united states ambassador to afghanistan we welcome you and we thank you for being with us long anticipated your testimony today two months ago i wrote a lengthy letter to the president some six pages that he listened to his commanders in the field and let me begin by commending the president for demonstrating his commitment to achieving success in afghanistan by adding thirty thousand american troops to the war and then later in private conversations i urge the president to listen to our military leaders and give them what they needed and he did just that i noted that the war in iraq caused the previous administration focus on afghanistan shortly after deposing the taliban regime and forcing allocate out of afghanistan the preoccupation with iraq because the war in afghanistan to be under resourced with sensually no strategy unsurprisingly the taliban and their al qaeda allies were able to come back and once again threaten the stability of afghanistan in the region and ultimately our country the president's speech last week conveyed his commitment to addressing the threat in january two thousand and nine there are about thirty three thousand united states troops in afghanistan now in about seven months three times that yesterday in my office ambassador eikenberry informed me that we will soon have triple the number of civilian experts assigned to the mission and we welcome that many in the press and compare the increase in force in afghanistan to the surge in iraq i don't think such comparisons are wise or fair as a percentage the forces on the ground the increase ordered by president obama is much larger than the increase in iraq and the fine afghanistan will be different in many ways many articles citing general petraeus yesterday suggest that he does not believe that progress that get us there will not come as quickly as it did in iraq in the article he suggested that we must be measured in our expectations to be this article highlights the need for a commitment to accomplishing this miss not just from the present but from congress and the american people i hope that this hearing can help build that sense of support and that sense of commitment yesteryear general mcchrystal and you know best i can very set in my office and told me that you believe you can successfully complete the mission in afghanistan i believe that you're right that the president's new strategy coupled with the increase in troops and civilian experts in the sense of urgency provided by the july two thousand and eleven target for transition presents our best chance for success  remember this committee will have questions about the strategy and how it can be accomplished for my part i have numerous question what does success in afghanistan look like what do you believe must be accomplished in the next eighteen months what risks are we accepting in the next eighteen months and how can we mitigate them how will we convince the pakistanis that their interests lie with how well we measure progress over time and how will we help the afghan people build a sort of legitimate government that can insurgency while i do have questions about implementation and yet have any doubt that we must succeed in afghanistan that the president is right  deployment of an additional thirty thousand troops on top of the troops already approved and that the new strategy provides a good path for success i hope our witnesses today can help us fill in the details of how the difficult but a this committee this congress and the american people have been awaiting your testimony before i go into the substance of my remarks i want to state at the outset that all of us support your mission in afghanistan and the men and women serving under your command for over three months washington has been mired in a substantial war debate pendants and academics alike have been weighing in on whether the conflict in afghanistan is in our national interest and if this is a fight we can win in the absence of a clear authoritative voice during these months of the white house review the course of the debate has followed a lot of leaks from the always popular never accountable anonymous source to put it mildly this was not helpful during this time the public support for the war waned and i worry our mission to the president last week and your testimony here today i believe we finally turned the corner in this war we must now move from the assessment stage to the execution stage of this strategy instead of asking if we can achieve success we must now give the time and resources that you need to succeed rather than questioning if the united states has a will to win general mcchrystal and and the thousands of us military and civilians in afghanistan will demonstrate the will of this mission to defeat al qaeda the taliban and bring stability to afghanistan it's time that we conclu this chapter on the war debate in washington and write the next chapter on national consensus and mission gentleman will have the i'll be the author of success today you will write the first page of this next chapter after these hearings washington must step aside and let a couple once again become ground zero in this conflict gen mcchrystal and ambassador i can bury the task before us enormous i know that i speak for the entire committee when i say that you are the best people to take on this challenge this country is blessed to have leaders like you in its service in september and word when we receive your assessment we read your written word when we receive your assessment today we need to hear about the unwritten words between the lines of the assessment this is your opportunity to speak to the citizens of this country and interested parties across the world i think when they hear from you they will be convinced of the soundness of our strategy and optimistic about the chances for our success fortunately much of your assessment seems to have been internalized in washington and by members of this committee on tuesday night the president agreed to provide you with additional troops to execute a counterinsurgency strategy the commander in chief responded to the urgency of the situation when he committed to deploy those forces as fast as possible last week secretary gates testified that our aim is to reverse the taliban's momentum which is precisely what your s your assessment described as essential to preventing mission failure in afghanistan yet the president's speech and subsequent testimony last week left me concerned that the administration did not adopt some of the fundamentals of your assessment nowhere in your assessment that i see discussion of a date certain to begin withdraw in fact you wrote that the long term fight will require patience and commitment i believe your concern was that the afghan people are waiting on the sidelines to see how committed we are did we demonstrate that commitment last week on thursday secretary gates testified that he was persuaded by you and general petraeus that beginning a period of transition on a date certain will in fact incentivize the afghans i look forward to your persuading us  the same today moreover i cannot find mention in your assessment of the need to put pressure on the afghans to take on responsibility before last week's speech i assume like many that the afghan national security forces were doing everything they could to get into the fight corruption in the realm of governance and development undermined our security efforts i believe that the afghan ministries of defense and interior were part of the solution and not part of the problem in fact the variable holding back the growth of the afghan national security forces were things outside the control of kabul namely funds to pay for a larger force and more capacity on the part of nato to train the afghans so where did this new narrative of putting pressure on the afghans come from what i did not hear last week was a commitment to follow the recommendations of your assessment and build an afghan national security force of four hundred thousand instead admiral mullen spoke of taking it year by year again i don't recall your assessment recommending incrementalism to hear how your headquarters will interpret last week's guidance from washington there is the critical question of resources are thirty thousand additional forces and up to win decisively you wrote in the assessment resources will not win this war but under resourcing could lose it given the many leaks you requested at a minimum forty thousand additional forces please explain why the president is not under resourcing his own strategy will you have to cut the scope of the mission because you did not receive eighty thousand more forces in next year you determine that additional forces next year you determine that additional forces are required do you have the flexibility to ask for more while we've heard about top line numbers we've not heard discussion about the composition of these forces how many combat brigades will deploy how many will be trainers will each combat brigade receive all its enablers will the cap of the thirty thousand forces make you choose between adding combat forces or the neighbors general embassador this is your opportunity to answer the critics and bolster the supporters of this strategy no one is more chairman congressman mckeon distinguished members of this committee thank you for the chance to appear before you today i welcome this opportunity to testify in a way ahead in afghanistan and i'm pleased to do so with  eikenberry and old friend let me begin by saluting the bravery of the men and women of the international security assistance force in afghanistan they are anchored by over sixty eight thousand courageous americans are close partners in the nato alliance and a forty three nation coalition we honor the sacrifices of the fallen the veterans and their families we also recognize the toll paid every day by our counterparts in the afghan security forces by afghan civilians who ultimately suffer the most from this insurgency it is for them and for all of us that we seek a stable afghanistan a defunct al qaeda and a secure future in that vital region of the world i first deployed to afghanistan in two thousand and two and have commanded forces there every year despite that experience there is much in afghanistan but i have yet to fully stand for all of us afghanistan is a challenge that is best approach with a balance of determination and humility while u s forces have been at war in afghanistan for eight years the afghans have been at it for more than thirty they are frustrated with international efforts that fail to meet their expectations confronting us with a crisis of confidence among afghans who view the international effort as insufficient and their government is corrupt or at the very least consequential we also face a complex and resilient insurgency the quetta shura taliban or afghan taliban is a prominent threat to the government of afghanistan as a aspire to once again become the government of afghanistan the hakani and his be islam insurgent groups have more limited geographical reach an objective but they are no less lethal all three groups are supported to some degree by external elements in iran and pakistan have ties with al and coexist with a narcotic some criminal networks both fueling and feeding off instability and insecurity in the region the mission in afghanistan is undeniably difficult and successful require steadfast commitment and incur significant cost i participated fully in the president's assessment and decision making process and was afforded multiple opportunities to provide my recommendations and best military advice which i did combined with insights and policy considerations from across our government i believe the decisions that came from that process