BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

    (By Craig Whitlock)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 23 MB (23,082 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 612 times
    Last checked 10 Hour ago!
    Author Craig Whitlock
    “Book Descriptions: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021

    The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock.

    Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.

    Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory.

    Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground.

    Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.”

    The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two

    ★★★★★

    Michael G. Kramer

    Book 1

    Targeted: Beirut — The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror

    ★★★★★

    Jack Carr

    Book 1

    The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan

    ★★★★★

    Elliot Ackerman

    Book 1

    The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

    ★★★★★

    Lawrence Wright

    Book 1

    No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

    ★★★★★

    Anand Gopal

    Book 1

    Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

    ★★★★★

    Jim Mattis

    Book 1

    The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan after the Americans Left

    ★★★★★

    Hassan Abbas

    Book 1

    Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

    ★★★★★

    Steve Coll

    Book 1

    The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

    ★★★★★

    Lawrence Wright

    Book 1

    Red Sky Mourning (Terminal List #7)

    ★★★★★

    Jack Carr

    Book 1

    To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq

    ★★★★★

    Robert Draper

    Book 1

    The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program

    ★★★★★

    Jeremy Scahill

    Book 1

    When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

    ★★★★★

    John Ganz

    Book 1

    Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor

    ★★★★★

    Clinton Romesha