and i think that that lends itself a lot to the trust that he's putting into his own military leaders and to the generals that he enlisted help with because he's saying this is clearly your decision he already told the pentagon they had unilateral authority to send as many troops to afghanistan as they want the pentagon came back with a proposal to send four thousand now it seems like he's giving the pentagon the reins completely to say do what you need to do so that we get a victory in mind ministration now mike we talked about pakistan in the last hour you and i he's specifically brought up pakistan what do you think his path is going to be in bringing them into the fray like you were talking about well he did say that they will have no sanctuary but that to me signals that he intends to do hot pursuit of taliban that do seek sanctuary in pakistan it's going to really create issues with pakistan and but what's ironic is that pakistan they created the afghan taliban they're not going to go again so they get there is

a pakistan taliban which is trying to overthrow the pakistani government but this is different in afghanistan and i would i would also point out that it in night not mentioning troop levels it could imply more. along with conner insurgency the whole idea is to give the whole idea is to give the the afghan military the proper training so they ultimately can go it alone now talking about hunting the terrorists i'd like to bring in now former cia agent jack rice jack you heard what the president had to say he said that that the u.s. is no longer going to take part in nation building in afghanistan that he said verbatim we are now there to kill terrorists how are we going to do that without involving pakistan and now he has also brought in india. well you know what that's

all well and good to talk tough but here's the problem if you have a country and a government specifically with the afghan government that is frequently incompetent and corrupt if what you say is we're going to ignore them we're just simply going to kill people the problem that you have with that is you're still going to see a a government which is incapable of actually doing what it was that they're supposed to do and so as a result of that that will exacerbate the situation create more people who are willing to fight against us and frankly to make it even worse in this case which you hear the president saying is we're going to simply let people go out and do what they do will does that mean we're actually going to see more civilian casualties which is going to make even more injuries more problems and more enemies so we have to be very careful about what we're doing and to simply say well i'll tell you what our massive goal now is to not tell you what we're going to do well you know what that's not exactly a pillar yeah i mean not what with your cia experience like you said there's going to be a massive billion casualty don't you think if the plans aren't somewhat revealed to

the public who's going to hold them accountable. well i think that's a big part of this and i'm thinking about this not just as a former cia officer but working in courtrooms every day one of the big issues that we talk about is it's about transparency it's about when we do something as a country that we stand behind what we do but we also were very clear about some of the i get the strategy aspect of this i mean you can't simply lay out and say we're going to go here we're going to go there but at the same time to say i'll tell you what are our new goal our new approach is to not say what we're going to do but if we compare where we are right now and as i listened to what president trump said it sounded very reminiscent of what i heard from president obama it's very reminiscent of what i heard from president bush i recall looking into the faces of senior military people that i was dealing with in kandahar herat kabul and elsewhere and i can tell you this this is the hardest environment in the world to run

a mechanized war and there is none that's worse there is none that is harder and that's a fact and that's what we're stepping into again now i see some head shaking over here from our former pentagon man michael maloof my point if you want to say about that i agree with was most of what mr rice said however. the president did make mention of the possibility of pushing for reform within the government not not to take not to create a new government but to push for reforms because it is corrupt and people people know it and i think that that's what's going to have to be done ultimately and that can be done along with the the military political and economic efforts that he pointed out jack i want to jump in here because trump has been a long outspoken against the afghan war saying that it's not in america's national interest but then he said that it's the security threats in the country are immense so mike my question is what are the security threats that he's talking about as it

pertains to the united states' national interest. well obviously right now what he's talking about and again everybody falls back on this concept that nine eleven really started there was the incubator for it if you will but if we look at what we have is the fear is that you will have a vacuum where you will have those who can plan and execute and of the environment in order to do it but i think and he is right in this context one of the most difficult regions one of the difficult aspects of this is what's going on between afghanistan and pakistan but again it ignores a lot of the issues because if we look at the taliban and think about where we are right now realize the numbers pakistan the taliban has more control of pakistan of me of afghanistan right now than any time they have had since nine eleven they have increased their capability in country by fifteen percent in the last year you add to that the issue that the pakistani i.s.i. the intelligence service was essentially responsible for creating. the taliban in

