A review by ethanhedman
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock

informative reflective fast-paced

2.5

While the book advertises itself and the summation of the Afghanistan Papers, I have my gripes and will list them here. The book falls into much of what international affairs analysis usually does with misanthropic adventures overseas. It focuses on ‘woulda’ or ‘coulda’ and never ‘shoulda’. The papers are a reflection of the different direction different arms of the US government, US military, and Afghan leaders were pulling US and NATO forces. This leads to a “quagmire” in which all of the above say things are going well when they aren’t to anyone on the ground, and there is no political will to put an end to the vicious cycle. What the book fails to mention are the quarter of a million civilians dead just due to war - excluding sanctions - and the horrific state we left the county in. 

What irks me most about things like the “Vietnam papers” or the “Afghanistan papers” is that it frames the tragedy not as the genocides that we committed there, but that American taxpayers were lied to - that our tax dollars were wasted. This perhaps is not the direct fault of the author, but as a summary of the US government review of the US war on Afghanistan, it must take the same criticism.