reflect a realistic and effective approach to pursue our cold gore core goal of defeating al qaeda and preventing their return to afghanistan we must disrupt and degrade the taliban's capacity denied our access to the afghan population and strengthen the afghan security forces this means we must reverse the taliban's current and create time and space to develop af security and governance capacity the president's decision rapidly resources our strategy recognizing that the next eighteen months will likely be decisive and ultimately enable success i fully support the president's decision the president also reiterated how this decision supports our national interests rolling back the taliban as a prerequisite to the ultimate defeat of al qaida the mission is not only important it is also achievable we can and will accomplish this mission let me briefly explain why i believe my confidence derives first from the afghans resolve since it is their actions that will ultimately matter most in ending this conflict with their interests and by extension our own security second we do not confront a popular insurgency the taliban have no widespread constituency have a history of failure in power and a lack appealing vision third war strategy is applied we've begun to show that we can help the afghans establish more security and more credible governance finally afghans do not regard us as occupiers they do not wish for us to remain forever support as a necessary bridge to future security and stability i've been back in afghanistan for six months now i believe that with the president's decision and ongoing reforms i outlined in our initial assessment our efforts are now empowered with a greater sense of clarity capability commitment and confidence let me start with clarity the president's recently completed review of our strategy to include pointed questioning of all assumptions and recommendations has produced greater clarity of our mission and objectives we also have greater clarity on the way forward additional forces will begin to deploy by this time next year new security gains will be illuminated by specific indicators and will be clear to us that the insurgency has lost the momentum and by the summer of two thousand and eleven it will be clear to the afghan people that the insurgency will not win please from that point forward while we plan to have fewer forces in harm's way we will remain partnered with the afghan security forces in a supporting role to consolidate and solidify their gains results may come more quickly and we may demonstrate progress towards measurable objectives but the sober fact is that there are no silver bullets ultimate success will be the cumulative effect of sustained pressure across multiple lines of operation increasing our capability has been about much more than just tube increases for the past six months we have been implementing organizational and operational changes they're already reflecting improvements in our effectiveness but the additional forces announced by president obama are significant forces to increase our capacity to train the afghan national security forces and forces to partner with afghan army and police and expanding security zones and areas will provide us the ability to reverse insurgent momentum and deny the taliban the access to the population they require the additional capability we are building translates into credibility in the minds of after we demand proof not only that we want to protect them but that we can in a world perceptions where the battlefield is the mind of an afghan elder the hope of an afghan mother the aspirations of an afghan child this can be decisive our commitment is watched intently and constantly judged by our allies and by our enemies the commitment of thirty thousand additional u s forces along with additional coalition forces and growing afghan national security force numbers will be a significant step toward expanding security in critical areas and in demonstrating resolve the commitment of all coalition nations will be buttressed by a clear understanding of how we will mitigate risk briefly mentioned the first is the afghan government's credibility deficit which must be recognized by all to include afghan officials as a critical area of focus and change equally important is our ability to accelerate development of the afghan security forces measures such as increased pay and initiative literacy training leader development and expanded partnering are necessary to position the afghan national security force to assume responsibility for long term security third the hazard posed by extremists that operate on both sides of the border with pakistan with freedom of movement across that border must be mitigated by enhanced cross border coordination and enhanced pakistani engagement looking ahead i'm confident we have both the right strategy and the right resources every trip around afghanistan reinforces my confidence in the coalition and afghan forces we stand alongside in this effort but i also find confidence in those we are trying to help face many challenges in afghanistan but our efforts are one unassailable reality neither the afghan people or the international community want afghanistan to remain a sanctuary for terror and violence and if we are to be confident of our mission and our prospects we must also be accurate in our assessment of progress we are ourselves our leaders and the american people because the price to be paid is high and the stakes are even higher in closing my team and i would like to thank you and your colleagues for your support to the american men and women currently serving in afghanistan and to tell you a bit about them we risk letting numbers like thirty  roll off our tongues without remembering that those are fathers mothers sons and daughters serving far from home selfless and their sacrifices for each of us the other day i asked a young combat experience  where he was on nine eleven and his answer getting my braces remind me that he's been more than eight years since nine eleven and many of our service members and families have experienced and sacrificed much but as i see them in action at remote bases on patrol partnering with afghan forces we're covering and combat hospitals they don't talk about all they've given up they talk about all they are accomplishing and their determination endeavor this is not a force of rookies or delta the brigade commander and coast completing its fourth combat tour in afghanistan and his experience and expertise is reflective of the force that represents you his decision came after an intensive deliberate and a far reaching review i'm honored to have been part of that i believe the course that the president outlined does offer the best path of them i'm also honored to testify alongside general stanley mcchrystal my professional colleague and friend of new year's i want to say from the outset that general mcchrystal and i are united in a joint effort where civilian and military personnel work together every day side by side with our afghan partners and our allies we could not accomplish our objectives without this kind of cooperation as you know mr the united states is at a critical juncture in our involvement in afghanistan on december the first the president ordered thirty thousand additional troops to deploy to afghanistan on the celebrated  timetable with the goal of breaking the insurgency momentum hastening and improving the training of the afghan national security forces and establishing security in key parts of afghanistan on the civilian side we aim to increase employment and provide essential services in areas of greatest insecurity and to improve critical ministries and the economy at the national level these steps together will i believe help us to remove insurgents from the battlefield and build support for the afghan government as a president said we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance after a difficult election the afghan government does show signs of recognizing the need to deliver better governance and security we await urgent concrete steps in a number of areas i'd like to briefly discuss the three main pillars of our efforts in afghanistan security governance and development general mcchrystal has already addressed our plans for improving security and building the afghan national security forces since assuming my to afghanistan absolutely critical to regain the initiative and i'm confident that is these troops arrive the situation will stabilize and turn in our favor additional troops will permit us to expand our work with the afghan army and police so that they can take on a larger role in providing for their own security as president obama said the transition to afghan responsibility will begin in the summer of two thousand and eleven when we expect afghan security forces to begin assuming lead responsibility for defending their country moving on from security the second pillar of a comprehensive strategy focuses on governance at the national in the sub national level overarching goal is to courage improve governance so afghans can see the benefits of supporting the legitimate government and the insurgency loses its support as general mcchrystal points out one of the major impediments to our strategy our strategy faces is the afghan government's lack of credibility with its own people to strengthen its legitimacy our approach at the national level is improving ministries by increasing the number of civilian technical advisers and providing more development assistance directly through these ministries budgets by focusing on ministries that deliver sensual services and security we can accelerate the building of the afghan government to one that is sufficiently visible effective and accountable at the provincial in the district levels we're working jointly with our military through our provincial reconstruction teams our district development working groups and our district support teams which help build afghan capacity particularly in the areas of greatest insecurity in southern and in eastern afghanistan underpinning all of these efforts is the need to combat corruption and promote the rule of law with our assistance the afghan government is steadily building law enforcement institutions to fight corruption organized crime and drug trafficking in this inaugural address president karzai stated his intention to make merit based appointments in his new cabinet and implement an anti corruption strategy we're very encouraged by the state the cultivation of poppy and trafficking in opium also continues to have a debilitating effect on afghan society our strategy is multi pronged here involving demand reduction efforts by law enforcement agencies and the military to detain traffic drug shipments and support for illicit agricultural development the narcotics problem will of course never have solution though without economic development and this leads to the third pillar of our effort which is development in recent months we've adjusted our approach to focus on building aspects of afghanistan's private sector economy increasing our emphasis on agriculture in hansing government revenue collection and improving the coordination of assistance within the united states government and the international community the steps were taken to produce improvements in the lives of ordinary afghans and to contribute to more effective government and lessen support for the insurgency rebuilding the farm sector in particular is essential for the afghan government to reduce the pool of unemployed men who form the recruiting base groups we estimate that some eighty percent of the afghan population derives their income either directly or indirectly from agriculture mr chairman i want to emphasize that we're concentrating on what is