"Analysis" of the Afghan War from D.C.

“Analysis” of the Afghan War from D.C.

Peter Schultz

            Below is a link to an article in the Washington Post that purports to be “a secret history of the war” in Afghanistan. Needless to say, it is or should be controversial. I offer some thoughts, briefly, taken from my Facebook post about the article. 

Interesting analysis but unpersuasive. "By expanding the original mission, they said they adopted fatally flawed war fighting strategies based on misguided assumptions about a country they did not understand.
"The result: an unwinnable conflict with no easy way out." 

              Our elites probability knew but certainly didn't care if the war was winnable. Because like Vietnam, fighting the war was enough to serve Bush's and Obama's political goals, domestic and foreign. Whether it was won was and is inconsequential, which is why the US has been fighting there for 19 years.

While there are pictures of injured American troopers, there are none and no mention of the massacres that occurred at al Majalah and Gardez where civilians were gunned down, including 3 women at Gardez at a baby-naming party for a family working with the government and the US. In Gardez soldiers tried to dig the bullets out of the dead women bodies so their acts would avoid detection. It ultimately didn't work but the massacre was defended by General Hugh Shelton: The women were in "the wrong place, at the wrong time....so I am OK with that....I think you write it off as one of those damn acts of war." [Dirty Wars, Scahill, p. 347] Maybe that's how we should think about the attacks of 9/11: Just "one of those damn acts of war!" As the Afghani home owner in Gardez said: "now we think of that Americans themselves are terrorists....They bring terror and destruction." And as the father of one of slain women said: "We call them the American Taliban." [p. 346]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-strategy/