from russia. the future average. hello there were of you watching around the world for. tea tonight. these are all top stories the u.n. arab league envoy to syria calls on the united nations was powerful to speak with one voice when it comes to. moscow hopes co-financing peace mission. also headlining from us crude tactics the rounds exiled from the global banking system selling prices soaring in western nations russian oil but emergency domestic

reserves. also the controversial tradition of remembering s.s. veterans as heroes latvian nationalists gather for an annual march. for the population and seen as an inspiration for young neo nazis. next as the u.s. led campaign in afghanistan suffers a double blow from the taliban on the afghan government. america's struggling strategy. can start. to. flow and welcome to crossfire computer lavelle the big fight meyer 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. 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's all in berkeley i'd like to go to you first mr cameron was in washington and he said when the occupation comes to an end in one 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 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 that nobody ever learns these lessons the united states military there has a higher level of suicides than they do of 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 bin ladin 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 solace just painted right there what do you think about that i mean i get it you did great debate now is you know why are we 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 reshaped i would not however call for a precipitous withdrawal from the region entirely i think there are going to marry and instead what you 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 in crunch way 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 the time he knows the surge and he didn't give the combatant commander the amount of troops that were necessary for this with the president also knows to offer 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 they can also but you can't reach him 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 these foreign troops in afghanistan when

foreign troops leave afghanistan you have a different scenario when they say they're ok but that's the you know it's an argument you can get rid of saddam go right ahead. i'd say there is there have been a lot of problems especially with the cheater 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 a 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 are 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. 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 fact accomplish their goal. and the problem this is ours i started to give bad as a lie when vice president biden came out and said he didn't want cars i realized that even though it was completely certain the cars i would be erected reelected because he has supported afghanistan 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 to. put that wrench in washington go ahead go ahead and afraid of economic 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 to suggest that this just started under this administration i think is misguided and i think the culture of impunity there existed long before when you think about their christian i mean really 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 get i mean what went wrong because it places a complete basket case again. well you had

a 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 a master of the art basket are 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 especially 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 were intended 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 afghanistan back before one and also we don't want the iranians the chinese and other bad actors to draw

unfortunate conclusions about a percipient this u.s. withdrawal so mean you know sticking you know increased. security gains that you made and can you see that maybe the one of the actors is the united states and nato and afghanistan can you conceive about 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 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 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 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 what kind of changes are all about after the break here after the break we'll continue our discussion on the war in afghanistan they are. taking. this respectable british gentleman's choice was. jackets and whiskey.

a much younger wife. more than twenty years of intelligence service profits the so if you. feel these choices on fourteen. fewer chances. full of life. limited time. more optimistic. the theater where the ingenious opened their hearts to the rest of us. are. wealthy british science.

markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cars are the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our team. can. still . be. welcome at a crosswalk you know about too much we're talking about washington strategy or lack of strategy for afghanistan. can still. ok question i'd like to go to you it seems to me like a strategy for afghanistan is that change 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 woman's rights amount outs and retreat i mean where is there any silver lining except 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. don't you think it's too late to do that if you think it's true wait after everything that's been done the last decade i mean can you how many times you start over again ok you put out a new face and well i think it's a good point i can certainly understand the level of foot 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. trafficking which is a much bigger threat to russia that it is to the united states than our current exactly come more as an architect to come to russia than they than they do to the u.s. 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. any worse speak can't be any worse sol if i can go to you i did 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 a break of 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 that country they've lived of banditry or bribery or tribalism and off drugs for centuries so i don't think there's any going badly in terms of it and i disagree and i said actually we had graduated just had actually had its most recent peaceful period and then one thousand sixties and seventies it was exporting agricultural products legal ones less narcotics were grown in afghanistan and all of pakistan sorry i should say more more narcotics 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. cold war games brought cold war games bracci 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 at 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 find out that they be it's 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 of the year after and everybody knows that what . this new. nato what about payable. i was just you know they already had one saturday stand but it's no meeting history if you look at all the places where the u.s. military has intervened it's been a story of remarkable stability in these places don't resemble switzerland necessary but iraq has a nascent democracy it's violent we exit in too quickly kuwait is free persian gulf oil flow that was a very interesting area as you can see there are three are right now if you look at

the instances where we've ok gretchen you want to jump in you want to disagree thing at the end. 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 sure this is a ridiculous premise and if you look at the success of the u.s. military. 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 and law enforcement bureau 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 never happened but that is a problem all right barbara i'm going to let some of the show its power on the civilian side about the severe depression which i forgot 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 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 that going 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 this two rival continental neighbors in addition pakistan hardly any and afghanistan do not get along particularly well with iran and the taliban government

almost fight a war without get with the iran back in the year two thousand. so this is why high region where i have for you the responsibility 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 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 see it's a real tragedy that we can't 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 on the broad scale i would say this is been a political failure more than anything else ok so you want to jump in there would lie was said there. sol first on they 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 we were not invited by the way nobody invited us to afghanistan nobody invited us into iraq nobody invited us to these places we just go there because we have a mission or a strategy or a policy where go where we're going to dictate and take control gretchen when you talk about drug trafficking where does the drugs get consume in the 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 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 those terrible is just a bunch and we don't take this into a christian child meaning no facts go ahead you know this notion that he has a right larry made up of poor people who can't get other jobs or minorities a simply untrue. ok sol if you want to ensure. we can do this what do you know of 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 the journey in kabul before the civil war there which you know in many ways was a proxy war for the cold the for the super powers 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 if we don't carry out we've run out of time folks very interesting discussion is 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 makes one of us from watching us here are to see you next time remember hospitals. can.

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