oh. well they often say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in america's case the whole lot of asphalt but from protests in afghanistan to ongoing on rest in libya looks like the military mentality of might be backfiring so is it back to square one and speaking about what. if we have run the deeper level in the sunshine is remote. we'll talk about stop it already very important and maybe bomb sanctions against iran are working all right but not in the ways that most politicians anticipated also you how this squeeze play could actually suffocate the

american economy. plus get your buckets ready because bailouts have become a fact of life in this global economic recession but is this really the best way to do business or should we go back to cut from capitalism. a good afternoon it's monday february twenty seventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our team. well violence and unrest continues today in afghanistan much of it in response to last week's burning of korans and bhangra there have been five days of riots all across the country two american soldiers shot and killed by an afghan soldier and another two killed inside one of the safest places in afghanistan for americans the afghan interior ministry in all at least thirty people have been killed and there are reports that some of the

people who cook for coalition troops have tried to poison them many are shocked by what's happening but others say this is bound to happen and this particular incident has simply exposed a policy and a strategy that are inherently weak and have failed both in afghanistan and elsewhere when you're occupy a country especially one with an extremely different culture it will become a hotbed of tension of resentment and of violence it's a lesson some say the u.s. insists on learning over and over again from vietnam to iraq to libya perhaps syria will be next so is it time to go back to the geo political drawing board con how hannah is with us now he's a columnist with foreign policy focus. i know that you've been writing about afghanistan for years now so let's just go back to basics in what ways do you think intervention there was flawed from the get go one of the first thing they did was

that instead of coming in and forming a government that included significant numbers of patients who make up a plurality of the country and or really the key to what happens in the cells in the east and who have lots of support on the other side of the border with pakistan or instead of doing there if they recognized the karzai government which is really a northern alliance come made up mainly of was there. so what they did they struggled raul's basically supporting the government that the passions won. no no one has ever won a war with the passions and you don't have to go back very far i mean the british or the russians or whatever they're right back to the greeks and i'm on the bills no one wins that war so they started off on the wrong foot to begin with and then it's occupation you know t. lawrence lawrence of arabia had a essay they wrote in one thousand nine hundred called the algebra of occupation

and he said he has six months and after six months. you know lose well it's been ten years and we're losing you know let's pull this a little bit out of afghanistan and kind of talk about the deja vu aspect of this a whole lot of people pointing to vietnam and iraq and mistakes the u.s. has made it time and time again but doesn't seem to be learning from now on the other hand of course even some of the most hardcore critics of the war in iraq say afghanistan is different and was necessary to talk about these sort of conflicting points of view especially on the broader scale here well there's a tendency for generals not to read history i mean it's sort of standard and i think it's a part of their pay grade and that's why i generally should never make decisions about going to war how you wage work separate should be really may by civilians and what's happened is that the generals have largely driven american foreign policy at least since the cold war i mean this should have been obvious there no one

has been able say sent no one has made a successful occupation of afghanistan if there are three rules of warfare one never march in moscow to never get involved in only a minority issue and three never try and calm to rescue a state and so this is something they keep coming back to but the reason is it's very tempting if you could control afghanistan you could control the crossroads to asia the road to china route to pakistan and india the middle east central asia uncorrected congress look at afghanistan and what they see is goal they don't get it but that's what they see but what about this aspect and you know we're seeing some of this right now as we see you know these protests going on against the qur'an burning i mean this is not only a very different religion this is a very different culture and it seems to me. you know there's

a lot of understanding that wasn't that didn't happen into. terms of this and yet there's still talk about trying to win the hearts and minds yeah i think they're kind of dropped the hearts and minds stuff you know that's that's basically for the press what they what they did is made a second mistake and this is the one that the obama administration made they went in they put a surge of troops in they increased the military pressure on the taliban they began taking out either arresting or killing taliban leadership and they stepped up the drone war in pakistan it was exactly the wrong thing to do so now what you've got is you've got both sides dug in you've killed a large number of the leading taliban leadership so now what you've got are second on a leadership scattered all over the place most of them are more radical younger who are you going to go shia where i mean this was the worst thing that you could do and that's what the obama administration did i don't know how they're going to get

out of this keep in mind a lot of these demonstrations these are not in the east and in the south they're in the north these are the places where we have our eyes on the old specks in the projects so as you say this is a culture that covers the entire country and we have just stepped on it and things like night raids and drone attacks and and assassinations and things like that this is absolutely stirs up the population and we're back to the algebra of occupation and we're just coming down the wrong side of that column of numbers and yet you know while this is going on there's talk of intervention at least of some sort in syria no one of course calling for military intervention but again you know the u.s. and many western countries using you know these age old reasons the protection of the people the need for democracy as reasons to get involved now of course we know china and russia both veto the u.n. security council resolution to try to force president bashar al assad out of office

