Black and White Contrast Art of Soldiers Afghan Soviet War
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the The states became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-upwards complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
Click any underlined text in the story to see the argument in the original document
"We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn't know what we were doing," 
Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | ii/twenty/2015 Tap to view full document Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House's Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: "What are we trying to do here? Nosotros didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking." 
Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | two/xx/2015 Tap to view total document
"If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost," 
Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | ii/xx/2015 Tap to view full document Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns amidst Congress, the Pentagon and the Land Department. "Who will say this was in vain?" Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | 2/20/2015 Tap to view full document
Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.Due south. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, ii,300 died there and twenty,589 were wounded in activeness, according to Defence Section figures.
The interviews, through an extensive array of voices, bring into abrupt relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents — George Westward. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders accept been unable to evangelize on their promises to prevail in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.
With about speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not go public, U.Southward. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Transitional islamic state of afghanistan into a modernistic nation.
The interviews likewise highlight the U.S. authorities's botched attempts to curtail delinquent corruption, build a competent Afghan army and law force, and put a dent in Afghanistan's thriving opium trade.
The U.S. regime has not carried out a comprehensive bookkeeping of how much it has spent on the war in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.
Since 2001, the Defence Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Evolution have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an inflation-adjusted guess calculated by Neta Crawford, a political scientific discipline professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown Academy.
Those figures do non include money spent by other agencies such every bit the CIA and the Department of Veterans Diplomacy, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans.
"What did nosotros get for this $1 trillion effort? Was information technology worth $1 trillion?" 
Jeffrey Eggers | Lessons Learned interview | eight/25/2015 Tap to view total certificate Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, "After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much nosotros accept spent on Afghanistan." 
Jeffrey Eggers | Lessons Learned interview | 8/25/2015 Tap to view full document
The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans yr later year that they were making progress in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.
(Video by Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.Due south. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at armed services headquarters in Kabul — and at the White Business firm — to distort statistics to brand it appear the United States was winning the war when that was non the case.
"Every data point was altered to nowadays the best picture possible," 
Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | 8/iii/2016 Tap to view full document Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served every bit a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told authorities interviewers. "Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that 
Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | 8/three/2016 Tap to view full document everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking water ice cream cone." 
Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | eight/3/2016 Tap to view full document
John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents testify "the American people accept constantly been lied to."
The interviews are the byproduct of a project led by Sopko's agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Known as SIGAR, the agency was created past Congress in 2008 to investigate waste product and fraud in the state of war zone.
In 2014, at Sopko's direction, SIGAR departed from its usual mission of performing audits and launched a side venture. Titled "Lessons Learned," the $xi one thousand thousand project was meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes the next time it invaded a country or tried to rebuild a shattered one.
The Lessons Learned staff interviewed more than 600 people with firsthand experience in the war. Nigh were Americans, but SIGAR analysts also traveled to London, Brussels and Berlin to interview NATO allies. In addition, they interviewed about 20 Afghan officials, discussing reconstruction and development programs.
Drawing partly on the interviews, besides as other government records and statistics, SIGAR has published 7 Lessons Learned reports since 2016 that highlight bug in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and recommend changes to stabilize the country.
But the reports, written in dumbo bureaucratic prose and focused on an alphabet soup of government initiatives, left out the harshest and virtually frank criticisms from the interviews.
"We found the stabilization strategy and the programs used to achieve information technology were non properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the concrete presence of coalition troops and civilians," read the introduction to one report released in May 2018.
The reports also omitted the names of more 90 percent of the people who were interviewed for the project. While a few officials agreed to speak on the record to SIGAR, the agency said it promised anonymity to everyone else it interviewed to avoid controversy over politically sensitive matters.
Under the Liberty of Information Human action, The Post began seeking Lessons Learned interview records in August 2016. SIGAR refused, arguing that the documents were privileged and that the public had no right to meet them.
The Post had to sue SIGAR in federal court — twice — to compel it to release the documents.
"We don't invade poor countries to make them rich. We don't invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade tearing countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan."
— James Dobbins, old U.Due south. diplomat
The agency eventually disclosed more than than 2,000 pages of unpublished notes and transcripts from 428 of the interviews, also as several audio recordings.
