well thanks for joining us on how fast they are parents and here are your headlines russia says it hopes western and arab countries don't ruin the u.n. arab league envoy for peace mission in syria hopes ride on whether kofi arnold's findings can bring world leaders together to find a solution to syria's twelve months of turmoil. iran's banks are being booted out of a global payments system in a latest move to pressure tektronix over its nuclear program the fear is growing

europe that the sanctions could have ricocheted on beleaguered nations. thousands of egyptians have protested against police negligence following a football stadium stampede which killed seventy four people last month it's a major growing frustration over how the new leadership is failing to bring about change. except as the u.s. led campaign in afghanistan suffers a double blow from the taliban and the afghan government always up america's struggling strategy. can't. stick. to. chloe welcome to crossfire computer a little bit quiet myra continues after the killing spree by a u.s. soldier the burning of korans and the desecration of taliban forces the u.s. says it remains committed to its afghan strategy this is at

a time when some american super hawks contend the war is all but lost the occupation is coming to an end but under whose terms. can. start. to cross talk tense u.s. afghan relations i'm joined by salt landau in berkeley he is a senior fellow at the institute of policy studies author commentator and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues in washington we go to richmond peter she's an award winning journalist and author of seeds of terror and in los angeles we go to christian white and he is a principal with d.c. international advisory and a former state department senior advisor all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it's all in berkeley and i to go to you first mr cameron was in washington and he said when the occupation comes to an end in one nine hundred fourteen i'm sorry in two thousand and fourteen. it won't be

a perfect country afghanistan but he said if you compare where we are today to where we were two or three years ago the situation is considerably improved what world is he talking about the situation in afghanistan now is catastrophic. well i think mr cameron is living in the bubble the situation in afghanistan is like all the other wars the united states has gotten into since world war two is as long as there's somebody who fights back we don't win we didn't win in korea we couldn't win in vietnam we really didn't win in iraq and we can't win in afghanistan and it seems that nobody ever learns these lessons the united states military there has a higher level of suicides then they do have losses in combat the morale of the soldiers is obviously very bad because the soldiers know what they're up against theirs and this is a no win situation so what are they doing there the public is opposed to it the

public here and the public in great britain as well what is it that they hope to accomplish the united states and its allies went into afghanistan to get them a lot ok we got it they went in there to get a government that nurtured the fanes of nine eleven ok that government is gone it will never come back no matter if the taliban come back nobody will ever do that again they understand that so what's the reason for staying there to bring democracy to afghanistan it makes no sense ok and i think most of the world understands this ok gretchen pretty grim picture that we saw was just painted right there what do you think about that i mean again you know that the great debate now is you know why always continuing to stay there to two thousand and fourteen how can it improve by two thousand and fourteen what would be the difference except for the loss of treasury in lives. well i agree with much of what he said in terms of i mean i think the current strategy is in tatters and there has been

a string of absolutely appalling recent events that has. i think a record irreparably weakened the u.s. position and particularly the us military position in afghanistan i also think that it's very. challenging possibly pointless to try and fight a counterinsurgency strategy when you're propping up a government that is as corrupt and inept as hamad karzai government is and that said i do think there have been areas where the u.s. military pockets where the military has been able to bring stability however there is there are real questions about the sustainability of that stability so i think we're looking at a strategy now that lacks political direction and which really needs to be dramatically reshapes i would not however call for a precipitous withdrawal from the region entirely i think there are. married but it

just from afghanistan ok just from afghanistan i mean everything you've just said says we should just leave right now i mean it's pointless the key stay there because it gets worse and worse and worse or maybe the last couple of months are just an exception that's hard to believe. well i wouldn't suggest staying there in that capacity or this or that or continuing the current strategy i think that. the united states is looking at a rapidly changing threat portrait from the region groups that act much more like transnational organized crime groups than purely terrorist and politically and ideologically driven groups i would personally reshape the strategy strategy dramatically and i would probably be a lot tougher on the karzai government and the amount of money that is being allowed to flow out of the region. but i but i think the current strategy has at this point it's you know the final nail in the coffin came this week. with the

