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A Requiem For the Afghanistan Papers
In 2019, The Washington Post exposed the vulnerabilities of American-trained Afghan troops in the Afghanistan Papers. Why didn’t anyone listen?
The Washington Post gave the world the Afghanistan Papers in 2019, and the world promptly forgot.
Most of the American people have never even heard of the rare collection of vignettes about U.S. government ineptitude and malfeasance in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Papers consisted of more than 2,000 pages of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the Post, as well as interviews with more than 400 key people involved in the war in Afghanistan.
The documents and interviews revealed several critical insights into the U.S. government’s mishandling of the war in Afghanistan. Some of the key findings of the Afghanistan Papers were shocking.
Official Deceit
U.S. officials in three successive presidential administrations (George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump) consistently lied about the progress and prospects of the war.
According to the documents and interviews, U.S. officials had repeatedly painted a rosy picture of the situation in Afghanistan, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.