In an earlier article (FAIR.org, 12/18/19) regarding the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers (12/9/19), I discussed how the Post’s exposé also exposed the Post as one of the primary vehicles US officials use to spread their lies, and why it’s impossible for corporate media outlets like the Post to raise more substantive questions about the deceptive nature of US foreign policy.
But those aren’t the only significant takeaways. The Afghanistan Papers should also be considered an excellent case study of contemporary colonial propaganda, and yet another example of corporate media criticizing US wars without opposing US imperialism.
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s famous analysis of media coverage of the Vietnam War, in Manufacturing Consent, found that questions of the invasion’s “tactics and costs”—to the US—dominated the debate, because the media absorbed the framework of government propaganda regarding the “necessity” of military intervention, the “righteousness of the American cause” and the US’s “nobility of intent.” Decades later, Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model of corporate media is still a useful tool in understanding the Post’s Afghanistan Papers.
The Post advanced the centuries-old colonial narrative of the empire’s good intentions gone awry when it argued that the US “inadvertently built a corrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government,” and that this illustrated that “even some of the most well-intentioned projects could boomerang.” In fact, the Post dedicated a whole section of the Afghanistan Papers to propagating this standard colonial narrative, called “Stranded Without a Strategy,” which argued at length:
US and allied officials admitted they veered off in directions that had little to do with Al Qaeda or 9/11. By expanding the original mission, they said they adopted fatally flawed warfighting strategies based on misguided assumptions about a country they did not understand….
Diplomats and military commanders acknowledged they struggled to answer simple questions: Who is the enemy? Whom can we count on as allies? How will we know when we have won?
Their strategies differed, but Bush and Obama both committed early blunders that they never recovered from, according to the interviews.
The Post is so eager to push this colonial narrative of noble incompetence that a later report (12/11/19) on “key takeaways” from the Afghanistan Papers claimed that US officials “failed to align policy solutions with the challenges they confronted,” having “strategic drift” in place of “coherent US policy for Afghanistan.” As noted earlier, one method of discerning whether US officials are being dishonest, not incompetent, is to check whether the pretexts for invading and occupying another country are constantly changing.
But the imperial utility of a cost/benefit or tactical “critique” of US wars is the implication that immoral and illegal invasions like the Afghanistan War are justifiable if the US can achieve its goals, and it enables future invasions, provided US wars are better fought next time. It’s an intentionally nebulous criterion, since there are always tactical and cost/benefit questions to be raised for any military endeavor, which is why this kind of critique can enable perpetual interventions in the service of US imperialism. Indeed, the Post actually admits this when it mentioned that the Afghanistan inspector general’s secretive “Lessons Learned” project was
meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes the next time it invaded a country or tried to rebuild a shattered one.
Furthermore, at several times the Post parroted statements from US officials claiming that some of the “lessons learned” about their “strategic failures” were that the US should have killed more people in Pakistan and threatened to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely—without any pushback.
The Post parroted claims that “Obama’s strategy” of imposing “strict deadlines” and promising to “bring home all troops by the end of his presidency” was “destined to fail,” because the Taliban could just “wait him out.” Why was Obama’s broken promise an “artificial” date for “ending the war before it was over”? If the US truly prioritized preserving taxpayer dollars and the lives of US troops and Afghans, the open secret is that the US could simply end the Afghanistan War any time it wanted to, by announcing an unconditional, unilateral withdrawal without negotiating with the Taliban.
In another “Lessons Learned” interview cited in the Afghanistan Papers (12/9/19), regarding the “strategic challenge” of Pakistan supporting the Taliban and sheltering their leaders despite receiving billions of dollars a year to “fight terrorism,” the Post uncritically cited a US official’s bloodthirsty support for indefinite occupation and killing Taliban members anywhere in Pakistan:
In his December 2016 Lessons Learned interview, Crocker said the only way to force Pakistan to change would be for Trump to keep US troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and give them the green light to hunt the Taliban on Pakistani territory.
“It would allow him to say, ‘You worry about our reliability, you worry about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, I’m here to tell you that I’m going to keep troops there as long as I feel we need them, there is no calendar.’
“ ‘That’s the good news. The bad news for you is we’re going to kill Taliban leaders wherever we find them: Baluchistan, Punjab, downtown Islamabad. We’re going to go find them, so maybe you want to do a strategic recalculation.’ ”
While pushing this colonial narrative, the Post actually tried to make the absurd case that some of the US’s strategic failures stemmed from being too generous to Afghans, and lying to the American public about not wanting to do “nation-building,” asserting that “nation-building is exactly what the United States has tried to do in war-battered Afghanistan—on a colossal scale.”
