22/08/2017 Newsnight

Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win.

Fighting talk from President Trump over Afghanistan.

But harsh words too for Pakistan, formally a US ally,

for harbouring the Taliban and other terrorists.

What does the Afghanistan announcement tell us about who holds

We speak to the mercenary boss who had hoped for

What does he make of the President's plan?

More than 600 people are receiving NHS counselling

We'll hear of the slow painful process towards

My children did not know what fear was. She knows what fear is now. My

child is priceless and their children are priceless. The

government said HS three will happen.

We'll ask the shadow chief secretary to the treasury

if there's cross-party consensus for the scheme.

That is now President Trump's battle cry for Afghanistan,

a far cry from his pre-election determination that there

should be an American withdrawal from the country.

Now he has given The Pentagon authority to ramp up troop numbers,

and greater autonomy to attack the Taliban.

Also in his sights in his Fort Myer speech was Pakistan -

with the president calling for Islamabad to stop providing safe

Mr Trump said Pakistan had much to gain from partnering

with the international effort in Afghanistan and much

to lose from harbouring criminals and terrorists.

Taking tough on Pakistan is not new, but taking meaningful action

to prevent terrorism there has proven difficult.

We'll assess what levers Trump has - and how he might make his ire felt.

With General Kelly... Donald Trump has appointed more generals to his

cabinet than any president since World War II. Perhaps it is

unsurprising that after months of infighting he has bowed to the

military stands on Afghanistan. Last night, in a dramatic reversal of his

isolationist campaign rhetoric, Donald Trump committed the US to a

deeper commitment in its longest ever war. We must ensure they have

every weapon. Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win.

Currently there are 8000 American troops in the country. Donald Trump

refused to discuss numbers but it is expected that they will send an

extra 4000. Despite the big talk, this is a tiny proportion of the

100,000 in the country at the height of Barack Obama's so-called surge in

2009. The secretary of defence has described the Taliban itself as

searching. This map shows the extent of their fightback with the

government now in control of less than 60% of the country. Perhaps the

most striking today were the president's strong words for

Pakistan. The US government has long accused Islamabad of failing to do

enough. Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in

Afghanistan. It has much to lose eye continuing to harbour criminals and

terrorists. He did not make a specific threat but it is thought

they are going to increase drone strikes, withdrawing aid, or

downgrading Pakistan's status as a major non-NATO ally. I'm not sure

the pressure will result in Pakistan backing off, it could well double

down on it. What he did add a new element which is rather explicit

threat to engage India more heavily in Afghanistan. That will get

Islamabad's attention. Figures suggest there have been 428 US drone

strikes since 2004. At the peak there 128. That number has fallen to

just four. Pakistan would not wish to see the strikes escalate, they

view them as illegal. We'll discuss what this

means for the Trump presidency in a moment -

but first I am joined by Carlotta Gall, who for 12 years

Afghanistan and Pakistan Her book 'The Wrong Enemy:

America in Afghanistan', argues that America was fighting

the wrong enemy in the wrong country and should have instead focused

their efforts towards Pakistan. Also with us is Associate

Professor Christine Fair from Georgetown University,

who served as a political officer Good evening to you both. Is this

the right message and the right threat to Pakistan? Undoubtedly. For

the first time we've heard some really strong torque. He's talking

about them changing. We've got to see what he follows through with.

Trump has talked like this for a long time. What do you think should

be the first lever on Pakistan? What would hurt it? The first thing

they've already done is conditionality of the huge amount of

money that they give to Pakistan every year. You can condition that

on performance and they've already started that. The secretary of

defence held up 50 million not long ago. Then there are drone strikes,

like the strike before. Essentially president Trump is building on

Barack Obama's attitudes but do you agree it will have more traction

this time? We are in complete agreement. I was excited to see her

on this segment. We have been consistently saying the real enemy

is Pakistan. I would go further. The biggest programme is the coalition

support fund. This is where Pakistan gets $1 billion a year to do it as

sovereign countries are supposed to do. I think we should get rid of

that programme altogether. Paying Pakistan to do what countries are

supposed to do actually does violence to that commitment. We

should completely re-examine our foreign, military assistance,

provide them no access to platforms like F-16s that allow it to continue

aggression towards India. We should be willing to provide platforms.