shooting and punch away ok christian the final nail in the coffin you want to react to. well you know you have to take a look at the longer term so we have a counterinsurgency strategy of sorts that president obama put in place but it's always been essentially a policy of managed failure because of the time he knows the surge and he didn't give the combat commander the amount of troops that were necessary for this with the president also knows to offer arabs and so the taliban basically have no there's an expiration date on the u.s. commitment they've conducted themselves accordingly but stepping back we have achieved the goals that president bush originally set out for this mission back when it began october ninth i believe of twenty one which is to ensure that afghanistan could not be used as a safe haven for terrorists the problem is if the taliban come back there is actually reason to believe and also you can be sure don't you think it's the

occupation withdraw it's the occupation there will be it's the occupation that creates the violence right that it's foreign troops in afghanistan when foreign troops leave afghanistan you have a different scenario. there ok but that's the you know the argument you get there don't go right ahead. i'd say there is there have been a lot of problems especially was strategic communications you know there was a shocking poll taken among males in southern afghanistan that more about ninety percent don't know really what happened on nine eleven and if you don't know that you can't understand while the u.s. is there so there have been big shortcomings on the other hand the karzai government even though just today they say they want the u.s. to withdraw basically for direct combat and just be in reserve which might not be the worst thing in the world but the karzai government still wants the u.s. there this is a democratically elected government and also most afghans really say that when the u.s. withdraws if it does so before afghanistan has its own capabilities then you might get another civil war ok so what do you think about that. ahead well i mean when

you say the karzai government is democratically elected i mean i think the karzai government does have its virtues i think it belongs in the guinness book of robert records for corruption. there's no question about that it is taken bribes that are virtually unknown even in that area but democratically elected that's ridiculous there's no such thing i mean how can you have in afghanistan a democratic election that's bizarre it's absurd the united states did in fact accomplish that goal. is the problem this is started to be a bad show i would vice president biden came out and said he didn't want cars i really like that even though it was completely certain the cars i would be erected reelected because he has supported afghanistan and that is when cars i started to conclude he had to make peace with the bad actors in his region because he saw the u.s. commitment was wavering ok gretchen do output that you can now i'm a. graduate of washington go ahead go ahead i'm afraid i think how many cars i was

in bed with all sorts of bad actors as were his brothers long before joe biden came to have dinner with them this government has a record of very close connections with a major drug trafficking organization. money exchange networks that have moved billions of dollars out of the region and money and billions of u.s. dollars of u.s. aid this is a government that is. i think essentially an. organized crime group masquerading as a. developing nation propped up by washington and the longer we continue to prop them up the more blood and treasure we will lose for no reason but but to suggest that this just started under this administration i think is misguided i think the culture of impunity there existed long before if you think about the christian i mean i mean it goes all the way back to the very beginning here i mean

when you said to george bush accomplish the goals that he wanted to get i mean what went wrong because it places a complete basket case again. right away you have the creep of the mission as you did in iraq where it went from establishing from removing a government to creating something much grander and more stable and flowing democracy something like a shining city on the hill recently investor the basswood or noted that that actually is no longer the goal you had a decade were basically there was a lot of attention paid to security in the region of specially in the south we have a what i would say is america's most dangerous ally if it's an ally at all in pakistan so you have all these things which actually weren't tended while the u.s. was focused more on iraq so there's a lot of error to go around and it does span two administrations but the fact is it serves no one interests in the civilized world to have afghanistan it fall into the hands of people who might reasonably be expected to offer terrorist safe havens we

don't want to somalia in afghanistan or we don't want to get a stand back before a one and also we don't want the iranians the chinese and other bad actors to draw unfortunate conclusions about a precipitous u.s. withdrawal so mean you know sticking you know we increase. the security gains that he made in kenya can you see that maybe the one of the bad actors is the united states and nato and afghanistan can you conceive of out the way people look at it on the ground. i mean talk about bad actors all the time you know i think we're again we've had a tremendous failure of strategic communications and public diplomacy our public diplomacy has been focused too much on the approach of this just explaining america putting lipstick on our foreign policy and assume people will love us rather than finding voices within afghanistan within islam more broadly to confront the islamist to confront the terrorist to confront the people who conflate a religion with while and so we failed so badly at that so in that sense i think

it's unfortunate and it doesn't surprise me that we don't have afghan popular support to the degree we ought to but on the other hand there is this government so they had free and fair elections they have a democratically elected president and they want us there at least for the time being so you know a a reasonable transition to afghan control which is underway training up afghan security forces it's been way too long the american electorate is just as frustrated as other people are so you know i think you will see big changes coming in the u.s. posture in afghanistan all right we'll see what kind of changes are all about after the break or after the break we'll continue our discussion on the war in afghanistan stay. in.

