America’s Military Leaders Said the Afghan Security Forces Were Making Progress — They Lied

The Afghan National Security Forces were never going to be competent or capable of resisting the Taliban. America’s generals knew it all along and conspired to conceal it. They must now be held accountable.

This story quotes extensively from an article by Craig Whitlock in The Washington Post, which is worth reading, and provides the basis for the argument made herein.

“[I]nterview records… contain new insights into what went wrong and expose gaping contradictions between what U.S. officials said in public and what they believed in private as the war unfolded.”

— Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post

This is a fair summary of the explosive and damning information contained in interviews records obtained by the Washington Post, which are the subject of its new series of articles, titled The Afghanistan Papers. The interviewees were told that their responses would be kept secret from the public and, indeed, were only made public after an extensive, three-year legal battle.

Among these is an accounting of how the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were touted for years by America’s generals as the key to enabling U.S. forces to depart Afghanistan without leaving it open to reconquest by the Taliban, while in reality there was never, at any point, any real prospect of the ANSF existing as a competent, independent, capable fighting force.

Lest this story be disregarded as moralistic finger-wagging, it is vital to understand the dire ramifications of the revelation that America’s military leaders have spent decades conspiring to mislead, deceive, and bamboozle both the American people and their elected representatives. One of the primary, fundamental institutional principles undergirding America’s system of checks and balances is civilian control of the military. Previous republics which have fallen to military coups, both in history and in contemporary times, are distressingly numerous. Perhaps one of the saving graces which has enabled the U.S. to persevere as the world’s oldest existing constitutional republic is the fact that we (are supposed to) have an ironclad guarantee against military interference in the affairs of state. Our military’s commander in chief is a civilian. Our military’s budget is determined and controlled by civilians. Our military cannot go to war without a declaration issued by a body of civilian officials (or at the bare minimum without their express permission).

But all of this is underpinned by one prerequisite: that these civilian authorities are able to oversee the military and its activities. And that condition is not met when the military keeps secrets from civilian officials and gives them reports which are fundamentally untrue. If civilian leaders (and the electorate which gives them their mandate) don’t know what the military is doing, and cannot reliably assess whether or not it is working, they cannot oversee it.

Much ado is perennially made in discussions of economic policy about “regulatory capture”, the process whereby a special interest which some agency or office of the government is supposed to regulate instead gains the upper hand and effectively controls the “regulator” instead. It appears possible that a similar dynamic may be taking place between America’s military and civilian government.

In short, if the military can lie to the people with impunity, then the lies may get worse and worse and worse until there is no longer any guarantee whatsoever that civilian control of the military remains intact. And I don’t need to belabor the point that “military capture of the government” is a phrase with ominous and awful implications.

This year, as U.S. troops handed over Afghanistan to the ANSF and conducted their long-planned and promised withdrawal, the ANSF essentially melted and evaporated. The Taliban’s 2021 offensive began on May 1, 2021 and Kabul fell on August 15th. In short, after twenty years of assistance, training, and expenditure by the United States; Afghanistan essentially surrendered without even trying to resist. U.S. intelligence assessed that the country could possibly fall within six to twelve months. As bleak and disappointing as that assessment was, in fact, Afghanistan was completely overrun in three and a half months.

What follows is an incomplete list of the assessments given to civilian leaders and to the public by military leaders concerning the ANSF, as cited in the Afghanistan Papers:

“[The ANSF is] a highly professional, multi-ethnic force, which is rapidly becoming a pillar of the country’s security.”
— Pentagon memo, October 2004

“The United States and our allies will help President [Hamid] Karzai increase the size and capabilities of the Afghan security forces. After all, for this young democracy to survive in the long term, they’ll have their own security forces that are capable and trained.”
— President George W. Bush, February 2007

“I will report to you that the army is on the right path. The Afghan army has good soldiers. We are developing that army from scratch. It is well trained. It is well led.”
— Gen. David McKiernan, Commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, November 2008

“This is the worst nightmare for the Taliban, that the Afghan army is increasingly effective, partnered with our forces and moving against an enemy that they know better than anyone. I think this is very heartening.”
— Gen. James Mattis, July 2010

General Mattis went on to become President Trump’s first Secretary of Defense.

