The book is an excellent recapitulation of all that went wrong in Afghanistan over twenty years. For those who have no expertise in the region and history of the conflict or have lost the plot after moving on to other crises, this book serves a useful purpose, although its publication is a bit late, and people in short order will quickly move on to other issues. That said, people who are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it. Although in this case one could argue that even those who knew history (Vietnam) found themselves unable to not repeat it.
A major problem with the book is that, as the author states, it is mainly a compendium of people’s reflections on what happened after the fact giving each (often anonymous) raconteur a chance to revise his role in the unhappy history of the event. In many cases the quoted speaker downplays his or her role. They sound as if they were passive bystanders to critical decisions that were made instead of active participants if not originators of poor planning and decision making. For example: Regarding the end goals of the war “Rumsfeld was careful to keep his doubts and misgivings private” If this was so, he badly misled the American people from the earliest days of the war in Afghanistan. He was supposed to be setting policy. He was not a passive non actor in what happened. In fact, he was a very powerful voice in setting policy. This statement is a CYA revision. There are a surprising number of Rumsfeld excuses in the book, Another: “Speaking confidentially years later to government interviewers many US officials who played a key role in the war offered harsh judgements about the decision-making during the conflict’s early stages”. Mistakes were made. Again, the unspoken idea here is, “well, I had nothing to do with it”! No one says, “I made a mistake” or “I lied to my boss and or the public”.
Key take a ways from the book:
1. From beginning to end the book is about cold, deliberate, flat out lies to the American public. Mostly by military leaders, but also politicians and government bureaucrats. They knew progress was not being made. They knew that we were not winning the war. They knew that building an independent Afghan army was a total failure, but truth telling was never going to help anyone’s career. Meanwhile the loss in blood and treasure continued.
2. Robert Gates “…on 9/11 we didn’t know jack-shit about al-Qaeda” The same could be said about the history and culture of Afghanistan
3. The government seems to have blurred the distinction between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. For most of 20 years we were fighting the Taliban, not the perpetrators of 9/11 who were Arabs, mostly Saudis. No Afghans participated in the 9/11 attack, and it is almost certain that they knew nothing about it in advance.
4. The U.S. failed to recognize that the Taliban became a catch all cover for patriotic and religious Afghans who wished to drive out foreign invaders just as their ancestors had done for hundreds of years. If the Americans and their NATO allies had killed every single card-carrying Taliban (not that they had them) they still would have faced an enemy determined to drive them out.
5. Allying ourselves closely to murderous, rapacious (in all senses of the word) warlords undercut any high-minded talk about democracy and rule of law. It was the Taliban who were considered fair and just maintainers of the peace. Bringing justice to rural areas of the country that had been suffering under corrupt government officials, government backed militias, and warlords did as much as anything to bring the Taliban to final victory.
6. The book continually points out that the US and its allies had no strategy for wining. Multiple interviewees cite this as if there was some magic strategy somewhere that could have brought victory. I posit that there never was a war winning strategy. Standard counter insurgency tactics of wining the hearts and minds was never, ever going to work. To the average Afghan we were truly infidel invaders of their country with a culture that was an anathema to all their values. To the rural Afghan the heavily armored tech laden soldiers even looked like a aliens from outer space. The Taliban couldn’t be bombed back to the stone age because in many ways they were already there. Flat out mass killing didn’t bring the Russians victory either.
In the book a lot has been made of bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora. Finding him in this incredibly rugged mountainous terrain was always going to be difficult. An extra 800 to 2000 soldiers was not going to make a difference. That small number of troops would be lost in the landscape. Against a man who had intimate knowledge of the area and support among the local tribes meant that realistically they weren’t going to catch him. Remember at this time the vast fleet of surveillance drones and aircraft did not exist.
Immediately after ending the Taliban government critical errors were made at the Bonn conference where a new Afghan leader was selected by the victorious allied forces. The selection of Karzai filled the bill from the Western perspective, but it ignored centuries of Afghan politics. If nothing else the Afghan people would reject a ruler imposed on them by outsiders. The British tried this several times with horrific results. Crucially the book ignores the possibility of the one man who had some legitimacy in the eyes of the people of Afghanistan, their exiled king Zahir Shah. He was moderate, well educated, reforming and liked by the majority of the people. The reason he was not given a role at the Bonn meeting was, as near as I can make out, the US wanted a more “modern” government for Afghanistan and actively rejected any possible role for him. This was a terrible mistake.
The new Afghan constitution deserves a PhD thesis but not a book (no one would care to read it especially now that it’s a moot point). Its history is so convoluted that it defies easy telling. Basically, it was written by western advisors and carefully selected Afghans and was never ratified by any real national authority, only the acting president. The promised national popular referendum never occurred. If followed, Afghans would have ceased being Afghans. This document legitimized nothing in the eyes of most Afghans, even among those few citizens who could read and write. The Loya Jirga, an ad hoc national assembly, was handpicked by the occupying forces and had no legitimacy with the vast majority of the Afghan population. Even so, the allies had to reformulate the Loya Jirga several times to get the results they wanted. Nevertheless, the occupying forces and their mostly carpet bagger national government referred to it constantly as the backbone of Afghan law. The more they did the less legitimacy they had. Oddly enough (maybe) much material describing the genesis of the new constitution seems to have been scrubbed from easy access on the internet. It used to be there, but it is not now. While you can find many sites that have copies of the constitution, articles that described its authors and history seem to have gone missing.
It’s not in the scope of the book to explain why so many mistakes were made by people who now say they clearly knew they were making mistakes and lying. The closest explanation is they didn’t want to lose their jobs. That doesn’t bode well for future endeavors.
Cures
1. An active inquisitive press that was in the theater continuously in sufficient numbers and not as buddy bonded embeds. In this war the media failed utterly to speak truth to power. A single reporter covering from New Delhi or Jerusalem was never sufficient. I understand covering the news is not profitable, but what about public service?
2. An active and inquisitive Congress that over the past twenty years sometimes asked hard questions and but never followed up
3. Accountability. Heads must role for those that lied. Mistakes can perhaps be forgiven but lies never. Many have retired. Perhaps their pensions can be clawed back even if we can’t bring the dead back to life.
4. The establishment of “blue teams” to question strategic plans. A blue team that has immunity to payback and access to high level decision makers. A traditional council of war may simply rubber stamp their commander, but teams that were charged to differ with accepted beliefs would be far less likely to toady.
5. Stop calling all military members “heroes”. If all are heroes no one is. First of all, it’s condescending. The upper classes often, I suspect, call them heroes to keep them happy and the ranks filled. Not that they would want their sons and daughters to be “heroes” God forbid! If all are “heroes” it’s very difficult to criticize them let alone punish those that deserve it. If you want heroes, why not call all chicken processing plant employees heroes? The death rate among those people in recent years has been far higher than in the military.
6. A dissent channel like the State Department has had for many years. Its an additional way for people on the front line to have their voices heard.
7. Longer term, teaching of ethics and civics. People need to be taught how to read and write it stands to reason that student need help to learn their responsibilities as citizens and not just their rights.
Where there any heroes in this sad story? One name stands above all the rest, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.