Providing them with F-16s is simply preposterous. You cut her off when

she was making a really important point that we have made repeatedly,

that we need to think about smart sanctions. Not only Visa denials but

going after civilians, intelligence operatives, with whom we have

reliable information. We are in complete agreement that the way

forward is not just denying aid. We need to develop the fortitude to

develop sanctions. This is going to quickly run us into the very real

concern that every policymaker in Washington raises and that is the

nuclear arsenal. They used to blackmail us. Coming back to you, as

Trump indicated enough that he would be prepared to lose the special

relationship he's got with Pakistan? Should he have gone further? He made

the point that the special relationship may be there but they

are killing our soldiers. He drew a line that we are amazed that America

has not done. What is there to lose? A nuclear strike? He is standing up

to that. I think he will call their bluff. He is leaving it to his

general to decide where and when. If the signal that you're going to send

fewer than 5000 more troops really going to scare the Taliban back from

the areas they've been taking recently? That is not the point.

They will be doing training and assisting, holding the line. The

Taliban are attacking provincial capitals every month and the

Americans need to go and help the Afghanistan forces. That is what

they are doing. Would be unacceptable to the American people

to commit more troops to Afghanistan? Is that out the

question? I don't think it is out of the question. To his credit, he laid

out wide the Americans need to continue caring about Afghanistan.

If there is continued leadership in explaining that Afghanistan and

Pakistan is the epicentre of some of the most pressing American national

security concerns, Americans will go along with it. There will be

bipartisan support. This may be one of the issues where we see

bipartisanship. Particularly the idea of bringing in India as a more

forceful partner. Back in Washington, some

were wondering today what President Trump's foreign

policy U-turn might say Last week Mr Trump's

former aide Steve Bannon - having been fired from

the White House - told the readers of his right wing Breitbart news

that the Trump presidency he had Today his website was

suitably critical of on the subject is Erik Prince -

the founder and former boss Until recently Mr Prince had hoped

the president might agree to a plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan

and leave securing peace He says he was invited

to the president's Camp David summit to draw up the plans -

but following the change in personnel at the White House,

the invitation was withdrawn. Mr Prince joins me

now from Washington. Good evening to you. You have an

history of running mercenary operations. What was the plan you

were putting forward to the White House? Blackwater was not a

mercenary organisation but we employed Americans serving abroad. I

wrote an op-ed that said how we could end the war. I spoke about the

need for a Viceroy. It was not to rule Afghanistan. It is to be one

leader that would coordinate it. We had the Department of defence and

the CAA in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There has been no unity of command.

It has been very chaotic. That is why we have spent close to $1

trillion in Afghanistan alone. This year, they will consume more than

the UK defence budget just in Afghanistan. We are not winning. You

concede that it is a loaded term. Was this going to be yourself?

Absolutely not. It should be a senior US official, someone with

business experience. We've been going round and round for 16 years.

We are figuring out a way to tie this off. You might say president

Trump, having listened to the generals around him, has shown a

certain maturity today in actually doffing his to their views. Is that

a mistake? The president campaigned against

this notion and resisted it for the first seven months of his

presidency. The Pentagon kept coming back to him with just only the

option of more troops and more money as we have been doing for the past

16 years and it has not worked. I do not think the policy will last long.

Even the rules of engagement, the Taliban has had three open-air

victory parades in the last three months. That does not require any

more troops from the Pentagon, it requires coordination and speed and

innovation from the Pentagon to get after them. The Pentagon has become

so much of the bureaucracy it cannot operate at the speed of the Taliban.