“[The Afghan security forces are] progressing ahead of schedule… They are performing well in partnership with coalition troops and will continue to improve with the right training, equipment and support.”
—Defense Secretary Robert Gates, December 2010

“The Afghan forces are better than we thought they were.”
— Gen. John Allen, 2012

“This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day.”
— Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, 2013

Gen. Milley is as of this article, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

“The Afghan national security forces are winning. And this is a hugely capable force who have been holding their ground against the enemy.”
— Gen. John Allen, November 2014

“The Afghan security forces are getting there. . . . If you’d have asked me to bet on it five years ago, I don’t know. I’d maybe give you even odds on it or something. But it’s coming together.”
— Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, c. December 2015

“[They] performed better this year than they were performing last year, and based on that, we are cautiously optimistic about the coming months.”
— Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, June 1, 2016

“We’re on the right track. Again, this is a tough war. It’s a war. A war is a contest of wills. The Afghan army and police are demonstrating a will to succeed.”
— Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, July 23, 2018

These are just a few of the nearly-unbroken stream of lies, disinformation, PR propaganda, and spin doctoring which the U.S. military and its leaders substituted for truthful assessments of the actual state of the ANSF and its progress toward effectiveness and self-sufficiency.

In reality, U.S. military officials have known since early on that the ANSF was uncommitted, unprofessional, in many cases unteachable, in many cases helpless in combat without direct intervention by U.S. forces, and absolutely riven with egregious corruption at all levels.

The Afghanistan Papers detail how the Afghan government could not even say how many troops were in the ANSF at any given time, where many of them were, or in some cases, even who they were. In one reported example, Afghans would enlist in the ANSF, complete their training, and receive uniforms and weapons; only to desert, sell everything, then re-enlist and do it all over again. It was common for Afghan troops to sabotage trucks and other equipment, ask for replacements, then sell the parts on the black market. The Papers relate how Afghan civilians were victimized by ANSF troops who would set up their own checkpoints to bribe them.

It is clear from the documents obtained by the Washington Post that at no time was the ANSF ever an effective fighting force, nor did it show any signs of even potentially becoming one.

And yet Congress, the press, and the American people were repeatedly assured that the opposite was the case. Not until 2021 was the extent of the military leadership’s willful, pervasive mendacity fully exposed.

18 U.S.C § 1001 provides that:

“…whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully —

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

— shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years…”

The Afghanistan Papers show conclusively that military leaders and Pentagon officials made public statements, including during testimony before Congress, at the same time that internal documents reveal them making contradictory statements to colleagues and interviewers.

These officials must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and their sentences must be pitiless.

An unaccountable military is anathema to democracy, perhaps the greatest possible threat to the safety and perpetuity of a free society. We cannot allow the perfidious, self-serving, and egregious lies of our current and former military leaders to go unpunished. To do so is to show them that this behavior can continue. And that cannot be permitted.

The war in Afghanistan has been a costly debacle. Over 2,300 troops are dead, over 20,000 are wounded, uncountable others are emotionally and psychologically scarred in ways we are only beginning to understand, 22 veterans are lost to suicide on the average day, the institutions which care for our veterans are overwhelmed, our geopolitical rivals (particularly China) are emboldened and have already outflanked us in the Middle East, and 20 years of blood and treasure have gained us absolutely nothing.

And this unmitigated disaster could all have been avoided had our generals chosen to tell the truth. Perhaps there exists some way in which they can justify having, to a certain extent, misled the press and the people on the basis of classification and national security — but they cannot, must not, be permitted to have lied to Congressional leaders and to four successive Presidential administrations. That is an unequivocal crime which must not go unpunished.

The Afghanistan Papers, Part 5: Unguarded Nation, by Craig Whitlock