The documents place 62 of the people who were interviewed, but SIGAR blacked out the names of 366 others. In legal briefs, the agency contended that those individuals should be seen every bit whistleblowers and informants who might face up humiliation, harassment, retaliation or physical harm if their names became public.
By cross-referencing dates and other details from the documents, The Mail independently identified 33 other people who were interviewed, including several former ambassadors, generals and White House officials.
The Post has asked a federal approximate to strength SIGAR to disclose the names of everyone else interviewed, arguing that the public has a right to know which officials criticized the war and asserted that the government had misled the American people. The Mail also argued the officials were non whistleblowers or informants, because they were not interviewed every bit part of an investigation.
A decision past Guess Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington has been pending since late September.
The Postal service is publishing the documents now, instead of waiting for a final ruling, to inform the public while the Trump administration is negotiating with the Taliban and because whether to withdraw the 13,000 U.S. troops who remain in Afghanistan.
The Mail service attempted to contact for annotate everyone whom it was able to identify equally having given an interview to SIGAR. Their responses are compiled in a separate article.
Sopko, the inspector full general, told The Post that he did not suppress the baking criticisms and doubts about the war that officials raised in the Lessons Learned interviews. He said information technology took his office 3 years to release the records considering he has a small staff and because other federal agencies had to review the documents to foreclose government secrets from existence disclosed.
"We didn't sit on it," he said. "Nosotros're firm believers in openness and transparency, just we've got to follow the law. . . . I recollect of whatsoever inspector general, I've probably been the most forthcoming on information."
The interview records are raw and unedited, and SIGAR's Lessons Learned staff did not sew them into a unified narrative. Just they are packed with tough judgments from people who shaped or carried out U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
"We don't invade poor countries to make them rich," 
James Dobbins | Lessons Learned interview | ane/11/2016 Tap to view full document James Dobbins, a sometime senior U.S. diplomat who served every bit a special envoy to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan under Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. "We don't invade disciplinarian countries to brand them autonomous. Nosotros invade tearing countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan." James Dobbins | Lessons Learned interview | 1/11/2016 Tap to view full document
From left, Gen. David H. Petraeus, Articulation Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen, Veterans Diplomacy Secretarial assistant Eric Shinseki and Defence force Secretarial assistant Robert Gates at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., in 2009 as President Barack Obama publicly outlined his plans for a troop surge in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. (Christopher Morris/7/Redux)
To augment the Lessons Learned interviews, The Post obtained hundreds of pages of previously classified memos about the Afghan war that were dictated by Defense Secretarial assistant Donald H. Rumsfeld betwixt 2001 and 2006.
Dubbed "snowflakes" by Rumsfeld and his staff, the memos are brief instructions or comments that the Pentagon boss dictated to his underlings, often several times a day.
Rumsfeld made a select number of his snowflakes public in 2011, posting them online in conjunction with his memoir, "Known and Unknown." Merely most of his snowflake collection — an estimated 59,000 pages — remained hole-and-corner.
In 2017, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Annal, a nonprofit research constitute based at George Washington Academy, the Defense Department began reviewing and releasing the remainder of Rumsfeld'southward snowflakes on a rolling basis. The Archive shared them with The Mail.
Together, the SIGAR interviews and the Rumsfeld memos pertaining to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan found a underground history of the war and an unsparing appraisal of 18 years of conflict.
Worded in Rumsfeld'south brusque style, many of the snowflakes foreshadow problems that continue to haunt the U.S. armed forces more than than a decade subsequently.
"I may be impatient. In fact I know I'm a bit impatient," 
Donald Rumsfeld | Rumsfeld memo Tap to view total document Rumsfeld wrote in one memo to several generals and senior aides. "Nosotros are never going to go the U.S. armed forces out of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan unless we accept care to run across that at that place is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for u.s. to leave." 
Donald Rumsfeld | Rumsfeld memo Tap to view full document
"Aid!" 
Donald Rumsfeld | Rumsfeld memo Tap to view total certificate he wrote.
The memo was dated Apr 17, 2002 — half-dozen months after the state of war started.
What they said in public April 17, 2002
"The history of military conflict in Afghanistan [has] been one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We're not going to repeat that mistake."
— President George Westward. Bush-league, in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute
With their forthright descriptions of how the United States became stuck in a faraway war, as well as the regime's determination to conceal them from the public, the Lessons Learned interviews broadly resemble the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department'south elevation-secret history of the Vietnam State of war.
