According to the recently published "Afghanistan Papers," for over eighteen years, U.S. civilian and military leaders have been simultaneously clueless and deceptive. "We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn't know what we were doing," said Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House's Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations. "If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost," Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department.  "Who will say this was in vain?" While I was assigned to the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan, the most commonly used phrase in reports coming from all echelons and locations was "progress is being made."  At that time, the war was being fought, and...(Read Full Post)