Americans praising their own generosity is a hallmark feature of American colonialism—which extended to framing atrocities like slavery, the displacement of Native Americans and the extermination of Vietnamese people as “generous”—and the Post continues this long tradition by parroting US officials who believed that “Congress and the White House made matters worse by drenching the destitute country with far more money than it could possibly absorb.” Apparently the problem is not that the US intentionally funnels money to enrich US investors and prop up puppet governments subservient to the US, but that the US engages in thoughtless charity:
The scale of the corruption was the unintended result of swamping the war zone with far more aid and defense contracts than impoverished Afghanistan could absorb. There was so much excess, financed by American taxpayers, that opportunities for bribery and fraud became almost limitless, according to the interviews.
The Post (12/9/19) claimed that “no nation needed more building than Afghanistan” following “continuous warfare since 1979,” when it was invaded by the Soviet Union. The Post cited frustrated statements from officials working for USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) complaining that the US was wasting too much money on nation-building for primitive people in a largely non-market society who “bartered for items” instead of using currency, and lacked the education and “technical expertise” necessary to maintain “huge infrastructure projects,” with officials claiming “We were bringing 21st-century stuff to a society living in a different time period.”
Left unmentioned were US efforts in 1979 to sabotage an indigenous Afghan Communist movement, that was making strides toward ostensible US goals like the education of girls, eradicating opium production and expanding access to healthcare, by “knowingly increasing the probability” of luring “the Russians” into their own “Vietnam War.” (Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski later defended this ruthless strategy: “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?”)
Nor was there any mention of USAID and the NED being corrupt propaganda arms of the US State Department to subvert leftist governments, often serving as a pipeline of taxpayer dollars into investors’ pockets under the guise of promoting “development” and “democracy.” Some US officials even argued that the rampant fraud and waste from American “aid” contractors were so parasitic that it would be better to funnel contracts to corrupt Afghans, who “would probably take 20% for their personal use or for their extended families and friends,” than “‘a bunch of expensive American experts’ who would waste 80 to 90% of the funds on overhead and profit.”
And despite the Post’s attempts to portray the US as “inadvertently” building a “corrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government that remains dependent on US military power for its survival,” it’s hard to see how other candid statements about the US military and agencies like the CIA “giving cash” to “purchase loyalty” from Afghan government officials, religious leaders and warlords viewed by many Afghans as “cruel despots,” don’t contradict that assertion. In fact, Herman and Chomsky’s study The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism found that corruption is a primary feature of US client states—like the corrupt Afghan government—with US aid and a favorable foreign investment climate being negatively related to the condition of human rights in these countries. Hence the numerous reports of Afghanistan being “open for business.”
Tellingly, US officials in the Afghanistan Papers remarked that while the US actively replaced officials seeking to combat corruption, or knowingly “looked away and let the thievery become more entrenched than ever,” and retained support for US-installed CIA assets like Hamid Karzai who committed mass voter fraud, US officials had a “dogmatic adherence to free-market principles.” This is supposed to explain why, despite their “good intentions,” they consciously imposed economic policies that enriched foreign investors and increased poverty, instead of policies that would help Afghanistan, because US officials considered them “incompatible with capitalism.”
This is consistent with Michael Parenti’s study of US foreign policy (The Sword and the Dollar) finding that US commitments to “democracy” and “anti-corruption” are dispensable and easily abandoned (indicating insincerity), while commitments to opening countries like Afghanistan to foreign investment and free-market capitalism are uncompromisable. What explains the refusal to put Afghanistan on the State Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism—despite knowing the Taliban were sheltering bin Laden—other than the fact that it would prevent US oil and construction companies from entering into an agreement with Kabul to construct pipelines to Central Asian oil and gas fields?
