The new Reason Interview is with documentarian Dan Krauss, whose Bodyguard of Lies performs an autopsy on American involvement in Afghanistan. You can stream the movie at most major platforms. I highly recommend it, especially as all manner of foreign policy matters—in the Middle East, Middle Europe, and Latin America—are heating up.
In many ways, this is an excruciating film to watch. If you’re old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks, the passage of The Patriot Act, and the initial invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, it will revivify fading memories of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and others laying down sermons about the need to topple the Taliban (which was providing cover for Osama Bin Laden) and promising a swift and total victory. They spoke with such conviction! And the press ate it up, while Congress did nothing to challenge or watch-dog the aims and spending.
Within six months, Krauss shows, Rumsfeld himself was looking for an exit and clarity of mission was nowhere to be found: Was it neutralizing al Qaeda’s global reach or nation-building, something Bush had sworn off as a candidate for president? The movie also recaptures the false hope of Obama’s presidency. Hailed as antiwar because he made cryptic remarks about staying out of ‘dumb wars,’ he focused on Afghanistan and increased troops there to their all-time while hyping an incoherent ‘surge’ strategy that led to nothing but more death and destruction.
It’s a given that the United States did not build a coherent foreign policy strategy once the Cold War ended, even as the Clinton administration dispatched troops and bombs promiscuously throughout the 1990s (including at least twice for reasons transparently connected to domestic political troubles). That didn’t get better under Bush, of course, or Obama, or Trump I, or Biden, or Trump II (so far). Foreign policy is almost never THE thing in American politics and so we keep forgetting what we’ve done and the mistakes we just made. As Krauss and the former generals, soldiers, Afghans, and journalists he interviews make clear, we are almost perfectly amnesiac when it comes to war. We’re not even fighting the last war, because we’ve already forgotten it ever happened.
In our conversation, one thing I do find positive is that, post-Afghanistan and Iraq, there seems to be a genuine consensus that America should not be in the business of regime change or long, protracted invasions and occupations. Trump has certainly been vocal about that and it’s reflected in his interventions so far (such as in Iran), which have been one-and-done. That said, he’s beginning to shift rhetoric on Ukraine-Russia, so who knows?
All the more reason to revisit Afghanistan and watch Bodyguard of Lies.
Below is the Reason writeup and below that are embeds for YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and SoundCloud.
Lasting 20 years, the war in Afghanistan was not only the longest conflict in American history—it was a near total failure.
Today’s guest is Dan Krauss, whose documentary Bodyguard of Lies is an unflinching look at the Afghan war and the lessons the public desperately needs to learn from it. Krauss shows how officials such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted they weren’t going to be honest with the American people. He reminds us that within six months of the 9/11 attacks, the United States had essentially destroyed Al Qaeda’s capacity to attack us—but instead of leaving, Washington chose two more decades of occupation, nation-building, strategic confusion, and widespread corruption. And he tells how Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama kept doubling down, how trillions of dollars and thousands of lives were wasted, and how a compliant press and Congress let it all happen.
0:00—Introduction
1:14—Donald Rumsfeld and the “bodyguard of lies”
4:59—The Afghanistan War in 2002
7:35—The shifting objectives of the war
18:20—Government corruption in Afghanistan
21:08—Vietnam parallels
29:57—Obama and the Afghanistan War
33:42—The military-industrial complex and tracking the money
36:53—Gen. David McKiernan
43:47—What lessons have Americans learned?
50:30—Did the Afghanistan War make us safer?
1:01:28—What is the message of Bodyguard of Lies?
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