remember, you can always follow us on twitter. tweet me, tweet the show. please, be sure to join us again tomorrow in "the situation room." certainly, you can watch us live. you can dvr the show so you won't miss a moment. that's it for me, thanks for watching, i'm wolf blitzer in the "the situation room." now let's step into the "crossfire." >> wolf, we're trying to make sense out of the obama doctrine before president obama goes to westpoint to confuse us all again. >> actually, you can sum up the obama doctrine with these words, no more dumb wars. the debate's going to start right now. >> tonight on "crossfire," a new deadline for u.s. troops to come home. >> we will bring america's longest war to a responsible end. >> is president obama making america stronger or weaker on the world stage? on the left, van jones. on the right, s.e. cupp.

in the "crossfire," a contributing editor for atlantic media and bill crystal, editor of "the weekly standard." is the president keeping us safe or putting us at risk? tonight on "crossfire." >> welcome to "crossfire," i'm s.e. cupp. >> i'm van jones. we have guests with very different views of president obama's record of keeping us out of war. now, big news this afternoon. president obama has announced a firm deadline to get our troops home from afghanistan. now, remember, at one point we had over 100,000 americans over there in harm's way. by the end of 2016, thanks to this president, only 1,000 are going to be left to guard the embassy. here's what the president had to say about that. >> americans have learned that it's harder to end wars than it is to begin them. if this is how wars end in the 21st century. >> and hallelujah, ending war, that's what we want the

president to do. let's recap, this president promised us no new wars fought on a credit card, check. he also promised to get osama bin laden, check. he promised to get us out of iraq, check. and promised to get us out of afghanistan. check. promises made, promises kept. this is a huge deal for military families with military deployments hanging over their head. so on their point, thank you, mr. president. >> it's an impressive list, van, but not quite mission accomplished yet. peter, let me start with you and give you another list of sorts. syria, libya, egypt, iraq, russia. trust between our allies has dwindled. our enemies grow bolder every day, our relationship with israel seems to be crumbling. we've killed thousands or hundreds, no one knows, with an unaccountable drone war, and terrorism is on the rise. now, don't take my word for it.

let's listen to democrat senator dianne feinstein on cnn. >> i see the intelligence. terror is not down in the world, it is up, both deaths, injuries, in many, many different places. >> peter, how can anyone say that president obama's foreign policy has been a success? >> well, i think the thing that most americans care about most is that we have not had another terrorist attack anywhere near the scale that we had on george w. bush's watch on 9/11. yes, there have been terrorist attacks around the world, yes, al qaeda and jihadists are still a very significant problem, but the major thing most americans are most concerned about, the homeland, obama's record has been good and, of course, we got osama bin laden himself. america's relationships with allies are stronger than when obama took office. look at asia, probably the most important area in the world, america's relations with japan, south korea, the philippines

have invited us back in militarily, malaysia, vietnam. america's allies where it counts most are stronger. >> they've been skeptical of us as we've dealt with russia. we've made promises to get involved and they've seen us dither on those promises and they've asked us to, you know, assert ourselves yet again. are we going to keep our treaties? >> well, i think the people most concerned about what we're doing in russia are european allies, and i think obama's done a pretty good job of leading those european allies. he got us to support tougher sanctions and look what happened in the last few days, there was an legitimate election in ukraine, the russians are saying they are going to work with this new ukrainian leader. the potential for them moving militarily seems way down from a couple weeks ago. looks like the country has a much better chance of hanging together in a pro european way in part, i think, because of what america did. >> bill?