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welcome across the uk i get a little too much we're talking about washington strategy or lack of strategy for afghanistan. q. ok question i did go to you it seems to me like the strategy for afghanistan is they've changed i mean now afghanistan is the opium capital of the world and then we were supposed to build democracy it's a catastrophe i disagree with christian respectfully about what the nature of democracy there then it was about women's rights and now that's in retreat i mean where is there anything over line except that it's so bad that the occupation more and. well i don't think ending the occupation per se is is a good idea i agree with christian on that a precipitous withdrawal from the region is going to be extremely dangerous

if it happens and i believe the united states needs to stay engaged in the region i would simply reshape the nature of that engagement pretty dramatically and focus a lot more on the illicit money flows in the region. if you think it's too late to do that if you think it's too late after everything that's been done in the last decade i mean can you how many times you can start over again ok and put on a new face well i think it's a good point i can certainly understand the level of fatigue and frustration that the american public and european public has with this issue however. this is a problem that has essentially been allowed to fester and still there's very little attention being paid to it there's a number of very serious threats emanating from the region narcotics trafficking which is a much bigger threat to russia than it is to the united states and our current x. actually come more as a narcotic come to russia than they and they do it in the us but also. there are

continued it's it's perhaps true that the occupation has succeeded in driving extremist forces out of afghanistan but they really only push them about five hundred yards over the border into the tribal areas of pakistan if the united states pulls out if afghanistan again turns into a failed state or descends into civil war where do you think they're going to go they'll move straight back in it's it's it's i don't think it is i think it's a simplistic argument to suggest that if we go away everything will return back to normal and it doesn't what is any worse speak can't be any worse if i can go to you i would say you know just for the sake of argument just leave i mean we've already said we're going to leave here and the longer we stay the more the casualties go and we always say you know we talk about public opinion on this program in the u.k. in the united states and what about the people on the ground in afghanistan i think they need a break of the occupation is what is driving bunch of this violence. well i think

that's what the pundits don't see they don't have to go in there and fight and they don't therefore get compelled to commit suicide or to your innate on corpses or to burn korans were to go and shoot a bunch of civilians this is what happens during war one of one soldiers get screwed up and frustrated this happens it happened in korea it happened in vietnam it happened in iraq and it's happening in afghanistan and it will continue to happen this isn't going to stop and gretchen when you say returned to normal when was afghanistan ever normal i don't think there was ever a normalcy in the country they've lived of banditry you of bribery or tribalism and off drugs for centuries so i don't think there's any going badly in terms of it and i did afghanistan actually graduate and i stand actually had its most recent peaceful period and in one nine hundred sixty s. and seventy's it was exporting agricultural products legal ones and less narcotics

were grown in afghanistan than all of pakistan sorry i should say more and more your contacts were grown in pakistan's tribal areas an area about the size of rhode island than all of afghanistan a country about the size of texas so i think it was stable china got a cold war game brought cold war games. superpowers into that region and i think i do agree that the afghan people have been the big greatest victims of this and i think the united states really left them in the lurch of the end of the one nine hundred eighty s. and were about to do it again it's a real tragedy so if you want to be pointed out they be a true yeah it may be a tragedy but it's not or you know when we talk strategy strategies military this country doesn't succeed when it uses its military if somebody fights back except for world war two when you go through all of the other wars we don't have the staying power we're not going to get the staying power ultimately we're going

to leave if not this year the next to the year after and everybody knows that whatever the people you want to. create what about payable. i was just you know there's already one topic that is standard if you know eating history if you look at all the places where the u.s. military has intervened it's been a story of remarkable stability these places don't resemble switzerland necessary but iraq as a nascent democracy is violently excited too quickly kuwait is free and persian gulf oil flow that was a very interesting area as you can see that there are three iraq right now if you look at the instances where we've gretchen you want to jump in you want to disagree . i just want to say that you're wrong i'm saying when people fight back we don't do well we didn't do well in korea for three years for nothing we didn't do well and a lot of i am war this is a ridiculous premise and if you look at the success of the u.s.