essential and what is attainable the president's strategy is based upon a pragmatic assessment of the security interest of the united states of america and our belief that a sustainable representative government and a sustainable economy in afghanistan are essential to our success we need a buyable afghan government so our forces can draw down and the investment of u s taxpayer taxpayer dollars can be reduced in closing i'd like to mention two important risks that we face  carrying out this strategy and which i share with general mcchrystal the first is that in spite of everything we do afghanistan may struggle to take over the essential task of governance and security on a timely basis the second is our partnership with pakistan effort we're undertaking in afghanistan is likely to fall short of our strategic goals unless there is more progress at eliminating the sanctuaries used by the afghan taliban and their associates inside of pakistan if the main elements of the president's plan are executed and if our afghan partners and our allies do their part i'm confident we can achieve our strategic objectives and i say this with conviction because for the first time during my three tours in afghanistan all of the elements of our national power are being employed with the full support of the president increasingly with our allies achieving our goals inside of afghanistan will not be easy but i'm optimistic that we can succeed with the support of congress our mission was under resourced for years but is now one of our government's highest priorities substantial development funds and hundreds more civilian personnel we will soon have increased our civilian presence in kabul threefold and in the field six fold just over the past year we will of course need more united states foreign assistance is also a comparatively small but essential chairman afghanistan is a daunting challenge success is not guaranteed but it is possible with additional troops and other resources provided by the president and with the help the united states congress thank you for the general mcchrystal tell us what your mission is chairman i believe that our mission is to do two things first al qaeda is a threat to the united states and to our allies worldwide our ability to prevent al qaeda from reestablishing safe haven inside afghanistan as most people know many of the nine eleven hijackers were in fact trained on afghan soil in al qaida range run training camps and it's critical we prevent their ability to return to spaces inside afghanistan and repeat that kind of activity wider than that our mission is to help the government of afghanistan have the ability to defend itself to conduct its own nation general do you agree with the president's decision to strategize and increase the number of troops i agree with the president's decision and i believe that it provides me the resources that we need to execute the strategy to accomplish the mission as outlined for us general will you be successful in your mission i believe we will absolutely be successful what do you need from us general the armed services committee i believe the resources have been provided by the president's decision i believe what we need from the armed services committee and from the american people is continued commitment and support for our force in this mission and master i can very november twelve washington post i'm pleased that their good german thank you let me make three points first of all in the process of the strategy review that went on for three months all the participants  in this very vigorous review process were encouraged to state their assessments and their recommendations all of the participants did that in a variety of ways video teleconferences through direct conversations to written communications my second point is i'd like to clarify that at no point during this review process mr chairman i ever oppose to additional troops being sent to afghanistan as i said during my opening statement i fully about the need for the accelerated growth of the afghan national security forces that requires additional u s troops and nato troops to accomplish that so it was not a question of additional troops it was the question as we all had about the number of troops what would be the timelines for those troops what would be the context that those proops would operate in and then the third point i wanted to make is results of this very extensive review the mission was refined the ways forward were clarified and the resources now have been committed to allow us to achieve the refined mission with that at this point in time as i said in my opening statement mill has been thriving over the last three months as the last question we just had there you know i have heard that your request of the president was anywhere from ten to eighty thousand additional troops we have not been given your request all we've had to go on is what we've heard i know that you requested  tied it to a risk factor now when i was in afghanistan in august and we met i mentioned that i know you had been given certain direction from the secretary and from others and i asked you directly if that was going to influence the request that you made the commander in chief you told me no you had a moral obligation to ask for what you needed to be successful in the mission as i mentioned congress has not had the opportunity to review your troop request we did we weren't able to read the original assessment that you sent but i have the highest level of confidence that you would hear your word and ask for what you thought you needed given your best military judgment to be successful general can you tell this committee and the american people what  different force options you requested and the degree of risk that was tied to those requests congressman that is still a classified document so i'm unable to to go into detail but i could certainly go into the process and i'd like to do that when we completed the initial assessment we went into a resource analysis which we called it which is the classified document that is outlined to you during your visit we identified different packages with associated risk based upon our assessments of that and then i said that i would also make a recommendation technically not a request at that point but a very direct recommendation of my chain of command of what the appropriate force level was and i did that through this process and then when that went into the president's assessment and decision making process what i was very pleased about is beginning with my initial assessment i was not only encouraged to be candid and straightforward i was demanded to be candid and straightforward so as we went forward with what was then in the resource analysis and that became part of what was considered in the president's assessment throughout that process which was exchange of different documents in a series of security in every case i was able to to make my recommendations or my analysis and they would come back for more detail rationales so that i could explain that i thought it was a very healthy exchange as correlate i'm sorry ambassador i can very laid out getting everything the table getting everybody very clear on where we were and what i think came out of that was as we focused on the mission the understanding of the mission i believe that the president's decision reflects resourcing resources that our congress with what i recommend we needed so i'm very comfortable with the outcome resource wise of what was made in the process general would you be willing to give the classified session with the committee give us what you asked for absolutely and let me now frame the question and in a little i asked for forces to be deployed as quickly as they could be deployed and the flow worked out that was going to be about that in two thousand and ten but i didn't ask it that way  thank you general did you recommend that the troops begin withdrawal by july two thousand and eleven i did not recommend anything to do with i made no recommendations at all on that in your judgment the deployment of thirty thousand troops to the eastern and southern parts of the country and the eighteen month timeline provide the least risk and most opportunity compared to the other options you gave to the commander and i believe that it does nothing in this is without risk as you said with so i think it's appropriate risk what i'd like to do is give the wider context of this as we look at our partnership with afghanistan from now through partnership that the president and the secretary defense have discussed in the long term in fact we have done is provided the afghans the assurance that we are going to be strategic partners with them now that likely will not involve combat forces it will involve different things over time but it's a very important part of a long term commitment to them and if you are the insurgency that is also a very difficult fact to deal with because it sensually makes the insurgent long term approach not viable if you come to near term the president has just announced thirty thousand additional u s forces and we expect to get some range of additional coalition forces so starting very quickly beginning this month actually with deployment we will have a significant the increased force on the ground that's going to allow us to turn the momentum both actual momentum on the ground and momentum in the eyes of the afghan people over about the next eighteen months i believe the next eighteen months are the critical period in this war because i believe they're critical in the minds of the afghan people and in the minds of the insurgency so i believe that the researchers we've been provided along with the strategy which we have already started implementing and the resolve reflected by the support of the american people and our other coalition allies i believe for this eighteen months we're going to make tremendous progress against this while we simultaneously grow afghanistan's capacity to provide for its own security that then bridges to the long term so i'm i'm very comfortable where we are now as we go out toward the strategic partnership and i don't believe the july two thousand and eleven timeframe militarily is a major factor in my strategy i do want to say up front there are people who will grab on to that i think inappropriately and they will try to use in an information operations and describe it as something that it is not in terms of a lack of commitment on the part of th s and the coalition because we've we've committed to a long term partnership but i think we can deal with that and on the positive it is a bit of a forcing function by being very clear to all the players involved that we are going to be looking hard at things it provides a forcing function an impetus for moving forward for the afghans and others to continue to make progress toward their own capacity and finally general i know we moved  additional forces in earlier this year i believe they began arriving in april may june and we began an offensive july first you've had time now to assess that that's almost what we're projecting for next year we'll have forces arriving some this month and some early next year and then we're looking to another review next december so based on how you assess the effort this year and then the increased effort next year will you feel good about being able to assess for another review next december of how we're doing toda i will of course we will do constant assessments as we do to see where we are but i actually think we'll the progress already being made by the forces approved in march and by the other steps we've taken and how we  operate our cumulative with the additional forces that will start flowing in and we're actually going to start earlier this year than