The United States has resumed stalled talks with the Taliban as it seeks to end the decades-long war in Afghanistan. The sticking point in the negotiations remains what exactly will the US will gain from the conflict.
A damning new report reveals that US officials distorted facts to mislead the public about the Afghan war. The 18-year-old war was known to be failing from an early stage, but US officials concealed the information from the American public.
Based on a confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post, the report reveals that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan and concealed unmistakable evidence that the war had become unwinnable.
This is being compared to the Pentagon Papers, the batch of documents about the Vietnam War leaked to the press. It revealed the US government lied about the war and kept on ending more troops. This turned the tide of public opinion against the war and the lesson that government would brazenly lied to them.
Things are much different now as the US public is more preoccupied with other stories such as the Trump’s impeachment. Most Americans cannot even point out Afghanistan on the world map. The revelation will unlikely led to a revolt. Afghanistan was long overshadowed by other conflicts such as Iraq and even the peace process seldom makes news headlines.
The documents include 2000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with nearly 400 people who played a direct role in the war, from generals to diplomats and Afghans officials. They are filled with complaints, confessions, and frustrations on how the US became mired in the long-standing conflict.
The revelations on the onset do not seem very shocking on what went wrong in Afghanistan. According to senior US general Douglas Lute, they were devoid of a fundamental understanding of the country and didn’t know what they were doing. Many US officials acknowledged that their war strategies were flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money on Afghanistan.
The documents also contradict public statements from US presidents Bush and Obama that they had a clear strategy and were bringing peace, when they had idea what they were doing and how to do it.
This has created a huge credibility gap like Vietnam War when government officials were telling about how the war was going, and how it was actually fought. And just like Vietnam, the US might also have to make an embarrassing retreat from Afghanistan as well.
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