the. osama bin laden may be dead but that doesn't necessarily mean mission accomplished or the u.s. will look into what the killing of u.s. enemy number one could mean for america's war in afghanistan. and it's the fortieth anniversary of the biggest mass arrests in u.s. history the one nine hundred seventy one made a police crackdowns here in washington saw the arrest of nearly ten thousand antiwar protesters but with several wars and a faltering economy topping the agenda in spawn's eleven why aren't people taking their message to the streets. and the like states has the. freest.

environment for the prints in the world so really it does why don't you tell that to the journalists for arrested for exercising their right to free speech of the world celebrates press freedom day see how the land of the free might just be the home of the repressed. it's tuesday may third world pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. . now bin laden is dead the bogeyman who drove us foreign and domestic policy over the last decade is gone the question is right now what will it mean for the increasingly unpopular war in afghanistan or the seemingly perpetual war on terror now in the decade since nine eleven attacks the united states has fought other wars

in iraq yemen pakistan somalia libya some openly some secretly in that same decade we spent over one trillion u.s. dollars on military operations bases foreign aid veterans' health the list goes on and the year after year we nudge the death toll for u.s. troops higher and higher not to mention the hundreds of thousands who perished by means of u.s. collateral damage and bin laden is dead but what remains in his wake and could the two bullets to the skull of an american enemy actually change america's foreign policy now earlier i pose that question to matthew hoh he's a former marine corps captain and state department officer who became the highest level diplomatic official to quit over the war in afghanistan here's what he had to sing. here in the united states bin laden's death brings closure or at least some degree of closure to nine eleven and so hopefully that closure the american public may feel now let me turn into a political movement that may force members of congress to push for

a change in strategy and maybe we'll see a change in a policy in afghanistan start to bring some of our troops back we still have a long way to go in afghanistan april was the deadliest april of this any pills you spent afghanistan believe as us more than forty five of our service members have been killed you know hundreds more wounded with no idea how many afghans are killed or wounded and there's no end in sight you know afghanistan we're stuck in a stalemate and until they change our policies in afghanistan that stalemate will continue as a former u.s. official who is really privy to a lot of the discussions that are going on in the calculus behind the conflicts in afghanistan explain to me if the purported purpose of going into afghanistan in the beginning with the denial kind of safe haven to chase bin laden down and get the nod and why today in front of your garden are the taliban in afghanistan an enemy worth the thousands of troops that we have on the ground in the trillions of dollars at risk yeah it's

a difficult question and that's one of reasons why i was on my position from state court in afghanistan which because of that because who are fighting we're fighting the taliban we're fighting these real posh tunes for the most part real pashtuns who are fighting us because we're taking pore in someone else's civil war so it's a complex question i think this goes back to american domestic politics this goes back to president obama running against senator mccain in two thousand and eight and yet to prove that he was for a democrat for a black democrat he could be a good commander in chief and he was going to he had been president obama was right on iraq we should have gone in but he's going be right in afghanistan he was going to win the good war and i think this stems back to to then this this escalation of the conflict and so how here we are now nearly three years after that. you know senator obama said he would ask lead to war and win it we're stuck again in a stalemate and it will happen on that we'll talk a little bit about your personal experience going to what is the reference from ethnic politics are part of the fact that the thinking on the war pinpoint that for

me is that the generals here in washington at the pentagon didn't understand the cultural situation for the political situation in iraq personally what that connection i think you had. we had as we had this doctrine of counterinsurgency that had more or less you know i think military had performed in central in latin america or other parts this year performed in vietnam and in resurrected in iraq however what happened was we did the surge in iraq beginning in january of seven at the same time because of other events many of them political such as sunni awakening or the solder such as army ceasefire. stability started directing violence dropped quite a bit we took as about patient of our doctrine and so what we brought over to afghanistan to win the war was this dr atomic certainty that we're going to show up

