getting bin laden we say, hey, see you, wouldn t want to be you, doesn t that say we just had the objective of getting bin laden? we re not rebuilding afghanistan. i was there. when you get off the plane and you look around and see on every block millions and millions of dollars being spent on military solutions, you see people starving, you see people without jobs and without education, it s outrageous to contend that we are there rebuilding. we re not. we re destroying. that s the great pain and that s what s so profoundly wrong about this analysis. you come in and occupant, and then you expect them to think you re friends? the single biggest reason for the increase in the taliban is our occupation they re a nationalist organization. they thrive on having an enemy that comes in and takes over.
intelligence, figure out where these people are, or you re firing missiles blindly, and that with the helicopters, we have risks of casualty action, but with giant wars we have far more casualties. yes, you re right, we eliminated that as a possible sanctuary, but the flip side is if he was in afghanistan, why couldn t we do what we did in pakistan? we swoop down, get him, et cetera. under that logic, shouldn t we have invaded pakistan and occupied the whole thing? i hate to say it, but given what we know now, it s sounding increasingly like a reasonable prospect, but before 9/11, the white house discusses option using special force toss capture or kill bin laden. each time those options were waved off because of the fact they were either too difficult, too risky, or the possibility of success was so low that, you
ideal either, so it s a tough situation and everybody knows that. evan kohlmann and steve clemens, we appreciate your expertise tonight. the chairman of the senate armed services committee, carl levin thinks that the death of bin laden reinforces 9 president s intention to move toward a robust reduction of troops this summer. it s about time we ve gotten out of the conflict that s resulted in the death of more than 1,500 troops, add that to the numbers of soldiers killed in iraq, and you see that it s cost us more than 6,000 american lives, not to mention that so far the wars in afghanistan and iraq have cost us $1.5 trillion. joining me now is robert greenwad producers of documentaries rethink afghanistan and iraq for sale.
but in addition, were it not for our can t to take our logistics thus the port of karachi, on a 1,000-mile run through the khyber pass we could not for 90 days support 150,000 nato troops 800 miles from the sea. so pakistan is absolutely primary to our ability to continue this struggle. i think looking forward in afghanistan, there may well be an impact on al qaeda s ability to recruit and retain. i m not sure. i don t believe it s going to have a significant role on what s going on inside afghanistan to the extent that this is a tribal war of the pasch tuns against the rest of them. i think the war will continue,
robert, i know your opinion on this. we got different opinions earlier about what s the more effective way to go, but i want to focus again on the future. what do we do in afghanistan? we get the troops out as quickly as possible. it s a military occupation, which is creating enemies, creating people who hate the fact their country is being taken over, and we work for the security of the united states there s lots we can do, cenk. enormous resources, enormous values this country has. we are doing none of that every time we occupy another country and wind up being the enemy. some might say, hey, look, we were telling afghanistan all along we re going to rebuild. it s the pottery barn rule if you break it, you own it after