covered. i was going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. beilenson afghanistan has escalated tremendously over the past two weeks is a full merit military withdrawal from the country still plausible and is there a way to stop the current violence also marco rubio told c pack attendees this month that america is a nation of conservatives is he right or is america leaning in another direction and university of virginia students are the latest soldiers in the fight for workers' rights how have they chosen to fight for change and will they succeed in

reaching their goals. you need to know this in june of last year president obama addressed the american people regarding the war in afghanistan and laid out this timeline for u.s. troop withdrawal. starting next month we will be able to remove ten thousand of our troops from afghanistan by the end of this year and we will bring home a total of thirty three thousand troops by next summer fully we're covering the surge i announced at west point after this initial reduction our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as afghan security forces move into the lead our mission will change from combat to support. by two thousand and fourteen this process of transition will be complete and the afghan people will be responsible for their own security

unfortunately that timeline for withdrawal is now in danger as the afghan people and those security forces who are supposed to take the lead are killing us troops today a suicide bomb outside a military airfield in eastern afghanistan killed nine people and injured a dozen others it's the latest in a string of recent deadly attacks in the wake of the qur'an burning incident we could go over the weekend an afghan worker killed two high ranking u.s. advisors in the ministry of interior building in kabul on top of that seven u.s. military trainers were injured sunday when an afghan protester lobbed a grenade into a military base in the conduce probing province and last week an afghan soldier shot two u.s. soldiers dead during a protest near a coalition base in kandahar altogether thirty five people have been killed and at least two hundred injured just in the past week prompting the united nations to pull critical forces from ministry buildings inside afghanistan without the u.n. and without the support of afghan security forces a u.s.

troop withdrawal than in the near future looks unlikely so what's really behind this violence and what does the united states have to do now to get things back on track or is it even possible ali garrett joins me now he is the national security reporter with think progress dot org ali welcome to the program thanks tom it's good to be back thank you thanks for joining us again just speaking as an average american i'm guessing that if mexico or even canada had invaded the united states because they thought our president was a threat to world peace and had taken off george w. bush on them and then occupied our streets and bomb dissidents in the sky with drones that a hell of a lot of americans would be out on the streets shooting at a mexican or canadian occupiers how could george w. bush have thought it would be any different when he began the invasion occupation of afghanistan. well i mean as far as beginning the invasion i think it did come from nine eleven so that he had a reason you know if the u.s.

attacked if of antakya been launched on mexico city from the u.s. that might have given mexico more justification in doing it but certainly we've seen that a lot of the ways the occupation of afghanistan have been carried out and especially the the light footprint which with with which the u.s. went in and especially the distraction of the iraq war have have created a situation that was that of continuing untenable security for now more than a decade and and afghans are understandably upset about this is the burning of the qur'an as the last straw and not the first row. yeah i mean i think that there's a pattern of afghan this pleasure with the u.s. occupation there certainly we've seen many other signs in the past few months we had warnings of afghan government members who were threatening to defect to the taleban we've had repeated entreaties from afghan president hamid karzai to

president barack obama to halt the night raids against suspected militants where lots of people were being sort of bagged and tagged by the u.s. and there's been a lot of signs leading up to this the scar on burning incident which i think you're right to characterize characterize it as sort of the last straw this isn't just its own incident which these these people are are angry about that is bringing them out on the streets. i think that it is the culmination of of sort of an occupation that has to a great extent gone awry if this is the the peak of the curve as it were is there a downward slide side to the to the violence and the anger or is this just going to continue escalate. until we leave our midst it's tough to say tom i don't know i'm i think that the u.s. certainly is making preparations to leave and today at a press conference at the pentagon the spokesman for the pentagon said the both the

civilian and military leadership of the defense department was sticking to the plan to leave at the end of two thousand and fourteen and by that time having him over full power to that afghan government so for now it seems that the obama administration the military are staying on track with their original plan. to continue to transfer powers it's not clear how that jibes with as you said a lot of military advisors nato officials and u.n. officials have been pulled from there advising assignments within afghan government organs and ministries and so on so it's not quite clear how long those will last and how that will hamper the effort. to stable the transfer of power to a significantly weak afghan central government but for the meantime the u.s. is not accelerating their plans to leave and so far as i know is not making a decision to stay longer but you know cliches from shakespeare in the best laid plans of mice and men to the to the the old parable joke or saying or