those that were approved in march and we're going to try to flow these initial forces in employ them as quickly as we can so i actually think that by december we will have had more time to make sure our thinking and and show real progress and i'm confident that we will and finally general do you feel that you will have the flexibility a year from now or twenty to ask for additional forces if your assessment at that point points to those additional forces needed for success i believe i have the responsibility to give my best military advice which ever the direction the situation is going i do not anticipate the requirement to ask for additional forces but i would always provide my candid best military advice thank you very much  chairman thank you general i go to the american troops in new york i'm in there even better than we think they are they are they are amazing i've been in thirty three years and i served together most of that and when i compare it to when i came in in the seventy's it is completely different we are fighting an extended war professional force augmented by civilian so our citizen soldiers who do an extraordinary job i was up at walter reed yesterday as many of you do see in our wounded and as i met soldiers  sailors who had been wounded there their sense of commitment to get back into their units back with their forces was extraordinary and their sense of focus on the mission and then when i go down on thanksgiving i flew around to as many combat outposts as i could and i went to i don't know how many but it was a lot and one of them that was a young second lieutenant platoon leader along with an afghan national police element and the organization was out there in the middle of nowhere and did not have watch out because their generator wasn't working and so they were there and there was no complaint at all but one of the young sergeants came up to me and talked about partnering with the afghan police because you know they are the much maligned afghan national police and he said sir you've got understand this is working great this is extraordinary the progress you're making we should have started this months ago that units on their eleven month a twelve month deployment so when i see that every time i get out many cases they bring unique skills like our agricultural development teams that are around the country bring things that active component skills and maturity active components don't have they're not exactly the same but together they are much better  they we are losing we are paying a price with our citizen soldiers and casualties and in lost time away from home just like we are with our entire force i just could not i cannot say enough about their performance german  in afghanistan representing the full inner agency of our government the federal bureau of investigation the drug enforcement administration the department of agriculture u s state department i could go on treasury they are a them how they were doing they were doing they were just out there doing their job with the u s army we should be enormously proud of the u s civilians who are serving alongside our soldiers sailors airmen marines thank you very much and informed that the countries as we go around the world trying to convince other countries to join in the fight because truly this fight against al qaeda somehow we have to convince the rest of the world that it's in everyone's best interest to assist there are two issues that are brought up the first one is that some somehow the belief is that we're going to leave there and leave prematurely  are very important the traditionally muslim countries where i think we need to focus to get their assistance into into this very critical region of the world can you comment  first of all on how we can convince others to join in this effort secondly on the issue of corruption and the things we can do to change both of you pl great congressman i thought i'd start on how we can convince others to stay focused on this we do have forty three nations in fact that's about to go up fairly soon as well and that's extraordinarily important to the effort for a couple of reasons one they all bring capacity but it's also very important because we are a coalition there we have additional credibility with the afghan people they know a coalition will never be occupiers so there's no way to paint us as the soviet union so that's very important i think it's important to all our coalition partners to stress our long term strategic commitment with afghanistan many of our coalition partners are there because they believe it's important others are there because they believe that either the nato alliance or the relationship with the us is a nother factor and i think that's very important but stressing the consistency of our commitment i think is the most key point and in general if you don't think that the that the deadline eighteen month deadline affects the commitment in others and other nations as i believe that if we put the perception of that because in fact i don't i don't view july two thousand and eleven as a deadline i did that as a point at which time the president has directed we will begin to reduce combat forces but we will decide the pace and scope of that based upon conditions at that time  our opening statements we emphasized the importance of efforts to help strengthen the legitimacy of the government of afghanistan we're working right now in many areas let me just highlight three first of all combined efforts with the government of afghanistan to improve their law enforcement capabilities we have many programs one for instance the development of the major crimes task force the equivalent of an afghan f b i led by our f b i in training efforts and our allies secondly we're working to help improve the transparency and accountability of the afghan ministries certification programs more of our money up our development money going directly into afghan ministries that are certified in a transparent way and this requires partnership as well right now about eighty percent of the developmental dollars being put in by the international community into afghanistan or outside of the afghan budget so they need help in this area as well and then third we're working hard again with a combined international effort to help improve the civil service of afghanistan these are long term efforts there's not going to be any kind of silver bullet but i'm optimistic we can make progress but this all has to be underpinned by afghan leadership encouragingly president karzai in his inauguration address he did talk about efforts to go after iraq but this is something we have to make progress on over the thank you i read an article this morning i think it was from the washington post that was talking about an afghan with one eye and a beard and yet aligned himself with the with the national government and with our presence there and acknowledged that if the taliban came back to power they were going to cut his head off if that is the general perception of afghans isn't it going to be kind of difficult to get them to align themselves with the federal government and with let's imagine for a moment that i'm one of the bad guys i'm evil but i'm not an idiot i have long range plans and above all i'm very patient the president has signaled that we're going to begin a drawdown in july of eleven and if conditions on the ground are ok that drawdown is going to continue apace i'm going to make sure conditions on the ground are ok because i'm a very patient guy and two years or so is not very long to wait i'm just going to cool it for those two years or so and then these guys are going to be gone and i can have at it the going to be difficult to recruit afghans if they know that if we're not success and success is not assured we're not successful they're going to have their head cut off or something like that and why isn't it true that the bad guys who have far more patience than we have that part of the world sees it very differently than we do a lot of codell to china to talk about energy they began the discussion of energy by talking about post coital that's a long way off why won't they just point like to bring out on this first is that you're right about the insurgency and their use of coercion they will and they do threaten people and it's very powerful because the threat of being harmed stops you from making decisions you might otherwise make and so it's important that we be able to protect the afghan people we can try to win their hearts and minds and then your time but you must be able to protect them from coersion the second point however is that the insurgency has a an essential weakness in this and the challenge that doesn't allow them to simply wait first they're not popular they are not a national liberation front that people inside are just waiting for their success they may succeed on largely on their course but if they go to ground or if they go to areas and simply wait what happens is during that period as we protect the afghan people along with our afghan partners and build up a way of life and convince the afghan people that they have a stake in this better way of life then the society becomes more durable it becomes more difficult of course because the people have something to protect and they've got something to do lose which they don't want to lose additionally at the same time the afghan government particularly afghan national security forces are building their own capacity and so as the people are starting to buy into a new life and their government has increased capability to defend them then suddenly the insurgents who may have waited patiently are are faced with a much less vulnerable target or much less vulnerable a lot of afghan populace so they really can't afford to wait and this is this is the key to us trying to establish security and a future in the minds of the afghan people as we go forward i'm sorry do you see that changing i read about one afghan who was really happy and zero one when we got the taliban out of there they he now would welcome them back three hundred years it's been tribal rule why do you think that's going to change i think it will change they have had a central government at least in my view but it's never been a central government that has the same kind of control over local levels that we might in different models it's been a pretend central government hasn't it i think it's been a legitimate central government but it is again it does not run things quite the way in most nations that we are familiar with but i believe person killed in action and yet they were treated differently and i would encourage is a question for the record to report back to us are you satisfied that as we augment the number of civilians going into that into harm's way that they will be treated fairly and their families will get the kind of support and they will get the kind of was given to as a final statement and then but you did make one change here on page three talking about the summer two thousand and eleven written statement says that point forward i would begin to reduce u s combat force levels to remain partnered with the hear a whole lot of discussion about possible for getting people who are currently connect with the taliban to come over to a different side and i don't need a detail on this that is in the discussions and part of the next is that  correct it is that must be a government of afghanistan run and manage program but we have stood up a particular sale to support them in that we have resources available to do that we think it's critical to offer our fighters maybe not the most senior day after the president's speech and you mentioned the information and how people would respond overseas to the discussion about the middle of two thousand and