When they were leaked in 1971, the Pentagon Papers caused a sensation past revealing the government had long misled the public about how the United States came to be embroiled in Vietnam.
Bound into 47 volumes, the 7,000-page study was based entirely on internal government documents — diplomatic cables, decision-making memos, intelligence reports. To preserve secrecy, Defense force Secretarial assistant Robert McNamara issued an club prohibiting the authors from interviewing anyone.
SIGAR's Lessons Learned project faced no such restrictions. Staffers carried out the interviews between 2014 and 2018, mostly with officials who served during the Bush-league and Obama years.
About 30 of the interview records are transcribed, discussion-for-word accounts. The residue are typed summaries of conversations: pages of notes and quotes from people with unlike vantage points in the conflict, from provincial outposts to the highest circles of ability.
Some of the interviews are inexplicably curt. The interview tape with John Allen, the Marine general who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, consists of five paragraphs.
In contrast, records of interviews with other influential figures are much more extensive. Former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker sat for ii interviews that yielded 95 transcribed pages.
Dissimilar the Pentagon Papers, none of the Lessons Learned documents were originally classified equally a government secret. Once The Mail pushed to make them public, however, other federal agencies intervened and classified some material after the fact.
The State Department, for instance, asserted that releasing portions of certain interviews could jeopardize negotiations with the Taliban to cease the war. The Defence Section and Drug Enforcement Administration also classified some interview excerpts.
The Lessons Learned interviews incorporate few revelations about armed services operations. But running throughout are torrents of criticism that refute the official narrative of the war, from its primeval days through the starting time of the Trump administration.
At the outset, for instance, the U.S. invasion of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan had a clear, stated objective — to retaliate against al-Qaeda and prevent a echo of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A articulation artillery training session at a combat outpost in Jaghatu, in Wardak province, in 2012. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
However the interviews testify that as the state of war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of organized religion in the U.S. strategy took root within the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.
Central disagreements went unresolved. Some U.Due south. officials wanted to use the war to plough Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women's rights. Withal others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.
"With the AfPak strategy at that place was a present under the Christmas tree for everyone," 
Lessons Learned interview | 5/18/2015 Tap to view total document an unidentified U.S. official told regime interviewers in 2015. "Past the time you lot were finished you had so many priorities and aspirations it was like no strategy at all." Lessons Learned interview | five/18/2015 Tap to view full document
The Lessons Learned interviews as well reveal how U.S. military commanders struggled to articulate who they were fighting, let alone why.
Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? What about the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, permit alone the warlords on the CIA'southward payroll? According to the documents, the U.Due south. authorities never settled on an answer.
As a result, in the field, U.S. troops ofttimes couldn't tell friend from foe.
"They thought I was going to come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live," 
Lessons Learned interview | 12/15/2017 Tap to view full certificate an unnamed former adviser to an Army Special Forces squad told government interviewers in 2017. "It took several conversations for them to sympathize that I did non take that data in my easily. At first, they just kept request: 'Just who are the bad guys, where are they?' " Lessons Learned interview | 12/fifteen/2017 Tap to view full document
The view wasn't any clearer from the Pentagon.
"I accept no visibility into who the bad guys are," 
Donald Rumsfeld | Rumsfeld memo Tap to view full document Rumsfeld complained in a Sept. 8, 2003, snowflake. "Nosotros are woefully deficient in homo intelligence." 
Donald Rumsfeld | Rumsfeld memo Tap to view full document
What they said in public Dec. ane, 2009
"The days of providing a blank check are over. . . . It must exist clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan."
— President Barack Obama, in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
As commanders in primary, Bush, Obama and Trump all promised the public the same thing. They would avert falling into the trap of "nation-edifice" in Afghanistan.
On that score, the presidents failed miserably. The The states has allocated more $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Program after Globe War II.
The Lessons Learned interviews testify the grandiose nation-building project was marred from the showtime.
U.South. officials tried to create — from scratch — a autonomous government in Kabul modeled after their ain in Washington. Information technology was a foreign concept to the Afghans, who were accustomed to tribalism, monarchism, communism and Islamic law.