but it seems that there is no concept that previous policies and. previous strategies like the one being proposed for syria aren't necessarily good ones running series a very good example because again what you have is that you have this approach that says that a military solution is part of the way you solve problems it's really not nowadays and i think what's going on in syria at this point is you've got a civil war going on here the worst thing you can do in a civil war is to arm one side or encourage it so instead of saying look let's talk about some kind of negotiations let's talk about some sort of way to back off the current situation that's going on in syria they do what they're doing in libya which is they wanted they declared regime change was there was what they were after they trudge the the libyan government with war crimes and then it became a fight to the death and i think so it remains to be seen em both libya and syria

exactly who these opposition forces actually are i want to be finding out a lot of that in future months and years can how and. how an end scuse me columnist for foreign policy and focus do appreciate your perspective i know you've been following this for quite some time glad to get it. well the question looms large and is often central to questions of foreign policy what must be done to try to force iran to stop its nuclear program for the obama administration often called it weak on its iran policy by republican counterparts the answer is sanctions and this week the latest round is set to go into effect it will target transactions made with the iranian central bank now later this summer sanctions directly targeting iranian oil are set to go into effect as well that law says that if you buy iranian petroleum you'll be locked out of doing business with any financial institutions in the united states for president obama it's

a global puzzle how to hit iran where it hurts the most without of setting up other countries especially allies who rely on iranian oil now iran has of course deny that it's seeking to build nuclear weapons and has recently showed signs that sanctions already imposed are starting to have some major negative effects on the country but there's one area many people are forgetting to take into account when they count sanctions as a solution right here in the united states it could mean a dramatic spike in oil prices here which would not only hurt consumers but could also severely hurt president obama's chances of being re-elected in november let's go now to v.j. for a shot director of international studies at trinity college in hartford connecticut and every day let's just start with this what's the likelihood this policy of sanctions against iran ends up hurting people in the u.s. as well as other countries. well it's not going to be of being the sanctions regime iran produces

a very large amount of oil it largely delivers that oil to your ip and these are two big buyers of the oil including turkey and if the iranian sanctions against iran put in place from your group that is going to mean that the united states is going to put pressure on saudi arabia on iraq on libya to deliver expensive france if you do your trip to india and if this happens that means that there will be very little expect the graph to be for the united states if they want to have more supply on the market to bring all prices so it's very likely that if the sanctions go through by the summer all prices in the united states might dutch five dollars a gallon a day i want to touch upon something you said and that is the need to get saudi arabia a saudi arabia involved i know back in the one nine hundred seventy s. there was you know

a somewhat similar situation some are pointing to in which saudi arabia was willing to use its excess oil to sort of flooded into the market to keep prices down but today i think things will be different a lot of people believe that's no longer in the best interest of the government in saudi arabia of course it wants to use its access to oil for its own population to keep them happy to prevent another arab spring from happening there i mean what do you mean when you say having saudi arabia sort of get involved as well. well the saudis have been going on a dual of european capitals and recently the major figure from the oil ministry was in new delhi meeting the indians and they have been making all kinds of promises of excess capacity coming out of saudi arabia to these markets in a sense to bring on board countries like india and brussels on side for the move to shift the sanctions regime into an embargo of course whether the

saudis have this excess capacity is a separate question and that is in a sense a national security question you know the saudis have always given very inflated numbers about their oil reserves it's very important to recognize that the shift from a sanctions to an embargo regime against iran has a great. benefit for saudi arabia so saudi arabia has been playing an active role in trying to bring the world on one side to isolate iran and right no places like new delhi and happens under not convinced that they will be given you know it's soft landing if the sanctions become an embargo against iran so it's not the case that these places have entirely or to the saudi american position that an embargo on iran would be would be neutral for them i think that's an important point and you know you can talk about other countries that can get involved to help

let's talk also about countries that may be hurt by this japan south korea you know they rely heavily on iranian oil russia opposes a sanctions that china works kind of indiscriminately with any country in which it sees business opportunities and so you know you see china partnering with the u.s. you'll see china partnering with iran how does this play out with other countries that often are on the side of the u.s. in terms of diplomatic relationships. you know there are two very important points one is that it is not the case that most countries are as enthusiastic to join the embargo of iran as the united states and a lot of blended european countries even the greeks of very very nervous the percent of greece's oil usage comes from iran and when iran said that they were going to dream to vliet got of supplies to europe there was a great deal of spending money i'm in athens where there's already an incredibly

difficult economic situation and that's the first or it is that many countries are lots sold on the idea of the embargo on iran secondly because we realize so greatly for our financial systems on your account the united states most financial transactions go through something called the swiss network which is based in brussels you know when you wire transfer money you abroad you need a swift court it's a messaging system for a wire transporting of money the swiss network has said that they're going to now sanction the iranian central bank and twenty some iranian financial institutions so this is a very serious question because what it means is despite the appetite of much of the world to continue doing business with iran europe and the united states are making it harder to do business by removing iran from the international financial markets and that is a disturbing trend now r.t.