the first place so we have that issue and then he talks about the president talks about working more closely with the indians so he's going to start actually going into pakistan to go after people who are coming across the border into afghanistan and he's going to be working as closely as possible with the sworn enemy of the pakistanis yeah you want to see instability we haven't even seen it yet and that's really what's coming at us and this is something that has to be discussed but people are talking about that i think mike makes nodding along with i agree i agree with that but i think what was missing from the speech tonight was the omission of the other countries that have a highly vested and historical interest in the future of afghanistan russia china in addition to india but also we are wrong and he only mentioned. india and pakistan because we happen to recognize their neighbor yeah their neighbor there they have your emetic relations with them what about iran iran has that is storable

. influence so they have term. disinvestments there as this china absolutely and as does russia and he totally didn't mention any of that when he also said with a lack of transparency he didn't say whether we are going back into a full scale war or if we're going into advise and assist but what he did mention was that he understood that the nation as war weary let's take a listen to that. but we must acknowledge the reality i am here to talk about tonight that nearly sixteen years after september eleventh attacks after the extraordinary sacrifice of blood and treasure the american people are weary of war without victory nowhere is this more evident than with the war in afghanistan the longest war in american history seventeen

years i share the american people's frustration i also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time energy money and most importantly lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations. that is why shortly after my inauguration i directed secretary of defense madness and my national security team to undertake a comprehensive review of all strategic options in afghanistan and south asia so no i think that what cannot be lost on the significance of the president's first nation address is the fact that he's going against what he ran on he said

that he didn't like the war in afghanistan he said it for years and so he had to have a real big heart to heart with the american people to explain that while they are war weary while they do not want to see this this war go on for a seventeenth year as we near a sixteen year term on this that the fact of the matter is is his view of the world his view of afghanistan has become much different since he's been sitting in the white house and now mentally he has a much different thought process behind it and he's trusting his military leaders to take the lead on this one but i think that's why he had such a a long conversation leading up to telling us his decision about afghanistan because he needed to explain to the american people why he was changing his tune he said his original instinct was to pull out he likes to follow his instincts and in this case he went against them and we have seen for the first time a little bit of contrition out of the president now that he is sitting in that oval office might you have something to say that i was going to say that his strategy as he outlined tonight along with what simone said leaving it up to the military

commanders in the field it has worked so well in both syria and iraq i think he sees this as a prescription for now dealing with afghanistan lessen the rules of the gate or lighten up on the rules of engagement leave it up to the local commanders to do what they need to do because before under obama everything came from washington right now now this is and we're seeing tremendous successes in iraq. yeah but what this is going to mean however is that like iraq the united states may be actually having to set up a base and staying for years in years to come in afghanistan and i think that that's what's going to help number alternately going to set up a base in syria as well so i thought i was see these things beginning to come to jill as as a as a strategy that's workable for all three areas now let's take a quick look just to give a recap for our viewers the actual u.s.

involvement in afghanistan since this war began let's take a look on your part of pills story here. the united states began openly meddling in afghan affair is in one nine hundred seventy nine with the introduction of operation fly clown a cia trained equipped program aimed at assisting the afghan mujahedeen in their fight against the soviet allied democratic republic of afghanistan the program that was one of the most expensive in cia history spanning ten years it initially budgeted twenty to thirty million dollars a year to back the fighters by nine hundred eighty seven that number rose to six hundred thirty million dollars a year why was it worth spending a billion dollars to defeat a democratically elected government the program's godfather former national security advisor to president carter's big new brzezinski once said its purpose was to believe the soviets and the decision he never regretted us national security

advisor brzezinski flew to pakistan to set about rallying resistance he wanted to arm the mujahideen without revealing america's road. on the afghan border any other type of pos the soldiers of dog to redouble their efforts but we know that their deep belief in god they are confident that their struggle will succeed. but are stuck with us all humble some ananya you know that the land over there is yours you will go back to it one day it does your fight will prevail and you'll have your homes in your mosques back again because your cause is right and god is on your side. the purpose of organizing with of pakistanis would be commend the soviets bullied. and joining us peshawar lation ship with washington the mujahideen was successful