You are saying that the people employed out with the Pentagon and

US military would be able to use different methods, such as the

people you are engaged with do? Let me clarify, this needs to be a true

Afghan solution. The Afghans continually resist a foreign

occupation force which they've had for 16 years. My concept is to

employ long-term contract is that would attach to each battalion, live

and train with them, but with them and if necessary fight side-by-side

with them. A few foreign professionals to provide structural

support for each battalion combined with an air support and you have a

very different and higher performing Afghan army. In the days after

September 11 you 100 CIA officers and a devastated the Taliban. They

can be defeated. You caught the attention of the president and a

Steve Bannon and you're now close to Steve Bannon. He has said over the

weekend that the Donald Trump presidency that he fought for is

over. Do you agree? The president has a lot of different voices in his

ears. I believe the President finally caved on this issue with

going back to the same plan for the Pentagon really because of the

fiasco in Charlottesville, he felt had not politically and he went with

it. I do not think it is a decision he will stay with for long. He needs

to find a way to do this because of the mid-term elections and the next

election the people who voted for him by the people sending their sons

and daughters. So you do not think he will stick with this plan for

long, due think there is still hope for your plan? What I layout is

basic soldiering. It is how the East India company operated. Not trying

to develop a colonial force, this is an Afghan solution, professional

soldiers attached to the Afghan army. By even the United Nations

definition that does not make them mercenaries. Under Afghan rules of

engagement and the code of military Justice, it is a much cheaper and

much smaller footprint way and proven to be effective over the

centuries. To stand on its own against these terrorist

organisations resident in Afghanistan. Thank you for joining

us. It's little more than two months

since the Grenfell disaster, and for many involved,

residents, others in the neighbourhood who watched

the horror unfold, volunteers, nurses, firefighters,

the imprint of that traumatic day will always be with them,

and hard to cope with. Only yesterday the head of

the London Fire Brigade Dany Cotton revealed she is receiving

counselling following the blaze. The

NHS has knocked on two and a half thousand doors in Kensington

and Chelsea to enquire about mental health and offer

advice and counselling. So far six hundred people -

one hundred of them children - have been referred for further

treatment. The symptoms are many and varied,

including guilt that they survived Our special correspondent

Katie Razzall has gone back to Grenfell to see how

people are coping. You just keep on getting

flashbacks to, obviously, the fire and nightmares

and sleep talking. This has been the biggest push

on mental health in the UK there has ever been in response to one

of these events. We had nowhere else

to go but look at it. Theresa Griffin has lived

beside Grenfell Tower We used to sunbathe on the top

of it, years and years ago. They used to have no

locks on it then. I was 16 and everyone

used to go up there. Yes, that tree wasn't there,

there wasn't so much, In this close-knit community it

isn't just survivors of the fire Local residents like Theresa

watched, powerless to I could see, there was two people

there that stood out for me. There was a friend

of mine, Tony Disson. And he was talking to

people out the window. And there was a woman over

in the corner and she just shouted She didn't care about herself,

she just wanted her kids, I can't find any

answers in my faith. The church doesn't give me any

solace at all, which is the first time in my life that I've never got

any answer from myself, for myself. In this vicinity there are whole

families who are traumatised. While younger children can become

withdrawn and fearful, older ones react to

tragedy more like adults. I have to take my daughter

to bed at night. I didn't have to do

that when she was six. And this fear that she has

of losing, you know, And a child shouldn't

feel guilt like that. 14 years of age, you know,

she wasn't in the fire, so she feels this terrible

weight on her. She lost two really

quite close friends. My daughter didn't know what fear

was in the true sense of the word. And that you don't always

go to bed and get up. And it's something that didn't need

to happen, that's the killer, And it's down to a pound note,

and that's heartbreaking. My child is priceless,

and their children were priceless. Normally major incidents involve

people from all over This is a situation where

people are in one place. So you've got a big

concentration of problems. But also people are networked

together so you can both be traumatised yourself and also

bereaved, lost friends, and so that makes for a very

complicated situation that kind NHS mental health outreach workers

have knocked on 2200 This is the UK's largest ever

mental health response So far 600 people have been referred

for further treatment This woman's flat

faces Grenfell Tower. But at the beginning I wasn't

able to sleep at all. I hadn't slept for three nights

following the incident. Nightmares and sleeplessness

are a normal reaction to a trauma. If they endure it can be a sign

of psychological problems. Luckily for this woman,

her insomnia disappeared. But others haven't

been so fortunate. People come and they're

having sleep problems. In children there is

a lot of bedwetting. People have a heightened

state of anxiety. They don't want to

talk and communicate. And you can see both ends

of the scale in one person You know, we have seen

a range of emotions. If I had one wish it would be