"Our policy was to create a strong central authorities which was idiotic considering Afghanistan does not take a history of a strong central government," 
Former State Section official | Lessons Learned interview | vii/ten/2015 Tap to view full document an unidentified former State Department official told regime interviewers in 2015. "The timeframe for creating a stiff key government is 100 years, which we didn't have." 
Former State Department official | Lessons Learned interview | 7/10/2015 Tap to view full document
Meanwhile, the U.s. flooded the fragile country with far more aid than information technology could peradventure absorb.
During the peak of the fighting, from 2009 to 2012, U.Due south. lawmakers and war machine commanders believed the more they spent on schools, bridges, canals and other civil-works projects, the faster security would meliorate. Aid workers told regime interviewers it was a jumbo misjudgment, akin to pumping kerosene on a dying campfire merely to go on the flame alive.
U.S. soldiers wounded past an IED are transported past medevac in Kandahar province in 2010. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Ane unnamed executive with the U.South. Bureau for International Development (USAID) guessed that 90 percentage of what they spent was overkill: "We lost objectivity. We were given money, told to spend it and we did, without reason." 
Lessons Learned interview | 10/7/2016 Tap to view total document
Many assist workers blamed Congress for what they saw equally a mindless rush to spend.
I unidentified contractor told authorities interviewers he was expected to dole out $iii million daily for projects in a unmarried Afghan district roughly the size of a U.S. county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back dwelling: "He said hell no. 'Well, sir, that's what you just obligated us to spend and I'm doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.' " 
Senior USAID official | Lessons Learned interview | eight/fifteen/2016 Tap to view full certificate
The gusher of assistance that Washington spent on Afghanistan besides gave rise to historic levels of corruption.
In public, U.S. officials insisted they had no tolerance for graft. Simply in the Lessons Learned interviews, they admitted the U.Due south. regime looked the other mode while Afghan ability brokers — allies of Washington — plundered with impunity.
Christopher Kolenda, an Regular army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan several times and advised three U.S. generals in charge of the war, said that the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai had "cocky-organized into a kleptocracy" 
Christopher Kolenda | Lessons Learned interview | 4/v/2016 Tap to view full document by 2006 — and that U.S. officials failed to recognize the lethal threat it posed to their strategy.
"I like to use a cancer illustration," 
Christopher Kolenda | Lessons Learned interview | 4/5/2016 Tap to view full document Kolenda told government interviewers. "Petty abuse is like skin cancer; in that location are ways to bargain with it and you'll probably exist simply fine. Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is similar colon cancer; it's worse, merely if you catch it in fourth dimension, you're probably ok. Kleptocracy, however, is like encephalon cancer; it's fatal." Christopher Kolenda | Lessons Learned interview | 4/five/2016 Tap to view full document
A imprint depicting President Hamid Karzai in Kabul shortly later the country's 2004 ballot. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
By allowing abuse to fester, U.South. officials told interviewers, they helped destroy the popular legitimacy of the wobbly Afghan government they were fighting to prop up. With judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes, many Afghans soured on republic and turned to the Taliban to enforce lodge.
"Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the evolution of mass corruption," 
Ryan Crocker | Lessons Learned interview | one/11/2016 Tap to view full certificate Crocker, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul in 2002 and again from 2011 to 2012, told government interviewers. He added, "Once it gets to the level I saw, when I was out in that location, it'south somewhere betwixt unbelievably hard and outright impossible to fix it." 
Ryan Crocker | Lessons Learned interview | 1/11/2016 Tap to view full certificate
What they said in public Sept. 4, 2013
"This army and this police force have been very, very effective in gainsay confronting the insurgents every single day. And I call up that's an important story to be told beyond the board."
— Then-Army Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, praising the Afghan security forces during a press briefing from Kabul. Milley is now a four-star general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Year subsequently year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan ground forces and national law strength that can defend the country without foreign assistance.
In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid past U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of "ghost soldiers."
None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and constabulary could always fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.Southward. commanders have chosen unsustainable.
Afghan army recruits in Kabul in 2009. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
One unidentified U.S. soldier said Special Forces teams "hated" 
U.S. Special Forces officer | Lessons Learned interview | 9/7/2016 Tap to view full certificate the Afghan law whom they trained and worked with, calling them "awful — the bottom of the barrel in the state that is already at the bottom of the barrel." U.S. Special Forces officer | Lessons Learned interview | 9/vii/2016 Tap to view full document
A U.S. military officer estimated that 1-third of police recruits were "drug addicts or Taliban." 