eleven which is a fair discussion and the major is growing the military is currently training captains for deployment overseas and put me in the position of being the village elder who's got a brother who's been killed by the taliban and then you're the captain the young captain decide that what are you going to tell me about what does that mid two thousand and eleven mean five family and clan my geographic area that i control align myself with the international forces what are you going to tell me about what that means i start with the fact that we have committed to a strategic partnership and that's what i tried to explain to develop jailed or we are going to stay partnered with the government of afghanistan and the people of afghanistan for their future whatever that has to look like then i walk him back and say in the near term we're going to do a significant effort to grow your afghan national security forces to afghanistan can be secured by afghans and we are going to use additional coalition forces to provide time and space breathing space to do that i would then come back to him and i would say this is a shared responsibility afghanistan belongs to afghans afghanistan must be built and secured by afghans and i would say that they have got to make the decision to do the kinds of things that help that process along it is difficult it does put people in hard decisions i go back to our revolution where our leadership put an awful lot on the line and an awful lot of people in afghanistan are in the position of doing the same thing  mcchrystal there has been some knowledge but i think through the years that the women in the military were women troops have performed very very well and that this is a different kind of war than some of the i think that the best the way i look at it is the mission has been effectively and appropriately refined as we went into the process from the president as we took the information that was in the president's strategy decision in march and then subsequent documents and we informed ourselves with those in our initial assessment in our camp plane campaign designed we designed a campaign that would focus on those areas we thought that needed to be cured not every part of afghanistan is either under threat or needs to be secured at the same level we focused on those to determine what level of force we would need both afghan security forces and coalition forces to be able to do that as we went in and made our recommendations to the chain of command on that in fact that turned out to be a great point around which we discussed to refine everybody's understanding of the mission in fact we had the word defeat which we had referred received in the initial guidance but that gave us a great opportunity discussed that in for minutes amount of detail because in military terms defeat actually means to render an enemy incapable of accomplishing its mission does not mean that you eradicate that enemy down to the last individual it could be similar to politics where you defeat the other party in an election but you don't wipe them out  but so as we look at the strategy that really helps govern how many forces you need and where you need to go it turned out to be a very very helpful process as we did this is we were forced to explain just how much terrain how much of the population we had to protect the lines of communication that were important for that and then the forces we thought that were appropriate for that that was the essential refining that i think was very valuable your assessment at the end of august talk a lot about the need to fully implement a counterinsurgency strategy different culture different organization great differences beyond the number of troops and yet i really haven't heard very much about that in the last week where the recommendations you made about different strategy organizational changes and other things fully agreed to the white house to my knowledge they were in fact they've also been extraordinarily supported with across nato with our nato i said partners this is a long term process because you're asking a force to that was designed and raised culturally most of our forces to do different things to operate a counterinsurgency but starting when i arrived in june we've been pushing in that direction we haven't we haven't been stopped in any of those areas we reorganized our command which stood up several new progress most of our forces do very well but but there is a mindset to do counterinsurgency that really takes a lot of learning and maturity over time so it'll probably be unfinished business  that was true in august does that mean we have nine months to turn this thing around i think it's important that that we turn it around quickly i might say a little bit longer now but we used the last six months at full throttle so we didn't waste a minute of the last six months as we start to deploy the forces were just approved we've got a foundation to put on those what i tell inside my command now is by next summer i expect there to be significant progress that is evident to us inside our force by next december when i report back to you in detail i expect that we'll be able to lay a real progress out that will be clear to everyone and by the following summer of july two thousand and eleven i think the progress today general mcchrystal on march twenty seventh of this year president obama announced a new strategy for afghanistan which included the deployment of twenty thousand additional troops the president stressed that there were four goals to that strategy number one to disrupt terrorist networks in afghanistan and pakistan to promote capable accountable and effective afghan government i would assume that means not corrupt number three develop self objectives for this new strategy being presented to us only this time it's going to cost an additional thirty thousand troops so general let me read this question because it's a little detail p said that the withdrawal of u s forces from afghanistan will be levon and that promise of course has been reinforced but somewhat ambiguous by the secretary of defense the secretary of the state in the national security adviser's i watched the  all on sunday shows all of those officials caution that the pace in the completion of the withdrawal will be conditioned on concrete progress towards our strategic objectives on the ground in afghanistan and that promise to begin the withdrawal at a certain date and the stipulation that the pace of withdrawal will be conditional many of us fundamentally inconsistent for two reasons if conditions on the ground are paramount then it's not really possible to predict cannot answer that yes or no what i will do is tell you that although i will always give my best military advice i think trying to speculate to that particular condition would be appropriate for me at this particular time let's set cause for the reasons of insecurity so it's absolutely central that the government of afghanistan addressed it but it is an extraordinary challenge we're talking about a country that had three decades of conflict a country because of that three decades of conflict that has literacy rates of twenty five percent we're talking about the complete collapse of institutions but i will tell you i've served in afghanistan since two thousand and two and there has been progress that's been made we don't want to overlook substantial progress that's been made but what's going to be over the next two years that president karzai administration in partnership with us with the support of the international community that they start to take stronger measures to become a more accountable government and that they do address seriously the problems of corruption that plague the society thank you for that you are successful professional to come back out and really challenge to show their strengths i mean i imagine that's probably a given but i'd like to hear you comment on that i believe they will try to do that but i think that they're going to be challenged to do that when they massed now in any significant numbers they are defeated fairly quickly were significant losses so what i think they will do and what we see them talking about doing is trying to maintain pressure show a brave front against this and continue to to show the momentum that they believe that they have i think however that they will end up using an increasing number of asymmetric tactics suicide bombers improvised explosive devices coersion of the population at night and things other than in large scale operations general let me ask you this last question time's running out if the if you needed to pursue the enemy like during vietnam they had a sanctuary do you have the green light to go across the border in hot pursu so we have the ability to protect our forces with fire across the border artillery and air fire and we do that in coordination with our pakistani partners so we can pursue them to target them and do that fairly routinely but again we coordinate that we have a series of procedures in process or in place that allow us to do that mr chairman i would like to ask in the future from time to time if possible that we would have classified briefings morning ambassador thank you for your service general do you agree with the statement that there is not a robust al qaida presence in afghanistan today in terms of numbers there is not a robust al qaeda presence in terms of the ability linkages to people like the kani network and to the quetta shura taleban through surrogates in fact they do have significant linkage and  an influence in your written testimony on page two general you say that our core goal of defeating al qaida and preventing their return to afghanistan return from where there are many locations their primary location in that area is pakistan i thought you'd say that and what's the plan with respect to al qaeda sanctuaries in pakistan let me just play devil's advocate question for months not my view but i hear it there is a robust al qaeda presence both quantitatively and qualitatively pakistan so we're sending thirty thousand more troops to afghanistan what are we doing to be aggressive pakistan my current position i don't have direct responsibility for operations inside pakistan although i maintain closely based upon my background i would tell you that the most effective long term tactic against terrorism is governance where us stablish effective governance with rule of law of law in an area it's very difficult for terrorist groups to operate so our strategic partnership with pakistan and pakistan i believe  just the american people are not going to support the deployment of thirty thousand people on a bank on an indirect strategy to try to deal with a very direct problem and i understand that the prevention of a reemergence in afghanistan has real value but it's pretty clear to me that one of the central focal points of this mission is to help the pakistani would the force protection rules of engagement permit you to pursue across the border if in your judgment force protection required  that i'd like to take that for the record so i can consult the specific rules of engagement if you were writing those rules and what would your recommendation i would never take away from american forces particularly their ability to question is provocative and i do not mean to be provocative my hope is that the taliban are degraded to the point that they are not a force within pakistan that government can stabilize they can execute their mission in the fog and we can get both reagan home in from missouri and i thank you mr chairman and general i immediately agreed with your comments about the quality of the forces in afghanistan my son is over there at camp leatherneck so i want an immediate support there i would say