The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2014 31 and put the Afghan people rst. Yet even when we nally began making some restitution to Afghan civilians after raids, our payments were erratic and often never reached those who were most damaged. As a result, those families would often go over to the Taliban and become our enemies. is is a di cult area that runs right up against hard-and-fast legal principles that underpin the American way of war and our interpretation of the international law of armed con ict. But the fact remains that for many Afghans, American actions not only did not make them safer; they made themmore vulnerable. It is not too late for us to rethink our approach and rectify these injustices. True, doing so will require legislative action, which would undoubtedly spawn strong opposition from many quarters. But if the American experience in Afghanistan is to live up to what we claimed—that we are not like other foreign powers who came only for their own ends—then it is a task we should undertake, both for the Afghan people and for ourselves. 5. Undertake a serious e ort to educate the American people about the reality of Afghanistan and what we have achieved there. None of the above will be possible without the support of the American people. Sadly, today’s polls show most Ameri- cans believe we were wrong to go into Afghanistan in the rst place. But not too long ago, the answer was the opposite. What changed? Is it war weariness, as so many armchair pundits opine? Or is it something more? In my discussions with a range of Americans over the past year, I have found a di erent answer: Americans are “failure weary.” ey see Afghanistan and Iraq as similar failed e orts, where violence and depravity are the norm. ey do not understand what has really happened on the ground in Afghanistan. Nor do most Americans understand what we undertook there. ey see a failure of “nation-building”—notwithstand- ing the fact that both President George W. Bush and President Obama explicitly rejected “nation-building” as a goal, and never devoted enough resources to get anywhere close to achieving it. Some go so far as to assert that we have failed by not defeating the Taliban, even though Pres. Obama spe- ci cally disavowed that goal when he announced the 2009 “surge.” Instead, he declared that our aim was to degrade the Taliban, so that the Afghan Security Forces could handle the threat it still poses, with some help from us. When I and others in the administration wanted to use the word “win” in documents, we were told not to by White House o cials who insisted that our objective was limited to degrad- ing, not winning. Somewhat understandably, most Americans never understood that distinction. e explanations for Americans’ astonishing ignorance about Afghanistan are many, starting with a media xated on violence, failure and scandal that also su ers from a kind of “groupthink” that makes it unfriendly to stories that challenge the prevailing narrative. Perhaps most important, however, is the lack of leadership on Afghanistan from the very top— across two administrations. Whatever the reasons, we need to come up with an approach that delivers accurate information We have a historic opportunity to make our aid truly e‡ective. A money changer makes a flower out of Afghanis and greenbacks at a streetside stall in Kandahar city. Casey Garret Johnson