Official Army History: Bush Administration Neglected Afghan War, Diverted Resources to Iraq
Patriot Games
the war in Afghanistan, he noted that the effort was finally getting the
resources it needed. During the previous administration, Obama said,
“commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the
reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.”
“In early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war, in Iraq,”
Obama said, and “for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant
share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national
attention.”
Former Bush administration officials fired back, claiming the Iraq war
did not deprive resources from Afghanistan. Former White House adviser
Karl Rove said “the United States had, at the time what the military
felt was an appropriate level of resources.” Bush’s Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld called Obama’s comments a “bald misstatement, at least
as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense.” Later,
Rumsfeld spokesperson Keith Urbahn turned up the heat, accusing Obama
distorting the facts.
Unfortunately for Rumsfeld, Rove and their neo-con allies, the Army’s
official history of the first four years of the war completely
contradicts their claims. The New York Times reported this week that
according to the official history, as early as late 2003, the Army
historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to
officials at Centcom and [the Department of Defense] that the coalition
presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for a proper
counterinsurgency campaign. Paraphrasing the history, the Times notes
that American forces were “hamstrung by inadequate resources” and thus
“missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of
the war.”
“A Different Kind of War,” the title of the account, to be published
this Spring, is written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s
Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth and covers the period from
October 2001 until September 2005. Rumsfeld was secretary of defense
during this entire time. The Army writes such reports after major
military engagements in order to train future commanders.
Contradicting Rove and Rumsfeld, the historians blame the Iraq war for
the lack of resources in Afghanistan, as well as top Bush officials and
the president himself:
The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to
Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.
First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and
reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation
building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military
officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping
voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall. [...]
Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the
invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States
clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.
The historians also note that, as was the case in Iraq, Bush officials
had neglected to properly plan for what to do after the government fell.
“[T]here was no major planning initiated to create long-term political,
social and economic stability in Afghanistan,” the historians write. “In
fact, the message from senior D.O.D officials in Washington was for the
U.S. military to avoid such efforts.”
Despite Rove and Rumsfeld’s attempts to salvage their legacies, it’s
widely accepted that the Bush administration neglected the Afghan war.
But as the Times notes, these new findings are “notable for carrying the
imprimatur of the Army itself.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/02/army-history-afghanistan/