The Case for Democracy

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In two thousand four, afghanistan had its first presidential elections. And there were millions of afghans who had gone to the poles. But over time, this government lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the afghan people. Every subsequent election was riddled fraud and corruption and ballot box stuffing. i don't think it was because afghaniston was ill-suited for democracy. We just couldn't figure out how to do it in an effective manner. It seems as a lost cause now that we're trying to democratize Afghanistan.

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: to 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. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling 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. The Afghanistan Papers is a shocking account that will supercharge a long overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.