in both toppling the afghan government and draining the soviet union which crumbled in one thousand nine hundred one one main fighters celebrated throughout the war for his dedication to the cause was osama bin ladin who would later found al qaeda in one thousand nine hundred eight the collapse of the country brought on three u.s. involvement resulted in civil war throughout the one nine hundred ninety s. various warlords and jihadi groups battled for control of the country with the taliban taking power in one nine hundred ninety six the taliban which also emerged out of the us back to be offered haven to bin laden and al qaeda which infamously attacked new york city and washington d.c. on september eleventh two thousand and one that's right bin ladin attacked the very country which once supported him as a freedom fighter so when the us invaded afghanistan in retaliation on october seventh two thousand and one u.s. involvement in the country may have been something new to americans but for afghans it was the escalation of

a policy in place for decades and twenty fourteen president obama celebrated the end of the combat mission in the country but as we here in the united states anticipate president trump's announcement of a troop increase tonight it should become more and more evident a war which has been waged for a decade still has no end in sight and with no obvious goal in washington on a par and fill our team all right i want to thank michael maloof for joining us there and that discussion let's bring in former u.s. diplomat jim into the conversation jim thanks for being here so you heard everything the president had to say. what were your thoughts about it. well and i heard what michael had to say to exchanging one gray beard for another now. yes i heard what the president had to say you know i maybe take a step back for a bigger picture here. i have been all along a very strong supporter of the president and what i hoped from this administration from this president something radically different than we had from barack obama or

george w. bush and i'm sad to say that aside from from some rhetorical flourishes this is a speech that could have been given by president hillary clinton or president bush it's the same thing now let me give the best possible spin here it's a surge it's basically an ad iraq type surge if he says that our goal is not nation building been achieving a situation where we can withdraw from honor some stable situation presumably where afghanistan will not be a base for a die ashore for a for al qaeda we don't know what that looks like or how that's going to be going for but i do think he said no we're not we're not that you know but but but no but i don't even think again this was billed as a strategy speech i didn't hear a strategy here but i heard a bunch of tactics including loosening the rule rules of engagement putting in more forces but not saying how many and all this sort of thing to what end now maybe if you give us this enough wiggle room to say things have stabilized now let's get out

of here that would be the best possible interpretation but the other interpretation is we will simply dig in for as long as possible and i have not optimistic and i think you also have to put it as he alluded to at the beginning of his speech how much of this reflects his internal domestic problems obviously the first part of the speech was all about charlottesville right although he didn't say so he's trying to say i'm very presidential now i'm walking this back all you establishment types that been trashing me all week see look how presidential i am and i think there's a lot of that there too i don't know if that's going to work or not i think i think he's in a difficult situation politically and he's trying to find some way out of there by playing the commander in chief card and i think jack rice and. background there not in jack what do you have to say to that. you know what i completely agree like i said because i could have heard this from obama i could have heard this from from bush this is nothing new at all in and you can use a lot of rhetoric and you can talk about path to victory and path with on or in

just about anything else but in to him it's all hollow because it doesn't fundamentally change what's going to happen and let's be clear we're talking about four thousand people maybe again we don't know it's a secret right that's the pillar and if we compare that to the hundred thousand people on the ground and if we talk about other options because he did mention the idea of economic he did mention the idea of the diplomatic if we're going to talk about that let's talk about the fact that at this point the state department's almost hollowed out they don't have the capability and the reach to come in and do things because we do know one thing the military is good at two things that again i've heard this over and over i've watched as a close and personal over and over for decades now is they know how to kill people and blow up stuff and the admit it that's what they're good at that's what they do but we've pushed so much into their lap they have so many responsibilities that go so far beyond beyond that you can build a base or more in afghanistan a big one but broad bondsteel or anyplace else you can build another one in syria

but if you don't have the additional capability to reach beyond the blowing things up and killing people you're going to have a real problem until you finally say oh victory ok let's go let's load everything up and drive out of the country just like the soviets did and you know what jack on that note in case any of the viewers missed it i want to play the president saat sound bite here talking about specifically that we're there to kill terrorists. ultimately it is up to the people of afghanistan to take ownership of that if you choose to govern their society and to achieve an ever lasting peace we are a partner and a friend but we will not dictate to the and. afghan people how to live or how to govern their own complex society we are not nation building again we are killing terrorists right and jim we heard right there. light on details as as you know you've heard it from me at all all year the president has

