The Final Call

Lies, lies, lies: America’s presidents and the Afghan War

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According to recent coverage in the Post, based on thousands of pages of documents, notes, interviews and reports, “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest U.S. war, costing thousands of lives and a trillion dollars. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump knew the truth and have failed to tell the truth. It took the Post three years to get documents and truths through filing a Freedom of Information Act request and engaging in court battles.

“Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action,” the Post reported.

As lives were being lost on the American side and the Afghan side, U.S. military officials and advisors were lost. 

“ ‘We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan—we didn’t know what we were doing,’ Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: ‘What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking,’ ” the Post reported Dec. 9.

“ ‘If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost,’ Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. ‘Who will say this was in vain?’ ”

“ ‘What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?’ Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, ‘After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.’ 

“At the outset, for instance, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had a clear, stated objective—to retaliate against al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

The Post observed that “as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the U.S. strategy took root inside the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department. Fundamental disagreements went unresolved. Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights. Still others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia. ‘With the AfPak strategy there was a present under the Christmas tree for everyone,’ an unidentified U.S. official told government interviewers in 2015. ‘By the time you were finished you had so many priorities and aspirations it was like no strategy at all.’ ”

From the beginning of the Afghan War and the war on Iraq that preceded it, one man has been a voice of caution for all three presidents and that man is the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. 

He has warned America against her insatiable appetite for oil, her desire to destroy Islam, drive to institute regime change in the Middle East, her unbridled and unbalanced support for Israel and her love of war.

“America has been spared what other nations and people live with daily when their nations are racked with civil war, civil strife. And this nation has been involved in the destruction of other nations and the bombing and destroying of other capital cities,” said Min. Farrakhan in his Saviours’ Day 2002 message “Healing the Wounds to Bring About a Universal Family” in Los Angeles.

“America, a mystery Babylon, but the Scripture says: ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen.’ Why is she fallen? It is because she has become a habitation of devils and a hole for every unclean and hateful bird, a cage. What does that have to do with great America? Is America going to fulfill her destiny as the foundation of the Kingdom of God on Earth, or is America going to fulfill prophecy? Not a good prophecy, but a prophecy that America would be like ancient Egypt, like ancient Rome, like ancient Babylon, like ancient Sodom and Gomorrah. America does not have to go that way. America can be America the Beautiful, but she must have a good shepherd. The leadership of America can either take America to hell or can lead America out of this ugliness and make America good … .”

But change for America must be rooted in truth and actions that reflect respect for the nations of the earth and love of freedoms that the United States constantly touts. She can no longer bully or deceive nations and is creating enemies abroad and distrust and anger at home. Lies and war will not save America and the debacle in Afghanistan proves it. Still these failures may not be enough to steer a nation off of a path that could mean its ultimate doom.