that what i'd like you to do if you could do this fairly concisely would be what would you say your biggest three challenges are i'm looking more for titles and i am for a long paragraph on  the number one is going to be the growth of the afghan national security forces both in size and quality i think the second is going to be partnering with ambassador i can marry and the government about afghanistan for governance because where we create security it is not durable without governance and then i think the last of of course is probably just getting at the psychological aspects of the afghan people as they are coerced by the interred insurgency it plays into everything else but convincing them is a critical task at hand thank you for making that concise your first point was the security forces and that was going to be a question i wanted to ask more about and that is what do you would you say is the condition of the security forces in afghanistan we are on a committee with the chairman night are here and we looked at the same thing in iraq and there's sort of what you have to build up and build what is the status of the forces in general if you can do it fairly quickly yes or together the afghan national security forces are just about one hundred ninety thousand people assigned or are on the road right now the afghan national army is significantly ahead in terms of professional capacity even the afghan national police because we started earlier we started in two thousand and two at the butt taliban and company level they fight pretty well organizationally there's much development to do the afghan national police have much further to go the percentage of policemen who have actually received formal training is fairly low we are increasing our partnership and our focus on them but we are starting in a a much lower level the last point is the police of course have a tremendous challenge because they operate so dispersed it's harder to have leadership and influence over that but they also die in larger numbers than any other force on the battlefield fighting so while we can be very critical i think we also need to balance the fact that they are dying for their country and they do troops allows you to protect them better and to partner with them better that's exactly the heart of the strategy here create more security but do it shoulder to shoulder partnering with the police and the army thank you very much general and ambassador couple of questions thinking back a little bit from lessons from afghanistan do they have a constitution in afghanistan i mean from iraq do they have a constitution in afghanistan corruption is something that a lot of people been hitting on that theme is there any is corruption inevitable as long as we've got the mass of poppy crops that are have to say that carefully over in afghanistan  there is no question that the high level poppy production in opium trade contributes to corruption is it possible for us to deal with the corruption problem as long as there is that major dependence on that supply of income it will be difficult but there is progress that is being made against narco trafficking congressman last year there was about a twenty percent reduction that occurred countrywide from that from that promising a development last year but there is a comprehensive effort that's being waged by the government of afghanistan supported both by our civilian side especially in the area of law enforcement with ultra programs in the military thank you the last thing is you've been paying attention to governance from the bottom up sometimes i think we started too much from the top down congress that's a very serious problem and i would agree with you i'd characterize our first several years in afghanistan is focusing at the national level our new strategy does call for emphasis at the subnational level in very direct support in close coordination with our military and their efforts out in the field and i thank the gentleman the lady from california ms davis thank you mr chairman and thank you to both of you general basta thank you so much for your service i appreciate general your mentioning the men and women who are serving and particularly their families i continue to think that we're still a military at war not a nation or and quite frankly i'm not sure that that we're trying to address that problem  we talk about the credibility of the afghan government to their own people and we've mentioned many times about the corruption and i want to just focus on our role for a second mr ambassador are we supporting leaders who in fact are fueling the insurgency in many ways we have a great deal of resources to the ministries you mentioned  certifying the ministries but i want to know whether the congress has a role in trying condition some of that support for the extent to which we could be playing a more significant ro busy working in close partnership with us to rigorously audit and investigate the spending of our money you are playing a very right role and as we move forward with afghanistan we have and what a deterrent as well against things like corruption and misbehavior because they are they are part of what i want to get to is where the afghan villagers the people in the local area assign credibility in their mind to the afghan police that's the most important metric more so than their ability to go after crime they will provide security but it's do the people view them as credible and it will be answer to that question is you know this is not happening then what we just keep working through that at the end of the day the afghan national police must be with credibility by the local people it will never be perfect but we have to get to that thank you thank  number of u s forces but how many total more than thirty thousand i think we are going to end up with about thirty seven thousand all the way it's absolutely unclear at this point it's a little bit unclear at this point  i have never been in a position where i requested before so it would be misleading from a force that i had was completely resourced never made a request that you had said that during the entire time you've been in afghanistan  determined that we've got to win this war so i believe i believe the key point here is really that the long term strategic partnership with afghanistan which the president outlined so i think that underpins everything and in determine that we've got to have more troops to win this war that we've got to put more troops in there so what i can guarantee is i will give my best military advice and i would think that the nation has to make of the service of all those you lead i'm going to continue my lobbying campaign provincial reconstruction teams changing the name to professional development centers something like that have an afghan face on this as quickly as possible we should have done that already shame on us for having not figured this out five or six or seven years ago have an afghan p t c university and it's interesting when i talk with you general mcchrystal you agree when i talk with you a you agree on on this point the two of you could just get together and make it happen that would be i think helpful to us to the entire cause i don't have your balancing act with sophisticated characters the ones that you know the two thousand and eleven date might have a forcing function with presumably they'll be listening to our counter information operations focused on the on specific characters that we need to persuade to look you need to jump on our side of the fence here at least get off the fence and help us out  during the next year and a half you know clearly the taliban are going to be emphasizing two thousand and seven july two thousand and eleven and you know we've talked enough about that that's really you've got quite a quite a challenge here when you you think about the different characters that you're trying to persuade with regard to two different objectives in vietnam as far as i can determine about the only really successful thing that we had going for us was the village passed cation program just about everything else we tried didn't work very well and then we screwed that up by moving the folks who were very effective at guarding their own villages having help from special forces teams we tried to move them into more conventional forces and move them to different parts of the country and then they just didn't want to fight the r really struggle with the afghan national army it's it's really very visible it's pretty easy for the taliban to avoid them just like it's easy for the taliban to avoid us what we really need are people who kind of look we need the one eyed bearded guy that roscoe bartlett was referring to you know looking out for us in our interests and in the in the rural areas and it seems to me that the people who would come to him and say look you better not be helping the americans because when they leave we going to cut your head off he would like to be in a position to say well here's the way it's going to work before they leave i am going to cut your head off so i won't have to worry about you showing up after they leave and that's the kind of almost vigilante justice that occurs in rural areas of afghanistan it has for centuries now general crystal the central aspect of your new campaign is to empower local  ps and local communities and strengthening of local communities and you've got this national concept at the same time and so there's a clash here and then as far as the local folks are concerned a lot of them are going to want to treat the enemy exactly as i just described you help the taliban i am going to kill you no questions asked i'm just going to do that there's not going to be a trial if there is it's the law west of the pecos son first we're going to give you a fair trial and then we're going to hang you how do you how do we how does america fit in there when you've got the national government the local folks and the local folks not interested in abiding by our concepts of how about how to go about doing this it's are out to start on that that's what we have got to get to afghan responsibility for their security responsibility it's got many facets to it they absolutely have a tradition of local security denying their area to outsiders of any kind and i think that we need to reinforce that and we need to support that where we can we need to balance that with great caution against a tradition that's much newer but much hated in afghanistan of warlords and militias and so on the one hand you have a local security tradition on the other hand and what about the last twenty years groups have come up under warlords that have been have been predatory and are much hated by the people and took part in the civil war so we've got to make sure that we don't either let reality or perception of those to work against each other so as i say with caution as we go forward and we are working programs that that you're from a red congressman to try to to build at local levels we're having some success there with our afghan partners government and local elements the other parts of shared responsibility there are wider than just security forces that might carry weapons it's also elders not allowing the young men to join the taliban it's also people turning in information on improvised explosive device location or just telling taliban you can you can do i d s but you can't do them in our neighborhood is that grows out that's the kind of confidence the locals would like to do that but they lack the confidence right now it's like a neighborhood that's been intimidated so we've got to we've got to do a balance of a very credible national force and there must be an afghan national army and police with a strong neighborhood  taliban's capacity could you explain