A panel of University of Wisconsin professors told a crowd Friday the current United States occupation of Afghanistan is not only ill-conceived, but it also poses a grave threat to national security.

The last eight years of the war in Afghanistan have proven current U.S. military policy needs profound re-evaluation, according to Joe Elder, a panelist and UW professor of sociology.

“The U.S. made a major mistake following [Sept. 11],” Elder said. “They wanted to punish Osama Bin Laden and wanted to put an end to al-Qaida. I would argue that invading Afghanistan was an inappropriate and in the end a defeating way of doing it. We have not caught Bin Laden, we have not prevented the spread of al-Qaeda. To the contrary, our policy in invading Afghanistan has allowed al-Qaida to spread.”

Uli Schamiloglu, a panelist and professor of Central Asian studies, echoed this belief, citing the continually deteriorating foothold U.S. troops are fighting to maintain.

“Basically, popular sentiment has been rising against the U.S.,” Schamiloglu said. “Some of the Taliban groups in Pakistan have decided to unite against the American. … If anything, the U.S. is more vulnerable now in terms of its position, in terms of maintaining its troops, in terms of supplying its troops.”

The numbers of troops believed necessary to make meaningful progress in Afghanistan are baffling, according to panel member and historian Adam Schesch.

Responding to President Barack Obama’s recent deployment of 17,000 more troops to the area, Schesch said that realistically, 500,000 people doing frontline quality professional fighting, aid provision and civic action are necessary.

“Right now we have less than 100,000 reliables in Afghanistan. The 17,000 is a joke,” Schesch said.

Agreeing with Schesch’s criticism of Obama’s recent addition of troops, panelist and UW professor Frank Emspak added the war is a huge domestic threat.

“From a political perspective, the presidency will be destroyed because the citizens of this country elected Obama as an agent of change, and so far the foreign policy is fundamentally the same,” Emspak said. “The costs are enormous and will eat out the political and financial flexibility needed to bring about meaningful domestic reform.”

While the focus of the forum was Afghanistan in particular, Joe Davis, a UW doctoral recipient in American history and a former state government employee, felt a bit dissatisfied by the panel’s neglect to contextualize Afghanistan within the rest of the Middle East.

Davis said the only way to look at the issue is to bring it into a larger context of the Middle East, naming nuclear armed Pakistan and India as specific concerns.

“It’s always easy in forums like this to suggest simplistic answers, but it’s not always that easy … other than some caveats about how we ought to have more peace,” Davis said. “I really didn’t hear anything dealing with the fact that this nation does have real national concerns in that part of the world.”