openpolitics.com

We’ve been in Afghanistan for 6,000 days. What are we doing?

“The war is over.”

— Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in Afghanistan
in April 2002

“I believe victory is closer than ever before.”

— Vice President Pence
in Afghanistan in December

 With metronomic regularity, every thousand days or so, Americans should give some thought to the longest war in their nation’s history. The war in Afghanistan, which is becoming one of the longest in world history, reaches its 6,000th day on Monday , when it will have ground on for substantially more than four times longer than U.S. involvement in World War II from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day (1,365 days).

.. It was not mission creep but mission gallop that turned the intervention into a war against the Taliban, which had provided, or at least not prevented, the haven. So, the United States was on a mission opposed by a supposed ally next door — Pakistan, which has supported the Taliban through Directorate S of its intelligence service.

.. The officer warned McChrystal against ‘anything here that looks permanent. . . . We are not staying long.’

.. After blowing up tunnels — some almost as long as a football field — thought to be created by and for terrorists, U.S. officials learned they were actually an ancient irrigation system.

.. on Oct. 7, 2001, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. objective was the creation of a strong central government. When he was asked whether Afghanistan had ever had one, he answered without hesitation: “No.” Which is still true.

.. If the U.S. objective is freedom there rather than security here, or if the theory is that the latter somehow depends on the former, the administration should clearly say so, and defend those propositions, or liquidate this undertaking, which has, so far, cost about $1 trillion and more than 2,200 American lives.