Yesterday, the Washington Post published At War With The Truth, the result of a three-year effort aimed at gaining access to a trove of documents related to our 18-year-long-and-counting Afghanistan War. The documents number “more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.” As with the Pentagon Papers and the Vietnam War, The Post reveals private statements conflicting with public ones from the United States government and military, demonstrating an ongoing, intentional misleading of the American public. Through the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and early into the Trump years, warfighting strategies were flawed, and enormous sums of money were wasted exporting democracy, or attempting it. Corruption was endemic, wrong-headed attempts to quash the opium trade made it more productive than ever, all the while claiming to the public and the press that “progress” was/is being made.
“John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show ‘the American people have constantly been lied to.’” Well, there’s a statement.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) conducted over 400 interviews and used other government information before publishing seven Lessons Learned reports from 2016 to today.
The article is fascinating and frustrating in what it reveals, such as throwing money into a non-modern country without a hint of how to effectively spend it. “One unidentified contractor told government interviewers he was expected to dole out $3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan district roughly the size of a U.S. county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back home: “He said hell no. ‘Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.’” Don’t read past it: $3,000,000 a day.
The article reports rampant corruption, inadequate progress for Afghan military and police force effectiveness, and, echoing Vietnam, attempts to manipulate public opinion. Bad news was already known when Donald Rumsfeld, still Secretary of Defense, blessed the hiding of a 40-page negative report, according to the story. Rumsfeld has been out of the office since 2006 and the war continues. As does putting lipstick on the pig. One senior NSC official said in 2016, “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”
Perhaps the conscience-challenging piece of information should be the estimated 43,000 Afghan civilians killed so far—nearly 1,000 more than the aggregate number of Taliban and other insurgent fighters killed. Both are well behind the 64,000+ Afghan security forces deaths.
I encourage you to read the entire piece.
The open publication of secret documents produced for the benefit of the government but hidden from the public is necessary for a self-governing people. We cannot correct what we do not know. It is too easy for any government—including that of the United States—to hide information from we who are responsible to hold them accountable. When the government can lie and obfuscate about the effectiveness of war, government officials can keep from paying the piper on Election Day. In most such instances “the government” is the president—whether Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Bush, Obama, or Trump—and the administration he heads. Historically, whistleblowers, press reports, congressional hearings, veterans, or some combination reveal calamitous decisions and corrosive behaviors that keep wars hot and the public, simultaneously, unsurprisingly, in the cold.
What should followers of Jesus think about these things?
Some would argue merely that “war is hell,” that things happen in war that cannot be controlled. This much is true. People go crazy. Massacres occur outside the rules of engagement. Innocents are killed accidentally and on purpose. Bombs go awry. Airplanes malfunction. Positions are overrun. Orders are misunderstood. Sound judgment is lost at some times, while it remains in others.
There is a fog of war. What we should have learned since the coining of that phrase is the fog envelopes those on the ground, those at HQ, those at the Pentagon, those in the Congress, those on 5thAvenue, and those on Main Street. At many turns we do not see clearly nor understand fully. Manipulation and deception can go unchecked for years; it has on more than one occasion.
Prosecution of a modern war that lasts eighteen years in a single, distant, undeveloped country depends on the suspension of focus from the people back home. I would argue what’s happening in Afghanistan does not cross the mind of the average American, more than once or twice in forever. It isn’t the focus of mealtime discussion, prayer groups, knitting circles, book clubs, or sermons. American veterans of Afghanistan, generally, are neither vilified like their Vietnam brethren nor canonized as World War Two’s Greatest Generation. After nearly two decades of active fighting, former NFL player Pat Tillman remains not only the most famous person to have died in the War on Terror, but, aside from a few generals, possibly the most famous person to have served in it.
This should lead to more pause, not less, for Christians. The Holy Spirit and scripture, not adrenaline or nationalistic pride, should guide our thinking. What others forget we should remember: eternity is a long, long time and war sends thousands of people into it unprepared.
Former Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. President, and President of NATO, Dwight D. Eisenhower, famously warned of a “military industrial-complex” that would come to dominate our society, even to the soul and spirit. Today, his prescient words are equally appreciated, ignored, and unknown. Followers of Jesus, however, should know. We should know because we serve a Savior who refused a standing army or the political overthrow of Rome; a Savior who said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” who healed the detached ear of an enemy, who forgave the ones who were at that moment crucifying him. The Kingdom of God was not established by terrestrial warfare nor will it be expanded by such. A bloodthirsty Christian is quite the moronic oxymoron.
Eisenhower was not only right on the spiritual implications of the military-industrial complex, he was right to warn about its economic, materialistic foundation. Speaking to the nation on January 17, 1961, he said (all emphasis mine):
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Ike’s concern was the influence of what we commonly call “the defense industry”—a more benign term than military-industrial complex—would become so economically interwoven in American society, that our lives and our livelihoods would come to depend on it, with “grave” and “disastrous” results. One such result is that those of us who are seated in the heavenlies with Christ have come not only to trust in horses and chariots rather than the name of the Lord our God, but to hold fervently a troubling theological substitution as if Jesus Christ himself designed the first Patriot missile battery and deployed it in Galilee. An economy that depends on the military-industrial complex is an economy that depends on war. An economy that depends on war is an economy at odds with the Kingdom.
Reading the signs of the times is more than trying to discern when Christ might return. I would argue a fixation on the timing of Christ’s return can blind end-times enthusiasts from other important realities to which Christians should turn their time, energy, and search for truth. How war is prosecuted should be of the utmost concern to Christians. Of those 42,000 Afghan civilians who have been killed over eighteen years, how many of them died without Christ? That question is far more important than the bottom-lines and stock valuations of arms manufacturers like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics,Raytheon, or Lockheed Martin. If Christ is to be believed, the destiny of our “enemies” supersedes our retirement portfolio. Paul was willing to be banished to eternal hell and damnation if his unbelieving countrymen would come to faith in Christ. Jesus implored us to pray for those who hate and persecute us.
[Insert obligatory warning about allowing human-led political entities to determine who are enemies to the people of God.]
Of all people on earth who should resist the urge to embrace earthly, imperial goals it should be followers of Jesus. It was, after all, a political empire that put Jesus to death at the insistence of religious power-structure leaders. “You take him and kill him yourselves. I don’t find anything wrong in him,” said the Roman procurator tasked with quelling Jewish revolts. Pontius Pilate couldn’t be troubled to defend Jesus to the end, so he allowed the lamb to be slaughtered. What a Friend We Have in Empire has not and should not make the hymnal.
The marriage of the American Civil Religion with Christianity birthed a child which, under most lighting, more resembles the former than the latter. A 23 and Me of 21stcentury American Evangelicalism might reveal ancestral DNA we’d rather not have known and the presence of siblings we’d rather ignore. In all cases followers of Jesus should cast a jaundiced eye toward anything that smacks of hubris, empire, and worldly power, remembering the prince of this world still wars against us through principalities and powers, and that these principalities and powers work to erect and maintain an endless chain of Babylons. Our city is the Jerusalem that is above from where the King reigns over his kingdom not made with human hands, nor maintained by human legislation, nor expanded by military might. May we demand more of a warring government than a bland disinterest and the freedom to go shopping.
