Failed policymakers have no shame on Afghanistan

So many senior uniformed and civilian leaders, and every president since 9/11, have systematically misled the public about the true state of the war. They routinely claimed that things were getting better in Afghanistan, that the Kabul government was becoming more effective, and that Afghan security forces were capable and improving. It was always a lie.

In congressional testimony in March 2011, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy claimed that with the surge underway for over a year, U.S. troops had been fighting the Taliban “side-by-side with an increasingly capable [Afghan forces] throughout Afghanistan [and] have wrested the initiative from the insurgents, even in the strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces.” As I was physically serving in Afghanistan at the time, I knew for certain that these rosy assessments were directly contradicted by on-the-ground reality (in early 2012, I published a report explaining why).

Last Saturday, Flournoy admitted that the West had made an error by “trying to create a Western democracy.” She conceded that “In retrospect, the United States and its allies got it really wrong from the very beginning,” and that during the 2010 surge, she “realized that this is not going to work.” If she believed the surge wasn’t working, then her testimony under oath before Congress claiming success cannot be reconciled.

In February 2013, the tenure of Gen. John Allen as commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan came to an end. During his change of command ceremony, Allen declared: “This insurgency will be defeated over time by the legitimate and well-trained Afghan forces that are emerging today. Afghan forces defending Afghan people and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory. This is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.”

Yet in its quarterly report just months later, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that it was “extremely concerned about the [Afghan forces’] capabilities and the use of U.S. funding for the security forces.” Allen has never explained the contradiction between his bold public statements and reality.

David Petraeus, who may have claimed success more often than any official over the past 12 years, told Fox News on Tuesday that it was “uncharitable” to pin the blame on the Afghan army for losing to the Taliban because they worked “very, very hard over the years.” Petraeus never explained why American sons and daughters should fight for the Afghan government when its own people would not.

Also on Tuesday morning, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster told CBS that he “absolutely” would have continued the war — ignoring the fact the Afghan government was so corrupt, and the security forces so weak, they dissolved in the face of the Taliban advance.

Not a word from any of these people about the systematic lying in which multitudes of American leaders combined to prevent the people from knowing the true state of affairs in Afghanistan. Not a word about the shocking levels of corruption, at every level, from the Afghan political and military organs. Not a word about the abject unwillingness of Afghanistan’s political and military institutions (special forces aside) to fight. Not a word about the supreme sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of American service members over two decades. Not a word.

It concerns me that the majority of those who lobbied for the continuation of perpetual war in Afghanistan barely mention the bloody sacrifice made by thousands of American men and women. Simultaneously, they seem happy to absolve corrupt Afghan leaders who refused to fight for their country.

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. Follow him @DanielLDavis1