>> i'm sure you agree with this assessment, and furthermore, it seems to me republicans in particular love beating up on this president saying he's not doing enough, but the american people are tired of war and they don't want us to be more involved. you look at the polling on ukraine, people don't want us to do more on ukraine. isn't it, in fact, the case the president is right with the american people on being less interventionist? >> president is supposed to lead, van. do you think the president was right in 1994 not to go into rwanda? so what if a billion people were slaughtered. intervention in the balkans weren't popular, we supported it, republicans opposed him, they were wrong in that case. the announcement today on afghanistan is unbelievably irresponsib irresponsible. maybe enough to sustain the training and counterterrorism mission. to announce zero troops except the troops guarding the embassy at the end of 2016 is beyond irresponsible. it's totally crazy. you're telling them we're getting out. what is wrong with leaving it,

i'm going to make a judgment based on conditions on the ground. >> what's wrong with open-ended commitment for this country? >> we have sacrificed blood in that country and president obama sent tens of thousands of troops there and making their sacrifice in vain. i find it sickening. >> i think president obama was wrong to send additional troops to afghanistan. it was wrong, the single biggest failure of his presidency, because the truth is, we went to afghanistan -- >> how can you support a man -- >> how can you support a man that sent hundreds of thousands -- >> i support that war. afghanistan was a disaster. >> afghanistan -- >> war in afghanistan wrong? >> war in afghanistan against the taliban, yes, against the taliban, yes, against al qaeda, no. we don't have enough money in this country to pay people who are unemployed unemployment benefits, according to the republican party, yet we have -- we can continue to send tens of thousands of more troops in

afghanistan when we see what's happening to those troops when they come back, the incredible -- >> that's pathetic. >> that's pathetic? >> you're talking about the veterans as victims. that's what you said, we see these troop when is they come back. the troops are proud. president of the united states sent them there. the president of the united states sent them there and now he is running a huge risk of undercutting all they achieved. >> bill, my sister-in-law served in iraq and afghanistan, she left her small children to do so, but the fact that our soldiers served honorably wherever they are sent does not mean wherever they are sent is wise in the national interest. the cost to the families and people has been enormous and there is nothing in afghanistan, save preventing another attack on the united states, that is worth it. >> let me ask a question, how many more years would you be willing to have his relatives, my relatives, your relatives, serve over there? five more years, ten more years, 30 more years, until afghanistan

looks like manhattan? >> how many more years do people serve in korea, how many years do we leave troops in japan? >> no insurgency in korea. >> not much of an insurgeon si. we just had a successful election in afghanistan. you correctly touted the successful election in ukraine. for all the troubles of afghanistan, it has been a difficult war. >> mistakes made by bush and obama, pretty successful election and what the president of the united states does on the heels of that, forget it, we're gone. what signal does that send? >> are you concerned, peter, what will happen in afghanistan is what has already happened in iraq? you know, we successfully went in with a surge, we pulled our troops out too soon, we told them we were going to do so, and it has collapsed yet again into a den of terrorism. why not commit to the job and leave when the job is done? >> there is no way that 10,000

more american troops in afghanistan can defeat the taliban insurgency and make that a unified country. >> well, not when we tell them we're leaving in eight months. >> it doesn't matter. >> of course, it matters. >> it is far beyond america's capacity to build a unified afghanistan and i find it remarkable that when people say we don't have the resources to do basic things like rebuild our infrastructure in the united states, they are willing to say we should be doing that in afghanistan. we don't have that capacity, our focus should be on keeping america safe and rebuilding our alliance. >> i think it's sad for spokesman for american liberalist to wash hands of responsibilities around the world. >> 12 years of washing our hands? we've been there 12 years. >> now you're celebrating -- whatever mistake has been made, you're celebrating the actions of the president who's saying, you know what, those 12 years, too far. >> multiple scenarios by which 5,000 more american soldiers can defeat an insurgency that's been

going on for years and years and years and probably will be for decades longer. >> it has been basically held at bay, it can continue to be held at bay. most of afghanistan is not under taliban rule, there's no terrorist attacks coming out of afghanistan. pakistan, though it's a horrible place, it's been held better than it could have been. we're going to pay a big price for getting out of there. >> we'll see. republicans aren't the only ones who disagree with obama's foreign policy. next, i'm going to give you a sneak peek into hillary clinton's new book. is she trying to put daylight between herself and her old boss? if you add up all the miles she travelled as secretary of state, how far did she go? nearly 500,000 miles, nearly 1 million miles, or nearly 2 million miles? we'll have the answer when we get back.

