Michael Hughes: The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers was met with deafening silence because most astute observers already knew the U.S. military had painted a false picture of the war, not to mention the fact the document dump was released to an indifferent American public. That said, the documents still shine a bright light on the incompetence and corruption that drove the policymaking process in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress.
The documents, published on December 9, amount to clear indictments of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and scores of senior officials in both administrations who all deceived the public on what was really going on inside Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
However, U.S. Congress is equally as responsible for enabling these destructive policies including by approving around $1 trillion for the war, a high percentage of which was lost to waste and corruption, according to the documents.