The Longest War (2020) - full transcript

Oh, I didn't pay.
Can you pay here?

[laughs]

[machine whirring]

Oh, my gosh.
It took my card.

[laughs]

You might want
to go back, dude.

So today I'm getting filmed

about my job at CIA.

I know you-you were,
um, studying

about Afghanistan and--

[girl]
All the wars.



All the wars,
and you, um, were a spy.

[Maddox chuckles]

I worked with spies.
It's true.

[indistinct chatter]

I'll never feel like
an Afghanistan expert.

The war, it's so complex.

It's almost been cyclical with
our U.S. government as well.

[turn signal clicking]

What is the mission?
What is the goal there?

[car door closes]

♪ soft music ♪

And I got to know Afghans.
I worked with Afghans.

I'm a woman, a mother.

My heart hurts
for these people



because I just don't see
how this ends.

♪♪♪

After the extraordinary
sacrifice

of blood and treasure,

the American people are weary

of the longest war
in American history.

This year we will bring
America's longest war

to a responsible end.

I want the Afghan people
to understand--

America seeks an end to this
era of war and suffering.

[George W. Bush]
We know from the history

of military conflict
in Afghanistan,

it's been one
of initial success

followed by long years

of floundering
and ultimate failure.

We're not gonna repeat
that mistake.

We welcome the distinguished
interim leader

of a liberated Afghanistan,
Chairman Hamid Karzai.

[applause]

[Bill Clinton]
Osama bin Laden publicly vowed

to wage a terrorist war

against America
from Afghanistan.

This will be a long
ongoing struggle

between freedom
and fanaticism.

[George H.W. Bush] Our
commitment to the people there

would lead
to a peaceful Afghanistan

with no more bloodbaths.

[Reagan]
The goal of the United States

remains a genuinely
independent Afghanistan,

free from
external interference.

Massive Soviet military forces
have invaded

the small sovereign nation
of Afghanistan.

History teaches
that aggression unopposed

becomes a contagious disease.

♪♪♪

I grew up thinking Afghanistan

was the biggest country
in the world,

the most beautiful country
in the world,

the most developed country
in the world,

with a huge passion
for my country

because it was very much

the same, uh, thing
my father shared.

♪♪♪

In a very romantic way,

my father was always talking
about the Afghanistan

that he had experienced.

They would go on the weekends
to restaurants.

They would take a walk
in the park.

But these were all those, uh,
fairy tales to us.

Mm, we never experienced
Afghanistan that way.

♪♪♪

One thing in common about many
of these fights in my country

is that, unfortunately,

it's our soil that is
being used for various wars

between the global powers.

♪♪♪

The world
simply cannot stand by

and permit the Soviet Union

to commit this act
with impunity.

[gunfire]

The Soviets killed about
ten percent of the population.

[camera shutter clicking]

It was a genocide,

and the military was not
doing anything about it,

but I heard
that, uh, the agency did.

[Bearden]
The CIA director says,

"I want you to go out there
and win this."

[Coll] I was the
Washington Post correspondent

in, uh, South Asia,
so the Afghan War

was pretty much
the biggest story on my beat.

Pakistan had
an immediate refugee flow.

They went to their ally,
the United States, and said,

"We've got all these rebels

who are coming into our country
as refugees.

They want to liberate
their country

from Soviet occupation.

We, the Pakistan government,
are inclined to help them,

but we could use
your support as well."

And so we were told
to get busy

and try to figure out
what was happening

with these guys
called the mujahideen.

[Sageman]
People knew that the CIA

was supporting the Afghans.

They could never know how.

[Schroen] So we then decided
we would use the Pakistanis

as our surrogates
to support the mujahideen.

[gunfire]

[man]
speaking native language

[Reagan] The Soviet presence
in Afghanistan

is a major impediment

to improved
U.S.-Soviet relations,

and we would like
to remove it.

[Schroen] We were putting in
a variety of weapons systems

into the hands
of the mujahideen.

The United States
started to provide

these Stinger
antiaircraft missiles

to equip the rebels to fight
the Soviets as equals.

They started knocking Soviet
aircraft out of the sky

by the hundreds.

[Bergen]
That changed the war,

and it showed that the
U.S. government was serious

about not just inflicting
some damage on the Soviets

but actually getting them
to leave Afghanistan,

which is what they did.

[Bearden] And as soon as
Boris Gromov rode on that tank

out to the middle
of Friendship Bridge

from Afghanistan,

I hit send on a cable
that was typed out using Xs

to make a big, "We won."

♪♪♪

I wrote an article
and put the name on it,

"Graveyard of Empires."

My point was, it's very easy
getting in there,

but getting out
is immensely difficult,

and winning is...

very, very questionable.

Whatever winning means,

you usually don't get it
in Afghanistan.

♪♪♪

[horns honking]

Kabul has changed a lot
in the last several years.

It used to be
that you could

kind of walk
around the streets

and pick up a cab

and go to a restaurant,
have a nice meal.

If you're a foreigner,
that's basically all gone.

♪♪♪

The Taliban have done
a campaign of attacking

anywhere Westerners gather,
and we're in an armored car

because it's regarded
as too dangerous now,

which is a pity because Kabul
is an amazingly beautiful

and vibrant city.

The city is now brimming
with up to six million people,

and it's a very different Kabul
than the one I remember

under the Taliban
or during the Civil War.

♪♪♪

The United States ended
its official presence

in Afghanistan today,
two weeks before

Soviet troops are scheduled
to complete their pullout.

Our State Department
correspondent

Bill Plante reports.

[Plante] A marine guard hauled
down the stars and stripes

at the U.S. embassy in Kabul

as the remaining handful
of diplomats

prepared to get out
of Afghanistan

as soon as weather permits.

The U.S. joins
other Western nations

which have temporarily
pulled out,

fearing chaos
after Soviet troops

end their ten-year occupation.

I first got
into, uh, Afghanistan

by crossing the-the frontier

between Pakistan
and Afghanistan

with a group of mujahideen
in mid-1989,

just as the Soviet Union
had, uh, withdrawn.

♪♪♪

I was working
with an aid agency,

trying to help
both with refugees in Pakistan

and inside Afghanistan.

People were readying
themselves for the fight

over who would claim
Afghanistan

now that the-the Soviets
had got out.

♪♪♪

America made a fatal mistake.

The Afghan thing was almost
totally forgotten.

The result was that
an Afghanistan

so overloaded with ordnance
and awash with money

slipped into its own devices.

[Coll] From a war
correspondent's perspective,

by the time
I was traveling around

in the war in the early '90s,

it had become
a nasty civil war.

[Constable]
The thing I remember most

was how lonely it was.

Kabul was like a ghost city.

You could stand
in a major intersection,

which now has endless
clogged traffic jams,

and see no one and hear nothing
but bicycle spokes

and horse carriage bells.

It was very haunting.

[man]
yelling in native language

[Constable] There was rape.
There was robbery.

Buildings were rocketed
and shot all the time.

People were terrified.