that people would be But I know that is

proving very difficult. But that would be very helpful

because one of the problems of you being traumatised

is you don't feel safe. And trying to get that safety

feeling back is very important. 155 of Grenfell Tower's households

are still in emergency Like Paul who lived on the sixth

floor of Grenfell and woke up in his smoke-filled flat

to the sound of screaming. He has been in this hotel since

the fire and says he can't be alone. Friends, NHS clinicians

and even his favourite football club Arsenal have been offering

support and counselling. It has not got any better

at the moment, it has For me I feel it is getting

a little bit worse. For me, maybe over time it might go

down a bit more with the medication, the sleeping tablets and my friends

being around me constantly. I think for me personally it was how

I got out of the building, what I saw coming out

of that building. The fact that eventually

when I did get out, how lucky And I know quite a few people that

have obviously lost their lives, people who were very,

very close, I would see them Raymond Barnard, who

was on the 23rd floor. He watched me grow up,

held me when I was a little kid. And he was one of the first

people I thought of, that I was praying that they've

got out alive. But he was one of the first people

to be confirmed dead. I go and see my mental health sort

of nurse at least once or twice. But she calls me up

on a day-to-day basis to check up And I have another mental

health support worker. Paul has been offered a temporary

flat, but he has been clear that he won't move in until the fire

brigade has checked it, After Grenfell he doesn't trust

the housing association's fire Even in this building here I have

asked quite a few times what is the fire procedure

for the building, for this sort And obviously the room I'm in now

as well, which is good for me, I feel a bit more safe,

is the fact that I'm literally one It's a little over two

months since the fire. A very short time for a community

to come to terms with All our community wants

to do is get the answers It's not dwindling onto

it or wanting to hold I just want to get over

it and I want to feel, I want to wake up in the morning

and like where I used to live. For now though, respite

comes in small gestures. I go over every day,

I light the candles at night time. At the place where

all the tributes are? Yes, where all the tributes

are and the flowers. I put fresh water in

the flowers, trim back I just feel a little

bit better at the end They haven't got

their kids any more. And if you or anyone

you know are affected by any of the issues raised in her film

then there is a dedicated Grenfell So how long does it take to recover

from something like this? Tony Thompson was a Superintendent

with the British Transport Police and was one of the police officers

who dealt with the Paddington Rail crash in October 1999 in which 31

people died and more He is currently chair

of the Emergency Planning Society, which advises government

on disasters such as Grenfell, You were there on that dreadful day

in 1999. When you hear the voices in that film about Grenfell Tower and

the range of the trauma that people are suffering, doesn't resonate with

you? Absolutely. We heard some people saying gradually coming to

terms with it. It is a long process, that will go on for many months and

years and different people will deal with it in different ways. Your

involvement at the epicentre of that crash, he went to the carriages, you

stayed for 11 days. Did that have a long-term effect on you?

Unfortunately my experience of rail crashes goes back to the Clapham

crash on the 12th of December, 1988, and I remember that as vividly as I

do the Ladbroke Grove crash. You cope with it in different ways but

it never goes away. Some will cope with it better than others but this

is a long process. In your experience, how important is it for

people to receive help as soon as possible? To have their mental state

attended to as soon as possible rather than letting them beyond

their own virtue long. -- for too long. The approach we take is, the

first few weeks, we try to provide people with what we call practical

and emotional support. By the time we get to 12 weeks, some people will

make progress, others may need counselling in the true sense and

clearly, the NHS and others are trying to identify people at risk.

It is quite normal in the first days and weeks to suffer from nightmares,

flashbacks, you've got that awful shell of a tower as a stark

reminder. I've been in the area a number of times and wherever you

look it is there. A lot of other disasters. Normally we remove the

wreckage. With Grenfell it will be there quite some time before it is

ultimately removed. Do you think there is a difference between people

having individual tragedies, the experience of their own, and

tragedies like Paddington, Grenfell. Is it a different way of dealing

with things? You have people about you. Does that reinforce it? What is

the difference in approach? Well, absolutely. If you are suffering on

your own, death is a death. If you're part of a wider tragedy, you

can share your concerns, if it is your own personal tragedy, you share

it with your immediate family. There are advantages and disadvantages to

both. I lost a close person through murder. I know what it is like. It

does not go away. You learn to cope with it better in small moments. I

wondered if you could tell me, because of your experience, what

message do you have? For a lot of people it will get better over time.

You will never forget the people who lost their lives. Slowly, slowly, it

may be help from friends. Gradually, it should get better. It will be

more challenging for some people. I'm talking about it getting better

for years. The key is to talk. Thank you so much.

