never materialized and that the Iraqi Insurgency went on as long as it did without the ROE changing. I don’t think the fact that the invasion made Iran the dominant player in the region was discussed enough either. It seems that that is all that was accomplished – we made Iran stronger.
While I agree with your conclusion that our Middle East adventures have been failures, I have some differences with your analysis as to underlying causes. In this comment I’ll address Afghanistan and then make another on Iraq.
I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan based on the need to eliminate Al Qaeda’s use of that country as a base of operations and still believe that to be correct. However, as you point out, the attempt to fundamentally transform that country was folly and once we reached Mission Accomplished on pushing out Al Qaeda withdrawal was the better step.
Our 21st experience should teach us the impossibility of fundamentally transforming Muslim dominated countries. We are poorly equipped from many perspectives to do so. Instead you can argue, based on our ME experience and the experience of European countries dealing with massive Muslim immigration, that Islam, even as a minority, has been more successful in fundamentally transforming European democracy than we have been attempting the reverse in the ME.
The better course once Afghanistan had been dealt with was to inform the leaders of all Muslim dominated countries that the U.S. had no interest in regime change or in how those leaders governed their countries. However, we would be vigilant in protecting the security of the United States and of its citizens at home and abroad and would take whatever unilateral actions were necessary to achieve that. If it meant launching drone strikes or Special Forces targeted missions we would do so.
That is necessarily an imperfect solution, but so has been our long time presence in Afghanistan and my proposal would have entailed much less cost and loss of American life.
As to the Washington Post series it provides some interesting and useful detail but the conclusion that our Afghanistan mission has gone badly off track should have been evident for many years to any reasonably informed reader of our media. I don’t blame the media for this one.
As to Iraq:
I was initially on the fence regarding the proposed invasion but eventually came down in favor of it because for me, post 9/11, the risk equation had changed. I was a WMD guy and felt the risks too great of not doing anything particularly because, at that point, the alternative was a rapidly collapsing sanction regime. In the end the lack of an active WMD program combined with the fiasco of post-invasion actions by the Bush Administration made it a disastrous decision. We would have been better off encouraging the already significant tensions between Iraq and Iran.
The intelligence failure was attributable to erroneous, but not manipulated, intelligence due to two factors. First, the post WW2 trend of our intelligence agencies to go through cycles of overestimating and then underestimating our foes. A common failing of many large organizations is preparing for the last war by not trying to repeat mistakes but overcompensating in the process. We saw this throughout the Cold War when it came to analyzing Soviet capabilities. The only time we got it right, with the reassessment of Soviet economic strength in the early 80s, was the sole time we were able to align political strategy with accurate intelligence. Regarding Iraq, prior to the 1991 war, our intelligence agencies drastically underestimated the extent of Saddam’s biological and chemical warfare capabilities and completely missed his nuclear program. The reaction was to overestimate Saddam’s capabilities over the next decade, a reaction enhanced by the next factor.
The second factor was Saddam’s successful campaign to convince everyone outside Iraq that he had indeed kept WMD. He deliberately acted in ways consistent with retaining WMD. I remember a conversation with a friend prior to the war when we were discussing this and talking about whether Saddam was bluffing about WMD but our immediate reaction was “nobody could be that stupid!“. Well, he was. It was Iran he was bluffing though, not the West.
A couple of years after the war the Dueffler report was issued which was a summary of post-war interviews with Iraqi military and political leaders as well as a review of internal Iraqi documents. It turned out that only a very small circle of Iraqi leaders knew before the war that Saddam had destroyed most of his WMD arsenal. He told other leaders and the most senior military commanders about it only on the eve of the American attack. Even then commanders in the field were left in the dark. When interviewed about WMD, they would claim while they didn’t have any, they thought the division on their flank had it. When the flank division commander was interviewed he said he didn’t have WMD but figured the division on his flank did.
You write, “Barrack Obama was elected to end the wars and he failed” but he did end American involvement in Iraq in 2011. One of the few things I thought he would do that I agreed with was withdraw from Afghanistan. Too bad he didn’t.
And again, I don’t think you can fault the media regarding reporting of what was going on in Iraq after our invasion.
Exactly.
I remember posting some analysis when this broke a few weeks ago, and getting similar dead air from people. It did break on the same day as Horowitz’s report so there is one problem there.
I completely blame them for the lead up of the invasion. They wanted a war because they thought it would be good for ratings. They have as much blood on there hands as those that started and then mismanaged this grossly incompetent war.
I for one opposed the war then and not shocked by any of this.
Actually much of the media opposed the war and gave extensive coverage to the mass demonstrations against it. I was able to read quite a bit of analysis opposing it in the NY Times, which I still read at the time.
Brilliant article, but America’s intervention in Afghanistan began in 1979 – and predictably resulted in the Taliban.
Do you know of anyone who predicted it back then?
Funding the Mujahideen empowered them. That was the point, wasn’t it?
Did they change their ideology? I think they didn’t. Holy War against Infidels works against the Soviets but it also works against a lot of other people. It seems predictable.
But did anyone predict it in 1979? That’s what I’m curious to know.
If they did it’s not easily accessible by google. It’s possible they didn’t? Which makes it worse, perhaps?
It’s hard to predict things. When George W. Bush invaded Iraq that made me very nervous, though I didn’t voice my objections very loudly. The fact that he had got Colin Powell to make the case, against Powell’s better judgment, calmed my fears somewhat. But even though I knew it’s bad not to have a plan for dealing with the aftermath, and that you can’t just build a nation by force, I would not have been able to predict the exact result.