been light on details and again light on this how are we going to kill the terrorists i guess and i guess that's where part of the it more special forces more loosening the rules of engagement so forth go i was actually more interested in what he said about no nation building we're not going to tell other people how to live to beijing building to involve several different things one is we just pour a lot of money in there build all the infrastructure there but we're not building here at home you know if they still haven't worked on an infrastructure bill here right which should have been a first start for him rather than an also ran but also with that we're going to lecture them on things like women's rights and all that sort of thing don't throw acid little girls' faces because they go to school and we've been doing precious little of that anyway to tell the truth i mean we're made no bones about it here human rights religious freedom we are fighting to make the world safer sharia least make afghanistan safer sharia one way or the other you're going to get the same kind of oppressive social order there and maybe that's just the better part of realism say that's afghanistan all this talk about corruption for example what we

call corruption in afghanistan people they're called life i mean this is the way of life works in a step back is that we're saying look what trump said his initial impulse was to say get out but now i talk to the big boys and they convinced me that wasn't the right thing to do the sad thing about this he knows what the right thing to do is and this isn't it he's doing this because he's boxed in i've been saying for weeks the bellwether in this administration will be whose head goes next next mcmasters or bannon's turned out was bannon which means mcmaster and his boys are running the show here the president is behind the eight ball in terms of all of his domestic politics he's got to do something. and that's what is going on around the white house it is you have you have john kelly now as his chief here these are the people who are sticking around in the trump administration my question to you jim is how is the afghan government going to react because we didn't hear anything about a partnership here we heard about him saying that his commitment is not unlimited

that the support is not unlimited but we didn't hear him say i've been speaking to the current afghan government this is what we want to do together moving forward why should we talk to them we barely talk to the south koreans about what goes on in korea there was a joke during the soviet times that there was a joke that afghanistan is the most peaceful country in the world it doesn't even interfere in its own internal affairs and fortunate why should we talk to a government that would not stay in power for five minutes without american military support. the fact of the magazine renting space is that what it is the will to will tell the afghan government what they're allowed to react to this. i think it's just like we didn't talk about russia would talk about china we didn't talk about iran why should we talk about the afghan government they're not part of our players jack how about you well what can you tell us about the cia and the role that they play in the intelligence in all of this where not hearing any of the details coming from the president certainly about intelligence. well you're right

and again that's a big part of this there's been a big effort over the last several decades and especially since nine eleven to really work with the intelligence community and have them dovetail nicely with the pentagon and that's really important because you need to get relevant information on the ground to those who are actually working in this issue at the same time i think it's important that the intelligence community is working in places like pakistan because that issue is a fundamental one because of the nuclear issue but because of their capability reaching across the region and again as we were just mentioning is when your other guest here just talked about to no reference to the iranians at all and the iranians again seventy five million people the most complex probably the most important the most capable of the countries in the entire region the most influential throughout the remember the entire western part of afghanistan they speak farsi but you got to realize what that means and it's again one of the examples that are missed but if we look at this historically here's what i can tell you genghis khan couldn't take afghanistan alexander the great couldn't take

afghanistan the russians couldn't take afghanistan the brits couldn't take it twice and so the idea that somehow what this president like the last president like the president before him will do by adding a couple thousand more people is there anybody in the room honestly who is going to say yeah this is the path to victory you know what this is this is the path to simply smoothing it over for a little while until you can say yeah yeah we won and then run run from the room like it's on fire and that's the statistics and that's the optimistic scenario but . it's a narrow is we don't wait till it's papered over and run we just keep going and keep on keeping on and that's what we've been doing for how many years now and how many more years will we do it starting now i'd like to play what president trump had to say about pakistan and for all intents and purposes they're sort of our friend i mean he's talking about them sheltering terrorists take a listen. pakistan has much to game from partnering with our f.

