Those who know history of Afghanistan has all along been advising the United States against aggression and continuation of the country as Afghans never compromised on their sovereignty. Secret documents made public by The Washington Post on Monday reveal the country’s senior civil and military officials hid evidence on how the war had become unwinnable. Instead, they continued to make rosy pronouncements about progress before the public, knowing all along that they were false.
Interviews of key figures, involved in the two-decade-long war, brought to light some ugly aspects of the entire venture and how an unjustified invasion was projected as a perfect strategy citing the bogey of terrorism and the so-called threats that a country, one of the weakest in the globe, posed to the security of a superpower. Douglas Lute, the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama years, remarked, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing”. The question arises as to why then millions of people were killed and maimed besides bombing the poor country to Stone Age? Relevant officials also acknowledged that neither they had any idea of what exactly the ‘good and bad guys’ were nor the benefits that would accrue from a costly engagement in Afghanistan. The contents of the WP report provide good education and awareness to American people as to what their governments had been doing in Afghanistan for an indefensible venture. There should be a thorough debate on all aspects of the war and this ought to lead to unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan so that Afghan people, like people elsewhere in the world, are able to make sovereign decisions about their fate.