[Semple] Out of the fight,
street by street in Kabul,

replicated in the sort of
districts of the country,

we got the Taliban movement.

I can recall
the precise moment

in which I learnt
of the Taliban movement.

I was at a garden party,
and a posh Englishman

told me about this supposedly
Islamic student movement

which had just taken over a
swath of territory in Kandahar

and was chasing after these
money-grubbing, gun-wielding,

you know, commanders left over
from the mujahideen,

hanging them up
from trees and posts

and stuffing money
in their mouths,

and he told me,

"Michael, this looks
like the next big thing,"

um, and he was right.

[Coll] The Taliban advertised
themselves

as a kind of purifying force,
a cleansing force

that would reunify Afghanistan
under the banner of Islam.

[Schroen] That was very
attractive to the Pakistanis.

They didn't want Afghanistan
to be a threat,

and so the Pakistani
government

threw their weight militarily

and financially
behind the Taliban,

and by early 1996,

they controlled three-fourths
of Afghanistan.

[Coll] They often conquered
without firing a shot.

They would just ride
into a town

holding Korans in the air

or waving the flags of, uh,
their movement or of Islam,

and whole garrisons
would just, uh, change sides.

[Constable]
The gratitude began to fade

and be replaced
with something else

when it became clear
that the Taliban wanted

to enforce an extremely
restrictive version of Islam.

I went to Afghanistan
as a journalist,

I think, five or six times,

and that meant that you had
to get a visa

from the Taliban government,

which meant that you were there
under very limited

and very strict conditions,
and there were many conditions.

Number one, you had
to completely cover yourself

except your face.

Number two,
you couldn't meet with women.

Number three, you couldn't
take pictures of anything.

I had a camera, a small camera,

hidden under
my voluminous scarf,

and we stopped at a bakery
to buy some bread,

and I saw this boy's face
through the window,

and I just ducked
into the bakery,

and I got out my camera,

and I just took this
one single picture of him,

and then I left.

♪♪♪

There was no music, no-no TV,
no phone system to speak of.

Women were locked
inside their houses.

Girls were not educated.
The economy totally collapsed.

♪♪♪

The deal was,
you get the right to life,

and you give up pretty much
all other rights.

♪♪♪

[Rahmani] This is the pictures
of all the ambassadors

that served here.

As you can see,
there are no women.

So here, I would come
as a shock factor,

but that's where
the change happens.

Starting '92,

I found the country
in the worst possible shape.

There was this, uh, ambience

of darkness and fear

and gloom.

♪♪♪

We have to wear burkas.

We never wore burkas
in my entire life.

I was a young teenager,
and I thought, "Why?

Why should I be like this?"

I told my family
that I am going to sew

the two big shawls
that we had

so that I will have
a very big sheet,

and I would fully
cover myself,

but I am not gonna
wear a burka.

It symbolized
so much oppression to me.

♪♪♪

In 2001,

there were 900,000 students
in school,

and the number of girls?

Zero.

We did not want our
generations to be illiterate.

So, if somebody knew math,

they would quietly tell

the neighborhood, uh,
boys and girls

that, "We will teach you math,"

but that always had
to be hidden.

[Schroen] We said,
"When you guys are victorious

and the Soviets are gone,
we're finished.

We turn the country
over to you.

We're not here forever."

♪♪♪

When that happened,
we basically walked away.

♪♪♪

When the Taliban took over,
most people said,

"There's nothing
we can do about it,

so we're not gonna
do anything.

We're not even gonna
worry about it."

Our interest really was
when bin Laden went there,

rather than anything that's
gonna change Afghanistan.

♪♪♪

[Saleh]
I come from a rural family.

Uh, we were one
of the destitute families,

uh, due to war,

and, uh, when I became
able enough,

I went back to the valley,

and I joined, uh, the forces
fighting the regime.

[woman]
At the age of 19,

he was already
a seasoned war veteran

in charge
of rebuilding villages

bombed in the fighting.

[Saleh]
Couple of years later,

I was given
intelligence assignment.

So, since '97, I was assigned

to handle
the overall relationship

with the, uh--with the CIA.

The strategic aspect
of the relationship

was telling them
what is terrorism,

what is bin Laden,
what is al-Qaeda,

and what type of threat
does it pose

to U.S. interest
in the wider region

and how we should, uh, cope
with it.

Of course, they were not
very receptive

of our strategic analysis.

They were showing
very little interest

to the hosts of al-Qaeda.

They were showing
very, very little interest

to the plight
of the Afghan people,

who were suffering
under that terrorist regime.

♪♪♪

[Bergen] One thing Afghans
don't need a lot of help with

is fighting,
uh, and, uh--

but a number of Arabs,
like Osama bin Laden, came,

and they were very idealistic.

They weren't very large
in number.

They weren't
very military effective.

They didn't have
any fighting experience.

But they got together,

and he founded al-Qaeda
over the course

of a couple of weekends
in Pakistan

in August of 1988.

It was a very secretive
organization.

[Coll] They really didn't have
very many places to go,

and Afghanistan was one place
where bin Laden thought

he could establish
al-Qaeda's headquarters.

[Bergen] In '96, I read
a State Department report

about bin Laden

saying he's financing
Islamic extremism.

He's recruited all of these
Arabs from around the world,

and he could be a problem.

So I went to my bosses at CNN.

I said, "Let's try
and interview this guy."

You know, this is, like,
the hostage video.

Yeah.
The hostage video.

♪♪♪

There we are.
We look almost human.

speaking native language

No one really paid
any attention until 1998,

when al-Qaeda
blew up two American embassies

within nine minutes
of each other.

Two bombs exploded
almost simultaneously today

at the U.S. embassies
in the East Africa nations

of Kenya and Tanzania.

[woman] U.S. officials
say the bombings

have all the fingerprints
of Middle East terror.

[Bergen] That is when
it became clear

that bin Laden and al-Qaeda

was really a big deal
and could--

not only were spouting all
this anti-American rhetoric

but trying to kill, you know,
large numbers of Americans.

[Bill Clinton] There is
convincing information

from our
intelligence community

that the bin Laden
terrorist network

was responsible
for these bombings.

[Grenier] Bin Laden
was constantly moving,

and we were using
Afghan tribal networks

to report on his travels
and his whereabouts.

Our tribal contacts
came to us,

and they said, "Look,
he's in this location now.

When he leaves, he's gonna
have to go through

this particular crossroads,"

and so what they proposed
was to bury

a huge cache of explosives
underneath those crossroads

so that when his convoy
came through,

they could simply blow it up.

And we said, "Absolutely not."

We were risking jail
if we didn't tell them that,

because the CIA
had a so-called lethal finding

that had been signed
by President Clinton

which said that
we could engage in

"lethal activity"
against bin Laden,

but the purpose
of our attack on bin Laden

couldn't be to kill him.

We were being asked
to remove this threat

to the United States

essentially with one hand
tied behind our backs.

[Martin]
I was a fairly junior officer,

and as al-Qaeda grew
into a worldwide presence,

we were very sensitive

and very aware
of this growing phenomenon.

