A conversation between Moyers and Andrew Bacevich about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

BILL MOYERS: And what do we do? President Obama himself has said that our strategy there is not ultimately a military victory per se, but to win the hearts and minds of the Afghani people.

ANDREW BACEVICH: War termination for us has come to be very difficult, because of our inability to understand the war that we undertake. And I think that both Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate the point- Iraq probably better. I mean, the Bush administration expected that a conventional invasion and occupation of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, that that act would end the war and would produce a host of positive effects. When instead all we did was to expand the war, extend the war, with virtually no political benefits to the United States. Why did that happen? Well, a lot of reasons. But not least among them was that the Bush administration fundamentally misunderstand what its own global war on terror was all about.

BILL MOYERS: So President Obama comes along and says, "Let's get that damn thing behind us. You know, let's just get out of there."

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well-

BILL MOYERS: "Get out of Iraq."

ANDREW BACEVICH: We were all saying at that point, "Let's forget Iraq." And he endorsed that notion. I mean, I voted for President Obama. And I think President Obama is probably the smartest guy to come down the pike, in terms of our politics in a long time. But I believe that his decision in December to escalate the war in Afghanistan was a tragic mistake, a squandered opportunity. That was his oppor- that was his chance. The Afghanistan decision was his chance to change course, when it comes to the fundamentals of US national security policy. And instead, he made in December, made the same decision with regard to Afghanistan as John McCain would have made, had we elected John McCain president.

ANDREW BACEVICH: And so, how could this incredibly smart guy have made that incredibly, in my view, stupid decision? I think that one of the explanations, I think, is that even though the president has styled himself as the man who's going to bring change and is going to change the way Washington works, the president surrounded himself with a national security team of very conventional and orthodox thinkers. I mean, we have a retired Marine four-star general as a National Security Advisor. We've got retired four-star as Director of National Intelligence.

We carried over Mr. Gates, the Republican security of defense as the new Secretary Of Defense. Even Secretary Clinton the Secretary of State is frankly a rather hawkish Democrat. So my sense is that as the president engaged with the Afghanistan question, in the inner circle of advisors, there may not have been any influential voices proposing a genuinely radical course change.

BILL MOYERS: But how do you explain that a country is so passive about a war that to so many people who, like you, seems to be at cross-purposes. Why are we so passive about it?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, this is the unintended and, I think, unanticipated consequences of moving to an all-volunteer force, and in essence, driving a stake through the tradition of the citizen-soldier. That we do have a circumstance today in which there is a significant gap, I think, between those who serve in uniform and the rest of us.

You know, life is tough. Unemployment is close to 10 percent. You know, raising kids, putting food on the table, that's a full-time job for most Americans. And since the 1970s, when this implicit contract was negotiated between the American people and the American government that removed from the people any obligation to serve, we've gotten very accustomed to the notion that whatever is going on in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever else is, in a sense, not our affair. I mean others have made the point. I've made the point.

I think that that condition directly stems from the decision made back in the Nixon era to kill the draft and to opt for a professional military. Not that people in those days anticipated the long-term consequences, but we today deal with those consequences.

BILL MOYERS: Let's come back to the reality on the ground right now. What could be Karzai's motive for pushing back against the west, against the NATO powers, against the United States, against President Obama, as he has been doing?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, tough to say. I think, again, from our vantage point, but my guess would be that that has something to do with his own domestic political situation. That to be- to seem to be the puppet of the Americans is not in his long-term interests.

And so he's pushing back. He's a politician and I think almost all politicians privilege their own personal ambitions. They are determined to maintain their hold on power, and if President Karzai perceives that the kind of pressure he's getting from the United States and other NATO allies is contrary to his own interests, he's not going to go along with it.

ANDREW BACEVICH: I mean, we had to- I keep going back to the Vietnam comparisons, but you will remember that the events leading up to the assassination of President Diem on-

BILL MOYERS: 19-

ANDREW BACEVICH: November first, 1963- in which the United States was complicit. That assassination plot stemmed in part from fears that members of Diem's own inner circle were contemplating opening up negotiations with North Vietnamese. And in order to prevent any such event from occurring we decided we needed to collaborate with Vietnamese generals in bringing about his overthrow.

BILL MOYERS: A coup.

ANDREW BACEVICH: A coup, in which, ultimately culminating in his murder. So this problem of finding a partner who will be sufficiently independent to not look like a puppet, and yet will be sufficiently compliant that he will contribute to our purposes, it's a very difficult problem.

BILL MOYERS: Is he indispensable to our effort there?

ANDREW BACEVICH: I honestly don't know enough about Afghan politics, I think. But I mean, I know of no one waiting in the wings who would be able to take his place. I mean, when we eliminated Diem, we did so anticipating that the generals would be better partners in the waging of the war against the Viet Cong. It turned out that the generals actually were much worse than Diem had been.

BILL MOYERS: And as a matter of fact, Karzai cannot afford to give up on the western effort in Afghanistan. Can he?

ANDREW BACEVICH: I don't know. You know, he's made these noises about cutting deals with the Taliban. I would think that there are enormous risks in doing that from his point of view, but I wouldn't pretend to be able to assess how he evaluates the risks of cutting deals with the Taliban versus the risks of continuing to collaborate with the Americans and the west.