U.S. military machine officer | Lessons Learned interview | ten/xx/2016 Tap to view full document Nevertheless another chosen them "stealing fools" 
Victor Glaviano | Lessons Learned interview | 4/11/2017 Tap to view full document who looted so much fuel from U.S. bases that they perpetually smelled of gasoline.
"Thinking we could build the armed services that fast and that well was insane," 
Senior USAID official | Lessons Learned interview | 8/15/2016 Tap to view full document an unnamed senior USAID official told government interviewers.
Meanwhile, every bit U.S. hopes for the Afghan security forces failed to materialize, Afghanistan became the world's leading source of a growing scourge: opium.
The United States has spent about $ix billion to fight the problem over the past eighteen years, just Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium poppies than ever. Terminal year, Afghanistan was responsible for 82 percentage of global opium product, according to the United Nations Part on Drugs and Law-breaking.
In the Lessons Learned interviews, former officials said virtually everything they did to constrain opium farming backfired.
"We stated that our goal is to establish a 'flourishing market economic system,' " 
Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | 2/20/2015 Tap to view full document said Douglas Lute, the White Business firm's Afghan war czar from 2007 to 2013. "I thought we should take specified a flourishing drug trade — this is the simply part of the market that'south working." Douglas Lute | Lessons Learned interview | ii/twenty/2015 Tap to view full document
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks to U.Due south. troops in 2013 at Military camp Bastion, in Helmand province. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
From the beginning, Washington never actually figured out how to incorporate a war on drugs into its state of war confronting al-Qaeda. By 2006, U.South. officials feared that narco-traffickers had become stronger than the Afghan government and that money from the drug merchandise was powering the insurgency.
No single bureau or state was in charge of the Afghan drug strategy for the entirety of the war, so the State Department, the DEA, the U.S. armed services, NATO allies and the Afghan authorities butted heads constantly.
"It was a dog'south breakfast with no gamble of working," 
Former senior British official | Lessons Learned interview | ix/21/2016 Tap to view full document an unnamed former senior British official told government interviewers.
The agencies and allies made things worse by embracing a dysfunctional muddle of programs, according to the interviews.
At first, Afghan poppy farmers were paid by the British to destroy their crops — which only encouraged them to abound more the side by side season. Later, the U.Due south. government eradicated poppy fields without compensation — which only infuriated farmers and encouraged them to side with the Taliban.
"It was lamentable to run across so many people behave so stupidly," 
U.S. official | Lessons Learned interview | 5/11/2016 Tap to view total document 1 U.S. official told government interviewers.
What they said in public Sept. 8, 2008
"Are nosotros losing this state of war? Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way."
— Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Partition, in a news briefing from Afghanistan
The specter of Vietnam has hovered over Afghanistan from the offset.
On Oct. xi, 2001, a few days after the U.s. started bombing the Taliban, a reporter asked Bush: "Can you avoid beingness drawn into a Vietnam-similar quagmire in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan?"
"Nosotros learned some very important lessons in Vietnam," Bush replied confidently. "People often inquire me, 'How long will this last?' This particular battlefront will last as long as it takes to bring al-Qaeda to justice. It may happen tomorrow, information technology may happen a month from now, it may accept a year or ii. But we volition prevail."
In those early days, other U.S. leaders mocked the notion that the nightmare of Vietnam might repeat itself in Afghanistan.
"All together now — quagmire!" Rumsfeld joked at a news conference on Nov. 27, 2001.
But throughout the Afghan war, documents testify that U.South. military officials have resorted to an old tactic from Vietnam — manipulating public opinion.
In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the state of war accept followed the aforementioned talking points for 18 years. No affair how the war is going — and peculiarly when it is going desperately — they emphasize how they are making progress.
For example, some snowflakes that Rumsfeld released with his memoir show he had received a string of unusually dire warnings from the war zone in 2006.
After returning from a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general, reported the Taliban had fabricated an impressive comeback and predicted that "we will encounter some very unpleasant surprises in the coming 24 months."
"The Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming few years — leaving NATO holding the purse — and the whole thing volition plummet once again into mayhem," McCaffrey wrote in June 2006.