The immediate construction of US military bases and the resulting private businesses servicing them generated massive corporate profits for the military/industrial complex, and served as guardians for US corporations extracting mineral wealth—indications of a planned long-term occupation and a launching pad for attacks within and beyond Afghanistan’s borders. Explicit statements from the Bush doctrine—which continued to guide the Obama and Trump administrations’ national security strategy—explained that “real freedom” means free trade, the “moral principle” that “if others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it.” These are the serious, logically consistent explanations for the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers and trove of documents are worth reading through, but it’s also a contradictory mess containing many distortions and lies by omission. The scandal of the Afghanistan War is not that the US entered into and prolonged an “unwinnable” war; the scandal is that the US empire’s invasion of Afghanistan is a war crime in violation of international law, and has inflicted imperial violence on the Afghan people, and it would remain a scandal even if the US accomplished all of its ostensible goals. Even as the Post’s scoop exposes US officials as liars—and highlights the danger of credulously accepting their ideological framework—because they rely so heavily on those officials’ narratives, the Afghanistan Papers still manage to propagate the old colonial narrative of the empire’s good intentions thwarted by backwards foreigners.
Editors note: On reflection, a passage in the original version of this piece about the oil and the US invasion of Afghanistan was inadequately sourced. A claim about Hamid Karzai formerly working for Unocal does not appear to be true.
And how many times have we heard “progressive” critiques of imperialism bemoan “mistakes” and “unwinnable wars”, rather than the moral rot at the dark heart of the matter?
Empire, whatever its “competency”, is an abomination upon humanity.
Is the “policy” still being implemented?
Thank you Joshua. It’s worth noting the two links below that debunk the false analogy being created between the Afghanistan papers and the Pentagon papers.
https://off-guardian.org/2019/12/15/the-afghanistan-papers-deep-state-narrative-management/
I always thought that war couldn’t be commenced unless we were attacked—like Pearl Harbor. However, I can’t remember either Afghanistan or Iraq attacking America. Let’s see, how do we stop these endless wars—-hey—what about all those generals and deciders in the 18 years of war on Afghanistan—-and their lies of WMD—hmmm, well let’s send the remaining people who America arrested and stuck in Guantanamo–let’s return them to their nations with a lot of reparations -and let’s replace them with the 18 years of military deciders who couldn’t explain their decisions! Plus—– let’s take a look at presidents who acted more like corporate war flunkies than what American presidents should be! I am wondering—when will America ever be responsible?
So lets put those responsible in Guantanamo including the cheerleaders at WAPO, New York Times and all 435 members of Congress who maintain the status quo as acceptable no matter how many people the US of A kills and injures. They could stay busy there reading each others op-eds.
This article requires immediate clarification from FAIR’s editors.
“Then what explains the Bush administration’s ultimatum to the Taliban on behalf of building a pipeline with the Unocal corporation to ‘accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,’ informing the Pakistani and Indian governments at least five weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks that it would attack Afghanistan ‘before the end of October’?”
I had not heard this amazing claim before, so checked the author’s sourcing:
(1) Anon., “Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence,” at http://www.ringnebula.com;
(2) Larry Chin, “Parts I and II: Players on a rigged chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the Afghanistan pipeline,” Online Journal, March, 2002.)
(1) is an unattributed timeline with linked secondary sources, visible here: https://www.ringnebula.com/political_issues/war_economics/afghanistan/timeline_afghanistan.htm
The “carpet of bombs” ‘quote’ is sourced to now-defunct website:
http://www.forbiddentruth.net.
As for the mid-July warning about an October invasion, (1) says, “Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July (34a) that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. (See also BBC report(34b)).”
The secondary sources link to a BBC article written by George Arney, which quotes Naik. Areney was the BBC correspondent in Pakistan from 1986 to 1988.
Naik served as the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan from 1982 to 1986. Wikipedia details his other postings:
“Naik served as the Director General to the United Nations from 1967 to 1970 and as Additional Secretary General from 1974 to 1978.[1] From 1986 to 1990, Naik served as the permanent Representative of Pakistan to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Naik served as the Ambassador of Pakistan to Geneva from 1971 to 1974, New York City from 1978 to 1982 and France. Naik was also part of the UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan.” Naik was found tortured and murdered in 2009.
The source linked to substantiate the claim Naik served on the “UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan” is Areney’s article from September 18, 2001.
The Guardian affirmed in part Areney’s reporting in a follow-up article on September 22:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/22/afghanistan.september113
The article has more quotes from Naik, which strongly undermine the conclusion the US was planning a full invasion of Afghanistan to secure oil receipts. For example:
Naik said, “[The US] had all the intelligence and would not miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to Afghanistan. The Russians were listening to the conversation but not participating.”
Asked whether he could be sure that the Americans were passing ideas from the Bush administration rather than their own views, Naik said, “What the Americans indicated to us was perhaps based on official instructions. They were very senior people. Even in ‘track two’ people are very careful about what they say and don’t say.”