that we're going to have more troops we're going to do things differently going to power the government all those good tens of concerns you connect the population to the government however we misread the conflict there this is the civil war it's the war that predated the civil we entered into the conflict in september of two thousand and one and you know we completely right in justified to do so and we entered into a with me going on for twenty years that when we entered into some of the civil war so what we did was we took one side out power but the other side in power never addressed the underlying root cause of the conflict and so i think those are misreading of what was occurring there are misreading that the taliban while we probably don't agree with many other tenets many of their leaders are absolutely despicable people. represent. one side of the conflict and it's that misreading this is misinterpreted or potations of the conflict is why we're in this stalemate or this was not right now year after year for the last five or six years the war has gotten worse every year the more troops we send in

a span the more money we spend in afghanistan the insurgency gets larger and the karzai government loses support which results in the violence getting worse and worse in the you can see that literally among any metric you look at these idea that somehow we're making progress in afghanistan a lot more. you know i mean there's nothing more to say about them but the allies would you support sort of building up civil institutions in afghanistan and trying to to change things on the ground not from a military perspective of course and if that's the case then considering that afghanistan has such a long history of conflicts from from the state of the wars to the united states the conflict on the ground there what makes you think that this wouldn't just perpetuate that sort of stuff where are the arena of these foreign invaders who are coming in and it's actually telling a problem country how to behave itself well the key is to help it not a dictator the key is to provide assistance of the silty and not to do it but is

that a possible after exactly for exactly that that the problem is where we're doing it is the way i like to describe it is that say after katrina the u.s. government took a guy like me a guy from jersey put him in charge of a parish in louisiana ok and then sent to new york national guard down to that parish to keep me in charge and then i took all that fuel money and sent it back to my friends in jersey that's roughly the dynamic we have there you've got these two sides in the conflict not even that oversimplify because the conflict in afghanistan but one hundred sides and they're probably right but you know so you've got to do these different side of the conflict we're helping one against the other so what would occur for me is i would go to these villages with my afghan government counterparts with more afghan government power. the military counterparts and you talking to the villagers and what you realize that the people you're there with the governor or the army commander or the intelligence chief or the province etc they were those people's traditional rivals so the people you're

speaking to their fathers their grandfathers were fighting these people for the last twenty or thirty years or they represent different side of the conflict so until you bring those other side of the conflict into the government into you make government action inclusive relevant xclusive which is what we do now basically if you're not in cars like click you're out of it so what we've done now is basically given the people of afghanistan two choices in are both really bad choices the choices are hey you can either support the karzai government which is corrupt illegitimate and predatory and compose your traditional rivals or you can support the taliban and those are both really bad choices so you have to find a way another way to actually bring people into the political process to give them more choices to legitimize their government has right now again not seen it and once you then have a stable political order a political order that includes traditional authority and that's a legitimate political order they can talk about institution building me can talk about doing those things we know we talked earlier about women's issues very

emotional very important however you will look at any progress on women's issues in afghanistan things will continue to carry on until you get some type of political settlement there that allows for the development of women's rights the development of educational systems the development of civilizations etc and that is not the host senior fellow at the center for international policy and the director of the afghanistan study group. in the land of the free home of the first amendment the united states of america is supposed to be of beacon for the rest of the globe that at least has been the rhetoric of our politicians for much of the past century now you may have a hard time shopping for a hallmark card in honor of today but may third today marks world press freedom day and to celebrate it a sobering statistic according to the latest global rankings of pressed freedom released by the freedom house organization the united states came in at twenty second ranking behind the likes of palauan dora st lucia even the marshall islands

now granted it could be worse but since one that it could be worse becomes something for the united states to strive for now as our g.'s christine for as our reports freedom of the press isn't guaranteed when it comes to the united states. so mike you know rock out loud it's crazy as a pillar of american democracy the cornerstone of a free society. freedom of the press united states has the. freest. environment for the press in the world certain but of course of course. right but journalists have been under attack in the united states their first amendment rights violated their status as the washstands of democracy dismissed i myself have been arrested as a member of the press i've seen other pressure arrested and they do the same thing they say to move away from this area even though you have

a right to be there then when she's moved where they want you to go they still go ahead and arrest you while some journalists are arrested while covering an assignment i did cross the street i'm not ok others have been detained while heading to an assignment. during the two thousand and two world bank meetings hundreds were arrested including journalists like deborah kahn the charge. i think in order. for you journalists say they're censored by the police because the press captures their treatment of demonstrators they know the media is a serious check and balance against government tyranny sometimes it even gets physical was at this protest in new york police officers steal a reporter's camera. covering demonstrations is one thing.