whatever you know man plans and god laughs. plans aside what are the practical realities here and how do they if how do they play into the american election cycle i mean isn't it pretty much a solid reality that between now and november if president obama starts pulling back that he'll be criticized for that and then on the other hand you had today rush limbaugh coming out and saying well it's time to get out and just leave the afghans to their own little private hell and and let them let them do whatever they want to do and then on top of that you've got these republicans trashing the president for apologizing for the qur'an burning after george bush had done the same thing back after abu abu ghraib it's all you know there's this political jumble this whole weirdness here in the u.s. is your thoughts on all of that and what what this might have to do. certainly rush limbaugh coming out and saying something is interesting you know that. i think that

there probably is going to be some sort of residual u.s. presence and in the long term that will retain the ability of the strike and what now is sort of called the aft packed theater. you know which is basically the model that we've seen which is special forces and drones which target al qaeda type people that might have aspirations to attack the u.s. and that's going to go on for the long time. the rush limbaugh thing is interesting because if we see a conservative split in the conservative movement over this that certainly would shake things up a little bit because right now the conservative line certainly in the election than in congress with the exception of maybe ron paul and a little bit from newt gingrich has been that we need to stick it out there and obama is shortening the the withdrawal to beyond what can be reasonably expected and those have been the lines of attack against obama so if the conservative movement starts to shift under the feet of these conservative leads in the elections and in congress that would be an interesting development i'm not sure

that the election's going to have that much effect on the the laid plans for afghanistan i think i think actually this is a case where you know a better cliche would be that the events on the ground are driving what's going to happen there. and so i think so long as they can as the as the u.s. can still take as closely to the plan that they've weighed as they're able to i think they'll probably continue to do that interesting sort of much alike like vietnam if the events on the ground are going to drive this thing ali thanks so much for being with us tonight appreciate it thanks very much tom it's a pleasure while the war in afghanistan deteriorates the drumbeats to war with iran grow louder but the bigger picture here is this is a familiar talking point being used on t.v. and on the campaign trail or rather is trying to build a no where a lot but i want noakes israel says near rann is reaching the point of no return on

nuclear weapons sources within the u.k. government are putting a time frame for war eighteen to twenty four months republican candidates are echoing the same nuclear fears. listen john we have a president who isn't going to stop them he is going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that man is going to use those nuclear weapons then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating that capacity. we must not allow iran to have a nuclear weapon if they do the world changes america will be at risk and someday nuclear weaponry will be used if i'm president even on this show it's been talked about. stuff we're concerned about them getting a nuclear weapon i think it's legitimate the i.a.e.a. has given a report recently that says they're working to acquire the means with which produce one or the but here's the big secret is not true the new york times revealed on friday all sixteen u.s.

intelligence agencies all sixteen believe that iran is not building a nuclear weapon is the first first sentence from the from the new york times article recently by american spy agencies are broadly consistent with a two thousand and seven intelligence finding that concluded that iran. that iran has to. it's that iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier according to current and former american officials the official said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in two thousand and ten national intelligence estimate and it remains the consensus view of america's sixteen intelligence agencies and you've got a whole bunch of people who have come out and said now they're not building a nuclear bomb there they're getting enough nuclear material to go the people around him can get a little nervous which is exactly what they want because george w. bush said axis of evil let's see iraq are we invaded them north korea or they've got the bomb first what's left iran but nonetheless james clapper the director of

national intelligence david petraeus the director of the cia leon panetta the secretary of defense the general did martin dempsey the chairman of the joints chief of staff i mean among the sixteen intelligence agencies these people in a high profile positions have come out and said in the media we don't think that iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb in the run up to the iraq war you know our politicians and our media failed us they were constantly parroting talking points with no basis in reality the same thing is happening today years mol basis in reality and huge amount of exaggeration and fear and she let's make some more money for the military industrial complex we desperately need the voices of peace to be speaking up and speaking out and say wait a minute let's look at peace rather than. coming up after the break conservatives like rick santorum and marco rubio will tell you americans becoming america's becoming a nation of conservatives is really the case are they sorely mistaken.