recently spoke with hans blix the former head of the international atomic energy agency i want to play really quick what he said about her what a lot of the world is hearing are our only options when it comes to iran versus what the options actually are. yes we have to push more for sanctions that we have run the diplomatic path on the sanctions and then now they're talking about stopping oil importing and maybe bombing but i think their last a imagination there's still things that can be done on the reward side i mean what do you think i mean do you agree that there are a lot of other options that some things can still be done as opposed to implementing the sanctions well it depends on what those things up the united states and europe have taken a maximum position which is that iran should not be permitted to enrich uranium now buys a lot by the nonproliferation treaty by the way in which the international atomic

energy agency has operated it's reasonable and legal for iran to enrich uranium as long as this does not get diverted to military purposes but the united states has said that iran can never enrich uranium you know and so the suggestion to come to have iranian enrichment happen outside iran there's a great deal of space for discussion here the problem is that the west needs to back down from its maximum position and come to iran with a very open suggestion that let us actually deal with what are your interests what are your needs and let us tell you frankly that we no longer wish for the destruction of your own a lot of people talk about iran directory visa or israel but what we don't talk about is the west's rhetoric reserve in iran they threaten iran routinely so if the west arrives with less than the maximum position and with a clear statement that they no longer wish for the destruction of the iranian

government the iranian regime then there may be room to talk. very interesting they're not just not just about action sometimes it might entails a way of thinking that's changed all across the west the director of international studies at trinity college well the german parliament today approved a bailout package for greece more than one hundred seventy billion dollars or one hundred thirty euros billion euros in the hopes this move will prevent a larger financial catastrophe for the eurozone this comes after months of back and forth wrangling and of greece being forced to make major cuts in spending what happens next could have a major impact on the economies of the rest of the world either for better or worse but how many people in the u.s. actually understand what's been going on there it's a question laurie harvest where the residents on that sought to find answers to so she hit the streets of new york city to find out.

greece is getting another bailout one hundred thirty billion euros is that a good idea this week let's talk about that do you know what's going on in greece right now or do you no idea you got the wrong person do you think a lot of people know what's going on in greece you know greece. or g.o.p. . then greece their butts out so what's greece is going to do to us whether they can bail or they're saved it might matter reform is the third largest g.d.p. in the world you've got to worry about greece. they only got good greek all of i'm from germany. and the greens have a you and so we should help to give your ok with that you don't feel like there should be responsible for themselves they should be let's. hope that if it was

coming directly out of your pocket would you still be in support of the bailout no not out of my book. so as long as that other european countries here ok with that but simply doesn't stay out i mean they will tell you to have enough time as it is without having to bail out another country so i think we have to start to think globally and we all have to believe other out and try to get the same back on track so that means shouldering other people's responsibilities are you ok with that. yes or no you know part of me says no i work hard i do what i'm supposed to do i've done how my parents raised me and work hard pay my taxes and all those things but if that goes then that affects me and affects my children too so sometimes not to quote hillary clinton but i guess it does take a village the bailout with the u.s. car industry sort of had an ok ending and i was skeptical about that so i don't know i don't think i'm quick to really say actually that's a good example though because you hear bailout and it sounds like you're getting

something for nothing but it's an example of one that worked so maybe this will work whether it's a stepping in a european union or whether it's going to be someplace in asia steps in foley china china will invest in them so is that a good thing i mean now that we're all globally tied and we see these kinds of situations arise is the global economy a good progression. it was a natural progression it's not as if anyone could stop it when you have free trade we would say i mean it's going to happen this way you have more interdependent countries at this point whether or not people even know what's going on with the greece bailout the bottom line is it's happening let's see if this one will make a difference. are as alike laurie said whether you know much about it or not or whether you agree or disagree with it bailouts have become a go to strategy from countries to companies there's no way around it the bailout

is also a political tool and rhetoric surrounding bailouts seems not to be going away to talk more about this i'm joined by max fried wolf senior analyst at green cross capital from our studios in new york city and max let's start with this bailout of greece there are mixed reactions to it how does this decision play down the road do you think i mean i think just before we even get to how it plays down the road we should take a step back from what is kind of panicked need poorly informed rhetoric on a lot of parties side greece is not getting bailed out creditors to greece are getting bailed out the reason that we keep hearing the term fire wall is because you're building a wall around the country letting it burn to the ground and making sure that folks who've invested in it residing in other countries don't see the fire leap the wall and get to them so this whole debate has become somewhat reminiscent of the debates we had and never really understood to our detriment around bear stearns and around lehman brothers in which someone else is getting bailed out by giving money to

