Documents show US leaders misled public on progress in Afghanistan War: report
Senior U.S. officials knowingly lied to the public about their progress throughout the 18-year war in Afghanistan, consistently painting a rosier picture of the state of the war than they knew to be true, according to a cache of documents obtained by the Washington Post.
In private interviews conducted by a watchdog that span the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations—which the Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request—U.S. officials frequently acknowledged a lack of understanding, strategy and progress in a war they regularly described publicly as being on the cusp of success.
“After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan,” retired Navy SEAL Jeffrey Eggers, a White House staffer in the Bush and Obama administrations, said in a private interview.
Interviewees also describe a deliberate disinformation campaign meant to spin discouraging statistics as evidence the U.S. was prevailing in the war.
“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel and senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, said in an interview.
“Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone,” he added.
In 2015, Ret. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as a top advisor on the war during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” according to the Post.
Lute went on to lament the deaths of U.S. military personnel that he blamed on bureaucratic entanglements between the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress.
Also at CNN.
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
[...]In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:31PM (8 children)
Why didn't this appeal show up before armed Russians were on the street corners of the Crimea?
Except, of course, if it was to their advantage to do so. I wouldn't trust China further than I could throw it. And I can't throw them very far.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:43AM (3 children)
They did, long before. Read about the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution [wikipedia.org] which set the stage for all of this.
Essentially Ukraine has two very different groups within it. Ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians. The two groups don't tend to get along well in no small part because of WW2. Russians took horrific casualties defeating Nazi Germany. Ukraine took the opportunity to align themselves and collaborate with the Nazis. Crimea is primarily ethnically Russian. The democratically elected leader of Ukraine before the protests was Yanukovych. Yanukovych chose to start turning away from the EU and aligning Ukraine more with Russia. Following this event there were "protests" which many Ukrainians saw as an illegal foreign supported coup. The protests were ultimately successful and they put Turchynov in power and attempted to imprison the former president. Turchynov was the leader of the People's Front - a far right [ethnic Ukrainian] nationalist movement.
Needless to say the coup had basically 0 support from the ethnic Russian regions in Ukraine, among them Crimea. So these regions now began protesting against the coup and leadership. This, in turn, led to the leadership of these regions declaring their intention to break off and join Russia following a referendum. This was mostly a formality because there was basically complete support for joining Russia (as later confirmed by Western pollsters including e.g. Gallup). And so Russia moved unmarked forces into the area to ensure the results of the referendum would be respected.
As an aside, this is also why notions of "racism" in the US are so idiotic. Ukrainians and Russians are, on the surface, identical. They also speak nearly the same language - the languages are quite different but similar enough to ensure mutual that speakers of one or the other could converse with a speaker of the other, if they tried. They are effectively the same people, but the amount of animosity between them dwarfs any form of racism in the US. Skin color is a very distracting red herring that prevents us from ever tackling the real problem, which is cultural clashes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:01PM (2 children)
You do realize that there are Russians and Ukrainians in the US? And they don't so conflict in the US. The conflicts are driven by national interests not ethnicity.
One doesn't resolve culture clashes by rationalizing tyranny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:33PM (1 child)
There was no "invasion" at any point in Crimea. Just to clarify, there were two big issues in Ukraine. In February after the coup, violent separatist movements broke out in eastern Ukraine around the Donbass region on the Russian border. This region has nothing to do with Crimea and is an entirely different issue. Around August Russia started providing direct (though unmarked) material support to the separatists. That conflict continues to this day, and Donbass is still a part of Ukraine. Crimea is an entirely different region in the south that's basically an island - they're connected to Ukraine through a tiny natural land bridge. What Russian presence there was positioned to ensure the referendum was able to be carried out without Ukraine simply stopping it by force of arms. Perhaps you might argue that was their right since Ukraine was their territory but on the other hand, would you not say that people have a right to self determination? If 80% of California wanted to secede and create their own little country, should they not be able to? As always, I am not asking rhetorical questions. I see that there are arguments for both sides, but I think people have more a right to decide their own destiny than a government has to "claim" them by self granted rights.