if we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i think that you know a little truth. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the role without you she has played. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

in screwed news we're one day away from the michigan primaries and all polls show a dead heat between rick santorum and mitt romney a santorum win the wolverine state could mean the unthinkable and impossible pout for romney to eventually win the nomination was romney's troubles in michigan can all be traced back to two thousand and eight when he penned an op ed for the new york times titled let bank detroit go bankrupt voters tend not to support a candidate who wants you out of a job then again and rick santorum will be choosing a guy who wants his church to run the country something we'll get into a little bit more later tonight and i really take either way voters can't be happy with their choices in fact could it be that voters are growing more and more uncomfortable with conservatism in general that seems to be an outrageous notion

considering the most political operatives especially the right and talking heads on the news hold the belief that america is essentially a center right nation but my next guest disagrees with that sarah jaffe joins me now she's an associate editor at alter net sarah welcome back. hi tom thanks for having me great to have you here with us media opponents and conservatives argue that america is becoming more and more conservative you're suggesting the opposite is true. yeah i'm definitely suggesting the opposite is true i mean right now we're hearing only from republicans right so we're seeing the things like rick santorum as you said wanting the church his church specifically to run the country dominating the public debate in a way that really doesn't reflect this country at all and that said you know we've basically have been listening to right wingers who have been pushing this message that america is a center right country for years and pushing the media with

a very you know to very great effect to parrot this statement why don't members of the media the conservatives like to argue that we're becoming a conservative nation even though the facts are just so. you know the thing that started me to write the story was a piece by richard florida in the atlantic the atlantic city section actually and the thing that got to me was that this is a guy who is not a conservative or a that he's the rise of the creative class guy he took a gallup poll that essentially said that america is staying exactly the same and has stayed basically the same for thirty or so years and he turned it into an article that said america is getting more conservative there was literally no proof of that the actual gallup released was titled something like america basically stays the same and from that he's extrapolating all this information about what's conservative what's not conservative on top of that the gallup poll simply asks you whether you identify as a conservative a liberal or a moderate now. most people in this country don't even know what conservative and

liberal mean politically they don't identify the same way that marco rubio did when marco rubio was in front of c pac a conservative political action conference telling american tara telling conservative activists that america identifies just like that so and in fact when you look at the studies where there people are asked about policy progress policies you know you you say do you support strengthening social security by lifting the cap the one hundred six thousand dollars cap and letting millionaires and billionaires pay into so scared to so it'll be solvent forever pretty much everybody says yes and seventy eighty percent do you support a national single payer health care system you know you get over sixty seventy percent even if you get over fifty percent do you support socialized medicine like they have in english. do you support the right to unionize do you support a higher minimum wage do you have a right on down the list i have. and and yet these same people will tell you that they're conservatives why the disconnect well it's worth i mean it's worth pointing

out too that the only issue in on which americans have significantly changed is actually gay marriage we've actually gotten far more progressive last year the first polls came out the national act the national aggregate of four different polls that found fifty one percent of the country thinks that gays and lesbians should be able to get married and using the word married not you know civil unions i mean we are if we are shifting at all we're shifting slightly more progressive and not only that but demographically we're definitely getting more progressive this country is getting less white this country is getting less straight it's getting more educated and younger so you know we're looking at a shift here that really doesn't trend more conservative at all although i and the odd part gets over the weekend i was i was in columbus ohio i was talking to some radio folks there and i was there for the opening of a new radio station and i'm on and there's there is a group. nobody sure exactly who's funding. that has put up spanish language.

spanish language radio programming in all the major markets in the united states where they've got local conservative spanish language talk show hosts and they're doing spanish language rush limbaugh it's totally flying under the radar of the corporate media and totally fly of the radar frankly i think most democrats and progressives and they're in and they're basically using the catholicism that is so widespread in the hispanic community in the united states as the lever to say the republicans are your your side and this is this is pretty potent stuff i mean it is so the browning of america also could be if it's the catholic you know central and south america i mean ization of america it could be moving in the toward the right could it not. i mean i don't know if you look at polls like right now we're in the middle of a big messy fight over contraception and the catholic conference of catholic bishops are the ones who are having a very public hissy fit about whether employers should pay or they shouldn't pay

employees pay for their health insurance plans this is something we should stress right you pay for your health insurance your employer doesn't pay for any of it so but the catholic bishops are the ones having a very public hissy fit meanwhile catholics use birth control catholics are not entirely anti choice. you know this is not there because the catholics at the top the santorum is on the bishops don't actually represent the positions of most catholics so what back to the political dynamic in the political probe polarities here in the united states world do you think that the tea party on the one hand in the occupy movement on the other hand play in telling us about the real political sentiments of americans. well you know i think the tea party happened because there wasn't anything happening on the other side and that once we got occupied people went oh and one of the things that i say in the article is that the recent new york

times poll that found that now two thirds of america thinks that the the distance of the tension between rich and poor is the most pressing conflict in this country two years ago was immigration was so we're shifting and we're shifting to an awareness of class in a way that once again if we figure out how to talk about it and let me say that democrats have not been very good about talking about class for the last most of my lifetime so the ones that can learn how to talk about it are the ones who are doing well right now what is the true meaning of being a conservative in america written from god i don't know i mean when you think about problems serve it when you yeah well when you talk about again to talk about class to talk about these things in wisconsin scott walker trying to take away collective bargaining rights that wasn't a conservative move that conservative small c conservative move would have been to keep the system the way it was right trying to take away their rights was actually a radical move so you know when we talk about the difference i mean big c.

