So, apparently it’s happened again.
For the second time in a lifespan, it strongly appears that the U.S. government embarked on a major foreign military campaign without any form of compass – strategic, tactical or moral – and then lied about it as the arid mountains, highlands and warring tribes of Afghanistan parched and wasted us for 18 years.
Much the same as it did for a decade when it lied about Vietnam where the jungles, deltas and highland of that country bored a hole through our fabric and smothered us from 1965 to 1975.
And nobody cares.
In 1971, the Pentagon Papers exposed government misfeasance, malfeasance and misrepresentation, undermining the party line that progress was being made toward “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam, a war that leaders knew early on was unwinnable.
The fact that a stalemate and “peace with honor” was as good as it was going to get didn’t stop the government from telling the country otherwise and sending brave men and women to serve and fight valiantly and brilliantly. The grunts didn’t know what their leaders knew.
On Dec. 9, The Washington Post headlined an equally damning expose regarding the Afghan War headlined “AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH.” The subhead: “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. There were not. And they knew it.”
The story is a culmination of a three-year legal battle The Post waged for the release of a report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, congressionally mandated in 2008 to explore war zone waste and fraud.
Waste and fraud. How fortuitously ironic.
In 2014, SIGAR released a sidebar titled “Lessons Learned,” an examination of policy failures in Afghanistan based on SIGAR interviews of more than 600 individuals directly involved in the war – military leaders, government leaders, aid workers, even Afghans.
Deja vu all over again.
Murky motives, unclear and conflicting goals, corrupt regimes, confusion as to who the enemy actually was, and manipulated metrics to sell the American public on the war are alleged.
Ocean-front property in Nevada. Sign on the dotted line and we’ll forgive your college debt.
SIGAR chief John Sopko told The Post, “The American people have constantly been lied to.”
And nobody cares.
We know nobody cares because the news media – gatekeepers of truth and arbiters of all things right and important – barely noticed it Monday morning.
After all, the media knows what we care about. It’s the media’s business to understand what’s important and feed us what we want to consume. It’s how the money’s made: No clicks; no cash.
The fact that the government has sent 2,300 people to die in Afghanistan on a nation-building pipe dream was buried beneath more compelling stories.
The impeachment proceedings, of course. The Golden Globe nominations. Deadly New Zealand volcano. Raising boys in the #MeToo era. Four-year Olympic ban for Russia due to (gasp!) doping. And a man somewhere who carved his name in his girlfriend’s face.
It now appears that more than 60,000 people have died in Afghanistan and Vietnam in wars the government understood early it could not win. And while those individuals were being mauled by IEDs, pierced by high-velocity bullets and generally savaged and ripped apart by shrapnel, the men in suits lied.
To our faces.
And we don’t care. It’ll be all right.
Are we that numb? Are we that cynical? Are we that cowardly? Are we that far removed from who we say we are?
There should wailing, tearing of sack cloth and gnashing of teeth above the fold at every news outlet in the country – especially local, small-town newspapers and radio stations.
Because, it’s the small towns that clad their sons and daughters in Kevlar at the behest of a grateful nation and sent to dangerous places.
Where they die.
When those in charge have no clear idea about what they’re doing.
And they lie about it.
And, it seems, we don’t care.
Jim Mayfield, formerly an award-winning journalist at the Daily Reporter, is the founder of C3 Content Creation and Consulting.