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liberty mutual insurance -- responsibility. what's your policy? welcome back. now the answer to our "crossfire" quiz. hillary clinton traveled nearly 1 million miles as secretary of state. the exact number is 956,733. take that home. all right, tomorrow president obama travels to west point, where for the umpteenth time he'll try to explain his foreign policy. listen closely, is she trying to distance herself from the administration? >> while there are few problems in today's world that the united states can solve alone, there are even fewer that can be solved without the united states. everything that i have done and

seen has convinced me that america remains the indispensable nation. >> does anyone else think that sounds a bit robotic, like it was auto recorded? all right. while hillary may think -- >> on that point, no, when you read the four pages of her book that's released, it does not look to me like a scintillating read. i think we're going to trudge every single one of those 956,733 miles around the world with secretary clinton being impressed with her hard work. >> probably not a lot that's new. >> wait for the movie. >> right, okay. while hillary may think that we're an indispensable nation, does obama? we abandon our red lines, pull troops out of dangerous places before a job is finished, and we sit by as dictators taunt us and humanitarian crises spiral out of control. indispensable or irrelevant? in the "crossfire" tonight, peter and bill crystal.

peter, where exactly have we been indispensable in president obama's foreign policy? >> well, clearly, on the ukraine. where the united states -- >> you're giving us credit for what's happening in ukraine? >> absolutely, if the united states had not led the europeans to do suffer sanctions than what they would have, which changed vladimir putin's calculus. we were talking about imminent russian invasion and the country being divided into civil war, now we have a legitimate president to take military action in the east and the russians are saying they accept them. that would not have happened without obama's leadership. >> do you think clinton's policies helped russia in the first place? >> not at all. it did it under george w. bush when it invaded georgia. the question was, how effective would the u.s. response be. it's true we could not get crimea back to ukraine, which is too bad, but we'll see how good that turns out to be for russia. in reality, we've made russia pay a significant economic price

and that's changed putin's calculation and i think we're going to have a unified ukraine, which is what we want. >> are we indispensable in president obama's world view? >> no, i think he'd like to have a world where we are dispensable, otherwise why would we get out of afghanistan? why doesn't he say i'm going to consult with the two candidates in 2016 and if they think it's prudent to leave 10,000 troops there, i'll let them make the decision what comes next. he's closing the door on the possibility of salvaging things in afghanistan after all the sacrifices we made, just as he did in iraq. that tells me -- if you were a normal president, i've drawn down, he can take credit for the decline in causalities, but you know what, take a fresh look in 2016 and see what we need. to say zero troops after 2016 -- >> it's so interesting you talk about responsibility. as a father when i want my children to be more responsible, you know what i do, give them responsibility.

giving the afghanistan people responsibility for their own country is not irresponsible. >> they need our help. >> they don't deserve our blood and treasure for another 12 yearings. >> truth is the jihadist threat, which brought us into afghanistan in the first place, i have enormous sympathy for the suffering of the people in afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, but we didn't go there to do social engineering in afghanistan. we did go there because that's where the terrorist threat was. the terrorist threat changed and it makes sense for us to spend more of our counterterrorism efforts more broadly, not on afghan alone. >> we do need more counterterrorism, because unfortunately, al qaeda is morphing out of control, but in afghanistan and pakistan itself, it is important to have troops in afghanistan to have counterterrorism raids. where was the raid to get bin laden? afghanistan. if we don't have troops in afghanistan, you dent get bin laden. we'll have 1,000 troops guarding the embassy.