conservative rick santorum wants you know. thanks obama's a snob for wanting your kids to go to college and wants you to you know and the people in virginia who are trying you know well we want to talk about that. the difference between not and people who identify as little c. conservative when gallup calls them up and asks is pretty extraordinary yeah it truly is. do you see as going forward in the future obviously apparently you're think that the country is going to continue to get more progressive what externally you have to be optimistic in the middle we have loved one external forces do you think are driving that or internal forces for them. or internal forces i mean like i said the demographics are shifting in a way that whatever the biggest force on the other side is money you're talking about you know it's a bit of radio i don't have to tell you that the money media has been pushing money friendly ideas for a very long time and that they're the right is still extremely dominant media that

six companies control most of our media. there is a you know they have a big megaphone we have to make sure that our ideas get out there so people can actually have a chance to hear the men agree with them because when they do actually hear them they tend to agree with us so well said surgery thank you so much for being with us there's. one reason why they think you want one reason why the nation may be moving toward the left is because the right has waged an all out assault against working people is the big picture on that last week millionaire fox business partner panelists went after hotel maids take a look at this. almost do you think is shall we say a fat salary for a hotel maid in new york city there's a new union proposal that would give housekeepers a raise to nearly sixty thousand dollars a year plus medical coverage with no out of pocket expense to them and no doc took co-pay that is the union demand and a common center this is a long term contract

a seven year contract and not just medical dental optical no out of pocket expenses this is a nightmare so no matter who well obviously for everybody who has to foot the bill now that the unions demanded this sort of pay for hotel maids sixty thousand dollars a year someone earning sixty thousand dollars a year seven years from now it's forty four thousand dollars you're right now is a nightmare if ever there was class warfare which is what you know the conservatives all those liberals talking about raising taxes on rich people that's class warfare this is it. it's is if ever i mean they go on they say they there are envious of it when they're talking about wanting to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires back to the level they were at under bill clinton three percent higher which brought us a balanced budget they said i want to do that because they're jealous of people who succeed if this isn't that i mean the real question here is why is it in the mirror

for working people to earn sixty thousand dollars a year but just fine for banks like john paulson earn literally four billion dollars a year you've got twenty people on wall street who are earning two billion dollars a year and nobody is oh that's not a nightmare that's the american way right now working people in america are getting screwed corporate corporate profits have reached pre-recession levels and not only that of you that's like one factoid they're back to where they were in two thousand and seven but they're actually up from that in fact they have shattered sixty year old records meanwhile wages have barely grown year to year average hourly wages climbed a meager one point five percent core inflation the price of things like food and energy increased to two point three percent so if average wages only went up one and a half percent and inflation went to two point three percent working people are actually

below below you know the cost of living so this is the real nightmare between ninety two thousand and two thousand and eleven eighty eight percent of national income went to corporate profits look at this this purple line here on the bottom this is from one hundred seventy roughly one hundred seventy to two thousand and ten the purple line on the bottom is wages i mean hourly wage of manufacturing production workers this line is the top five percent this line is the top one percent this line is the top one tenth the one percent and this line is the top one one hundredth of one percent. this is theft this is where all the money is going now if you were to chart productivity and here you would see productivity goes like this and historically if you go back pre reagan wages and productivity went up together but ever since the reagan revolution no wages of flattened out and all the gains all the profits from productivity there go to the top one tenth of one hundred the more percent the top one to do a tenth of

a percent and the top one percent that's a you know theft is now legal even promoted thanks to reaganomics we need to roll back the reagan tax cuts close the tax loopholes for job outsourcers empower unions those these are all of things that are popular individually and proof that america is not conservative it's the america is a progressive nation and a pretty straightforward style. after the break with the fight for workers' rights in high gear across the nation students at the university of virginia are taking the fight into their own hands what are they fighting for and how are they seeking to accomplish their goals.

sometimes you see a story seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.