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A Secret History of the War in Afghanistan

For nearly two decades, U.S. government officials crafted a careful story of progress to justify their ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan. Newly disclosed documents reveal to what extent that story was not the reality of the war. Today, one former Marine speaks about the missteps the government concealed for years. Guest: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a reporter in The New York Times Washington bureau and a former Marine infantryman and Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.  Background reading:Afghans have endured four decades of conflict, with little prospect of peace. This is the story of the last 18 years since the American invasion, as told by the men and women who’ve lived it.“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” one retired three-star Army general said in hundreds of classified memos obtained by The Washington Post.Here are our key takeaways from the declassified documents. 
Duration
30m
Broadcast on
16 Dec 2019
Audio Format
other

For nearly two decades, U.S. government officials crafted a careful story of progress to justify their ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan. Newly disclosed documents reveal to what extent that story was not the reality of the war. Today, one former Marine speaks about the missteps the government concealed for years. Guest: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a reporter in The New York Times Washington bureau and a former Marine infantryman and Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

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It's Monday, December 16th. So, Tim set the scene for me on this day. So, it's the first week of December in 2009. I'm a 22-year-old Marine corporal. Long before I was in your Times reporter. I had just walked into a subway shop off base in Jacksonville, North Carolina. It was kind of a downtime between my last deployment to Afghanistan that came to a close in September of 2008. We had been training for more than a year now for whatever came next. We were kind of in this weird limbo. And we knew that President Obama was making a speech. So, we had walked in and the lady behind the counter put it on the television and there was Obama and she turned up the volume. As Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan. This would come to be known as Obama's surge. The Taliban had been quickly resurging and this would be the first attempt to kind of go in, stabilize certain parts of the country where the Taliban had returned and allow both the Afghan government and the Afghan military to come in behind the American forces and attempt to prevent a complete Taliban resurgence. The 30,000 additional troops that I'm announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010, the fastest possible pace. And I remember thinking, well, I mean, I don't know who that unit is, but that's a quick turnaround. I mean, it's the beginning of December and they're probably getting ready to go. And by the time that I had gotten back to the barracks, we had received orders. We were that unit. We were going to Afghanistan and we were going very soon to kind of be the vanguard of this new strategy that the President said is going to turn the tide. And we had kind of heard the name Marjia. It was often built as the last Taliban stronghold, whether that was true or not as very arguable. But that would be the first part of the surge, right, that we would go in with other battalions and clear Marjia of the Taliban and install a local government from Kabul that could do with the Taliban we're doing, but better. And how are you feeling about this deployment at this point?
I mean, I was 22 years old. I was in charge of seven other Marines as a team leader for a sniper team. I had never passed sniper school. So I was in kind of a weird position where I was in a job that maybe I shouldn't have had, but we had a pretty junior platoon. And where every member of the team, this would be their first deployment in the sniper platoon. So I was, I mean, nervous would be an understatement. I would not only be doing this job for the first time, but, you know, I would be responsible for getting these seven guys back in one piece. So yeah, I guess it boils down to really one word I was scared. So what actually happens there? Right. So we get into Afghanistan. We kind of get everybody on the ground. Our battalion's a little over a thousand strong. And in the weeks and months leading up to the big operation to take Marjia in February, our battalion at the behest of our battalion commander. And I'm sure commanders above him thinks that it's a good idea to do smaller operations around Marjia. And the battalion commander called it, you know, bloody in our nose or something to that effect. And then at the end of January, January 24, 2010, a platoon from Charlie Company got into a pretty vicious ambush and two Marines, Sergeant Daniel Angus and Lance Corporal Zack Smith,

Transcription truncated.

For nearly two decades, U.S. government officials crafted a careful story of progress to justify their ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan. Newly disclosed documents reveal to what extent that story was not the reality of the war. Today, one former Marine speaks about the missteps the government concealed for years. Guest: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a reporter in The New York Times Washington bureau and a former Marine infantryman and Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.  Background reading:Afghans have endured four decades of conflict, with little prospect of peace. This is the story of the last 18 years since the American invasion, as told by the men and women who’ve lived it.“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” one retired three-star Army general said in hundreds of classified memos obtained by The Washington Post.Here are our key takeaways from the declassified documents.