It's not like
they were playing.

The threat was real.

And if President Clinton
had taken action

and killed Osama bin Laden,

there wouldn't
have been a 9/11.

If there wouldn't have been
a 9/11,

there wouldn't have been
Afghanistan.

If there wouldn't have been
Afghanistan,

there probably
wouldn't have been Iraq.

What would the world be like?

♪♪♪

[Maddox] It still gets to me,
living in our nation's capital

and every building
has significance...

...especially driving by here.

Something I'll never forget,
shaped my whole life.

♪♪♪

I had finished my first week
at Georgetown.

They have a National Security
Studies program there.

I was driving around
in the area,

getting used to it
after that first week,

and then a bunch of cars
stopped in front of me,

and people got out and started
screaming and pointing.

The plane had just hit
the Pentagon.

♪♪♪

When I came to D.C.,
I actually didn't think

I would stay,

but counterterrorism
developed into an entire field

after that day,
and I got swept up in it.

♪♪♪

[Coll] On 9/11, it was clear
who the enemy was,

and the Bush administration
went straight into Afghanistan,

where al-Qaeda was,

where bin Laden was,
and tried to attack them,

both for the purpose
of responding to 9/11

but also to try to disrupt
any planning

that al-Qaeda
might have under way

for a follow-on attack.

[man] The Taliban
have now made it clear

that they will not bow
to American pressure.

At a chaotic press conference
at their embassy in Islamabad,

they threatened holy war
if attacked

and rejected
President Bush's demand

to surrender Osama bin Laden.

Are you willing to hand
Osama bin Laden

to the United States or not?

No, no, no, no.

[Mohseni]
Well, for the Taliban,

there was an opportunity
for them to distance,

uh, the movement from these
groups and individuals,

and we were hoping
they wouldn't,

because, uh, for us,
it was an opportunity

to actually rid Afghanistan
of the Taliban.

And as we expected,
they stuck to their guns,

and they did not
in any way compromise,

and that was the beginning
of the end for them,

at least in that period.

[Schroen] When 9/11 happened,
they called me in.

Basically, they said, "Will you
take the first team in?

We got to--we want to put
a team together."

I said, "Oh, God,

everybody in the United States
wants to do this,

and they're giving me the job,

be the first people
to hit back at bin Laden?"

I said, "Yeah,
better believe it."

[Bernsten] When I entered,
you know, I had my orders.

I had an operational directive
to execute on the ground.

Number one, destroy the Taliban
because they're in the way.

We have to get at al-Qaeda.

Number two,
kill every member of al-Qaeda

that you can find
on the battlefield.

Number three,
find and kill bin Laden.

♪♪♪

[Schroen]
Well, when we left,

chief of
Counterterrorism Center said--

We met him on the morning
we were getting ready to leave,

and he said, "I'm gonna
give you your orders now.

Once the Northern Alliance
is ready

and they go into Kabul,
we want you and your team

to go in with them

and capture bin Laden
and his lieutenants.

Then what I want you to do is,
when you capture those guys,

I want you to cut
their heads off,

and the lieutenants, I want you
to put their heads on pikes

and display them
and photograph them,

and bin Laden,
I want you to take his head

and put it on dry ice
in a box and ship it back,

so I'm gonna take it
to the president to see."

So I look at the deputy.

He looks at me,
and I-I'm saying,

"Is this guy serious?"

I said, "Okay, maybe we could
cut off their heads.

Maybe. I don't know."

I said, "I doubt it,
but maybe we could."

I said, "And we can certainly
make pikes out in the field.

You know, that's not hard."

I said, "But where
am I gonna find dry ice

in Afghanistan?"

♪♪♪

[Coll]
Vice President Cheney

said fairly soon
after the attacks,

"We're gonna go over
to the dark side."

And, historically,
when presidents have wanted

to go over to the dark side,
they've asked the CIA to do it.

[Cheney] A lot of what needs
to be done here

will have to be done quietly
without any discussion,

using sources and methods, uh,

that are available
to our intelligence agencies.

[Gossman] The first trip
I took was in 1994,

Human Rights Watch.

The war had continued.

The Soviets had gone,
but the war was continuing,

which was sort of--
came to be the story

over the many years
I went to Afghanistan.

Despite whatever
political changes happened,

the war almost had a life
of its own and continued.

The first boots on the ground
after 9/11 were the CIA,

and very quickly,
they began working with

and bolstering militia groups
to work with,

and those groups
were designed,

recruited, and trained

to go after leading al-Qaeda
or Taliban figures.

[Coll] The CIA was transformed
as an institution by 9/11.

Out of that came
the, uh, structure

that is now notorious...

the black sites, the enhanced
interrogation techniques,

the waterboarding,
and the rest.

When I joined
the agency in the 1980s,

only the bad guys
used those techniques on us.

Unlike the FBI,

the agency really did not have
any skill in interrogation,

especially
hostile interrogation.

That was something new.

[Martin]
I can honestly say

I know what attacks
were stopped.

I know how hard
the folks worked,

and I also know
they weren't emotional.

People weren't having fun
waterboarding people.

[Maddox]
I would never say

that I am in support
of torture

or anything in that regard,

but there was definitely
a push technically

and in human intelligence

to get as much information
as possible,

and you have
to put yourself back

in that particular time
in history.

When I think about...

when I think about the kids

and the-and the-and the-
and the women and children

and good Americans
who are still alive

because of what we did,
you know what I say?

I say, "Fuck history.

Fuck history."

As far as that program,
I slept good at night.

[Gossman]
I did a briefing on it

for all the ambassadors
in Kabul,

and I had said

that the torture
that had been described

by people who had investigated
the secret detentions,

the salt pit, the case
of people being left out,

dying of hypothermia,
and the rest of it,

these kinds of torture
and secret detentions

had been known
in the Soviet times.

It was shocking for them
to be coming up again

in post-2001 Afghanistan.

The Americans didn't
come to the briefing,

but they came
immediately afterwards

and wanted to see me.

When I was approached
by one of them,

he was so angry,
he was shaking.

The very fact I dared
compare those abuses

to what had happened
with the Soviets

had infuriated him,

and I'm just like--
that's what infuriated him,

not the fact
that they happened

but that I had made
a comparison with the Soviets.

The way the-that war
has been fought,

the counterterrorism war,

it's largely shaped
where we are today.

It was always the CIA's war.

It was in the '80s, the '90s,
and it was after 2001.

♪♪♪

[Bernsten] We enter Kabul.
It's 12 November.

I know bin Laden's fled.

Watch bin Laden move south,

which was down to Tora Bora,

and then pursued right away.

Tora Bora is a very remote
mountainous part of Afghanistan

on the border with Pakistan.

It's an area
that he knew very well.

He'd been going through
that area during the '80s,

fighting the Soviets.

It's an area--
he liked being there.

He, uh--he had, like,
a vacation home there,

which wouldn't be my
first choice of vacation spot.

[Bernsten]
We knew that bin Laden

was moving with a group
of about 1,000 people.

