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Using the same deceitful tactics they pioneered in Vietnam, U.S. political and military officials repeatedly misled the country about the prospects for success in Afghanistan.

None of this was true. It was always a lie, designed first to justify the U.S’s endless occupation of that country and, then, once the U.S. was poised to withdraw, to concoct a pleasing fairy tale about why the prior twenty years were not, at best, an utter waste. That these claims were false cannot be reasonably disputed as the world watches the Taliban take over all of Afghanistan as if the vaunted “Afghan national security forces” were china dolls using paper weapons. But how do we know that these statements made over the course of two decades were actual lies rather than just wildly wrong claims delivered with sincerity?

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-government-lied-for-two-decades?

Afghanistan: We Never Learn

As the Taliban waltzes into Kabul, the look of surprise on the faces of top officials should frighten us most of all

The pattern is always the same. We go to places we’re not welcome, tell the public a confounding political problem can be solved militarily, and lie about our motives in occupying the country to boot. Then we pick a local civilian political authority to back that inevitably proves to be corrupt and repressive, increasing local antagonism toward the American presence.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/afghanistan-we-never-learn