>> places like mali and nigeria, it's why we're watching boko haram and al qaeda, at least why we should be. don't we have a responsibility, then, in places like syria where terrorists feel emboldened. people who would want to kill united states citizens are growing. >> what would you do? >> in syria three years ago go into syria. >> and do what? >> when the terrorists and the rebels numbered in the dozened. >> and do what? >> instead, now they number in the thousand. >> go in and do what? >> we certainly could have armed the rebels. >> of course we could have. when we're in the dozens we could have armed the right people, peter. now we don't know who they are. >> i think one of the lessons, there may well be that there was a case for arming the rebels early on. one thing we have learned from

afghanistan in iraq is we should have a little more humility about america's ability to decide who among the syrian rebels are the moderates and -- >> obama's humility in announcing a red line, in involving us in that conflict in syria and abandoning. >> the red line was a mistake. >> okay. >> i'm not going to defend everything obama has done. but 90% of the chemical weapons are out of syria today, which was more effective than what would have 457ed -- >> but peter, assad used them and recently used bleach on his own people. what responsibility -- >> how would have america having skilled several hundred people by sending in tomahawk missiles simply because obama set a red line have done anything for sir the people of syria? >> we could have toppled assad. >> those missiles would not have toppled assad. iran would have doubled down more. >> in terms of the syrians of the war, are you on the al qaeda side or the hezbollah side? who over there are you saying?

>> who knows now. >> going to spawn terror on the one side and give iran a victory on the other. that's what happens when america does nothing. >> it's not giving iran. iran is much, much weaker. >> yes, iran is shaking in their boots. >> iran is totally isolated in a region that is completely than how they were. >> we are associating with a guy who has bragged to the world scene that he has duped over world leaders to the position we're in now. >> stop, stop. stay here. we want you guys at home to get in on this conversation, this argument. weigh in on the fireback question for today. do you think president obama's foreign policy has been a success? tweet yes or no using #crossfire. got to give you the results after the break. also, we've got our outrages of the day. mcdonald's ceo has some thoughts about his employees' pay. i got to tell you, i'm not loving it. >> oh! >> when we get back.

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that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there's someone around the office who hasn't had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i'm looking at you phone company dsl.

check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. welcome back to "crossfire." now it's time for outrages of the day. here is mine. at his annual shareholders meet, mcdonald's ceo donald thompson stated we continue to believe that we pay fair and competitive wages. seriously? donald thompson made just under $9.5 million last year. now, that's no surprise. the median salary for american ceos has now jumped to about $10.5 million last year, according to a report that came out today. now, $9 million. compare that to the average salary for a fast food worker, most of whom by the way are not teenagers anymore.

they're between 24 and 54 years old. you know how much they make? about $18,000 a year that is below the poverty line for a family of three. so donald thompson, i think you ought to try getting by on a fair wage like that. it's outrageous. >> okay. my outrage. in maryland there is a 40-foot monument made out of cement and marble erected in 1925 by the american legion commemorating the men of prince georges county who died in world war i. odd isn't a word i would use to describe it. but fred edwards, national director of the atheist nonprofit united coalition of reason did. why? because the solemn monument to sacrifice is in the shape of a cross. so he filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to tear it down for violating the separation of church and state. look, i'm an atheist myself, but this cross isn't a violation of anyone's beliefs or lack thereof. and it isn't a violation of anyone's rights. the separation of church and state exists not to remove

religion from the public square, but to protect religion from government oppression and kooks like edwards. >> amen to that. let's check on our fireback results. do you think at home that president obama's foreign policy has been a success? right now 38% of you say yes. 62% of you say no. what do you guys think about those results? i'll start with you. >> look, the most important referendum came in 2012 when mitt romney hammered barack obama from the right saying he had been too weak, not interventionist enough. obama pushed back and the american people clearly showed they wanted to turn the page on the kind of foreign policy we saw under george w. bush. >> but they clearly don't like president obama's foreign policy. that poll is not alone. it's not the only one. >> peter is right that president obama won in november 2012. in the last year and a half, some chunk of the people as perfectly reflected this "crossfire" segment have obviously turned and come to the correct decision as the real world consequences become more

evident. >> i want to thank you peter beinart and bill kristol. this will continue online. i'm van jones. >> from the right i'm s.e. cupp. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. next, a vigil under way in california for the six people murdered by elliot rodger. we're going to go live to the scene. plus, how did the white house blow the cover of a top cia spy, and will anyone be held accountable for it? and months after flight 370 vanished. it is enough? we're going to talk to the head of the company that provided that crucial data. let's go "outfront." good evening, everyone. i'm