Ahead of a Northern Powerhouse summit in Leeds tomorrow,

George Osborne, in a mischievous flourish, ended his opinion piece

in today's FT by saying that Theresa May could "relaunch her

premiership" this autumn by backing Northern Powerhouse Rail

which would plug the Northern cities into HS2, making it

The government responded by saying that they would go ahead with it.

How does Labour respond? Does Labour back the idea of a track which goes

from Liverpool- Hull? We do. It is part of decentralisation. For too

long we've had a need to chill out. You're giving no help to a lot of

the smaller communities. They want help for retraining. That is much

more valuable. That assumes that they are mutually exclusive. There's

no reason why you cannot do both. It could boost the Northern economy. It

has a knock-on effect. We've set aside ?25 billion for investment.

These things cannot be taken as individual items. You've got ?25

billion for education plans. What about the electrification of the

Transpennine Express to mark the interesting thing, the government

pulling away from that upset the apple cart. There needs to be a

proactive plan for investment in the infrastructure. This is no use.

Especially when it is direct from London. London and the government

have got to chill out in regard to this control over everything that

goes on. This is the way forward and that is what the leaders meeting in

Leeds will be sending a message about. There is no point in doing

this unless there are Spurs which will bring people in Newcastle into

economic regeneration and that won't help them. Of course but this is a

progressive process. Across the area from Liverpool- Hull, you're talking

about 10 million people across that corridor, not taking into account

Cheshire, Lancashire. It is the opportunity for them all to share in

the prosperity. You are happy to subscribe to something that will be

seen as a Tory success? It's not a question of being a Tory success. It

has been on the cards for years and I will not start getting partisan if

this will be beneficial for communities across the North, bring

it on. Thank you. Literary festivals occasionally -

almost inadvertently - And that's exactly what

happened at Edinburgh when the Booker Prize winning writer

Zadie Smith revealed that she limits the time her seven year old daughter

can spend in front of the mirror each day to 15 minutes,

after explaining to her that she was Whether she was actually applying

make up the whole time Zadie Smith didn't make clear, but she alluded

to the huge YouTube industry even for pre-teens, with demonstrations

of how to contour and apply strobe An endeavour that, she said,

can take an hour and a half. So does make-up imprison young women

or can it empower them? Claire Coleman is a journalist

and make-up brand consultant. Madeleine Spencer is beauty editor

of InBeauty magazine. Good evening to you both. Let's deal

first of all the children. The idea. I watched these YouTube videos of

four -year-olds doing contouring. Where does this come from? It comes

from the way that from a younger and younger age children are exposed to

much more of these influences that show them their idols. It seems to

be a natural progression. I don't think they need to know how to

contour. They don't need to know but the application of make-up can be

done, and I wanted to know exactly how Kylie Minogue did her make up. I

think it is absurd but the idea of wanting to emulate something is

totally ingrained. But the idea that unless you do this it will not be

acceptable, a lot of seven-year-olds actually do not have a complete

sense of their own physicality, they don't need it to know how pretty

they could be! It is up to the parents. I don't think limiting that

time does that. But they need to say you have plenty of other attributes

other than the way that you look. It worries me. We need to take a stand

on this sort of thing. We're going to have so much time where we worry

about how we look and concern ourselves. We are looking at

worrying about how people perceive us. To concern ourselves, it is

absolutely wrong. Essentially, if somebody wants to spend an hour and

a half in front of the mirror, it doesn't mean they are stupid, it

just means that aspect of their life is important to them. Absolutely

not. The idea that we have this at one end of the spectrum is something

we need to get over. As a feminist I'm never going to dictate to any

woman how we should be spending our time. What we are talking about is a

wider societal issue where women are judged if they are not making an

effort. Men have a similar pressure. It is worse for women because they

have pressured to look a certain way. But the idea that looking a

certain way is just for women I don't think is true. There's an

expectation to look certain way. It is across the board. As a society

what do we expect of people? Are we too concerned with how we look? It

is motivation. For somebody who enjoys make up, that is as much

pleasure as painting canvas. I agree that the ritual of make-up is

important to them but I rail against the idea that men and women are

judged on the same way. Women are judged much more harshly. Thank you

so much. That is it for tonight. Before we go, we've been

marking Proms season Tonight we have trumpeter

Christian Scott, with his take on the track Celia by jazz legend

Charles Mingus. Good evening. A weather front will

bring heavy rain through the night across Scotland and still be

lingering first thing tomorrow