challenging america's so-called war on terror is another just out here with a prize winning correspondent james risin subpoenaed by the justice department over confidential sources he could face jail time. more direct part is to frighten people in the government from talking heads to have a chilling effect on potential whistle blowers and the government to make them realize that you know there's a big brother out there that will get them if they step out of line with the leaks founder julian assange labeled quote a high tech terrorist by vice president joe biden for publishing leaked u.s. government documents and a video showing u.s. helicopter pilot shooting unarmed reporters in iraq he could be charged with espionage a move that is setting a dangerous precedent according to the committee to protect journalists the notion that somebody could be prosecuted for disseminating information under the espionage

act in our view would open the door for subsequent prosecutions potentially of her or throughout the rest of the prosecution of journalists doesn't concern everyone here's an coulter taking questions at the conservative political action conference what do you mean knowing the third jailed journalists i think there should be more in jail so i thought well the u.s. proclaims its press free this kind of repression has to stop we have to be able to report to ensure. or that we live in a democratic society carry media criticism of the astounding smog. when detained in the united states journalists are usually held for a few hours charged and then released but when arrested while covering u.s. military operations abroad the consequences can be much more severe sometimes even deadly join us for that segment tomorrow in washington christine for. our two you know we will focus on the international aspect of all this tomorrow but today let's

focus here in the united states earlier we discussed the issue of free press with jeff cohen he's a journalism professor at ithaca college and also the author of this book here cable news confidential i think we have a graphic up cable news confidential my misadventures in corporate media and he shared his take on the current state of freedom of the press. there have been some inroads against christianity time in our country in recent years there have been journalists who are caught in dragnets when there's been protests at a political convention. you've had churnalism two thousand and eight from an eyewitness video that are detained her house surrounded by heavily armed police officers to sort of harass them because their video work at two thousand force republican convention in new york city so the dropping of charges against months of protest and so i think it's a great thing that we have

a relatively good amount of press freedom and destructuring. for investigative independent reporting who are thrown in jail you are kill usually you are jail sometimes you are if you're out on the streets and protest but what shocked me when i worked at cable television do at m.s.n. e.c.n. elsewhere is how to mit journalists or preface country and usually the worst thing that happens to you if you do independent reporting is you don't get a promotion or a rights i would argue you're hitting on it that's the bigger issue is in this country churn alist work for giant conglomerates their money comes in from giant corporations that are the advertisers there's a lot at to miti if you were a kid mainstream media to media about going outside of the patent think and so there's too much packed journalism i mean look at what happened in san francisco last week where

a reporter from the chronicle took out her book she was the pool reporter from the san francisco chronicle it obama fundraiser she takes her camera or her cell phone records of protest against obama by obama supporters about bradley manning the alleged the wiki leaks leaker who's been mistreated in custody and army. that man who was told she'd be pulled out of the cool the next time i didn't mind you this comes the day after obama had his town hall on facebook supposedly embracing this new world of social media yeah that's that's a pretty sad and ironic there i just think that when reporters do get outside of the pack that's when they run into trouble that's when amy goodman gets arrested at the republican convention in two thousand and eight that's when her two producers were pretty aggressively arrested and charged with felonies felony riot charges you know there's a great story were amy is talking to a mainstream reporter at the two thousand and eight convention amy goodman

