A policy failure of America in Afghanistan

On October 7, 2001, after twelve days of 9/11, when the U.S military began bombing Afghanistan, no one anticipate that it would turn into the most prolonged war in American history - longer than World War I, World War II and Vietnam combined.

After two decades, the Americans and their allies failed to achieve the desired result and evacuate their forces, diplomats and weaponry. Though, many explanations were conducted for public accounting over the strategic failure of America in Afghanistan.

A report published by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which had interviewed hundreds of participants who played a direct role in the war, from General and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials. The report held under the title of "Lessons Learned", which was intended to diagnose the policy failure in Afghanistan.

Although, the report remain secret until it faced a legal battle that lasted for 3 years, just aimed to find out what truths the government is hiding and reveal them to the public, the report disclosed more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with 428 people. 

Many of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S government to deliberately mislead the public throughout the war. Their officials both in the U.S or in a military headquarter in Kabul routinely disclosed statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was plainly not the truth.

US fought a War without a functional strategy

U.S Army Gen. Dan McNeill, who twice served as the U.S commander during the Bush administration complained, "There was no campaign plan. It just wasn't there.

"There was no coherent long-term strategy", said British Gen. David Richards, who led U.S and NATO forces from 2006 to 2007. "We were trying to get a single coherent long-term approach - a proper strategy - but instead we got a lot of tactics." 

Richard Boucher, a top diplomat to South and Central Asia who served during the Bush administration said, "We didn't know what we were doing". 

9/11 happened, a leading character who was a Defence Secretary that time, Donald Rumsfeld said, "I've no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan, he complained in a memo to his intelligence chief - almost two years after the war has started.

Reference:

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, by Craig Whitlock.