Ii months subsequently, Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Rumsfeld, gave the Pentagon chief a classified, 40-page study loaded with more bad news. It said "enormous popular discontent is building" confronting the Afghan government because of its corruption and incompetence. It likewise said that the Taliban was growing stronger, cheers to support from Pakistan, a U.Due south. marry.
Yet with Rumsfeld'southward personal blessing, the Pentagon buried the bleak warnings and told the public a very different story.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, left, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in March 2002. (Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Mail service)
In Oct 2006, Rumsfeld'south speechwriters delivered a paper titled "Afghanistan: V Years Later." Brimming with optimism, it highlighted more than fifty promising facts and figures, from the number of Afghan women trained in "improved poultry management" (more than 19,000) to the "average speed on most roads" (up 300 percent).
"Five years on, there is a multitude of good news," information technology read. "While it has become fashionable in some circles to call Afghanistan a forgotten war, or to say the United States has lost its focus, the facts belie the myths."
Rumsfeld thought it was brilliant.
"This newspaper," he wrote in a memo, "is an first-class piece. How do we use it? Should it be an article? An Op-ed piece? A handout? A press conference? All of the above? I think it ought to get it to a lot of people."
His staffers made sure information technology did. They circulated a version to reporters and posted it on Pentagon websites.
Since then, U.S. generals have almost always preached that the war is progressing well, no affair the reality on the battleground.
"We're making some steady progress," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Segmentation, told reporters in September 2008, even as he and other U.S. commanders in Kabul were urgently requesting reinforcements to cope with a rising tide of Taliban fighters.
2 years later, every bit the prey rate among U.S. and NATO troops climbed to another high, Ground forces Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez held a news conference in Kabul.
"First, we are steadily making deliberate progress," he said.
"And this includes the State Section, ambassadors, you lot know, down at the local level. Everybody did a neat job. Nosotros're all doing a bang-up chore. Actually? So if we're doing such a groovy job, why does it feel like we're losing?"
— Michael Flynn, a retired 3-star Army full general
In March 2011, during congressional hearings, skeptical lawmakers pelted Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, with doubts that the U.Due south. strategy was working.
"The past 8 months take seen important but difficult-fought progress," Petraeus responded.
One twelvemonth after, during a visit to Afghanistan, Defence force Secretary Leon Panetta stuck to the same script — even though he had just personally dodged a suicide attack.
"The entrada, as I've pointed out before, I call back has made pregnant progress," Panetta told reporters.
In July 2016, later on a surge in Taliban attacks on major cities, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of U.Due south. forces in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan at the time, repeated the refrain.
"We are seeing some progress," he told reporters.
What they said in public March 27, 2009
"Going frontwards, nosotros will not blindly stay the class. Instead, we volition set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable."
— Obama, in remarks from the White Firm
During Vietnam, U.S. war machine commanders relied on dubious measurements to persuade Americans that they were winning.
Near notoriously, the Pentagon highlighted "body counts," or the number of enemy fighters killed, and inflated the figures as a measurement of success.
In Afghanistan, with occasional exceptions, the U.S. war machine has generally avoided publicizing body counts. But the Lessons Learned interviews contain numerous admissions that the authorities routinely touted statistics that officials knew were distorted, spurious or downright false.
A person identified simply as a senior National Security Council official said there was constant pressure level from the Obama White Firm and Pentagon to produce figures to evidence the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard testify to the contrary.
"It was impossible to create practiced metrics. Nosotros tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture," 
Senior National Security Council official | Lessons Learned interview | ix/sixteen/2016 Tap to view full certificate the senior NSC official told government interviewers in 2016. "The metrics were always manipulated for the elapsing of the war."
Even when casualty counts and other figures looked bad, the senior NSC official said, the White House and Pentagon would spin them to the point of absurdity. Suicide bombings in Kabul were portrayed as a sign of the Taliban's agony, that the insurgents were too weak to engage in direct combat. Meanwhile, a ascent in U.S. troop deaths was cited every bit proof that American forces were taking the fight to the enemy.
The remains of Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, get in at Dover Air Strength Base in Delaware in Baronial 2014. Greene was the beginning U.South. general killed in Republic of iraq or Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
"Information technology was their explanations," the senior NSC official said. "For example, attacks are getting worse? 'That'due south considering there are more targets for them to fire at, then more attacks are a faux indicator of instability.' Then, three months later, attacks are yet getting worse? 'Information technology's because the Taliban are getting drastic, so it'due south actually an indicator that we're winning.' "
"And this went on and on for 2 reasons," the senior NSC official said, "to make everyone involved look adept, and to brand it look like the troops and resources were having the kind of effect where removing them would crusade the country to deteriorate."
