Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan

421 Pages·2016·2.49 MB·English

by  Scott Horton

Advance Praise for Fool’s Errand

“In Fool’s Errand, Scott Horton masterfully explains the tragedy of America’s
longest war and makes the case for immediate withdrawal. I highly recommend
this excellent book on America’s futile and self-defeating occupation of
Afghanistan.” — Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower and author of
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

“The real story of the disastrous U.S. war in Afghanistan must be written so that
future generations may understand the folly of Washington’s warmongers. Scott
Horton’s Afghan war history is an important contribution to this vital effort.” —
Ron Paul, M.D., former U.S. congressman and author of Swords into
Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity

“Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand is a deeply insightful and well-informed book on
America’s longest war, explaining why it remains as unwinnable as it ever was.
It appears at an important moment as the Trump administration is once again
reinforcing failure.” — Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the
Independent, author of The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for
the Middle East

“An incisive, informative analysis of the Afghan fiasco and how we got there,
scrubbed clean of propaganda and disinformation. Horton captures the situation
very well indeed. I much enjoyed reading it.” — Eric S. Margolis, author of War
at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet and
American Raj: Liberation or Domination? Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World

“Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton is a
spectacularly researched and sourced book, and it provides a refreshingly
rational analysis of America’s Afghan quagmire. I would recommend this book
to anyone who wants to know the truth of this nation’s longest war.” — Lt. Col.
Daniel L. Davis, U.S. Army (ret.), senior fellow at Defense Priorities

“Scott Horton has a far better record on Afghanistan than the Pentagon or the
White House. He has been pointing out the follies of U.S. intervention there
since it started half a generation ago. Fool’s Errand vividly exposes the pratfalls,
atrocities, lies and incorrigibility of our never-ending Afghan crusade.” — James
Bovard, columnist at USA Today and author of Attention Deficit Democracy

“Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan is a
definitive, authoritative and exceptionally well-resourced accounting of
America’s disastrous war in Afghanistan since 2001. Scott’s book deserves not
just to be read, but to be kept on your shelf, because as with David Halberstam’s
The Best and Brightest or Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie, I expect
Horton’s book to not just explain and interpret a current American war, but to
explain and interpret the all too predictable future American wars, and the
unavoidable waste and suffering that will accompany them.” — Capt. Matthew
Hoh, USMC (ret.), former senior State Department official, Zabul Province,
Afghanistan, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy

“Fool’s Errand is a hidden history of America’s forgotten war, laid bare in
damning detail. Scott Horton masterfully retells the story of America’s failed
intervention, exposes how Obama’s troop surge did not bring Afghanistan any
closer to peace, and warns that the conflict could go on in perpetuity — unless
America ends the war. As Trump threatens to send more troops to Afghanistan,
Horton shows why the answer to a brutal civil war is not more war, which makes
Fool’s Errand a scintillating and sorely needed chronicle of the longest war in
American history.” — Anand Gopal, journalist and author of No Good Men
Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes

“In Fool’s Errand, Scott Horton informs us of just how non-masterful has been
the U.S. approach to Afghanistan — policy-wise, strategically, and even
tactically. Two presidents and several Congresses have failed, the Pentagon has
failed, and the military has failed. Moreover, there is nothing we can do about it
except withdraw, cut our losses, and put as brave a face on it as possible. Horton
tells us that President Trump, having indicated as much himself in his campaign,
should do just that, get out. Having watched this debacle from very close-by for
four years and for twelve more in academia, I totally agree with Mr. Horton, but
he has done a much better job than I could of telling every single American
citizen precisely why.” — Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, U.S. Army (ret.) visiting
professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary
and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell

“A lot of people think of the war in Iraq as the bad war, but Afghanistan as the
good and justifiable war. That convenient view does not survive Scott Horton’s
careful and incisive demolition.” — Thomas E. Woods Jr., author of
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century and Rollback:
Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse

“Scott Horton is the first to pull together all the strands of the story of America’s
longest war in one book. He tells it straight, with an unblinking eye for all the
lies that have accompanied each twist and turn of the war. Read it if you dare to
know the full truth about this sordid exercise in American imperial power.” —
Gareth Porter, historian and journalist, author of Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam and Manufactured Crisis:
The Truth Behind the Iran Nuclear Scare