Right away they said, "Okay,
we're gonna go pursue him."

I said, "Do it. Send them in."
We go up.

They get up on top
of a promontory mountain piece,

and then down below,

there's bin Laden
and his huge element.

Our team had a SOFLAM,

Special Operations Forces
Laser Acquisition Mechanism,

which allowed them to target

and do 56 hours of air strikes

and just hammer them.

We bombed the bejesus
out of the place.

[Bernsten] We destroyed
most of their gear,

their radios, their vehicles.

They had tanks.
They had all sorts of stuff.

They were trying
to get up into position.

We wrecked it all on the ground
before they could get up there

and killed a bunch of them.

Bin Laden wrote his will
at Tora Bora.

He thought he was gonna die.

He thought this was the end.

♪♪♪

But it wasn't.

♪♪♪

[Bernsten] So, after our guys
go up, do the bombing,

the initial bombing,
that first four guys come out,

and one of those guys had been
a former Delta Force guy,

have him brought right back.

He's the one
that says to me, "Gary,

we are going to need
U.S. forces."

♪♪♪

[Bergen]
The CIA requested 800 Rangers,

but that request was
turned down by the U.S. Army.

♪♪♪

What Gary Brunson
was arguing for, I think,

were very large numbers
of troops, uh,

to go into the valleys,

and, frankly, I-I thought that
much of what he was advocating

at the time
was not gonna be effective.

Gary probably had a little bit
more enthusiasm than judgment.

♪♪♪

That's bullshit.

They weren't accustomed
to having to make decisions

as rapidly as I was forcing

because I knew the enemy
was going to escape.

I didn't have a choice.

♪♪♪

On the 16th of December,

bin Laden and his-his-his guys
left the mountains.

♪♪♪

They just walked across
into Pakistan.

They got on motorcycles
and just headed out,

and it took us all those years
later before we found him.

♪♪♪

We were building the country.

We were training
the Afghan military.

We were paying
for building of facilities

with the U.S. military.

We had turned it over
to State Department and say,

"Okay,
now you build a new nation.

You teach them democracy,
how do they handle elections.

Do all that stuff."

[Rahmani]
As things progressed,

it was a dream come true,

and it was hard to believe

that we had got
a second chance to live.

♪♪♪

That was when I really
explored the country.

That was when I started

not only to travel
to every corner of Kabul

but also to over 15 provinces.

It was a utopia.

[Barker] My first trip
over to Afghanistan

was in January of 2002.

There's a reason that most
of the, like, correspondents

that came up
during that time were women.

Men had a very hard time,

particularly
in the early days,

doing stories about women,

and women were
a fascinating story

and an important story
in Afghanistan.

[Waldman] My first stories
in Afghanistan

were about what life
had been like

for the women under the Taliban

because they were finally able
to speak freely.

♪♪♪

There were women
who had been forcibly married

to the Taliban.

There were teachers
and doctors and young women

who had grown up

during those five years
of not being free at all.

[Barker] As people finally had
access to the outside world,

the culture was changing
before our very eyes.

♪♪♪

[Mohseni] I left Afghanistan
when I was 12.

I had not been to the country
for a very long time.

But the need to come back, uh,

was very strong
for not just me

but for a lot of other Afghans.

I was a banker,
and my brother was a lawyer,

and the other brother
was a finance person,

and our sister
was a marketing person.

And in 2002,

we secured
the first private license

for a radio station.

[laughter on radio]

[woman]
speaking native language

[laughter]

[indistinct chatter on radio]

♪♪♪

[Mohseni] It was about music.
It was about jokes.

It was men and women
just having a conversation.

♪♪♪

But it's ironic that...

how many people
are enemies of fun.

The conservatives at the time,

they were very suspicious.

We're a bunch of young people
in this house, basically,

no security whatsoever,

and people would literally
knock on our doors and say,

"We hate you guys."

But so the radio
was a success,

and we thought
the natural progression

would be to launch
a television station.

[man]
speaking native language

speaking native language

[Mohseni] We saw the good news
on day one,

and we came up
with all sorts of programs

that we could produce quickly.

[applause]

And then we started
to do really big stuff,

like the Idol format
with Afghan Star.

♪ upbeat rock music ♪

singing in native language

speaking native language

[Mohseni]
When we first launched,

this whole idea
of voting for a winner,

they couldn't believe that we
would stick to our principles

in terms of, like, counting
people's text messages.

But what was extraordinary

was how quickly
people accepted it.

[cheers and applause]

That's what's interesting
with the media.

We just give people sort of
a glimpse of what's possible.

[woman]
This weekend in Afghanistan,

the voice of the people
was finally heard.

[woman] Precious ballots
from Afghanistan's

only presidential
election in 5,000 years

poured into counting centers
around the country.

[indistinct chatter]

[Bergen] There hasn't been
a presidential election

in the United States
since 1900 where 70 percent

of the population
able to vote voted.

♪ soft music ♪

[Constable] I went
to villages and schools

where people were voting,

and the feeling in those rooms

was one of pride and hope

and belief that things
were getting better

and that the system
that was being created

would help the country.

[applause]

[Karzai] The Afghan people,
by coming out and voting,

have given the last

defeat to terrorism.

[Cheney]
The tyranny is gone,

the terrorist enemy
is scattered,

and the people
of Afghanistan are free.

[Schroen] I thought,
"If things keep on like this,

we can win this
in a couple of years."

♪♪♪

[McRaven]
All the books you see here

are about
special operations missions,

and they don't always go well.

Uh, you know, when I think
about Desert One,

it didn't go well.

When I think about
a lot of these, uh, books

that are here
on World War II missions,

they didn't go well.

So I actually drew
on a lot of the lessons

because I wanted to make sure
whatever plan

that I constructed for
the mission took into account,

you know, the successes
and why we were successful

and-and, frankly, the failures

and how we avoid
those failures.

I was sent overseas to run

the Special Operations
Task Force in Afghanistan,

and from a military
standpoint,

Afghanistan appeared to be
kind of in a caretaker status.

Please.

We clearly have moved
to a period of stability

and stabilization
and reconstruction.

[McRaven] So we shifted
our focus in 2003

as we began
the invasion of Iraq.

[mortar fires]

- [man] Jesus!
- [man 2] Whoo!

[Martin]
Big tanks, big toys,

that was the new war,

and our allies
became confused at,

what were
our real objectives?

We will stay on task until
we've achieved our objective,

which is to rid Iraq
of weapons of mass destruction.

"What?

They haven't hurt you.
Saddam hasn't hurt you.

He doesn't like al-Qaeda.
There's not al-Qaeda in Iraq."

[man]
Whoa!

[Grenier] I was called
into a meeting

with the CIA director,

and he told me
that he wanted me

to head up the CIA effort
in Iraq.

And the most, uh,
experienced senior officers

who were in a position,
you know, to deal

at a political level, uh,

very quickly left, uh,
the Afghan theater.

We're worried about terrorism,
and next thing, we wake up,

and-and resources are gone.

