Publishers Weekly
06/28/2021
U.S. government and military officials took part in an “unspoken conspiracy to mask the truth” about the war in Afghanistan, according to this searing chronicle. Expanding on a series of articles published in the Washington Post, Whitlock explains how he learned, in 2016, about a government program to interview hundreds of participants in the war for a report on policy failures in Afghanistan called “Lessons Learned.” Drawing on these transcripts and other oral history projects, Whitlock paints a devastating portrait of how public messaging about the conflict consistently belied the reality on the ground. He details internal rivalries in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, and the fatigue and pessimism of soldiers on the front lines. (“We were just going around killing people,” says one special forces officer.) A costly program to eradicate opium poppy fields in Helmand province backfired spectacularly, turning the region into a “lethal stronghold for the insurgency” and earning harsh criticism from veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and others. Whitlock also delves into the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration’s skewing of statistics to support its war strategy, evidence of Afghan government corruption, and the Trump administration’s complex peace plan with the Taliban. Rigorously detailed and relentlessly pessimistic, this is a heartbreaking look at how America’s leaders “chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift.” (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Fast-paced and vivid... chock-full of telling quotes"
— The New York Times Book Review
“Craig Whitlock has forged a searing indictment of the deceit, blunders and hubris of senior military and civilian officials, with the same tragic echoes of the Vietnam conflict. The American dead, wounded and their families deserved wiser and more honorable leaders.”
— Tom Bowman, NPR Pentagon correspondent
"The excellent new book... Bombshell revelations... [and] damning evidence of things we already intuited.”
— The Washington Post
“At once page-turning and rigorous, The Afghanistan Papers makes a lasting and revelatory contribution to the record of America's tragic management of our longest war. In transparent and nuanced detail, Whitlock chronicles how American leaders and commanders undermined their country's promises to the Afghans who counted on them and to the U.S. troops who made the ultimate sacrifice after 9/11.”
— Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S
“The Afghanistan Papers is a gripping account of why the war in Afghanistan lasted so long. The missed opportunities, the outright mistakes and more than anything the first-hand accounts from senior commanders who only years later acknowledged they simply did not tell the American people what they knew about how the war was going.”
— Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon correspondent
"Whitlock is unsparing in his assessment of presidents Bush, Obama and Trump, as well as U.S. military leaders, saying all failed to level with the American public....Whitlock's book is based on hundreds of ‘lessons learned’ interviews conducted privately by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. ...The candid interviews are revealing.”
—NPR
"A hallmark achievement of primary source reporting....The Afghanistan Papers reminds readers of the power of reportage built on documented evidence with names attached."
— The Daily Beast
“A damning account of America’s longest war that reveals what top generals and government officials really knew about the cost and futility of the mission. Whitlock puts the pieces together in a way nobody has before, bringing us the most comprehensive, inside story of this conflict ever told.”
— Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
“The Afghanistan Papers is an autopsy of America’s folly into central Asia. It chronicles years of recklessness and bad decision-making that the nation is still grappling with today. This book is one part indictment of mission creep and American hubris, and one part warning to future leaders.”
— Kevin Maurer, co-author of The New York Times bestsellers No Easy Day and American Radical
“Like the Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam War, The Afghanistan Papers expose decades of deceit and the persistence of an American brand of imperialism. Examined by the sharp eye of Craig Whitlock, this history provides ample evidence that citizens should finally reject the baseless claim that U.S. military power is a unique force for good in the world.”
— Christian G. Appy, author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity
"An unputdownable account of imperial hubris, blundering and deception." — The Spectator
Library Journal
★ 08/01/2021
With this book about the United States' invasion of Afghanistan, beginning in 2001, Whitlock presents an essential, extensive account of the longest war in U.S. history. Whitlock, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Washington Post, relies on extensive primary sources, including firsthand interviews and official documents, to detail the positions and actions of various U.S. officials who received indications from soldiers and diplomats throughout the years that the Afghanistan War was a failure, politically and diplomatically. For instance, Whitlock argues, Donald Rumsfeld's messages to Defense Department officials in the six months after 9/11 show that his public positions contradicted his understanding of events in Afghanistan. Whitlock makes the compelling case that the Bush administration was confident about the war in Afghanistan but never had a plan to end it; subsequent administrations approached the war in the same manner. What sets this book apart is the insight on the war from the perspective of Afghans, including leaders of local provinces. VERDICT Complete with American and Afghan viewpoints, Whitlock's book is a dense, nuanced analysis that will likely become an invaluable source for researchers and a valuable addition to military history collections at public and academic libraries.—Edwin Burgess, Kansas City, KS
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-06-05
A veteran Washington Post investigative reporter delivers a dispiriting history of the 20-year Afghanistan debacle.
The war in Vietnam was always controversial. The longer quagmire of Afghanistan, writes Whitlock, “was grounded in near-unanimous public support” when it began in 2003. There was no need, then, for the Pentagon brass to lie about the war, but lie they did, despite that fact that there was not a clearly articulated mission. The mission crept into a vaguely defined exercise in nation-building even as more than 775,000 U.S. troops cycled in and out of the country. Whitlock’s impressively documented book contains interviews with more than 1,000 participants in the war. The author also examines a report titled “Lessons Learned,” which, though inches thick, seems to have emerged only long after the damage was done (and $1 trillion disappeared into the ether). One curious diagnostic among many uncovered in this comprehensive overview: Early on, American troops had to fly their laundry to Uzbekistan, since there were no facilities in Afghanistan, whereas the base at Bagram soon sported “a shopping mall, a Harley-Davidson dealer and about 30,000 troops, civilians and contractors.” Bush administration officials could never wrap their heads around the fact that the Taliban and al-Qaida were distinct entities and were convinced that anyone willing to fight against them was a friend of the U.S. Those presumed allies milked a gullible U.S. dry. One interviewee notes that the U.S. misadventure could have ended in weeks if direct negotiations with the Taliban had been undertaken. Instead, enemies were misidentified and innocent people killed so frequently that one officer reported that some units were “focused in consequence management, paying Afghans for damages and condolence payments.” That Joe Biden was able to order America’s withdrawal redefined the terms of victory to say that the U.S. “had achieved its original objective long ago by destroying al-Qaeda’s stronghold in Afghanistan”—rather than acknowledge that the Afghans had defeated their second superpower.
By this authoritative account, the Afghanistan War has been a colossal failure that should have been ended years ago.