a democracy gal of the mainstream reporters this gee i didn't get arrested and amy says were you out there covering the protests and he says no i haven't left the building and they meet and quotes woody allen who says ninety five percent of life is just showing up i mean you know if you if you only get harassed in this country or arrested if you're a journalist if you are in the wrong place you're out of line you're out of place if you follow along with the sheep and you're not to you don't step out of line you'll be pampered and privileged that this country in other words the reporters that act as independent journalists sometimes get in trouble with their process sometimes even with the law but if you if you don't step out of place out of mind and you generally are pampered and privileged in this society that is jeff cohen professor of journalism at if a college and author of cable news confidential. now forty years ago today more than thirty thousand protesters descended on washington determined to shut down the

government of then president richard nixon and to end the u.s. war in vietnam or he's killing ford we visited the meeting police crackdowns in washington d.c. with some of the people who let their them. washington d.c. . may third one thousand nine hundred seventy one more than two hundred thousand protesters and veterans converge in the capital to demand an end to the war in vietnam the idea was to shut the city down because the war would stop and the only way to stop the war was to was to stop the government and that was the slogan of the demonstration and that was by putting their bodies on the road and blocking traffic any better was there with his camera rolling thunder what based circle look like i may third one hundred seventy one we're back in seventy one you know a lot of the people were staying around dupont circle you know actually i was

living there off of new hampshire and st and so it was just a block or two to be here and there were just thousands of people that would just converge and then we would disappear back in for places and we knew the turf and we knew the alley way so but the spite that i mean more i think on that day more than thirteen thousand people were arrested it was the largest arrest in history probably in one day. in the united states. police used tear gas in clubs to disperse protesters then president richard nixon called in the military robert klotz was a police captain a day later the eighty second airborne came in and helicopters. and i was assigned as allies on with the commanding general of the eighty second airborne and paratroopers landed at the national monument. but protesters wouldn't backgammon people trying everything to end the war and nothing would end it and so

this was like one of the last ditch efforts and in a sense it was almost like an indian tribal sort of like you know the image of may day was sitting bull sitting bull was you know part of a massacre so for us it was that last stand the last stand of dignity no. trying to end the war. and and we willing to abandon people willing to you know put their lives on the line to do that. by eight am on may third police had arrested more than two thousand people we had made plans as to where we were going to keep prisoners when they were arrested and you line to reno was one place the redskin practice field which was down by our of a stadium was another there was several places where you could put a lot of people and that's where they were taken. when they were arrested by the

end of the date more than seven thousand had been arrested the largest number of arrests in us history was the spirit like that day and it was incredible i mean you can see when the police raid into the crowd of the justice department with their sticks and their masons and then from that you know someone starts dancing and then all of a sudden everyone is standing everyone standing together and it was the same spirit here where they had incarcerated people where they threw them into a practice field like this you know people had to sort through their own you know do you deal with finding food and keeping warm and. keeping spirits up and from that people went back to their homes houses went back to their communities and and spread around that kind of like the legacy of that whole experience it was a last antiwar demonstration but. it's it was the beginning of the end for the war. both clots and backers say they haven't seen the magnitude

of protests and pressure brought to bear on government since made it despite america's decade long war in afghanistan and eight year presence in iraq i don't know whether it has to do with an all volunteer army where people were not being. drafted into the service nowadays there are less people affected by those wars that were affected by the previous wars in afghanistan. i don't know but you just you're not getting the numbers. that we used to get for those. forty years ago protesters still that's of the lincoln memorial the birds and the nassau mall if they can if it is streets and question the legitimacy of the u.s. war in vietnam but today the borders in iraq and afghanistan continue people are

now on the streets here in washington like they used to be in fort artsy washington d.c. . four decades ago americans did used to take their message to the streets they demonstrated against poverty racial inequality and of course the war in indochina now they may not have changed u.s. policy with their slogans and chance overnight but they were noticed fast forward to two thousand and eleven the economy is crumbling us debts and deficits are through the roof the u.s. military is stretched across more conflicts than it can handle a while the perpetual war on terror of the way our civil liberties that we americans hold dear so what's changed from one nine hundred seventy one to today with me to discuss is adam kokesh host of adam vs the man so adam in your personal experience do you think that the political climate the protests climate in this country is vastly different from the era of the vietnam war era or is it something else maybe it isn't covered it is very different it's different because of the actions of the government as they can to suppress dissent in this country and take by contrast what's happened in egypt in the way the protests were allowed to happen