♪ dramatic music ♪

[Kilcullen] When I was
in the State Department

Counterterrorism Bureau,

the most important resource
that was in short supply

was policy-maker attention,

and I said,
"We actually have to focus

on local-level governance,

reforming the Afghan
corruption system,

and giving the Afghan military

a series of really basic
capabilities,"

because by that point, we were
so sucked into the war in Iraq

that we just didn't have
the bandwidth to deal with it.

[man]
yelling in native language

[Kilcullen]
And the Taliban in Pakistan

and their cell groups
in Afghanistan

began to exploit that.

♪♪♪

I, uh, was involved
in some of the early,

early stages of talking
with the Taliban

about how to ensure that they
didn't join an insurgency.

They actually found
some way of reconciling

with the new regime.

I mean, it happened, like,
in my sitting room

in, you know, the house
in Islamabad, um,

you know, friendly discussions.

[men]
speaking native language

[Semple] My ability
to talk with Taliban today

is based upon actions
which I have taken every day

since I crossed
over the border in '89.

They can check my reputation,

work out how discreet I am,

and reckon
if I am duplicitous,

and I'm sort of, like,
doing the same

when I'm talking with them,

because, um,
one w-one way or another,

both sides of the relationship
have got to trust each other

to be able to-to go forward.

♪♪♪

In the wake of 9/11,

the Taliban leadership
wanted surrender terms

to live respectably
in their homes,

recognizing the authority
of the new government

which had been imposed
by the Americans.

Those terms were available.
They were torn up.

Instead we got increasingly
stories of Taliban

who'd tried to go home to
their villages in Afghanistan

either getting arrested
or giving up,

crossing the border,

going over to-to Pakistan

ready for the next chapter.

♪♪♪

The Taliban start to reform
the organization, uh,

saying that, "We have been
excluded from this new setup.

We're gonna have
another go."

[man]
Tonight Frontline reports

on the return of the Taliban.

[gunfire]

♪♪♪

There's some, uh,
ICOM chatter saying

that the Taliban
are looking at us right now.

[alarm blaring]

♪ somber music ♪

♪♪♪

[man]
speaking native language

[man]
speaking native language

♪♪♪

[Waldman]
For Americans,

the original story
of this long war

was we were saviors.

♪♪♪

We had gone in
and done a good thing...

and people were ecstatic
to be free again.

But the reality is,
I don't think

it was ever as clean
as we wanted to believe.

♪♪♪

[Barker] The first inflection
point that I noticed

happened in May 2006

when a U.S. military convoy
crashed into a crowd of people,

and they killed
about 14 people.

[crowd yelling]

♪♪♪

[gunfire]

speaking native language

♪♪♪

[crowd yelling]

[Constable]
People in these crowds

were shouting
angry anti-American slogans,

and I went, "What?

What has happened here?"

♪♪♪

That was the first time
I realized

that there was
as much resentment

against
the international presence

as there was
gratitude or hope.

♪♪♪

[Barker] There was
this building resentment

that Afghans had
against corruption

and civilian casualties,

and both of those could be
tied directly back to America.

We were pouring in
so much money

that corruption
was all but inevitable

with no checks and balances,

and then
with civilian casualties,

let's just say any
civilian casualty in general,

the Taliban
would immediately put out

press releases locally
saying,

"This is America
doing this to you."

They'd make up things,
and it was very effective.

[crowd yelling]

[gunfire]

[woman] Well, today's riots
showing just how fragile

our relationship is
with Afghanistan,

a key player
in the War on Terror.

Now, is it just a small group
of troublemakers at work here,

or are the Afghan people
simply ungrateful?

♪♪♪

[Constable] Afghans have
this streak of defiance

against the world
because of history.

There was the Russians
and the fact

that the Americans had
abandoned Afghanistan before.

There's always in the back
of the minds of Afghans

that-that suspicion
of ulterior motives.

♪♪♪

[Saleh]
United States got distracted,

and they wanted to show

that Afghanistan was still
this good story working

and it is rosy,

and they were not...

they were not listening
to us, you know?

♪♪♪

[Grenier]
I had great misgivings

because I felt that the CIA

needed to stay engaged

with key political players
inside Afghanistan,

but I could see very quickly

that there was very little
appetite, uh, for doing that.

It's not that we didn't know
Afghanistan

was going badly after that.

We did, but we couldn't
do anything about it,

because by the time
Iraq started to go bad,

Afghanistan
was also going bad,

and we were caught in a war
in two fronts

without the resources
to deal with both.

♪♪♪

[George W. Bush] America's
men and women in uniform

took away al-Qaeda's safe haven
in Afghanistan,

and we will not allow them
to reestablish it in Iraq.

So I have committed
more than 20,000

additional American troops
to Iraq.

The agreement
lays out a framework

for the withdrawal
of American forces in Iraq,

a withdrawal that is possible

because of the success
of the surge.

[man]
yelling in foreign language

[man] While Iraq has dominated
the headlines,

the less-publicized fight
in Afghanistan

has intensified.

[Obama] My fellow citizens,
our nation is at war

against a far-reaching network
of violence and hatred,

and for those who seek
to advance their aims

by inducing terror
and slaughtering innocents,

you cannot outlast us,
and we will defeat you.

[cheers and applause]

For six years,
Afghanistan has been denied

the resources that it demands
because of the war in Iraq.

It is in our vital
national interest

to send an additional 30,000
U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Well, I think
that in the last year,

we've made a lot of progress.

[Petraeus] Two thousand ten
will be a year

that will see progress

and a reversal
of Taliban momentum.

[woman] Well, the financial
and human cost

of the War in Afghanistan

has gone up every year
over the past five years,

more than 1,600 U.S. troops.

This past year in Afghanistan
was the deadliest yet

for American troops.

[Petraeus] Momentum achieved
by the Taliban in Afghanistan

since 2005 has been arrested
in much of the country.

I wish I could tell you
that this war was simple,

but that's not the way
of counterinsurgencies.

They are fraught with both
successes and setbacks,

which can exist
in the same space

and in the same time,

and I believe
the campaign is on track.

♪♪♪

[Coll] If you ask the
question, "Why are we here?"

as President Obama did when
he came into office in 2009,

"Why are we fighting
in Afghanistan?"

well, his best experts
gathered and advised him,

"Sir, we're here
because al-Qaeda

is still a threat
to the United States.

Bin Laden's still alive.
We got to finish the job."

[McRaven] Every year,
there was this sense

that if we did X, Y, and Z,

maybe we could finish up
the war.

[Obama] Tonight I can report
to the American people

and to the world
that the United States

has conducted an operation
that killed Osama bin Laden,

the leader of al-Qaeda.

[McRaven]
And this will go down

as one of the great missions

in the history
of the intelligence community.

As I was planning the mission,
you had to have surprise.

We had surprise.
You had to have speed.

We're coming in by helicopters.

And you had to have purpose,

and God knows these-these, uh,
SEALs and soldiers had purpose.

They were going after the most
wanted man in the world.