The three Americans at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Karl “Rick” Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the state department until 1997.
Coldren confirmed the broad outline of the American position at the Berlin meeting, saying, “I think there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action.”
The three former US diplomats “based our discussion on hearsay from US officials,” Coldren said. “It was not an agenda item at the meeting ‘but was mentioned just in passing.’”
According to Naik, the Americans raised the issue of an attack on Afghanistan at one of the full sessions of the conference. In the room at the time were not only the Americans, Russians and Pakistanis but also a team from Iran headed by Saeed Rajai Khorassani, a former Iranian envoy to the UN.
Nikolai Kozyrev, Moscow’s former special envoy on Afghanistan and one of the Russians in Berlin, would not confirm the contents of the US conversations, but said: “Maybe they had some discussions in the corridor. I don’t exclude such a possibility.”
Naik’s memory was that “we had the impression Russians were trying to tell the Americans that the threat of the use of force is sometimes more effective than force itself”.
Simons denied having said anything about detailed operations. “I’ve known Niaz Naik and considered him a friend for years. He’s an honourable diplomat. I didn’t say anything like that and didn’t hear anyone else say anything like that. We were clear that feeling in Washington was strong, and that military action was one of the options down the road. But details, I don’t know where they came from.”
Inderfurth said: “There was no suggestion for military force to be used. What we discussed was the need for a comprehensive political settlement to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, that has been going on for two decades, and has been doing so much damage.”
Naik responded, “I’m a little surprised but maybe they feel they shouldn’t have told us anything in advance now we have had these tragic events.”
In summary, the (1) claim that America threatened to attack Pakistan rests on the word of a single, former Pakistani official, and the account was denied by all three American diplomats in attendance as well as a Russian official who was present. Further, the alleged threat specifically was a limited helicopter attack, not a nation-building invasion.
Turning to (2), you can find an original link to Chin’s article here:
https://archives.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html
The given citation fails to mention Chin’s article was published with the Centre for Research on Globalisation. CRG is run by Michel Chossudovsky:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky
According to Wikipedia, CRG advances conspiracy theories around 9/11. See the following examples:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171117193837/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-website-in-natos-sights-for-spreading-disinformation/article37015521/
https://apnews.com/920e1c738df04555bccd56c09770b36d
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/19/blog-posting/edward-snowden-leaked-nsa-documents-show-us-israel/
CRG also promotes conspiracy theories about vaccines and climate catastrophe.
Conclusion: I’m not saying it never happened, but FAIR readers deserve more accurate and balanced sourcing, or at least a disclaimer as to the sourcing, especially considering the extraordinary nature of the claim the US planned to attack (but not invade! Again, this should have been made clear in the context of the author’s piece on invasion and imperialism . . . .) Afghanistan prior to 9/11.
Not really sure what you’re going for here, but the “…carpet…” quote can be found referenced at Al Jazeera, Salon, globalpolicy.org among other outlets.
I you can’t rebut the message, smear the messenger. Goebbels would be proud of Jeremy.
Also WSWS. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/11/afgh-n20.html
If that was such a crazy and unheard of claim to you, then where have you been hiding and what is your surname, given that you’ve gone to the trouble of posting a profile picture and have attempted to debunk some of the central claims of the article for aims that I’m still not sure I follow. The name of the person to whom the carpet quote is attributed is readily available with some Googling at what I’d consider reputable sources (aforementioned Al Jazeera, Salon, etc.).
Deserve better? Do you not remember how the media treated the run up to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions? Were you old enough to be following? You are aware that these kinds of quotes are very difficult to source, and that the WaPo and NYT frequently grant anonymity to government and “defense” contractor officials on the regular – and have since Vietnam?
This also fails to register with me. globalresearch.ca is what the AP article references. Michel Chossudovsky writes for them, but that is not relevant to the CRG whether MC manages it or not. The term “conspiracy theorist” is just another smear used by the establishment (AP included) to denigrate anyone or any organization that fails to abide by accepted U.S. and NATO talking points.
Could you please provide some of your previous research so that we can be sure you’re not an (official) conspiracy theorist as well? Thank you kindly in advance.
