Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran of 4 combat deployments, 2 in Afghanistan, recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. He wrote the article below "Truth, lies and Afghanistan", appearing in the Armed Forces Journal, about our occupation of that country. Read it if you have the chance.
Here’s a particularly striking if not surprising assessment–
"What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.
Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.
Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level."
You can read the report here and a more detailed unclassified report here.