It was about
who we are as Americans.

This man and his people
had attacked New York

and Pennsylvania
and Washington, D.C.,

and we had an obligation

to spend as long as it took
to bring him to justice.

♪♪♪

[Coll]
We did get bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda is diminished.

It's scattered.
It's under pressure.

We have been killing people
with our drones

for a good while now,

so why are we still here?

♪♪♪

[engine whirring]

♪♪♪

As the war in Afghanistan
went on and on,

the CIA then got into
the secret air war business,

which is really what
the drone campaign was.

It was a secret air war

designed to do
what the United States

was not prepared to do
through conventional means.

The CIA was given
charge of that

because it wasn't
going to be declared.

It wasn't going to be run
by the Air Force

or by the special operations
groups at the Pentagon.

It was, uh, covert,
and so that added to the sense

that the CIA was--
became an agency at war.

[Bergen]
It's a new way of war.

The United States government
wouldn't even acknowledge

this was really happening,

and-and when they did
acknowledge it,

privately they would say,

"There's
no civilian casualties."

Well, that wasn't true.

[man]
In Afghanistan,

NATO is investing
a U.S. air strike on Thursday

that may have killed a child
in Helmand Province.

[Raddatz] Whatever the
benefit of the drone strikes,

they have created
enormous resentment

among some here in the region

who view the strikes as another
sign of American arrogance.

[Bergen] And you can see,
this is by administration,

so under George W. Bush,

there were
relatively limited strikes

except right at the end
of his second term.

Then under Obama,
it spikes up hugely.

So it was really
President Obama

who hammed it up
very dramatically.

You can see the estimated
total number of casualties

is up to almost as high
as 3,000

on the outer bounds.

Myself and my colleagues
at New America

have been doing this
for about a decade.

We felt that there was
some data out there,

print media stories that we
could assemble and sort of say,

"What's going on?
Who's being killed?

How many strikes are there?"

And so we-we began
to kind of collate all this.

[Martin] When it came
to the Predator,

we also had our forces
somewhere in the area.

So there would be a shot,

and then people
were gonna move in

to do the sensitive site
collection,

and then--
so, you know, it was very human

because you knew
who were down there.

[Bergen] Afghanistan, I think,
was the early laboratory

of what this more
paramilitary CIA became,

so a drone program that went
from surveillance drones

to actually killing people.

I would say, actually,
the principal reason the CIA

is in Afghanistan is,
in a way, the drone program,

because after 9/11, al-Qaeda
didn't remain in Afghanistan.

They fled into Pakistan, uh,

and the Taliban
regrouped there.

[Martin] If I'm trying
to deploy six or 12 men

trying to climb up a mountain

and get this guy
when I can do this easier

and save our men
and women's lives and--

I'll go--I'll take the Predator
any day, any day.

♪♪♪

[Constable] In the early years
and really even through,

I would say,
for the first ten years,

you could travel anywhere.

The capital was lively.
The capital felt free.

Girls were going to school.

Girls were going to college.

It certainly felt like a place
that was churning with change.

♪♪♪

[Musazai] My father told me
about American University,

and he said, "It's the best
university in Afghanistan."

He always wanted me
to-to get education...

...so I joined the university.

[Sedney]
The vision for people here

is not a sixth-century
fundamentalist Islamic state.

It's a 21st-century
advanced country,

and they want to get there.

♪♪♪

We can play a role in that,

in helping them
achieve their dreams.

My father never want me
to come to this university

because of the risks involved
with the name "American" on it,

and seeing the situation,

how badly the war is going on
in Afghanistan,

he never wanted me
to come here.

But I told him
I have goals in my life,

and I've already did good
in my high school,

and I had passion
to get an education.

[Musazai] I was not worried
about security.

I had heard
about explosions on news,

but I had not experienced
something like that.

[Constable] As the Taliban
insurgency became stronger,

there was this growing
pattern of attacks

that began to make
everybody realize

that the Taliban
really were back

and really were causing trouble
and really were starting

to put the brakes
on progress of different kinds.

Many evenings,
I would go to my favorite bar,

this Lebanese café,
and I used to go there

probably at least once a week
for many, many years.

When you live
and work in a war zone,

you need a place like that.

You need someplace you can go

and really feel yourself,
be yourself,

and that's pretty much
the only place I felt that way.

And then the Taliban
attacked that café,

shot dead everyone in it,
including the owner.

[woman] The scenes
of this restaurant

are really quite incredible--

people crouched
on top of one-one-one another,

underneath tables,

gunned down inside there.

So that seems to have been
what has happened.

Anybody who was injured
seems to have been likely

to have been outside
the restaurant,

potentially in cars
waiting outside

or about to enter
the restaurant.

Anybody inside seems unlikely
to have been able

to escape easily
from the gunmen.

That's the moment
I sort of thought,

"What's left here, you know?
Why are we even here?"

I remember feeling it.
I remember thinking that.

♪♪♪

[Maddox] When I had
a temporary assignment

in Afghanistan,

I could electrically feel
the dangers around me.

There we go.

I've definitely known
people that have died.

- You want milk?
- No.

[Maddox, voice breaking]
The night before I left,

I was sitting
with my younger daughter,

and she gave me this bracelet
that she made,

and I promised her
I'd wear it every day

and every night
that I was away, and I did.

[sighs]
I never took it off.

And when I would leave the wire
or go to the less safe

or secure
and fortified areas...

I looked down at that bracelet,

and I would definitely question
what I was doing.

"Am I a responsible mom?

Does my work here
really make a difference

in this seemingly endless war?"

♪♪♪

I managed analytic teams
that covered Afghan politics

and Afghan economics.

At that time, there was
a U.S.-military narrative

that things were getting better
in the country

and that the Taliban
was failing,

and that was leading to
the discussions of drawdown.

[Obama]
Two thousand fourteen,

we have agreed
that this is the year

we will conclude our
combat mission in Afghanistan.

But things on the ground
were evolving

and telling a little bit
of a different story.

The 2015 takeover of Kunduz,

that's the first
provincial capital

the Taliban had taken
since before 2001.

It was a big deal.

[mortar fires]

[man]
The battle for Kunduz

started before dawn,

as Afghan government troops
tried in vain

to hold back the advance
of the Taliban.

After the West's
trillion-dollar war

against the Taliban,

its fighters still pose
a potent threat.

[Maddox] They took over
the city for about two weeks.

They released
a lot of prisoners--

a lot of them
were Taliban fighters--

and displaced
tens of thousands of people

in the process.

It was a total propaganda win
for them.

[translator] God willing,
this is our hope,

to build a religious school,

to build a bridge, a road,
a sharia-based government.

This is why we came out,

and this is what
we fought for--

so that sharia law
is enforced here.

Just holding the city--
that's all they needed to do

was just take it and hold it,
show of force

to show their fighters
and the world

that they were there
and still capable--

was quite significant.

♪♪♪

[Gossman] What happened in
Kunduz caught people off guard

when the Taliban
actually managed

to gain control of the city,

and I think what happened then
was a kind of panic.