. in afghanistan it has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists in the past pakistan has been a valued partner our militaries have worked together against common enemies the pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism we recognize those contributions and those sacrifices but pakistan has also sheltered the same organisations that try every single day to kill our people we have been paying pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. but that will have to change and that will change immediately and now the biggest terrorist that

pakistan housed as we know was osama bin laden so we can talk about the intelligence sharing there we can talk about bringing them in diplomatically jim i'll let you take the reins on that i think pakistan is a problem that nobody knows how to solve it's a terribly unstable state that the it is as was been mentioned by other people so far that the pakistanis created the afghan taliban let's remember going back to the clips we saw of osama bin laden we were working cheek by jowl with the pakistanis fueled with saudi money to build what turned into al-qaeda this turned out not to be a good idea the idea that we somehow can disengage from the pakistanis but also you know. he said we don't we're not allow safe havens and pakistani more he didn't say we were going to michael maloof said we'll go pursuit into pakistan he didn't say that he will strike them all over afghanistan he didn't say anything about striking them in pakistan i don't know if that will be so easy to want to find

ourselves at war with pakistan as well do about as they stabilize a state with nuclear weapons i don't think anybody really knows the answer to that question the the bigger problem it seems to me is to talk to the other regional partners which he didn't mention look we only have one interest in afghanistan and that is that it's not run by dianne or by al qaeda and other countries and their share that priority pakistan isn't necessarily one of them. jack and i'd like to bring you in here on the intelligence community side of pakistan i mean like you were just talking about a minute ago before we went to the president sound bite it sounds like. perhaps that the president is going to push pakistan and twist their. you are. best of luck with that. it's never going to happen again but we have we have new leadership in

pakistan right now but you also understand that the power in pakistan is always the army it's always the military and you have the intelligence community on the other side of these and they are frequently in conflict and at the same time they have more terrorist events inside their own country than anything we have ever seen and if you think about the northwestern provinces and how they're trying to deal with those issues plus what's going on right now in kashmir between the pakistanis and the indians who are now are going to be apparently our best friends the idea that we're going to go in with the leverage to do what are we going to simply pull all of our support destabilize the region completely because let's roulettes be very clear about this the pakistanis have a nuclear capability and it is a very very real one and if they start to destabilize there is a ripple effect across the entire region that can reach into china it could reach down into india and elsewhere if you're talking about trying to create something far more unstable than anything the north koreans have ever even contemplated i guess what you have found the perfect country to do it in and that is pakistan wow

i want to jump in because as we're talking about things with such huge implications talking about involving multiple countries i want to go to congress and what they're going to think of this because in june when secretary mabus had to sit in front of the senate armed services committee mccain was pushing him saying where is our plan now is from saying we're not going to tell you a plan will they be happy jim well it is a plan it's not a strategy i don't know i think was designed to make people like senator mccain happy i don't know if they will be happy to the extent to which it's simply conventional and god departing from the script so to speak maybe he'll get some grudging nods from the hill i mean it to me it sounded like a lot of platitudes no details no actual strategy i guess we'll just have to wait to see how this plays out i want to thank everybody that has stuck around. late night with us today jack rice jim chatteris michael maloof and of course some on del rosario thank you for tuning in to the president's special address tonight on

afghanistan we'll have more news for you tomorrow stay tuned we'll be back to the news with ahead tomorrow night at eight pm eastern thanks for watching. our culture is awash in logs dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that. fiction until they are indistinguishable we have become the most of society on politics as a species of endless and needless political theater politicians and celebrities are to ruling parties are in reality one part of corporate and those who attempt to just. run through this universe of fake news just signed to push through the

cruelty and exploitation of the little force so far to the margins of society including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well be squeaky against an avalanche. we must. change to. put themselves on the line. to get except the reject. so when you want to be president. or some want to. have to go right to be approached this is what before three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the water use it out. there should be moved.

all the feeling to. have the experience. and you get it on the old old. old according to josh. welcome to my world come along for the wrong. well they. were well welcomed told us a good night my name a summer you know a camp i'm named after and a descendant all of a general robert e. lee who probably i or his publicist. i'm not getting though he's actually my great great great great great.