Editor’s note: This article written by Mairead McArdle was posted at National Review back on December 9. This news is no longer surprising, especially after watching the last 18 or so years of American foreign and military policy and the recent CIA and FBI scandals. Years ago I gathered excerpts from articles about the war in Iraq and put it into a series, and then a few years later, I did the same about the war in Afghanistan. A lot has changed since then, causing my support for such actions to wain (to say the least). Here are the first few paragraphs of McArdle’s report:
Newly revealed government documents show that senior U.S. officials painted an overly optimistic picture of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that some officials said amounts to lying to the American public.
Newly revealed government documents show that senior U.S. officials painted an overly optimistic picture of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that some officials said amounts to lying to the American public.
The more than 2,000 pages from a federal investigation examining what went wrong during the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan, the longest armed conflict in American history, contain candid observations from more 400 people close to the conflict expressing frustrations and doubts about the U.S. role in the region. The Washington Post obtained the documents following a three-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“The American people have constantly been lied to,” said John Sopko, head of the agency conducting oversight on Afghanistan reconstruction, which conducted the interviews.
U.S. officials disagreed from the beginning regarding the purpose of the war, some saying it should result in a democratic government in Afghanistan, others pushing for cultural change, and others hoping it would shake up the power balance between Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and India.
“With the AfPak strategy there was a present under the Christmas tree for everyone,” an unidentified U.S. official told investigators in 2015. “By the time you were finished you had so many priorities and aspirations it was like no strategy at all.”
Read more: National Review
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