The CIA used Pakistan as a proxy and gave virtually no quality control trusting the Pakistanis to do the bulk of the work.
In the 1990s the CIA returned to Afghanistan hot on the pursuit of Stinger Missiles because it was believed one would shoot down an airliner. They went to Massood in the Northern Alliance and said they wanted to buy back them.
Massood said sure and delivered 8 back. The CIA wanted to know where the rest of them were. Massood said he had only 8 and he had to get them from secondary sources. The CIA asked him where the rest of the missiles that the Pakistanis had given him were.
Massood said the Pakistanis hadnt given him any. That they almost never gave him any and that despite that yes he was one of the best fighters against the Soviets the Pakistanis feared him more and certainly never were going to give him any thing cause he was from the wrong ethnic group.
It was only then did the USA begin to grapple with how little they knew about what was going on. They still grapple to this day.
I’ve seen this report in multiple sites. I hope Trump won’t listen to those who lied to other presidents. The headline says it all:
Report: Trump held private, enlisted-only Afghanistan war meetings – ‘No generals or officers, only enlisted guys that have been there’
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/12/report-trump-held-private-enlisted-only-afghanistan-war-meetings-no-generals-or-officers-only-enlisted-guys-that-have-been-there/
Watching Chernobyl right now. It reminds me a lot about the war in Afghanistan and the senior leadership that caused that disaster reminds me a lot of the National Security Apparatus.
The actions outlined in the WaPo reporting are eerily reminiscent of reporting deficiencies in Vietnam, primarily under Westmoreland. Plus ca change . . . It’s inexecusable.
While there certainly is a connection, those actions do not, however, add up to an outright condemnation of the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Granted those actions may fail a cost/benefit analysis, but that discounts the simple fact that is always far easier to criticize actions taken than is it is to assess what might have happened had those actions not been taken. Yes, we responded to 9/11. And despite dire predictions about the perils of terrorism–amply illustrated numerous times elsewhere since then–the “last” 9/11 was 9/11.
Predict what?
That Pakistan would create the Taliban.
That the post Soviet Afghan government would succumb to regional warlords.
That Pakistan would inject the Taliban into Afghanistan with the objective of creating a client state providing them with strategic depth.
That the war lords would rather vie for control of “the government” rather than unite to oppose the Pakistani cat’s paw.
That the United States, besotted with victory over the USSR, would heed the advice of Neville Chamberlain and not worry about a “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
That upon seizing power, the Taliban would provide succor and support to the man who funded and organized the bombing of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. (Among other things)
Subsequently, the President of the United States would order cruise missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. Disregarding the military principle of surprise, the US government would notify the government of Pakistan about the air strikes.
This brings events up to 1998.
If you are interested in what happened and why, I recommend
I don’t agree with everything he concludes, but the reportage is detailed and solid.
That’s interesting, too, but if somebody was predicting this back in 1979 I would like to know more about that person.
This is what I could find:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/at-cold-wars-end-us-intelligence-on-the-soviet-union-and-eastern-europe-1989-1991/16526pdffiles/SNIE11-37-88.pdf
From which:
Most of the paper focuses on the Soviet Union, which I think reflects America’s concerns at the time.
Rather than asking whether anybody predicted the Taliban’s rise, specifically, it might be worth asking why nobody bothered thinking about the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal in depth. I can’t find much on google, which makes me think that even if people did engage in this kind of analysis there was not much official appetite for it.
It does seem inevitable that empowering Islamic groups is going to result in an outcome where their ideology, unless contested, dominates. Do we need to ask for proof that such an analysis was undertaken to argue that this is basic due diligence one should expect from any kind of security agency?
The lack of appetite for this ‘what next’ kind of analysis was on display more recently when the West wanted to do the exact same thing in Syria – empowering ‘moderate rebels’ who were Islamists, and who were connected to Al Qaida, because they opposed Assad. Why do we think the outcome would be different from when we did the exact same thing in Afghanistan?
Because America never thinks about those kind of things, and is pretty incapable of doing so.
That is the source of much of my starting information. It only has built from there.
Around 2008, I read a paper that listed the expected major issues the US would face in the next decade. One of the assessments was that Mexico presented a bigger danger to the US than the Middle East did.
Sure, such an outcome could have been predicted. But it turned out that the outcome was one that we needed to care about. That notion is often lacking.
I’d suggest that it’s still way too early to jump to any conclusions regarding the merits of our military actions in the Middle East since 9/11. It will take some time (say a good thirty years or so) for historians to comb through the mountains of primary source documents which paint a very different picture than 2000 pages of information filtered through left leaning journalists.
On my research desk I currently have easily twice as much print data to shift through, and what I’m learning is that there is always more to the story. At least once a month I learn something that makes me say, “Oh. That makes sense why they did that at the time. And it also makes sense (given unknown variable x,y,or z) why it didn’t work.”
Do not be hasty to judge the actions and motivations of so many over so long a period. History will have the final say, and the war on terror is still in it’s third act.
Afghanistan sits between the Islamic Republic and a somewhat volatile South Asia (huge population centre). It’s between the then Soviet Union and the Straits of Hormuz. I’m not feeling it re the people could think it would be irrelevant, but hindsight is 20:20 so…