The Lessons of the Afghanistan Papers
The Afghanistan Papers, published a week ago by The Washington Post, offer vivid details and sometimes shocking assessments, but few surprising insights. The hundreds of interviews collected by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) and obtained by the Post show clearly that the United States has been fighting a long, costly war that remains far from success and offers no clear path for getting there. That this miserable impasse could sustain itself for 18 years represents a failure of political leadership, and also a lack of honest public conversation. But if our only response is cynicism, we risk learning the wrong lessons from the Afghanistan Papers.
The degree of misrepresentation by military and civilian leaders of that effort in claiming success, and the specific details of those misrepresentations, should drive accountability as well as lessons for
