Ashley Jackson

...In spite of the self-indulgence of public self-reflection, I think it can have great public benefit coming from US veterans: reflective ones are more likely to tell their friends/neighbors (or write op-eds) that war was a mistake. Don’t do another.

Even granting criticism of author’s positionality (and I do!), today’s context is key: powerful US policymakers/ commentators are trying to gaslight the #AfghanistanPapers, esp. military leaders. The op-ed is a rebuttal from their own “tribe.” I like to think/hope it will help.

Ok let's see, a) frankly I don’t see any reflection in her article whatsoever b) the timing of these “reflective” op-eds suggest that they come once everyone “realizes” facts about the world? where was her "honesty" all this time? it's been almost a decade c) these individuals

are knowingly complicit, their realizations and deep thoughts aren’t going to – to use your words – serve great public benefit. They need to give public apologies and be actively engaged in undoing the damages they’ve done.

This an important thread. Op eds like this make me want to tear my hair out. A lot of people knew, took the paychecks, took the promotions and now, by acknowledging their part in things, are taking bylines. Theirs is not the perspective I want to hear. It should not be privileged

We should be calling this out. And yet, in the isolated echo chamber of US policy, this is still a voice of dissent. Like @and_huh_what says, there's a battle over the narrative of Afghanistan w/in the US. That narrative matters. As much as it makes me want to bang my head

into a desk (you knew! couldn't you have taken a stand when it might have mattered most?) -- it still matters that they are speaking up. That might be the first step on a long road to actual accountability and acknowledgment, like @mebtikar, is rightly calling for. But man the

US is so far from that. If this is a baby step on the way to that reckoning, OK. I guess I have to here for it. I don't have to like it. But I have to acknowledge that, just maybe, this is part of how the US begins to understand the full horror of the past 18 yrs