The Afghanistan Papers: Lies, Deception, and Failures
The lies told by US officials to cover the failures in the ‘Graveyard of Empires’.
The War in Afghanistan has lasted for almost 20 years, caused the loss of life for over a hundred thousand people, and saw in 2018 according to Human Rights Watch the deaths of 10,000 people, out of a one-third of which were children (Human Rights Watch, 2019). Former President Barack Obama and the current President Donald Trump vowed to reduce the number of troops and end the war, while simultaneously increasing the numbers and even intensifying it; as we have seen with Trump's bombardment of Afghanistan, launching 1,113 strikes in September 2019 alone (Purkiss, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 2019). Under Trump's leadership as commander and chief, troop numbers have in fact doubled since he took office and killed more civilians in 2018 & 2019 than any other year of the war, this number then grows to even more once you include the civilians killed by Afghan forces who are trained and commanded by the US (Empire Files, 2020). It becomes clear that the war does not appear to be ending anytime soon and bears many similarities to other US military failures such as in Vietnam. The War in Afganistan has a 21st century equivalent of the Pentagon Papers, which contributed to the end of the Vietnam War and caused…