for us the difference between defeating al qaida and degrading the taliban i believe that is u s policy and i believe it is an important objective that the taliban be defeated and that means over time wherever they are around the world they are they must be prevented from being a threat against either the united states or our allies i think that will take many years and it won't be just an american effort it will be all of our partners but where they are i believe al qaeda both as an organization and as an ideology needs to be defeated and that will require a lot of muslim nation partners as well in terms of taliban what i think we need to do their servers and we we had an extensive discussion about that term defeat i think what we're doing is preventing out the taliban i'm sorry preventing the taleban from being an  s to the government of afghanistan and to the afghan people so rather than white bout every taliban member what we need to do is lower their capacity to the point where within their own means afghanistan can  can hold them from being a major threat to either their way of life or their government and i think over time that will cause the taliban to go away to become irrelevant and cease to exist we do intend to defeat the taliban initial assessment and that you would write a second assessment do you intend to provide congress a copy of that second assessment i have not been tasked to write a written assessment in that same form but i understand my secretary i will provide an assessment next december i don't know the form yet of that format of that but it will be clearly a complete assessment best do you think we've got enough civilians working now i mean it seems like an awful small number when you're talking about one hundred thousand troops and we've got less than a thousand civilians out there right now and the individual from the federal bureau of investigation again that we do look at the buildup of civilians that have occurred over the past twelve months by the end of january of next year over a twelve month period we'll have  three fold increase of civilians on the ground in afghanistan by military standards a three fold increase is extraordinary and is even more extraordinary that we have enough on the ground right now for the present mission that we will have additional requirements out in the field and we meet but if i could give one example i'm running out and i think it's important contacts are about a three fold increase that's only to nine hundred seventy plus i mean it i reconstruction priority is implementing a civilian military agricultural redevelopment strategy to restore afghanistan's once vibrant agriculture secretary now having visited one of the national guard's agriculture development teams intersection of security development absolutely in fact they follow in time very closely behind security but they actually increase security once you increase agriculture in most cases but also any kind of employment what you do is you take fighters off the battlefield or you take potential fighters off because unemployment is the biggest recruiter for the taliban right now so the ability to get back the fabric of life in when people have something to lose are much less interested in having insecurity in the area so it's what makes security durable in my remaining time i guess i just want to make a comment about the pakistan connection here because obviously i'm a little bit still a little bit confused what our strategy entails with respect to pakistan i understand there's only so much at an open session i'm looking forward to the hearing and i thank the chair for that this afternoon at three o'clock  of their service and they developed a great bond with the people of afghanistan and identified them as afghan brothers i also have another identification with the two of you i began my military career in the one nine hundred sevent military personnel the backup families general the president has said july two thousand and eleven is when the u s troops will begin to redeploy out of afghanistan is this a conditions base target will be adjusted if the afghan security forces or afghan government is not ready is the process conditions based and what are those conditions so i view it is a  solid decision the president has made and i write in the assumption that we will begin to decrease our forces beginning in july of two thousand and eleven but i do that in the context of that the president has also provided the people of afghanistan a long term strategic partnership a guarantee that we are going to be partners with them over the long haul and help them continue to protect their security and their sovereignty i think that while everything is conditions based i think it will be informed by conditions we're about to put thirty thousand more americans and additional coalition forces and go hard at this insurgency over the next eighteen months between now and you two thousand and eleven my expectation is the insurgency will be less robust in the summer of two thousand and eleven significantly so and it's also my expectation that the afghan national security forces will be more robust they will still be imperfect but they will be more robust along with some improvements in governance and development and whatnot so i think i see confidently in the summer of two thousand and seven that beginning the reduction of forces will be appropriate the pace and scope of which i think needs to be conditions based and i think it goes back to how strong is the insurgency at that point what is the the pace we've seen in the growth of afghanistan's ability to provide for their own support and then i think the last one is the minds of the afghan people at that point i hope to have convention convince the afghan people not myself but this effort i hope will have convinced the afghan people that their government is going to be successful here and they will then make the decisions that increase their support program is putting a lot of effort into farm to market roads and great progress in developing the transportation infrastructure of afghanistan and over the last several years thank you thank  chief stated in march that our real goal here was al qaeda in pakistan and then one of his three objectives was our partnership with pakistan as you came up with your forces was that part of the benchmarks for determining the proper number of troops most of our assessment for forces was what we recommended for inside afghanistan to create conditions that would be complimentary to progress inside pakistan so i think i'm answering your question here we did not  shape our forces for anything inside pakistan so the thirty five thousand taliban that pakistan were not part of your assessment of how many troops you might need to take care of those population centers even though the  not recognized not for operations inside pakistan the forces we need inside afghanistan were however informed by conditions as we assess them inside pakistan in the sense then your benchmarks are one that if you assess what troops you need then what the military prowess is of the pakistani counterinsurgency and whether the adversary flows back and forth or is part benchmarks for determining as we go forward success or an alternative approach or a less or more troops they are absolutely considerations factors that we we will take in terms of the relative strength of the enemy and what we need to do and where they part of your assessment they were or those benchmarks available the president had promised in march that we would have benchmarks we got draft that were considered inadequate in a number of people's minds in september so you do have these benchmarks by which you determine for that objective which he said is our overall objective  and to leave africa and inhospitable that they might not come back there so you have those available i gather in a classified form no i want to make sure i use the terms correctly here because when i talk about the factors the relative strength those are considerations in our planning benchmarks is the term would be metrics that we take to measure the situation they are not dissimilar but you have benchmarks by which you are going to measure your progress with the thirty thousand  take into consideration his overall objective which is al qaeda and however those considerations are getting the taliban on the other side flowing back what do you have the metrics for that we have a lot of metrics we are still refining them into where they're certainly not trying to a cause instability throughout the country indeed a return of the sunni regime to afghanistan they would look at it against their security interest and they probably have  vietnam and you have about three or four hundred today my question is that the defense department in the past since two thousand and seven has cut its funding from sixteen percent of overall though about nine  it's about one point five billion have you seen that congress and i'm not aware of in terms of accounts from department of defense department of state what i would tell you now is that i'm very  understand what's happening i want to go back to the idea that we've talked about a little bit the afghan population there general you said a few minutes ago in response to one of my colleagues that it was your hope that within a relatively short period of time you would be able to convince them that this was the right move on their behalf and that they would be with us but aren't there big question marks when we've got a timeline in place with how the afghan people are going to react when there are such a threat of violence from the from al qaida and taliban that are coming into these small villages and  names how are we going to convince them that we are this long term commitment that you mentioned it seems to me there's some ambiguity here and there needs to be clarity for the people of afghanistan to understand our commitment and translate that into their support for us can you comment on that most importantly they're going to judge us by our actions and as we as we go down into areas where we have recently secured the question back to us is always are you going to stay this time and when we've responded marines are asked this all the time and we say yes we are sometimes i'll come back and say but you didn't last time and so what they are really judging is not our rhetoric but our but our performance in staying and we do have a deficit of trust from that standpoint to make up because they know the taliban can be trusted to at least make an effort to come back in course what i think we need to do this is a  serious challenge sir but i think what we need to stress is one of the effects that we will have with the increase in forces that we have but more importantly the long term partnership that's really what they want even down at the lowest level  villages they're looking for long term predictability in their lives and a long term partnership with people will help them and us to help their government so i think we should not be i think we should contest propaganda about timelines but we should stress really the timeline that we are on is helping them in the long term partnership well i appreciate that i still think  eleven why shouldn't the enemy sit on their hands and then you know after the deadline ratchet up and you know i wish you all the success in the world and we hope that that comes together but next couple of months do you expect you're going to be able to have an ability to better explain this to the afghan people so that they're like more on your side because it seems like they don't depend on their own government this is a challenge but working with their government i think what we can do a number of things one of which is they don't they want to