bloodshed and war all for nothing i pose this question to dare crow political director for brave new foundation take a listen. the investment of lives and resources in the military for strategy was absolutely a ways we said prior to president obama's latest escalations in afghanistan that you know more troops are not going to solve the problem that if you added more troops you would in increasing the temperature of the conflict to more civilians have become the crossfire and that's exactly what happened so the answer is yes i mean that military for a strategy has been a waste and if you heard about the recent nato report that was leaked that showed the taliban's self concept is still very strong you'll see that that military first policy has failed to achieve victory and it was always going to fail to achieve victory the right moves would have been political solutions that would have brought all the stakeholders in afghanistan to the table and elected a government through legitimate means that would have represented the will people there now with this impending drawdown of the troops and as the

and joining me now for more is derek crow political director of the brave new foundation thanks for coming on the show derrick so the u.s. department of defense is the biggest polluter in the world how is this able to happen. well i mean part of it is that the united states continually goes to military every solutions across the globe and when you are the world's largest consumer of oil products for example that just means pollution and typically you also have military contractors who are there to make a buck and don't really care about environmental regulations or in a lot of cases the safety of the troops they're supposedly serving i mean you had you know anything from water contamination in camp le june to the burn pits in iraq and afghanistan and it's a persistent problem and it leads to about i think it's a report said seven hundred fifty thousand tons of toxic waste produced every year and you get sad you know that the worry isn't really too much about environmental regulation that says the u.s. tries to advise other countries on environmental policies and how can the u.s. do so when

war so on the world that they're putting out there they're a crowd policy director at the brave new foundation thank you. well there's a new red scare here in the united states the mainstream media has been bashing russia and china for several weeks now the two countries of course drew ire of the media and the u.s. government after vetoing a un resolution that would have forced syrian president assad from power while the media like to paint russia and china as enemies of the state do americans really fear these two countries the residents laurie harshness took to the streets of new york to find out. if you believe the news media you should fear china and russia this week let's talk about why if they wanted to china could wipe out the u.s. and probably three minutes but anyone with an atomic bomb could true so why china in particular chinese people are very dangerous why what has made you think that have you ever been personally threatened by a chinese person no so why do you feel that way. they know kung fu i don't think we were in the good of relationship with them so should we fear them is t

bloodshed and war all for nothing well joining me now is their crow political director from brave new foundation welcome to the show derek so violence in afghanistan at its worst arguably now since the u.s. went into the country and now afghanis are bracing themselves for the taliban to return back to power so this seems to be very far from a victory for the u.s. was the war than a waste of time. well certainly the investment of lives and resources in the military for strategy was absolutely a ways we said prior to president obama's latest escalations in afghanistan that you know more troops are not going to solve the problem that if you added more troops you would in increasing the temperature of the conflict to more civilians have become the crossfire and that's exactly what happened so the answer is yes i mean that military first strategy has been a waste and if you heard about the recent nato report that was leaked that showed the taliban's self concept is still very strong you'll see that that military first policy has failed to achieve victory and it was always going to fail to achieve vic

soldiers there a crow of the nonprofit brave new foundation things that still unclear when troops will be completely withdrawn. first of all pressure from this year's elections poll shows sixty percent of american voters are fed up with the war in afghanistan or against the. price is approaching true or is the time when washington's very hard cash is cutting budgets and obama wants to be energy are now regretting already remember he was president. states and this is a very important step you must drop to a smaller number of fortified. drone attacks with. sources it's not over yet understand what's going to have the eighty thousand us paid mercenaries who are in afghanistan remains uncertain. now the german chancellor is in china asking for help and vestments for the euro and it seems she might get it as china's prime minister says the country is now considering contributing to european rescue funds and the merkel is on an official visit to beijing where she's been trying to reassure the chinese about the economic situation it could also like to see beijing support the western position

soldiers there crow of the nonprofit brave new foundation believes it is still unclear when troops will completely be withdrawn. hopefully what this means is panetta said something like this on the plane when he made the surprise announcement that it would mean troops moving out of communities and on to bases first like they did in iraq and then eventually be pulled out so it absolutely does not mean that we have a date certain for all troops to be out of afghanistan and that's something that our community that's working to end the war and get the troops home has to be very clear on we do need to keep continuing to pressure the government well i certainly think that the lives and the resources that were spent on the military first strategy were absolutely a waste what you've seen people say in the southern regions of afghanistan that they want is a fair elections process and aside from the corruption issue that means that you can't have people who are blatant war criminals be allowed on the ballots in those regions just because they're u.s. and cobble allies. china as prime minister say

forces plan to pull out and twenty fourteen well i'm joined now by derek crow he's of the brave new foundation now working on the war cost dot com who for many spearheaded the rethink afghanistan work now. afghan officials claim the decision has ruined the whole transition plan and forced preparations to be rushed through clearly they are not happy about this have a good reason to be to be worried about this latest news. well i think they have good reason to be worried about the entire u.s. strategy from the beginning actually i mean and you should keep in mind that the afghanistan's government has spoken with two voices about this kind of thing for years karzai has gone back and forth saying he wants troops out of mediately he wants combat operations stop saying he wants them to stay so it's hard for the u.s. to interpret what the afghan government thinks on any given day about this but i will tell you what it does show is that finally years of public pressure on american officials are starting to break through i mean sixty three percent of americans oppose the war outright and fifty eight pe