Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work." If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that George W.Bush lied about mass destruction weapons, the thumbnail version of Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
Michael HastingsI think when war becomes your life, I think its very difficult to have the proper perspective to be able to create a fully balanced policy.
Michael HastingsDespite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory.
Michael HastingsThe fact is, psychiatric help is not widely available to CIA agents - and as in the military, there is a stigma attached to admitting post-traumatic stress.
Michael HastingsThere's this talk that we're asking soldiers to make the greatest sacrifice, but the reality is that civilians bear the burden of war more than the combatants. You're much more likely to get accidentally blown up or killed by a death squad than you are to die in a firefight.
Michael HastingsA new software is being developed so the psychological operations guys and the Pentagon's strategic communications guys - and we don't really know who's running it - but this is all totally out in the open. It's this new program that will allow them to have like ten fake Twitter accounts and ten Facebook accounts so you can pretend.
Michael Hastings