greece which they then turn around and have to pay out to someone else but those like you think your question don't you think with all this attention paid to greece . you know and i do understand what you're saying that it is creditors getting bailed out but don't you think that. the eurozone and some of the leaders in europe are going to make sure that the people of greece come out of this at least for the most part stronger than they are right now. i would love to think that i absolutely don't i mean i think that the twenty percent unemployment the forty percent youth unemployment the regular rioting the hemorrhaging of the future of the dreams of a lot of people the near bankruptcy or total bankruptcy of a significant portion of the country's industries the changing of the constitution to make debt repayment a higher priority than all basic social services i do think greece will get through it it's a tough country it will get some help i'm glad for the help they are getting don't think this is primarily a moral decision but i think we should be clear and most of the analysts aren't that what's being done here is you're sacrificing a significant portion of the greek economy in the hopes of keeping the rest of

europe and shoring up the creditors it's more or less the same kind of story we saw with the u.s. housing market here where what was shored up was the housing credits not the u.s. households and that's part of the reason we've seen millions of homes go through foreclosure that's an interesting comparison so let's keep it here in the u.s. then tomorrow of course the g.o.p. primary in michigan and the auto industry in michigan of course big business general motors at one time was bailed out by washington under president obama and guess what the country just announced its largest profits ever despite what many would call a successful bailout i want to play really quick what rick santorum and mitt romney said at last week's debate in arizona he supported the folks on wall street and bailed out wall street was all for and then when it came to the auto workers and the folks in detroit he said no that to me is not a consistent principled position i have one i believe in markets not just when they're convenient for me governor. i think they wanted fifty billion dollars and i

brought it up in the paper and i said absolutely don't write a check for fifty billion dollars all right so let's just talk really quick math about this issue of bailing out the auto industry i mean do you think it was successful will be seen as successful down the road. now look at all whenever we have that discussion we have to decide what we think is success i think the bottom line is for a lot of reasons including national security which both those gentlemen spend a lot of time talking about and saber rattling about you need to have an auto industry because the auto industry also makes your weapon systems in your tank something that nobody brought up in that particular discussion the bottom line is the auto worker has not done enormously well the city of detroit has not done enormously well the state of michigan has not done enormously well but there's no way you can say they would have done better with the larger bankruptcy of ford general motors and what's now part of their in the name of chrysler so do i think that the bailout was better than no bailout probably i also think that what history

and the study of economics teaches us is there isn't just a choice that some one politician proposes and absolutely nothing that there's a world of gray zone is in there and we should have and could have had a debate and come with a better policy but it was that or nothing that i think it's pretty clear that what we did choose to do was a lot better than nothing interesting and so let's talk also about tarp of course the troubled asset relief program in many ways it happened years ago but still wildly unpopular quite a few people today say this was the reason this what happened basically ensured that all of the too big to fail banks will be saved or bail out what do you think americans should draw the line in their support of the bank bailout. you know i understand why bank bailouts are unpopular and the tarp program kind of over promised and has massively under delivered so it's helped a tiny fraction of the number of people we were told it would help it's spent and lost more money in terms of some of the programs than it was supposed to although

most of the money has come back i think the lesson of tarp or for trying to draw broadly here and a lesson of g.m. is we need major industries but we also need them to be accountable not just to their stockholders but to their stakeholders to the communities to the tax authorities that they need to fund we didn't ok job of rescuing some of our big businesses which was probably a necessary evil but we attach no strings so we're now three or four years later the general public of the united states is poor people keep losing their homes corporate profits are at an all time high in their all time high as a percentage of national income which begs to a situation of we're better off with our big companies than without them but we should have attach some strings there's no strings attached relationship forged between taxpayers as givers and large corporations as pure takers has left us in a situation where some of us have very little left to give and other folks have gotten an appetite for taking well certainly for all these reasons you just listed max it's no wonder then that the bailout has become

a political tool at next fred wolf senior analyst for green press capital and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we cover and go to our team dot com slash usa or youtube dot com slash r t america but we're back in a half hour. question is that so much excitement in which of course his wife monica nonsense so here it is the price of crude remains stubbornly high and consumers feel the pinch the why are energy prices so high because of the lack of supply and security. wealthy british science. is not on the tireless money. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike's cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on r g. fish. fish fish. fish to. keep. in. touch.