don't come. thanks for being with us on how past the hour i'm karen taraji and these are your headlines that also calls on arab and western states not to afford kofi annan also mediating effort in syria amid high hopes the special envoy his report to the u.n. security council may bring the crisis closer to a solution. sparing no expense iran is exiled from the global banking system leaving while for us the soaring western nations rushing to open emergency domestic reserves. and the controversial tradition of remembering

alsace veterans as heroes liberia nationalist gather for an annual march condemned by half of the population and seen as an inspiration for young neo nazi. next as the u.s. a led campaign in afghanistan suffers a double blow both from the taliban and the afghan government crosstalk ways up america's struggling strategy. can. stand. alone and welcome to crossfire computers of all the quagmire continues after the killing spree by a u.s. soldier the burning of korans and the desecration of taliban corpses 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. get crosstalk 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 somehow in berkeley and i think go to you first mr cameron was in washington and he said when the occupation comes to an end in one thousand 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 a 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 viet nam we really didn't win in iraq and we can't win in afghanistan and it seems like 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 bent 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 correction pretty grim picture that sollars just painted right there what do you think about that i mean again they did it with great debate now as you know why always continuing to stay there to two thousand and fourteen how can i 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 this string of absolutely appalling recent events that has. i think

a record irreparably weakened the u.s. position and particularly the u.s. military position in afghanistan i also think that it's very. challenging possibly pointless to try and fight it 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 reshaped i would not however call for a precipitous withdrawal from the region entirely i think. from mary 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 to keep 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 way ok christian the final nail in the coffin you want to react to.

you know you have to take a look at the one or 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 absence of the taliban basically have no there's an expiration date on the u.s. commitment they've conducted themselves accordingly stepping back and 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 they can also but you couldn't reach him don't you think it's the occupation with troops the occupation there will be it's the occupation that creates the violence it's foreign troops in afghanistan when foreign troops

leave afghanistan you have a different scenario. there ok but that's the you know it's a good argument you get there to go right ahead. i'd say there is there have been a lot of problems especially with strategic communications you know there was a shocking poll taken in the labels 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 a 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 is a democratically elected government and also most afghans are saying 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. go ahead well i mean when you say the karzai government is democratically elected i mean i think that the karzai government does have its virtues i think it belongs in the guinness book of

record 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 they did it model isn't the problem this is i started to be a bad ally when vice president biden came out and said he didn't want cars i really liked it 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 you want because can i. put that wrench and washing 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 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 and i think the culture of impunity there existed long before you think about the christian i mean it goes all the way back to the very beginning here i mean when you said to george bush should accomplish the goals that he wanted to build i mean what went wrong because the place is

a complete basket case again. right well you had 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 basket 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 play into administrations but the fact is. it serves no one so 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 and we don't want to 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 in a sticking you know increase in. security gains that he made in helmand can you see that maybe that one of the factors is the united states and nato and afghanistan can you conceive of that the way people look at it on the ground. i mean you talk about bad actors all the time i think 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 is 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 as long as to confront the terrorist to confront the people who conflate a religion with oil and so we failed so badly at that so in that sense i think it's unfortunate it doesn't surprise me that we don't have afghan popular support to the degree we are 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 you know 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 i will 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 the state of our. close up genius is being to do it on the screen. where the four my four hours are

made and can be tested to the limits of the from. now on r g goes to the europeans. where blacksmithing has developed from a craft into an industry where rough rocks turn into words of beauty. and where a village called newspaper hides amid the forests welcome to the last grecian russia glows a. thing. through .

well. it's technology innovation all the list of around russia. welcome back to crossfire thank you so much we were talking about washington strategy or lack of strategy for afghanistan.

ok question i'd like to 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 question respectfully about what the nature of democracy there then it was about women's rights and now that's in retreat where is there any silver lining except for that it's so bad that the occupation will end. well i don't think ending the occupation per se 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 because i'm going to think it's

too late to do that if you think it's too late after everything that's been done the last decade i mean can you how many times can i start over again ok and put on a new face well it's a good point i can certainly understand the level of fatigue and frustration that the american public and the 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 and it is to the united states. as an architect to come to russia than they than they do to the u.s. but also. there are continued 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 and 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. we were speaking of 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 but what about the people on the ground in afghanistan i think they need to break the occupation is what is driving much 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 or to go and shoot a bunch of civilians this is what happens during war when of when 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 return to normal when was afghanistan ever normal i don't think this there was ever a normalcy in the country they've lived band of bribery or tribalism and off drugs for centuries so i don't think there's any well going back to ensure that the united states and i said actually had to stand actually had its most recent peaceful period and in the one nine hundred sixty s. and seventy's it was exporting agricultural products legal why this less narcotics were grown in afghanistan than all of pakistan or sorry i should say more power more a narcotic for 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 brought superpowers into that region and i think i do agree that the afghan people have been the greatest victims of this and i think the united states really left them in the lurch in 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 alternately we're going to leave if not this year the next to the year after and everybody knows that whatever you want to. hear. what about payable. i was just you know there's already one taboo to going to stand with no eating

history if you look at all the places where the u.s. military has intervened it's been a story of remarkable stability you know these places don't resemble switzerland necessary but iraq has a nascent democracy it's violent we exit it too quickly kuwait is free and persian gulf oil flow that was a very interesting narrative as you can see that there are three here 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 iran war this is a ridiculous premise and if you look at the success of the u.s. military. successful what's not successful is our so-called civilian surge our civilian agencies you know i mentioned earlier worries the flow of drugs in afghanistan that was the responsibility of the state department international

narcotics and law enforcement bureau others the british before we had it and that has been a failure you know secretary clinton was supposed to lead this violence in civilian surge in afghanistan it never happened just as the civilian surge in iraq never happened but that is a problem all right barbara i'm going to let some of the show it's still on the civilian side is about the severe reaction to going to gretchen here in 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 how can that be made possible ok because the foreign occupation is not welcome back and 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. but 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 do not 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 i as you know the responsibilities of afghan why is it the responsibility of united states and nato to create stability there why can't it be up to the neighborhood to do it 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 on 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 and i think it's again it's just it's a real tragedy that we can that the international community not just nato can come together at the diplomatic and it's a political level and try and get something but that's where i think i had three 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 are a lot of i would lie was said there. saul first bank 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 anymore our country really needs that money we cannot just simply send troops around the world where we're 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 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 a legal 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 or 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 those terrible is just a bunch and we don't take this into a. christian gentlemen no facts go ahead you know this notion that we have a right larry made up of poor people who can't get other jobs are minorities are simply untrue. ok so if you want to go through easier you know we can do this with the drug war incidentally there is a reason we're in afghanistan 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 maturity in kabul before the

civil war there which you know 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 is not good for russia it's not good for india because pakistan is going to indulge 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 run out of time folks very interesting discussion is i 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 all of us from washington c.r.t. see you next time remember astafy. can.

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