What The Afghanistan Papers tells us about War and Truth
BOOK REVIEW: The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War
By Craig Whitlock / Simon & Schuster
Reviewed by Jean-Thomas Nicole
(The Cipher Brief taps independent reviewers with experience in national security issues to review books for our undercover readers. The views expressed represent those of the reviewer and not The Cipher Brief.)
The Reviewer – Jean-Thomas Nicole holds a PhD in contemporary diplomatic history. In November 2008, Dr. Nicole was recruited by the Canadian Government, through the Recruitment of Policy Leaders Program, where he has since held various analytic positions in strategic policy, international affairs, intelligence analysis, as well as emergency management and search and rescue policy development.
REVIEW – Despite time passed since the fall of Saigon in 1975, the specter of the Vietnam War still haunts the American public psyche in 2021. The long-lasting impact of this national trauma was indeed felt as U.S. troops finalized their withdrawal from Afghanistan, on August 31st, amid the chaos, violence, and terror experienced within the confines of Kabul International Airport by the fearful crowds of Western nationals, Afghans, and their families, many among them former interpreters and local collaborators of U.S. military forces, all desperately trying to flee the new Taliban emirate.
It is also on the symbolic date of August 31st, that The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, a collaboration between Craig Whitlock and The Washington Post, was published in book and kindle editions. Whitlock is an experienced, award-winning, investigative reporter for The Post. He has covered the global war on terror for the paper since 2001, as a foreign correspondent, Pentagon reporter, and national security specialist.
In the explosive context of this first major foreign policy crisis for the Biden administration, coupled with some difficult U.S. domestic soul-searching set against opportunist political bickering revolving around the possibility of exporting a viable democratic model in a foreign land; an Islamic resurgence; a Chinese and Russian authoritarian competition, this book does not aim to provide an exhaustive record of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Nor is it a military history that dwells on combat operations.
The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts. Become a member today.
For experts and readers interested in delving more deeply into these specific aspects, I recommend Carter Malkasian’s, The American War in Afghanistan, which constitutes the first full history of America’s Afghan War from 2001 to 2021 written by the former political advisor to General Joseph Dunford, the commander of US and allied forces for all of Afghanistan, who also became the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Rather, The Afghanistan Papers, referring to the Viet Nam-era Pentagon Papers, is an attempt to explain what went wrong following the U.S. retaliation for 9/11 and how three consecutive presidents (George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama and Donald J. Trump) and their administrations failed to tell the truth about developments in the war.
Thus, Whitlock keeps coming back to that fundamental question like a litany or mantra: How did the war degenerate into a stalemate with no realistic prospect for an enduring victory? The United States and its allies had initially crushed the Taliban and al-Qaeda in 2001. What went wrong?.
By taking this approach, the author conducts, to the extent possible, a thorough public accounting of the U.S. administration’s strategic failures and provides an unsparing explanation of how the campaign fell apart over the years.
This book is based almost exclusively on U.S. public documents and notes from interviews with more than 1,000 people who played a direct role in the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The author also calls on hundreds of Defense Department memos, State Department cables and other government reports. Whitlock also relies on documents that The Washington Post obtained from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) titled, ‘Lessons Learned’ and describes how the newspaper filed multiple public-records requests beginning in 2016, and filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits in order to gain access to them. SIGAR’s Lessons Learned documents include interviews with more than 600 people reported to have first-hand experience with the war.
For Whitlock, this corpus of documents constituted a secret history of the war—an unflinching appraisal of the so-called never-ending conflict and demonstrated that U.S. officials repeatedly lied to the public about what was happening in Afghanistan, just as they had in Vietnam.
Fortunately, the author avoids the dangerous pitfalls of conspiracy theories by simply letting his rigorous demonstration and varied, but clearly obfuscated, governmental sources (mainly written and human) speak plainly. What gradually emerges, is a disturbing new perspective on the U.S. military debacle.
The Lessons Learned interviews, in blunt and incontrovertible terms, show that U.S. leaders knew their war strategy was dysfunctional and privately doubted they could attain their objectives. Yet they confidently told the public year after year that they were making progress and that victory was just over the horizon.
Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast. Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
What is the bottom-line for the interested policy reader? Unedited and unfiltered, they reveal the voices of people—from those who made policy in Washington to those who fought in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan—who knew that the official version of the war being fed to the American people was untrue, or aggressively sanitized at best.
Overall, The Afghanistan Papers, is a well-documented, contemporary historical account of the U.S. war experience in the graveyard of empires. It’s also a warning to future political and military leaders that the fortunes of war may change, the political regimes may crumble, but people remain. And if you decide to go to war, you must have clear, specific, objectives beforehand. You ought to know that you cannot change the Afghan heart and soul or a fighter’s spirit in any number of years by using violence alone, ignoring traditional culture and Muslim religion, or spending inordinate amounts of money on dubious nation-building efforts. You also cannot allow mass corruption to fester without destroying the legitimacy of the Afghan government, causing the Afghan people to sour on democracy and turn to the Taliban to enforce order. You cannot lie indefinitely to your own people either. As a government responsible of a gigantic war machine, you must find a way to transcend the continuous tension in both messaging and actual behavior, in speaking the truth. It may be a difficult idea to comprehend for some living in the western, post-modern, liberal, diverse United States of America.
Thanks to the work of a strong, lively, free press, deception was uncovered, and truth finally came out. In my opinion, it is the only fundamental difference that makes the USA a real, powerful, however weakening or declining, democracy in the world.
The American political and military leadership should have learned this painful truth from the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, the book indicates that they did not care to remember and instead, preferred to hide and lie – again. Nevertheless, this often-forgotten perennial human reality, based on centuries of history, spiritual presence, and cultural persistence is again coming at the forefront as Afghanistan begins a new chapter in its millennial march through time. Will there be peace or war in the rugged land of the fierce and indomitable Afghans? Will the Taliban regime last? Will the son of Masood prevail or surrender against the new order? What will the education of women become? God only knows… Inch ‘Allah. Allahou Akbar.
This Afghanistan Papers earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats.
Read former Deputy Director of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Phil Mudd’s review of Toby Harnden’s book, First Casualty exclusively in The Cipher Brief
Disclaimer: The Cipher Brief, like other Amazon Affiliate partners, gets paid a small commission based on purchases made via the links provided in this review
Read more Under/Cover book reviews in The Cipher Brief
Read Under/Cover interviews with authors and publishers in The Cipher Brief
Interested in submitting a book review? Check out our guidelines here
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews
Read more expert national security perspectives and analysis in The Cipher Brief