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Richard Haass & Arianna Huffington Examine Afghanistan War And Lack Of Oil

285 views · Published 7 June 2013 · 6:50 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: The 92nd Street Y, New York · 2013 · News & Politics

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President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass spoke with president and editor-in-chief of Huffington Post Media Group Arianna Huffington on June 5, 2013 about his new book, Foreign Policy Begins At Home. In this part of their conversation, the two tackled the Afghanistan War, which Haass described as a strategic error:

    "Afghanistan is simply a place where we've poured in more resources than neither the potential would have argued for, or our interests would have argued for. This is strategically, it seems to me, it doesn't make sense on strategic terms...Afghanistan is just a mismatch."

Huffington brought the Iraq War into the discussion, suggesting, "We didn't really learn anything from Iraq, because again everything we tried to do there in terms of establishing thriving democratic institutions and a stable Iraq has not happened."

Haass agreed that Iraq has not worked out strategically, generating a question from Huffington on why we didn't get more oil out of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Haass suggested, "In order to deal with the argument that we went to war quote on quote for oil, we didn't do an awful lot to help oil firms...we didn't want to play into the hands of somehow what we did was cynical."

Do you agree with Haass that Afghanistan doesn't strategically make sense? Leave a comment below!

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