In other field reports sent up the chain of command, armed forces officers and diplomats took the aforementioned line. Regardless of conditions on the footing, they claimed they were making progress.
"From the ambassadors downward to the low level, [they all say] nosotros are doing a great job," 
Michael Flynn | Lessons Learned interview | 11/10/2015 Tap to view full document Michael Flynn, a retired three-star Regular army general, told government interviewers in 2015. "Really? So if nosotros are doing such a great job, why does it feel similar nosotros are losing?" Michael Flynn | Lessons Learned interview | 11/10/2015 Tap to view full document
Upon inflow in Afghanistan, U.S. Army brigade and battalion commanders were given the same basic mission: to protect the population and defeat the enemy, according to Flynn, who served multiple tours in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan as an intelligence officer.
"So they all went in for whatever their rotation was, nine months or vi months, and were given that mission, accepted that mission and executed that mission," 
Michael Flynn | Lessons Learned interview | 11/10/2015 Tap to view full document said Flynn, who after briefly served as Trump'south national security adviser, lost his job in a scandal and was convicted of lying to the FBI. "Then they all said, when they left, they accomplished that mission. Every single commander. Non one commander is going to leave Afghanistan . . . and say, 'Yous know what, we didn't achieve our mission.' " Michael Flynn | Lessons Learned interview | 11/x/2015 Tap to view full certificate
He added: "So the next guy that shows up finds it [their area] screwed up . . . and and so they come up back and go, 'Man this is actually bad.' " 
Michael Flynn | Lessons Learned interview | 11/10/2015 Tap to view total document
Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez arrives at Forward Operating Base Pasab in Kandahar province for a transfer-of-authority ceremony in 2011. (Mikhail Galustov for The Washington Postal service)
Bob Crowley, the retired Army colonel who served as a animus adviser in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, told regime interviewers that "truth was rarely welcome" 
Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | 8/3/2016 Tap to view full document at war machine headquarters in Kabul.
"Bad news was often stifled," 
Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | 8/3/2016 Tap to view total document he said. "There was more than freedom to share bad news if it was pocket-sized — we're running over kids with our MRAPs [armored vehicles] — considering those things could be changed with policy directives. But when we tried to air larger strategic concerns nigh the willingness, capacity or corruption of the Afghan government, it was clear information technology wasn't welcome." Bob Crowley | Lessons Learned interview | 8/3/2016 Tap to view total certificate
John Garofano, a Naval War College strategist who brash Marines in Helmand province in 2011, said military machine officials in the field devoted an inordinate amount of resources to churning out colour-coded charts that heralded positive results.
"They had a really expensive machine that would print the really big pieces of paper similar in a impress store," 
John Garofano | Lessons Learned interview | 10/fifteen/2015 Tap to view total document he told regime interviewers. "There would be a caveat that these are not really scientific figures, or this is not a scientific process behind this." 
John Garofano | Lessons Learned interview | x/15/2015 Tap to view total document
Merely Garofano said nobody dared to question whether the charts and numbers were credible or meaningful.
"There was not a willingness to respond questions such equally, what is the significant of this number of schools that you accept congenital? How has that progressed y'all towards your goal?" 
John Garofano | Lessons Learned interview | ten/15/2015 Tap to view full document he said. "How practice you lot show this as evidence of success and not just evidence of try or show of just doing a good affair?" 
John Garofano | Lessons Learned interview | 10/15/2015 Tap to view full certificate
Other senior officials said they placed great importance on one statistic in detail, admitting one the U.S. government rarely likes to discuss in public.
"I do think the key benchmark is the one I've suggested, which is how many Afghans are getting killed," James Dobbins, the quondam U.S. diplomat, told a Senate panel in 2009. "If the number's going up, you're losing. If the number's going downwards, y'all're winning. It'due south as uncomplicated as that."
Terminal year, iii,804 Afghan civilians were killed in the war, according to the United nations.
That is the most in one yr since the United Nations began tracking casualties a decade ago.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
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