Excellent analysis JC! Like most readers here, I agree “110%”. Afghanistan had offered to turn over bin Laden IF the US showed evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attack, but the US dismissed that out-of-hand, opting for attacking a 10th rate military power (if-that) and killing 10’s of thousands of civilians in the process (40,000 was the last number I heard). If that whole episode wasn’t blatantly bad enough, the subsequent Iraq War(crime) made it obvious to anyone who was NOT twisting themselves into contorted apologetics that the US’ intentions were not..NOT..N. O. T. — NOT honorable or in anyway related to ‘democracy’, ‘defense’, ‘nation-building’ or any other euphemism they manufactured.
I have to admit that the US —- this country I was born, raised, and live-in — has a militaristic foreign policy that is the WAY overboard and in too many ways is similar to Nazi Germany’s (in fact one could easily make the argument that the US is even MORE brazen than Germany was — they ‘only’ invaded neighboring countries, while we literally go to the other side of the world to “help” countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc, etc ).
Best take on the “Afghanistan Papers” I read so far. This invasion was about colonizing the country. Gross mismanagement has not compromised that, but the mission is evolving. First it was to fight terrorism, now it’s about using the country as a forward base to fight Russia, China and Iran. Its strategic importance to our new objective means that gross cost overruns are just part of the process. The explosive report is DOA. No heads will roll. No apologies will be forthcoming. We are never leaving. All Hail the Empire!
Now, complicit oligarch-owned media doesn’t simply control the message (what we’re told, who’s version of what perspective of which story is cherry-picked to support Imperialism). Alternative perspective is silenced on social networking, blog aggregators were sanitized by K Street shills like David Brock, Google SEOs each of us into adversarial echo-chambers (while declaring journalism, fact & whistleblowers to be sowing discord). Hearst’s, “send me the photographs, I’ll provide the war,” sounds so quaint, nowadays.
https://mobile.twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1208486243530444800
wonderfully written and finally the truth be told. here in afghanistan we are left with a lawless society where warlords like the gangsters that they are extract money from everybody and the police aid thieves .. this is what we have .. no law… you get what you want if you pay.. the most corrupt institutions are the ministry of justice followed by the interior ministry … this is by design in order to create chaos so no progress is made and that the drug cartel can continue their extraction of opium at base prices ….
There’s not much different here from Vietnam. No one who’s invaded them succeeded, and corruption is natural as breathing. For America’s part, it’s always about the money, always has been. Afghanistan has the world’s biggest supply of lithium, and the US wasn’t going to get it and never will, so the money addicts booted out Evo in a hasty coup to seize control of Bolivia’s sizable lithium supply and I think Evo’s telling everyone who will listen.
The US is where the UK was at the start of WWII, and just as, if not more than, morally rotten. Empire’s cost is high, and never lasts as it’s about conquering, not living at peace. Anyone who talks about the glory of empire is either mad or stupid. The violence alone kills the souls of all who get close enough.
Big Oil wanted pipelines through Afghanistan from the former Soviet Union republics to the Indian Ocean and world oil markets. They had the Taliban come to Texas, to one of the Bush ranches. They asked for permission to build the pipelines. The Taliban refused. The oil guys told The Taliban that they would rain fire and death on them if they didn’t say yes. The Taliban decamped for home.
Osama bin Laden was a US asset against the Russians, until an East Texas Congressman, Charlie Wilson, playing war games, promised Osama money that he didn’t deliver. That pissed off Osama and 9/11 was next. Jihadis in jets broke something in the Bush II administration so they did the same box of nails stupid crap the US government does when it wants someone else’s stuff and won’t give it up. Osama wasn’t in Afghanistan when the US invaded. The invasion was to shake pipelines out of The Taliban, who are just as willing to die for their land as the jihadis. Cultural illiteracy has no excuse, at this late date.
I don’t know if this is how the US behaved in Korea, but I know they did in Vietnam, with an assassination anytime the proxy government didn’t follow orders. The government didn’t have a lot to do with the Vietnamese people. It was the US government. The Viet Cong and their allies, the North Vietnamese Army, fought for the country while the government dithered in US cash luxuries and the South Vietnamese Army hung out at home unless they were the President.
This was the pattern in Iraq, too. The operative dream must be that one of these times it will work.
To me, this is about the most butt-stupid way of spending blood and treasure extant. These fools don’t deserve those they deceive into thinking they’re going to fight for the country they love. After they find out there’s no glory in a money war, these guys come home with broken hearts, and if they don’t get what they need – they won’t get it from the VA, as the VA is part of the war machine – or they work through it, they kill themselves to get out of their misery and every son of a bitch who did that to a man with a heart that loved his country isn’t worth a pimple on that man’s ass. They probably know it, too.