O'Reilly on Afghanistan... with a Harvard professor

Falafel Bill O'Reilly let his mouth take over while he made absolute statements regarding the war in Afghanistan in a conversation with Sarah Sewell, a lecturer at the Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government and the director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. From Think Progress: (clip available)

O’REILLY: But look, we were successful in Afghanistan. And nobody thought –
SEWALL: Well, the jury’s still out on Afghanistan.
O’REILLY: — overthrow the Taliban in that way. So we were successful.
SEWALL: Unfortunately, Afghanistan’s going backwards.
O’REILLY: That’s a myth.
SEWALL: — which I think speaks –
O’REILLY: That’s a myth.
SEWALL: — to part of the problem with the focus of effort on Iraq. We risked losing the progress that has been made in Afghanistan.
O’REILLY: Now you’re just - that’s not true. There’s always going to be a Taliban insurrection.
SEWALL: It is true.
O’REILLY: As long as they have mountain - now it’s not. Every military analyst working for our team says most of that country is pacified.
SEWALL: Maybe you should be talking to the people on the ground –
O’REILLY: I talked to everybody.
SEWALL: — because they’re concerned about the situation.
O’REILLY: You’re just parroting the left wing line that America doesn’t know what it’s doing.
SEWALL: I’m parroting conversations with commanders who are in uniform serving in Afghanistan.
O’REILLY: All right, so have I. Our information is that there’s no danger at all of the Taliban reclaiming that country, none. They’ll be annoying. There will be a guerrilla warfare. It will not happen. I believe that.

Let's make this easy for O'Reilly. He only has to go here - posted 8 October by Boris.

Nato's commander in Afghanistan has said the country's citizens may start supporting the Taleban unless their lives improve in the next six months. Gen David Richards, a British officer, said the country was at a "tipping point", warning that up to 70% of Afghans could switch their support. They might prefer the "austere and unpleasant" life under the Taleban to five more years of fighting, he said.

[...]

"If we do not take advantage of this, then you can pour an additional 10,000 troops next year and we would not succeed because we would have lost by then the consent of the people."

Bill Maher was right on the mark when he said of O'Reilly:

...he's pulling stuff out of his ass.