there because it was there was some respect for the freedom of assembly here in the united states and i don't have it on this ride right ok no i mean they did a very clumsily but here in the united states by contrast we have the best repression that money can buy we have literally the best i mean the tear gas that they were using either came from here believe me the cops here know how to use it better than the cops in egypt too and that kind of oppression that we see here you know i've seen it firsthand i've been thrown to the ground by cops i've been arrested a couple dozen times we're doing things that are entirely legal so there's a certain mentality here that's different i don't think it's because the sentiments not there to buy you need to satisfy. action here in the united states is stronger than it's ever been maybe you don't have the swirl of the counterculture around of that heat in the sixty's but really the substance of this of that decided to dissent right now i think is stronger and deeper even than it was then but for people like us who would be organizing rallies and protests there's a certain like well let's do the math can we be more effective to communicate in

other ways online so there's sometimes when we use that to your advantage there sometimes when you just go around it but if you look at what happened in western illinois university this past weekend they had a they can the you can even have a party freedom of assembly not freedom of speech not free no dissent freedom of assembly so what happened in western when i was in illinois there was that there was a big block party on a huge thousands of students it looked like on the sidewalks on the streets and they sent in riot cops in a line to march down the street because their college students in the street oh my gosh and they pulled out the sound cannon they actually use the sound cannon and tear gas and not on dissenting protesting on college students who are having a party and if you can even assemble to have a good time let me see the you going to some of the protest us and that's the message it's being sense and whether you hear it articulated or not when people are deciding should i go to the that anti-war tea party rally this weekend you know

that it's it's in there and people go well i'm going to end up facing down cops and you know i don't want to do that and i think that that's really put a damper on things in terms of how we express dissent in the in the united states because that is a very powerful approach has been taken away but it just means that what we're able to do online is that much more powerful is trying to kick in in the end argument because on one hand you know if if if more people took to the streets at once i think you could argue that if there's enough people out in the streets perhaps that then some sort of message would be sent to the politicians to to the police officers to those in power at the same time you're saying that sort of seeing these kinds of violent crackdown. and sort of excessive excessive use of force a crackdown though really providing for people from even leaving the house and the first place if we had a protest against police brutality to be a really good way to get beat up fast you know that's that's just the reality of it did it in a which which came first in terms of protest or suppressing dissent and i think right now we're seen the politicians are going to do whatever they can to suppress

dissent and keep things looking like keep the illusion of that we have going in the united states here of a two party system that really doesn't it is divorced from the base of the system and they're doing everything they can to maintain the solution the people are happy with their representation rights are a lot of money in your personal experiences have really made you understand sort of what is wrong with this country you are a veteran you've experienced these and there's these kinds of suppressions i would argue that a lot of americans might be frustrated with what's going on but i don't know if folks are really at that level of really wanting to take it to the streets and in fact that kind of change i wonder if you know it could your judgment be clouded by me being around more people who are activists who are used to settling on to the streets i'm in again their message but it's taken down a notch i mean regardless of whether you think that sentiment is there or not whatever sentiment is there the expression of it is taking down a huge not because i can tell you from personal and organizing protests and rallies

when you need a permit not that you should because the permits right there in the first amendment of the constitution the united states of america but when you need a permit to keep the police from just taking you out of a space like you know here in d.c. if you want to organize a protest or rally on the mall we have what a dozen different law enforcement agencies in the district you got to talk to three or four of them you know you've got to fill forms to go to other paperwork and then you got to all of these hurdles that have been raised it's not just the violence suppression it's all the ways that we have been corralled into free speech zones bureaucratic suppression by bureaucracy so to speak thank you so much and i'm that was adam kokesh host adam vs the man. now unfortunately that does it for now for more on the stories we've covered to go to our to dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page with youtube dot com slash r t america you know the follow me on twitter at least the passing of one word and i hope to see you back here in a half an hour.