as we covered that r.t. dot com slash usa also check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r.t. america and you should definitely follow me on twitter you can find me at christine . well. it's technology innovation all these developments around russia we've got the future covered. can't. wait welcome to crossfire computerworld the quagmire 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 gretchen peters she's an award winning journalist and author of seeds of terror and in los angeles we go to christian right 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 sol 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 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 vietnam 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 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 ben law ok we got it they went in there they 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 i mean again it is great debate now is you know why are we continuing to stated to two thousand and fourteen how can i improve my 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 a counterinsurgency strategy when you're propping up a government that is as corrupt and inept as hamad karzai government is 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 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. fishing 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 a 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 manage 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 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 want to be again 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 the occupation there will be it's the occupation that creates the violence right if that's foreign troops in afghanistan when foreign troops leave afghanistan you have a different scenario in the same they're 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 with 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 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 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. 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 for democratic leader like that 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 its goal. is the problem this is the cars i started to be a bad ally when 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 direct 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 are looking. to push that direction in

washington go ahead gretchen 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 i think the culture of impunity there existed long before when you think about their

christian i mean i mean it goes all the way back to the very beginning here i mean what you said to george bush would accomplish the goals you wanted to get i mean what went wrong because it places a complete basket case again. right well you had the creep of the mission as you did in iraq where it went from establishing firm removing a government to creating something much grander and more stable and flowing democracy something like a shining city on the hill recently ambassador of the hard 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 the 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 weren't tended while the u.s. was focused more on iraq so there's a lot of of error to go around and it does span two 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 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 precipitous u.s. withdrawal so mean you know sticking you know increased. 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 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 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 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 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.

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it's the song. welcome back to crossfire calculable so much you were talking about washington

strategy or lack of strategy for afghanistan. to. start. ok gretchen i'd like to go to you it seems to me like a 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 a line except that it's so bad that the occupation will end. 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 the last decade i mean can you know how many times you start over again ok if what i mean you face well it's a good point that i can certainly understand the level of foot 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 to it 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 than it is to the united states which is in our car tax actually more of the narcotics come to russia then they go 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've really only pushed them about five hundred yards over the border into the tribal areas of pakistan if the united states calls 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 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 if i can go to you i'd 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 were 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 there was ever a normalcy in that country they've lived on have banned the trio 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 and i said actually we had gradually as i said actually had its most recent peaceful period and in one nine hundred sixty s. and seventy's it was exporting agricultural products legal ones less narcotics were grown in afghanistan than all of pakistan or sorry i should say more and more narcotics were grown in pakistan's tribal areas an area about the size of rhode

island and all of afghanistan a country about the size of texas so i think it was stable. cold war game 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 fight about maybe it's yeah maybe a tragedy but it's not 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 god staying power ultimately we're going to leave if not this year the next of the year after and everybody knows that whatever you want to. hear. what about pay it off.

i was just you know he's already had one saturday scan but if no waiting for history if you look at all the places where the u.s. military has intervened it's been a story of remarkable stability no these places don't resemble switzerland necessary but iraq has a nascent democracy and violent we exit it too quickly kuwait is free persian gulf oil flow those are very interesting areas you can see that there are three iraq right now if you look at the instances where we've ok gretchen you want to jump in and 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 we fought three years for nothing you know we didn't do well in anything i do i am war this is a ridiculous premise and if you look at the success of the u.s. military. only successful what's not successful is our so-called civilian surge our civilian agencies you know i mentioned earlier as 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 lead this wanted civilian surge in afghanistan it never happened just as the civilian surge in iraq never happened but that is a problem with our broader influence on the show it's higher on the civilian suck about the x. direction which 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 to think 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 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 the iran back in the year two thousand. so this is why high region where i hear 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 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

and 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 and i think it's again it's a see 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 is been

a political failure more than anything else ok so you want to jump in there but i would love was said there. so first 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 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 nobody invited us to these places we just go there because we have a mission or a strategy or a policy 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 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 we 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 on show and we don't really take this into a. christian john 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 urge for who. ok if you want to go through. there we can do this with the drug war incidentally there is a reason we're in afghanistan and that's because we were attacked 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 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 is not good for nato stock 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 not the best of the mujahideen and that's a real problem if we see quickly if we don't hear 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 thanks for viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time remember.

keep. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then he lives something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big fish.

if. he is eve. in the team.