As for the polls, everybody knew the referendum was going to pass by a landslide so there wasn't much point in participating if you didn't want the annexation. Nonparticipation could also be used to try to undermine the polls later (as we did). Regardless, the results stated by Russia have now been verified numerous times by various western agencies. This [forbes.com] article gives an overview of some of those polls. Gallup found 82.8% of all Crimeans stated that the decision to secede reflected the will of the people. 73.9% said it would make life better for them and their family, 5.5% said no.
They also cover a German poll which found similar results. But they also asked an interesting question. They polled Crimeans on their perception of the honesty of the Ukranian media. 1% said they provide entirely truthful information, 4% said it was more often truthful than deceitful. Guess who's media representation of what happened in Crimea corresponds strongly with the Ukranian version? Russia has become the bogeyman since 2016 so it's easy to forget how regularly our media colludes when it comes to spreading propaganda for war, or otherwise furthering our geopolitical ends.
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The ethnic conflicts are caused because the Russians don't like what the Ukrainians are doing and the Ukrainians don't like what the Russians are doing. That was the point. Same issue in the US. There's no issue with e.g. blacks because they're black, the issue is a people that make up 13% of the population being responsible for the majority [fbi.gov] of murders with similar over-representation in many other forms of crime, particularly violent ones. That's a huge problem, probably attributable in no small part to 'hood culture' (in which I grew up). But you can't even critique this because doing so is labeled racism when it has nothing to do with race beyond the fact that e.g. blacks are disproportionately driven to these cultures. Ukraine and Russia will probably, sooner or later, sort out their issues - but that's only because they can actually focus on their issues instead of both sides just declaring the other racist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 12 2019, @03:31PM
February 28, 2014 [ibtimes.com].
That was written within a week of the invasion of which I spoke. When you're that wrong right out of the gate there's no point to writing any more. As to the referendum, who authorized it? Wikipedia alleges it was by the legislature of Crimea, but that was under Russian control [theguardian.com] at the time:
[...]
What new lies shall we hear from you next?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:03AM (3 children)
And on China, I think I made it clear that I fully agree with you. What you said applies to most every nation on this planet. Things like NATO are not done out of the goodness of our heart. It gives the US immense political control of Europe because of the dependency relationship it creates. This is why, for instance, when the US wants to go invade some Mideastern country European nations not only shut their mouth, but even send some token forces along to create an optical 'coalition'. This also gives context to the timing of Germany/France talking about creating an EU Military. It was probably just a bluff, but was a direct response to Trump demanding greater compensation for NATO support. An EU military would make NATO redundant, which would substantially undermine US influence in Europe.
Ultimately I think people don't really appreciate how thin a line we walk in terms of the current world order because since it has persisted in, more or less, its current form (sans the relatively peaceful collapse of some communist nations) since 1945 and the advent of nuclear weapons. Most people who can ever remember the world radically changing, as it did for the entirety of its history past - are now mostly dead. But the death of living memory does not change the nature of mankind. If not for nukes we'd have long since have engaged in WW3.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
An EU military wouldn't have the non-EU members of NATO. NATO still has a reason for existing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:43PM (1 child)
You don't need the biggest military possible. You just need a large enough military to ensure your own sovereignty in a conventional (read: non-nuclear) war. An EU military would provide that, making NATO redundant.
And again I agree with you on China. All an ally is is a person who you gain more from aligning yourself with than from opposing. Imagine Canada decided to start pegging their oil only in the Yuan, and directly aligning themselves with Chinese interests. Within a month there'd be 'protests' on their streets with 'democracy and freedom' being brought to them in short order. We ally with them because it's beneficial. They ally with us because it's beneficial. The same is true of China and Russia, and will be for the foreseeable future.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 12 2019, @03:14PM
Exactly. You're also forgetting the primary lesson of the EU, the more entanglements with other countries, the less likely those other countries are going to war with you. Hence, the dual purpose of NATO - the more military allies you have, the more likely that you can ensure your own sovereignty in a war, and the less likely those allies are going to be at war with you instead.
Because? It's worth noting that countries in the past which supposedly were so treated, did a lot more than merely adopt use of some other currency. Rampant theft of oil infrastructure, invasions of US allies, or paramilitary attacks on US allies, are common attributes.
How allied are China and Russia anyway? Is it more allied than the economic entanglements that China has with the US? Prior to the present tariff mess, US trade was more than an order of magnitude larger than Russia's trade with China.
There's just so many problems with these narratives.