WASHINGTON, D.C.— The Center for Security Policy (Center, centerforsecuritypolicy.org) is pleased to announce its latest publication, Who Lost Afghanistan? which looks at how the seemingly successful military campaign to oust the Taliban in response to the attacks of September 11th degenerated into a twenty-year failed campaign, culminating in a disastrous and deadly departure.
Robert Spencer describes how the American foreign policy establishment’s bipartisan consensus refused to take seriously the theocratic ideology of the Taliban and Al Qaeda or the religious and cultural character of Afghanistan. From inserting Sharia law into Afghanistan’s new constitution to tolerating the bacha bazi culture of sexual exploitation of children, to undermining the freedom of speech rights of American citizens at the behest of Afghan mobs, every decision U.S. leaders made undermined the very reason the U.S. had come to Afghanistan in the first place.
“We saw last year in the horrifically incompetent withdrawal the bloody consequences of two decades of self-deception about the nature of the enemy,” said Center for Security Policy Executive Vice President Tommy Waller, a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. “If U.S. political and military leaders had studied the enemy doctrine to understand what jihadists like the Taliban believe, it would have been a very different outcome. Spencer’s book is the summation of a decades long clarion call that should have been internalized by American policymakers.”
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow. Spencer is the author of 25 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing), The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery Publishing) and the bestselling The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS (Bombardier Books). Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community.
Since the Center for Security Policy’s founding in 1988, its team has challenged establishment orthodoxy and refused to sacrifice principles for expedience in Washington. The Center’s work is rooted in the proven concept of Peace Through Strength as applied to the needed 21st Century strategy of America First. Security and freedom depend on a strong America and leaders who will use instruments of national power wisely to keep our nation out of unnecessary wars and to win those we must fight.
The Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) organization that educates policymakers, legislators, the media, and the American public. We are funded by generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations. For more information, visit the Center website at centerforsecuritypolicy.org.
###
