An ignominious end to an inglorious war
In 2019 the Washington Post published official documents from the war in Afghanistan following a multi-year fight with the Pentagon through the Freedom of Information Act. These papers were supposed to be this generation’s version of the Pentagon Papers — a tell-all that exposed the government for what it is. Instead they’ve been buried in a never-ending news cycle by an apathetic public that has largely ignored the nation’s involvement in the country.
These documents are not surprising — if anyone was paying attention — it was obvious. And this has become especially true in the aftermath of the evacuation of Kabul in 2021.
The sadness doesn’t come from the lack of coherent strategy. It’s that it took this long for the public to realize that American actions in Afghanistan have been futile. In the beginning Afghanistan was the good war, it soon became the forgotten war, and now it is an endless war.
I served two tours in Afghanistan as an infantryman charged with protecting the Afghan people and trying to bring democracy to that beautiful country on the roof of the world. After reading the documents, I found nothing new
I never felt lied to and still do not. We had a pretty straight forward mission: legitimize the Afghan government by providing security in the area we were assigned. We tried to do this by separating the enemy from the populace and building host nation security capabilities. Sometimes we had no idea who the enemy was in our particular area — as the Afghan/Paki border is littered with multiple insurgent groups, some affiliated with the Taliban, some not.
Counterinsurgency only works if the people view their government as legitimate, and the government can reach the people. Legitimacy starts with security. All the work I did over there was an attempt to connect the government to the people. Through projects like roads, bridges, schools, power generation, and the like. In counterinsurgency, the occupying force doesn’t matter. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is about the Afghani people and their government — not the United States.
A bigger problem, perhaps, was apathy. What if the Afghans did not want to be connected to the government, and in fact, resisted? The people in Kunar and Nuristan could care less about what’s going on in Kabul.
In addition to firefights, we have also been fighting an extensive Information Operations campaign, and now the United States had decreased bargaining power with the Taliban as it entered more rounds of negotiations. This played a major role in the Taliban’s resurgance ahead of the American withdrawl.
There’s also a fascinating historical component to all of this: none of it has had the same reaction as the Pentagon Papers. When those papers were released, they had an immense impact on the American psyche. Those papers represented systematic lying and attempt to spin reports in the best light possible from their government about a war they were being drafted to fight. It was shocking then because people didn’t suspect it. Now, as a direct result of the Pentagon Papers, the American people have become skeptical — jaded even — and suspect deceit regardless.
The second reason this has had little response is also a result of the Vietnam war. In 1973 President Nixon decided to abolish the eliminate conscription in the United States and turn to an All-Volunteer Force. The All-Volunteer Force was the result of a myriad of policy goals. Yet widespread outrage from the American people played a role in the demise of the draft.
The All-Volunteer Force has been at war for more than 21 years, it’s old enough to drink. Most of the public seems to be less interested with each passing year. Most Americans still couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map, even after the debacle in 2021. While an army of draftees is not the answer, either, I wonder what it would take to create a citizen body more invested in the nation’s overseas adventurism.
These papers are just more of the same, and the lack of outrage is both a direct result of their predecessor and a symptom of more significant societal problems. Sending Americans to fight for freedom and democracy used to mean something. After our endless, forgotten war in Afghanistan, can the United States salvage itself?
