Afghanistan: Afghanistan has always ended the supremacy superpowers that invaded it, for instance, the Mughals, the British, and the Russians. The United States began its invasion of the country thinking it would be an exception.
Statistics of troop casualties, thorough examinations of failed strategies, and the overall lack of progress to show for its almost two-decade-long military campaign weren’t exactly shared with the American people. Had that happened, America’s failure would have punctured the narrative of Uncle Sam experiencing a different fate.
The Washington Post’s investigations revealed that such truths were hidden so as to conceal US’ failure in Afghanistan.
A report commissioned by a US Congress-formed agency called the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), launched an $11 million project named “Lessons Learned” which shows just how overwhelmed troops were. This initiative consisted of interviews with diplomats, army officials, and others who have experienced the Afghan War to find out what went wrong during the war.
After a three-year-long legal battle to obtain the Washington Post could lay its hands on the SIGAR report. However, the names of 366 others (who are these others) have been blacked out. The identities of only 62 persons were not censored. Through further cross-checking and investigation by the renowned news organization, 33 additional interviewees were identified.
Three American Presidents–George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump–have differed in their approaches to solving the Afghanistan quandary. Yet the extensive content of the SIGAR reports shows that the strategies of all three presidents yielded no success during the lengthy American military presence in the country.
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