A report has been published in the United States in which the generals admit that they lied to their country and the government about their successes in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have invaded Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan after Kabul. Shortly before that, the US military took off from Afghanistan’s Bagram airport. For some reason, the Americans did not consider it necessary to warn the authorities in Kabul of their departure, and this gave the marauders a reason to start the mass robberies and the pogrom of the shops.
The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan did not become a sensation because US President Joseph Biden announced the final withdrawal of his troops almost earlier this year. And the Pentagon said the U.S. military would leave Afghanistan by early fall. US troops have tried to keep the interim government of Afghanistan in power. And now it is clear that there are only a few weeks left before the change of government in Kabul.
This war has never been popular in the United States. In 2019, the American publication Washington Post published an article about American generals who hid the truth about the war in Afghanistan. In particular, the military leadership could not openly acknowledge the defeat of its troops. Instead, the generals wore pink glasses and fed the whole world with lies about the course of the Afghan conflict. The Washington Post received all this information from the US government. These are previously unpublished documents of the American authorities, in which they are trying to find the exact reason for the failures in the Afghan war. The total size of the documents, which includes conversations with the military, diplomats and officials, is quite large and is more than two thousand pages. The American edition did not receive this information so easily and the journalists had to fight for its publication in court.
In total, the documents contain about four hundred conversations with the respondents. They all expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that America had been mired in this war for almost twenty years. Some of the military’s statements contained slander, and in a small number of them there were even conspiracy theories.
For example, according to US General Douglas Lut, his subordinates, as well as himself, had no clear idea what they were doing in Afghanistan. The commander did not even know why he was sent to this country. But he clearly knew that the dead American soldiers (almost 2,500 people) had died in vain.
During talks with officials, the US general acknowledged that the strategy for conducting military operations had been very unsuccessful and that the US government had tried in vain to turn Afghanistan into a pro-Western country, spending an unrealistically large amount of money.
US authorities have failed to tackle both Afghan corruption and Afghan drug trafficking. Another US military man, Jeffrey Eggers, regrets the trillions of dollars spent on Afghanistan. He openly said that Osama bin Laden was laughing at his grave, knowing how much money the Americans had thrown into the Afghan war.
Many point out that in official sources, the American authorities assure their people of the success of their troops in Afghanistan. There is information about the distortion of statistics by US officials, which hides the real state of affairs. So Colonel Bob Crowley admitted that he hid the real data about the battles in Afghanistan to please his own compatriots.
According to the Special Inspector for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR) John Sopko, who conducted the military and diplomatic investigations, the US military was led by liars. The whole army was soaked in lies, and a trillion dollars were thrown out the window, and the dead soldiers did not receive their retribution. Sopko does not know who is ultimately responsible for all this. The official said that after the financial crisis of 2008, the concrete calculation of the number of soldiers killed and the Taliban killed had stopped. Sopko gives an example from 2006, when several dozen fighters were killed. Sopko also mentioned the name of Donald Rumsfeld, a former US Secretary of Defense who is unexpectedly visiting Kabul to talk to the Afghan president. Now the situation is radically different: Rumsfeld is dead and the Taliban are on the verge of seizing all power in Afghanistan.
In 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was optimistic about the war against the Taliban. Gates was hoping for recruits and all he had to do was fund the operation. As a result, with the help of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Gates secured the distribution of the next billions of the budget. Later, in 2017, the government announced that all army corps in Afghanistan were stationed against the Taliban. In addition, the Secretary of Defense was confident that if anything happened, NATO would support the US military.
Typically, when discussing the U.S. failure in Afghanistan, Special Inspector for Reconstruction Afghanistan Sopko recalls an ad for the U.S. Army in which the girl recalls her childhood when she was raised by two lesbians. For some reason, the head of the federal agency calls conservatism schizophrenia, probably because he was disappointed with the actions of previous US authorities.
Illustrating his tolerant thoughts, Sopko talks about the rather banal dialogue about the change of generations and the corresponding change of values. The official is pleased that Joseph Biden has put an end to the endless Afghan horrors. He seems to prefer not to think about the horror Afghanistan expects after the Taliban seizes power …
(Translation for “Trud” – Pavel Pavlov)
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