military is it really successful what's not successful is our so-called civilian surge our civilian agencies you know mentioned earlier worries the flow of drugs in afghanistan that was the responsibility of the state department international narcotics of law enforcement. among others the british before we had it and that has been a failure you know secretary clinton was supposed to leave this wanted civilian surge in afghanistan it never happened just as the civilian surge in iraq ever happened but that is a problem of our bright going to decide to show its power on the civilian socks about the x. direction and i'd like to go to gretchen you know washington in the united states and its allies are going to leave i mean i've always thought you know it's better for the neighborhood to take care of itself and the how can that be made possible ok because the foreign occupation is not welcome back we all agree with that ok maybe except for mr karzai ok but other than that you know it's local players on the ground that must negotiate this the end of at least the occupation and then we

go forward how does that happen and who's likely to be. well you have tremendous distrust within the region as well that you have the. historic and and really acute rivalry between india and pakistan i mean some of at least some of the violence we see in afghanistan is is actually the sort of hot war side of the long cold war that has existed between these two rival subcontinental neighbors in addition pakistan hardly any and afghanistan get along particularly well with iran and the taliban government almost fight a war with afghan with iran back in the year two thousand. so this is a region where. the responsibilities of afghan law is the responsibility of united states and nato to create stability there why can't it be up to the neighborhood to do what it might be violent but then again there's a lot of violence anyway i think there actually should be a neighborhood wide sort of helsinki style conference to try and improve.

regional to try and reach regional agreements on major issues like transit trade on regional issues like narcotics trafficking and regional issues like nuclear proliferation on issues like trade this is a this is a region that. has tremendous opportunity from an economic standpoint to advance if it could just put placate some of these crises that have been going on for decades india pakistan is one and the afghan conflict is another these are really slowing this region down it's a i think it's again it's a real tragedy that we can the international community not just nato can come together at the diplomatic and at the political level and try and get something but that's where i think i agree with christian that's where i believe the failure has been at the political level it's not been there have obviously been some appalling

military blunders and certain aspects of the military strategy that i disagree with deeply however the broad scale i would say this it's been a political failure more than anything else ok so you want to jump in there with a lot was said there. so all first think the united states should think about changing its policy not changing its strategy that is what is our policy to go in and intervene militarily where we can well the answer is these are very costly interventions they're draining our treasury at a time when we really can't afford that any more our country really needs that money we cannot just simply send troops around the world we were not invited by the way nobody invited us to afghanistan nobody invited us into iraq and nobody invited us to these places we just go there because we have a mission or a strategy or a policy we're what we're going to dictate and take control gretchen when you talk

about drug trafficking where does the drugs get consume in one hundred years plus of a war against drugs in this country we have not reduced the rate of addiction not one percent so far why do we continue to fight the war against drugs it's ridiculous so we have drug trafficking because it's illegal and as long as it stays illegal you're going to have criminal activity but we never address that policy this we think of is unchangeable and now that we don't have the draft we send the poor kids who can't afford it will can't get a job at wal-mart and go into the military to go and do the fighting they get all upset they commit suicide they commit atrocities or they come during the interim let's just a bunch and we only take this until recent years gentlemen you know facts and go ahead you know this notion that we have a right and hurried up of poor people who can't get other jobs or minorities a simply shrew. ok so if you want to go through you know we can do this with

the drug war incidentally there is a reason we're in afghanistan and that's because we were attacked but let's get back to some of the basic policy facts here gretchen had a very good point there was a period of stability and stability in afghanistan and maternity and kabul before the civil war there which you know in many ways was a proxy war for the cold the for the a superpowers in the cold war the problem with running away quickly too is it puts pakistan back in the driver's seat in afghanistan which isn't good for anyone it's not good for the united states not good for nato it's not good for russia it's not good for india because pakistan is going to win gold the worst actors in afghanistan they have a history of doing that they did that during the soviet occupation by supporting the worst of the mujahedeen not the best of the mujahideen and that's a real problem if we if we see quickly if we don't hear you here we've run out of time folks very interesting discussion it's always find it very interesting to save

afghanistan we have to destroy pakistan many thanks to my guest today in berkeley washington and in los angeles and thanks for viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time remember. keep.

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