The psychological blow
and the PR repercussions

of having lost
a very important northern city

were enormous,

and so then there was a kind of

real scrambling
to-to regain control,

and the American military
made a really horrific error.

[man]
Breaking news overnight--

U.S. warplanes may have
killed nine local staffers

at a medical clinic
run by Doctors Without Borders.

The attack was in
the provincial city of Kunduz.

The U.S. apparently was trying
to dislodge Taliban insurgents

who had seized the city
on Monday.

[Gossman] An American gunship
targeted the hospital

and circled it
and hit it repeatedly.

What's concerning, maybe,
about how it unfolded

was that the Afghan forces
operating there

had raided the hospital
some point previously,

looking for wounded Taliban,

and were apparently
quite unhappy with the fact

that MSF treated wounded
Taliban in the facility,

whereas MSF,
like any medical-care provider,

say that they treat anyone,

regardless
of political affiliation.

[man]
Our staff have reported

that there were
no armed combatants

or active fighting in

or from the compound
prior to the air strike.

[translator]
Doctors were about to take me

to an operating theater
when the bomb hit.

There were flames
all around me.

I saw patients and doctors
burn to death.

♪♪♪

[Gossman]
Forty-three people died,

quite a number of them
staff and patients...

including patients on the
operating table at the time,

including children.

I mean, it was just horrific.

♪♪♪

And some of these forces
that have carried out

these raids
on medical facilities

are the ones we identified
as being backed by,

trained, recruited
by the American CIA.

♪♪♪

That hospital bombing
after the siege of Kunduz

was pretty devastating.

A lot of innocent civilians
were killed,

and war is war,
and you can always say that,

but when innocent lives
are lost,

it really does make it
difficult to continue the work.

I saw a lot
of horrific images,

and it's hard
to deal with that

and learn how to process that,

but I learned
and found a way to...

store those images

and those experiences in my
heart without it destroying me.

You wake up in the morning,
and you brush it off,

and there's always an emergency
and something pressing

that's happening,
and you don't have time

to necessarily process
during the day,

so you just...you just go
150 miles per hour.

You go until you crash again.

[Sedney]
It was seven o'clock at night

when the most number
of students and faculty

and staff were here,
and it was just

when people were going
to their last class of the day.

The attackers loose off
a couple of volleys.

One of them goes this way

and heads
towards our escape route.

Another one goes in here
to our main classroom building.

At that time,
this-these doors were open.

We didn't have the-the heavy
doors we have on them now.

It was, uh,
the month of August

in 2016,

and I was expecting

that it's my last semester.

I was done with my classes,

and I went to offer
the evening prayer,

and we were about
to leave the mosque.

I heard some people shouting.

My friend immediately
closed the door,

and she said--
she-she calls me Bresh--

and she said, "Bresh,
why is there gunshots?"

As she said that...

♪♪♪

...the explosion happened,

and everything went dark.

[Qasemi]
I saw myself on the ground

after a couple
of minutes there,

and I realized
that there was a huge,

um, hole
in the back of my head.

American University campus
in Kabul, Afghanistan,

is under attack as we speak.

At least one university guard
is now dead.

Officials say that dozens
of students and staff

are still trapped inside,
their fate unknown.

[Musazai] Everybody was crying
and screaming.

The terrorists said,
"Don't scream," you know?

And then they started shooting.

♪♪♪

I felt that somebody's
standing behind me,

and when I looked at him,
he shot me,

and I pretended to be dead

because I thought this is
the only way to...

to save myself.

♪♪♪

[Qasemi]
I was bleeding so badly.

I was trying to remember
what's happening

at the university,

and I remember
what my father told me.

He said I can't come here,

and I regretted, um, to have
not accepted what he told me.

♪♪♪

I thought, um,
"It's a-it's a dream."

I wanted to wake up,

but then I realized
it's not a dream.

It's reality.

[indistinct chatter]

♪♪♪

This university has educated
more than 100

top government officials,
young people.

Afghanistan
is a very young country,

where 75 percent
of its population

is below the age of 25,

so the attack against
the American University

is an attack
against Afghanistan's future.

♪♪♪

We're numb to so many things
in Afghanistan.

I mean, someone
described PTSD to me,

and I think
that as Afghans-as Afghans,

we collectively suffer from it.

♪♪♪

[siren wailing]

[man] Unsafe now are
Afghanistan's journalists.

A bus carrying TOLO TV
employees was the target.

[Mohseni] We have lost
13 colleagues in three years,

and they were kids
that we employed,

and they were members
of our family.

♪♪♪

It's not just a question
of these young kids

leaving us far too early.

It's also their families.

Sometimes they were
the breadwinners

of an entire clan.

♪♪♪

It brings home how serious,

you know, what we do is and...

and how dangerous it is,
and, you know,

we've created this culture
of telling the truth,

of pushing boundaries,

so there's an element of guilt

that we have exposed
these people.

[man] The Taliban
said it meant

to target the journalists,

that the channel had accused
their fighters of raping women

when they briefly seized
the city of Kunduz last year.

You think it through, and then
you think, you seriously think,

"Do we need to do this?
Is it that important?

If we can save a life,

is it worth having
a news outlet?"

♪♪♪

For the Taliban,

their ideology
is so important for them,

and the values that we push,

whether it's women's rights
and so forth,

goes very much against
what they believe in.

But also, I think that we
represent the new Afghanistan

because the country
has moved on,

and for them,
it's difficult to accept that.

[Semple] I take some hope
from the fact that now Afghans

on both sides of the conflict,

they're incredibly tired
of this war.

They're not baying for blood.
They want to see an end to it.

With people I trust
amongst the Taliban,

we're involved in a collective
effort to make sense

about what's going on
inside their own movement,

about what's going on in Kabul
and amongst the-the--

you know,
the non-Taliban Afghans,

and making sense of what
the United States is doing.

speaking native language

United States
had a very difficult time,

almost from the beginning
of the Afghan War,

deciding whether the Taliban

was an enemy
of the United States.

Are they a threat
to the United States?

Well, they're a threat
to our ally in Afghanistan,

but no Taliban, uh,
has declared an intention

to strike the United States,

certainly not
in an official way.

In fact,
they say the opposite--

"We're only fighting you

because you're here
in our country.

If you get out of our country,
we'll leave you alone."

[Schroen]
Right now the Taliban,

they don't like ISIS
any more than we do,

so there's a war
going on there

while the Taliban still
blow up people in-in Kabul

and around the country.

[Martin]
I do think, at this point,

the Taliban may have learned
their lesson

about harboring al-Qaeda.

Now, why they're
after Americans now?

Because they're in Afghanistan.

We're there.

And for the Taliban and for-
for Afghanistan in general,

the way to communicate is,
you hurt them till they leave.

They did it to the Russians,
you know,

and-and they're doing it to us.

[man] An American soldier
is dead tonight

after a Taliban car bomb
exploded

in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Ten civilians and
a military soldier from Romania

also killed in that attack,

which comes as the U.S.
tries to finalize a peace deal.

