Summary: At great effort and expense I have obtained secret documents from the US Government about the Afghanistan War. Although too secret to release the full contents, I make these excerpts available so that the American people will better understand our wars.
The great CIA counterintelligence ace, James Jesus Angleton (1917-1987) hacked into this page from his secret location in the afterlife. Although dead, he remains as acute an observer and analyst as ever.
A grim status report about Afghanistan and its insurgents
“… there seems to be a national attribute {in Afghanistan} which makes for factionalism and limits the development of a truly national spirit. Whether this tendency is innate or a development growing out of the conditions of political suppression under which successive generations have lived is hard to determine. But it is an inescapable fact that there is no national tendency toward team play or mutual loyalty to be found among many of the leaders and political groups within Afghanistan. Given time, many of these attitudes will undoubtedly change for the better, but we are unfortunately pressed for time and unhappily perceive no short-term solution for the establishment of stable and sound government. …
“The ability of the insurgents continuously to rebuild their units and make good their losses is one of the mysteries of this guerrilla war …Not only do the insurgents have the recuperative powers of the phoenix, but they have an amazing ability to maintain morale. Only in rare cases have we found evidence of bad morale among prisoners or recorded in captured documents …”
Angleton here: the Editor is an idiot. This is not about Afghanistan, nor from Ambassador McKinley. It’s from “The Current Situation in South Vietnam — November, 1964” by Max Taylor (General USA, Ret.), US Ambassador to Vietnam, presented to senior officials in Washington on 27 November 1964.
That this description of Vietnam applies so well after 53 years to another war demonstrates the US Government’s inability to learn from experience – a crippling disadvantage in a 4GW era. It’s a symptom of its deeply dysfunctional institutions.
About SecState Hillary during the Afghanistan War (2009-13)
“Dealing with the military, the President learned, was an awesome thing. The failure of their estimates along the way, point by point, meant nothing. It did not follow, as one might expect, that their credibility was diminished and that there was now less pressure from them, but the reverse. … Once activated they would soon dominate the play. Their power with the Hill and with journalists, their stronger hold on patriotic-machismo arguments (in decision making they proposed the manhood positions, their opponents the softer, sissy, positions), their particular certitude, make them far more power players then those raising doubts. …
“These years show how when a question of the use of force arose in government, the advocates of force were always better organized, seemed more numerous and seemed to have both logic and fear on their side, and that in fending them off in his own government, a President needed all the help he possibly could get, not the least a powerful Secretary of State. …”
Angleton again: Despite the eerie similarity to Afghanistan, this is David Halberstam writing about the Vietnam in The Best and the Brightest
. The similarities between these two weak Secretaries of State, Dean Rusk and Hillary Clinton, highlight the pitiful condition of the State Department.
. The similarities between these two weak Secretaries of State, Dean Rusk and Hillary Clinton, highlight the pitiful condition of the State Department.
For most of US history State was the senior of the Executive agencies. Now they’re merely lawyers for the military, tilting US foreign policy toward military solutions. I saw it coming.
Importance of a Strong SecDef
“Donald Rumsfeld can handle the military. That, of course, was the basis of his legend. Washington was filled with stories of Rumsfeld browbeating the military, forcing them to reconsider their decisions and taking their pet projects away from them. Later, as his reputation dimmed and the defense budget grews (it was not just Afghanistan, it was other projects as well), suspicion grew that he had in no real way handled the military, but rather, that he brought them kicking and screaming to the zenith of their power. …
“It turned out that the best way for civilians to control the military only as long as we were not in a real war, and that the best way for civilians was to stay out of wars.”
Angleton: This was written by Halberstam about SecDef Robert Strange McNamara in the 1960s, not Donald Rumsfeld in the 21st century. How astonishing that Rumsfeld – tough, determined, experienced – could make military reform one of his top goals and utterly fail. That’s not a good sign for America’s future.
Conclusions
These documents tell us much about the Afghanistan War, now in its 16th year. We can draw the following twelve inferences.
It is clearly imperative that …
Angleton: I’m deleting these absurdities and substituting useful advice. (I wish I could have done this to the memos of CIA Director Richard Helms.) America has repeated in Afghanistan many of its mistakes in Vietnam, which shows a defective grand strategy. Until we fix this, America will stumble from mistake to mistake around the world. I recommend reading these posts about grand strategy to see how we can better manage our relations with the world, both friend and foe.
Reading about our incompetently managed wars make me feel right at home, even nostalgic for the old days when I was alive. When it comes to the American Government, the more things change…
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