“Scott Horton’s new book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan
has a title that tells you where it is going, but to think that is all it is about would
be to sell short a comprehensive work that takes the reader on a long journey
starting in the 1980s. Indeed, if there were a university course on what went
wrong with Afghanistan, starting with Ronald Reagan’s Holy Warriors and
continuing with George W. Bush’s ouster of the Taliban leading to 15 years of
feckless nation building, this book could well serve as the textbook. Horton
provides insights into key decision-making along the way as he meticulously
documents the dreadful series of misadventures that have brought us to the latest
surge, which will fail just like all the others. The book is highly recommended
both for readers who already know a lot about Afghanistan as well as for those
who want to learn the basics about America’s longest war.” — Philip Giraldi,
former CIA and DIA officer, executive director of the Council for the National
Interest

“Unlike some liberals who go wobbly when confronted with U.S. military
intervention done in the name of ‘human rights,’ the principled libertarian Scott
Horton consistently opposes American aggression abroad. Read his Fool’s
Errand to find out why the U.S. never should have invaded Afghanistan and
should get out now. — Reese Erlich, foreign correspondent and author of Inside
Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect.

“America’s longest war — in Afghanistan — has until now been among
America’s least documented. Horton brings together far more than 16 years of
conflict, drawing in sources from well before most Americans even heard of
Osama bin Laden to show how the Afghan quagmire’s roots are deep. The title
tells it all, however: this war cannot be won, and ‘victory’ will be in the form of
escape. Meticulously researched and footnoted, Fool’s Errand is required
reading.” — Peter Van Buren, retired foreign service officer and author of We
Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi
People and Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan

“Why is the United States still fighting in Afghanistan? In this timely new book,
Scott Horton explains why America’s longest war is strategically misguided and
why getting out would make the United States safer and advance America’s
broader national interests. Even readers who do not share Horton’s libertarian
world-view are likely to find themselves nodding in agreement: the war in
Afghanistan has indeed become a ‘fool’s errand.’” — Stephen M. Walt,
professor of international affairs, Harvard University, co-author of The Israel
Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

“Scott Horton has written a superb, encyclopedic history and policy analysis of
the U.S. Global War on Terror. This should be essential reading for all
Americans involved with foreign and national security policy, especially ‘mere’
citizens in what is supposed to be a democracy. Mr. Horton’s book provides the
information we must have to understand Clausewitz’s words that ‘war is never
an isolated act’ and that we as decision-makers must ‘know the nature’ of a
conflict, especially to end it when that is called for. This includes knowing how
successive administrations have distorted the law in presenting lawlessness as
legitimate, and subverting the country from within, which Mr. Horton explains.
It is plain to see after sixteen years of aggressive war that our alleged experts are
anything but in understanding real strategic thought, which, in Clausewitz’s
view, called for a nation to seek peace as the strategic objective, not perpetual
war as U.S. policy is today. Mr. Horton’s book fills that strategic void for citizen
and ‘expert.’” — Maj. Todd Pierce, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (ret.)

“Scott Horton has been a scrupulous critic of American militarism since 2001.
His full-length case study of the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan is a chronicle of
warnings unheeded, lessons not learned, and the relentless pursuit of a policy
whose futility was always apparent. Every detail of this story is backed by an
impressive depth of documentation, and the final verdict spares neither the
ambition of generals nor the cowardice of presidents.” — David Bromwich,
professor of literature, Yale University, editor of Edmund Burke’s selected
writings On Empire, Liberty, and Reform

“Scott Horton has written an impassioned plea against the insanity of the
endless, hopeless war on terror. He shows that the war in Afghanistan was and is
unnecessary, and links its bipartisan prosecution and the use of torture to the
American rulers’ dream of world hegemony. It skewers the hype about the
dangers of radical Islam and terrorism. This book is needed now more than
ever!” — Jeffrey S. Kaye, author of Cover-up at Guantánamo: The NCIS
Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman
Al Amri

“Outstanding! Highly readable and fascinating summary of the longest war in
U.S. history, and why it never worked. Well researched and organized, Fool’s
Errand should be mandatory reading for every military officer serving today and
be placed in President Trump’s hands immediately. Trump’s pre-election
instincts on this ugly, corrupting and unnecessary war were certainly correct.
Scott Horton’s well-documented timeline of waste, illogical strategies and
neoconservative fantasy in Afghanistan all show why Trump’s gut feelings, and
those of most Americans for the past decade, have been dead-on. Using careful,
fair-minded and patriotic prose, the author exposes the Afghanistan experience
as a high-tech, networked Vietnam. Fool’s Errand is the true story of the direct,
undeniable result of a newer generation of ‘smart’ bureaucrats, in and out of
uniform, their shockingly bad advice and their astonishing willingness to
repeatedly lie to sitting presidents. Whether you want to wake up, stay woke or
just be remembered as the president who made America great again, this book is
a must read!” — Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force (ret.) and founding
member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

“Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand is an elegantly written, scrupulously researched
and timely history of the American war in Afghanistan. Horton casts a critical
eye over some of the Beltway’s most cherished myths and successfully
challenges what too often goes unchallenged in Washington. Horton calls into
question the morality and efficacy of counterinsurgency doctrine and nation-
building and warns of the possible consequences of staying in Afghanistan
forever. Horton’s arguments will be cheered by principled anti-interventionists
on both the Right and the Left — and if there is any justice in the world (an
increasingly dubious proposition) his arguments will resonate with the current
crop of policymakers charged with overseeing what is now, tragically,
America’s longest war. Here’s to hoping Fool’s Errand gains a wide, influential
readership.” — James Carden, contributing writer at The Nation and the
executive editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord

“Scott Horton has tapped an incredible number of sources and insights from his
thousands of expert interviews. He presents an original, compelling, and
ultimately damning indictment of the U.S. invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan.” — Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle
Eastern Policy and author of Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America

“Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand makes a well-researched and compelling case
that American policies in Afghanistan were ill conceived from the outset and
doomed to fail. Chronicling one unsuccessful American initiative after another
in a seemingly endless war, Horton argues that our continued military efforts
now yield little more than revenge-minded blowback. There is no light at the end
of the tunnel, and no one can imagine realistically that one will appear. It will no
doubt be a bitter pill to acknowledge that the Beltway fantasy of a united,
democratic, pluralist and feminist Afghanistan will never be achieved, but it is
one we will have to swallow eventually. Since the cost of pursuing unrealistic
goals is exorbitant in blood and treasure, the sooner our failure is faced up to, the
better.” — Scott McConnell, founding editor of The American Conservative
magazine

“Scott Horton’s book on the U.S. war in Afghanistan — its origins, its failures,
its ongoing travesties — is an indispensable guide to the latest conflict taking
place in the ‘graveyard of empires.’ Horton provides useful detail on the self-
defeating campaign against al Qaeda and the tragicomic pursuit of Osama bin
Laden, the malign impact the war has had on U.S. civil liberties and conduct of
international relations, and the destruction of a proud but poor country. He
navigates expertly between the micro level of tribal politics and the macro level
of geopolitics, providing compact analysis of counterinsurgency doctrine, drone
warfare, and the backdraft of the war’s consequences for the United States. An
important contribution to analyses of the forever war.” — John Feffer, director
of Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies and author of North
Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis and Crusade 2.0: The West’s
Resurgent War on Islam

“Fool’s Errand, Scott Horton’s well-researched, fine-grained chronicle of the
U.S. debacle in Afghanistan, reveals how foreign policy elites seized the post-
9/11 opportunity to pursue their neocon agenda. What is now the perpetual-
motion U.S. war machine has been maintained since 2001 by the entrenched
bureaucracy of three successive administrations under easily manipulable
presidents. This deep-state engine has proven to be devoid of any mechanism of
self-correction, fueled as it is by a lethal alloy of opportunism, vanity, and short-
term political expediency. Anyone wondering how Afghanistan became the
United States’ longest war will find the disturbing answer in this important and
timely book.” — Laurie Calhoun, research fellow at the Independent Institute
and author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the
Drone Age

“Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan is a
remarkable book. Backed up by massive and meticulous research and informed
by compelling analysis, Horton marshals a devastating case against America’s
longest war. If this book ever becomes required reading in international relations
courses and military academies, a great deal of harm in the future might be
avoided.” — David T. Beito, professor of history, University of Alabama, co-
author of Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and
Economic Power

“Bovardian!” — Anthony Gregory, author of The Power of Habeas Corpus in
America
Fool’s Errand:
Time to End the War in Afghanistan Copyright © 2017 by Scott Horton
All rights reserved.
FoolsErrand.us

Cover Photo: USAF SSgt. Clay Lancaster.

Cover Design: TheBumperSticker.com.

Special thanks to 3T Editing.
3TEditing.com.

Maps courtesy of Dr. Michael R. Izady.
gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml Published in the United States of America
by