[Waldman]
I'm really interested

in that whole incident,

partly because there was
a video someone took

right when it happened,

and there's an Afghan man who--

I think he sees
the truck or van

kind of coming on
to the sidewalk,

and you can see he knows,
and he starts to run,

and then he dies
when it blows up.

That video went really viral,
and it was such a sad story

'cause it was--
I think he was a shopkeeper,

and he usually sent
his assistant to do something

but decided that day
to give his assistant a break

and he would go do it.

I can't remember
the exact story,

but something about that moment

and people seeing him
kind of know what's coming

and try to escape,

I think every Afghan
saw themselves in that,

and that's why people
just kept watching it

over and over and over,

but that is what life
has become, you know?

You're just waiting

or hoping you can outrun
whatever's coming.

♪♪♪

[Trump] We're like policemen.
We're not fighting a war.

If we wanted to fight a war
in Afghanistan and win it,

I could win that war in a week.

I just don't want to kill
ten million people.

Does that make sense to you?

I don't want to kill
ten million people.

I have plans on Afghanistan

that if I wanted
to win that war,

Afghanistan would be wiped
off the face of the Earth.

It would be gone.

It would be over in--
literally in ten days,

and I don't want to do--
I don't want to go that route.

United States
does not owe us anything.

They can pull out
any second they wish,

but what will be
the interpretation

of this pullout?

There will be,
whether you like it or not,

a domino effect.

This will be celebration
for terrorists.

The mightiest power
in the globe running away,

leaving the scene to who?

I'm not saying they must stay.

I mean, they-they can leave
any moment they wish.

[Maddox] Seeing what
we've seen in Afghanistan

and our involvement in it,
being our longest-running war,

the theory is kind of
panning out.

I don't see
how this war can be won.

A bombshell series
of investigative reports

in The Washington Post

exposing heartbreaking truths

about the U.S. war
in Afghanistan,

which has claimed
some 2,400 U.S. lives

and cost nearly
a trillion dollars.

[Whitlock]
The first thing we did,

the first story
was just to show

that disconnect between what
they were saying in public

and what they were
saying privately,

but then,
as you pointed out,

we-we focus
on certain themes,

certain core failings
of the war.

That's the gist
of-of the series.

A new report claims
that the American people

were misled
about the War in Afghanistan.

A Washington Post investigation
looked at nearly 2,000 pages

of internal
government documents

and found that senior
U.S. officials

did not tell the truth.

[Fallis]
"Built to Fail.

Despite vows the U.S. wouldn't
get mired in nation building,

it has wasted billions
doing just that."

Uh, "Consumed by Corruption.

The U.S. flooded the country
with money

and then turned a blind eye
to the graft it fueled."

"Unguarded Nation.

Afghan security forces,
despite years of training,

were dogged by incompetence
and corruption."

And the last day, uh,
"Overwhelmed by Opium.

The U.S. war on drugs
in Afghanistan

has imploded
at nearly every turn."

[Whitlock] I think the main
headline is that, you know,

for 18 years,
U.S. government, generals,

ambassadors, diplomats

were giving
rosy pronouncements

about the War in Afghanistan,

even though they knew the war
was not going well

or it was failing

or that they had profound
doubts about the strategy.

So, in public,
they were saying one thing

about how they were
making progress

and this was
a war worth fighting.

In private,

they admitted they had no idea
what they were doing.

[man] "We didn't know
what we were doing,"

said now-retired Lieutenant
General Douglas Lute,

who was the Afghan war czar
for Presidents Bush and Obama.

I can't think of another war

where you have the generals
in charge of it

admitting that their strategy
was fatally flawed,

and to say that
in such raw terms,

it's not just news,
it's-it's history.

[man] We simply didn't know
what we were doing.

It wasn't even mission creep.
It was mission fantasy.

How do we ever believe in our
military people in the future?

I mean, it's like a spouse
who's been cheated on.

How do I ever
trust you again?

In a country increasingly
divided every day,

it's nice to learn
that there's one issue

that brings America's leaders
together--

lying about war.

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

[Whitlock]
I think the American public

has always wanted
to support the war.

They wanted to support
the troops here.

This is very different
from Iraq or other conflicts

around the world, and--
but over time,

it's become clear, I think,
to the American people

that this wasn't working out
as intended.

It took years and years
much longer than they thought,

and they've heard three
presidents talk about this.

And they knew it didn't add up.

♪♪♪

[Gossman] Building schools
and protecting women's rights

and so on, that's not
what this war is about.

Those have always
been secondary

to the primary objective,

which has been
to hunt Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The secret detentions,
the torture,

ceaseless night raids,
air strikes, drone attacks,

when I said it's a CIA war,
meaning they've sort of set

the priorities for the war,

and for the Afghans,
this is a never-ending war,

and many of them
have seen nothing but.

♪♪♪

The U.S. and the Taliban
have just signed

a landmark agreement
that could finally lead

to an end of hostilities
in Afghanistan.

After two decades of war,
the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban

have just signed
a long-awaited deal

aimed at paving the way
to peace

and the departure
of foreign troops.

[man]
Not part of the deal?

Any commitments
from the Taliban

to protect the civil rights
of people

they so brutally repressed

when last in power,
particularly women.

[Saleh] Afghanistan
has suffered for 40 years,

so it's very hard to see
how this country

is going to be able
to pull together.

The coming days and months
are going to decide

whether peace in Afghanistan
is going to move

from a signed document
to reality on the ground.

I really believe the Taliban
wants to do something to show

that we're not
all wasting time.

If bad things happen,
we'll go back.

♪♪♪

[Maddox] Meeting with Afghans,
you can tell

they've lost faith in their
American counterparts

because of the historical
flip-flopping

and pulling back
and pushing back into areas,

and you can see in their eyes

the weariness and frustration,

'cause it's their country.

It's their families,
and it's their people,

and we come and go...

and that hurts.

After the attack,
I went to the United States.

My medical treatment
was sponsored

by a hospital in Dallas.

I spent six months
in the hospital,

and many people told me
to stay there in the U.S.,

but I really wanted
to graduate,

and also, I wanted
to come back to Afghanistan.

I don't know,
but I wanted to come back.

[Qasemi]
I don't hate those people

who attacked my university,

because one day,
with the education I receive,

I want to bring a change that
will affect their children.

[Musazai] Educated people
are leaving the country

because of insecurity,
but if everybody leaves,

who will do something
for the country?

[applause]

We cannot just depend

on the United States
for peace.

So I think I have the
responsibility to work for it,

because this is the time.

The country is in need.

[Mohseni] Afghanistan
is the youngest country

outside of Africa,
median age of 18.

I think 60 percent
of the population

is under the age of 20,

so there's certainly
this appetite,

this capacity
to embrace change.

[indistinct chatter]

♪♪♪

You know, in life,
you get one shot

at doing something
that is impactful.

Whether we're successful or not
is another story,

but we-we've tried.

♪♪♪

buwee' ted

♪♪