partnership they want surance from us but they don't want to stay forever they don't want foreigners in their country so in many ways they guarantee that we the coalition will support them but not stay too long is actually a positive as well so what we've got to convince them is we are going to help their government and their forces korea conditions of security that will be reassuring and stable enough for them and that we will have a long term partnership with them that of that will make them feel comfortable to move in that direction but i do go back we have to prove that with our actions not just with our words and lastly back to pakistan for a minute i think it's been widely acknowledged that no matter how good we're doing that if the pakistanis don't step up to the plate we've got a real problem on our hands i'm assuming there a renewed intensive effort to convince them to do more than they've done before because we've only got rhetoric out of them so i think that their recent actions over the last year or two against their own internal insurgency are really a good indicator of just how serious they are about conducting counterinsurgency operations and reducing instability on their side i think that also pakistani leadership shares with us an understanding that instability on either side of the duran line threatens the other so i don't believe that either afghanistan or pakistan can be fully stable or secure over the long haul the other and i  turney microphone please thank you mr chair and thank you both for your testimony today i certainly appreciate all you've had to say i probably am one of the members of the committee who has deep reservations about the president's  suggestion and proposal and so let me take that perspective i do want to thank you for your comments about our troops i think that our troops are excellent they're skilled they're highly dedicated from the state of maine we have deployed about half of our national guard so we're very well  the numbers that have been deployed but i do also want to say well i understand the importance of you advocating for your mission before congress as a member of congress respecting the concerns of my own state also worry overall about the long term cost in lives in particular and cost financially to this country the increase in the deficit and the great need during this recession to provide some of the very assistance we're providing across the globe here at home so i balance these concerns overall not just in the mission before us but i do want to say as i look over the troop levels of the last four years i see two things i see a steady increase over time in the number of american troops on the ground and second i think we can all agree that part of the reason we're here today is because during the same part time period we've seen a resurgence of the taliban and many of asked about that today we've also seen a great increase in the number of lives lost projected increases even further in the future continually increasing the amount of resources spent on this conflict and no net improvement in the security situation so in my opinion we've reached a security plateau where no matter how many troops we commit dollars we spen workers we stand or elections that we have a really have in afghanistan we cannot significant we improve the security situation with all due respect it seems to me sometimes like we're trying to kill these with a bigger baseball bat and as it gets bigger it doesn't seem to work it only is a bigger bat so when i hear more proposals about adding troops in afghanistan my immediate question is what historic successes do we have now i know you've answered many questions today about the strategy about the ways of going about it but i have to emphasize that i don't over history how this will work will continue to work i have hope since you know i think this may well proceed with or without my approval that you are able to but if you're not in twelve months will you just be back here saying well there was a little miscalculation we should have done this we could have that what will you do if it doesn't succeed but more importantly historically how do you convince me that this could work and it's worth the cost  insurgencies are very difficult to deal with and if you go back and study counterinsurgency you'll find a tremendous number of unsuccessful efforts to defeat an insurgency the reason i believe we can defeat this insurgency and the reason why i believe there's great reason for optimism is one the nature of the insurgency this insurgency was a group that was in power the most prominent part of it the taleban and they were not credible in power and they are not credible as a political entity now so they are not the national liberation front of afghanistan coming back to to free the country in polling data in my own anecdotal discussions almost every day with afghans  both in cities and forward they don't want the taliban back the only time they accept the taliban taliban is with reluctance as a reality not as a desire so what they would like is help and i think the other thing about counterinsurgency is as we study it and we we've learned more about it when you lag an insurgency when an insurgency grows it's like a fire in a house if the fire starts and you put it out immediately or in your kitchen with a small fire extinguisher that's what it takes if you ignore or don't do that quickly enough and it's into several rooms that suddenly the requirement to put the fire out has gotten larger in many ways that happens in many insurgencies and in afghanistan because  insurgency grew as a recovered after two thousand and one but sort of slowly until two thousand and five it was evident that that grewe their shadow governance their presence among the people was not met by increases in afghan national security force strength levels or in coalition forces so what i'm saying is we lag behind that we have a saying is that counterinsurgency is not a game in which you play catch up you responded to the ranking member mr mckeon or one of my colleagues when asked about the july two thousand and eleven date that was a date that you had proposed or recommended i did not recommend that date but i did identify to my leadership that i felt that eighteen months in about eighteen months about the summer of two thousand and eleven that we felt we could make significant progress against this but you didn't recommend that such a date be put out there and now i just want to be clear congressman i did not ok and thank you and i noticed that in discussing this you felt that there were those who opposed  enemy presumably would seize upon this for information warfare and we can deal with that let me just say that i hope and pray that we can deal with that because i think it is a problem for you and i do think that is but ambiguity out there which we've heard from both sides of the today and we're hearing from our constituents of the american people they don't know what that means and i know i've listened very carefully to you and to admiral mullen and gates and i understand baghdad or somewhere where you are doing a fantastic job but what is it that we have the right strategy in the right resources to win i believe it's to let the afghan people win  afghanistan pakistan it is your judgment that should we fail in afghanistan should the taliban reemerge pakistan and its nuclear weapons and democracy would be in grave danger i believe it would be a significant threat to pakistan were the taleban to succeed in afghanistan thank you very much my time is expired i think the gentleman  nationalism of course they have tribal identities of course they have community identity but to an extent i find extraordinary afghanistan ask who are you they are an afghan and they're very proud of their very proud of their afghan identity there is much to build upon there that that's absolutely the case when we deal with afghans and you say well what are you to go i'm an afghan so i'd much of the ethnic divides that we hear so much about now inauguration speech to improve upon the quality of those important ministries we're waiting to for his announcements to be made we expect the first round will be within the next several days we have a degree of finance will be improvements in the central government sir in general one building the the afghan security forces this is getting into detail level but i think it's important one of the areas we hear of the difficulties is that there's only like ten percent i believe of the afghan military forces literate and so to have them learning reading maps doing the basic day to day how are you coping with that in terms of building this force that's an important point one is literacy training and not only is that important to help make the force better but it also is very popular and it helps get people in the service and it helps keep them in the service and it makes them a stronger server so we're running literacy programs the other thing about it that when people say a literate people can't fight i revived people the taliban is illiterate and so we can use illiteracy and and we will improve people but it's not automatically a defining ability to be a good soldier but i thank you all for being here once and i'd like to finish and just to comment and i've spent some time general fields a cigar and i think that's so important that we do monitor our our commitments in the civilian areas what we build what we do to make sure that we're giving e worried about one hundred in between one hundred eighty one hundred ninety thousand signed between the afghan army and police right now and will continue to grow up on an as much that they can meet how fast can they recruit and how fast can we train we're to take a significant force out of what the president just approved and put that into what we call initial entry training at a training base and that will help our capacity grow immediately along with our coalition partners are also put people into that command which is nato training mission in afghanistan and then over the long haul the rest of the development of the force in fact most of the development occurs when they're in units and that's by partnering with our force which is again a central tenet of the strategy as we go for so we can talk about the three hundred thousand about three thousand some are in place we won't be there by next summer will be by next fall of two thousand and ten we expect to be about one hundred thirty four thousand in the police and maybe a little over one hundred thousand in the i'm sorry in the army a little over a hundred thousand a place it would take another year summer of two thousand and eleven before we would talk about a combined number of hundred thousand  at this point in time that level would be the second would be very importantly in our programs in afghanistan we are working hard right now to help afghanistan's economy forward so they can have more autonomy our agricultural program we're helping them develop revenue collection systems so we're cognizant of needing to have the afghan economy and government move in directions they're going to be able to pay for more third point a very important point here is i don't know exactly what the ratio of cost is for an afghan soldier to an american marine or army soldier deployed in afghanistan maybe one to twenty five maybe one hundred fifty it's a ratio right now we're obviously if you're only looking at the impressive to death about the head and shoulders about the numbers but let me ask you one other different way you got to thirty thousand your focus is on population centers if you have forty thousand what's that differential in terms of that allow you to put them where they need to go i think i think we'll be in good shape so the impact on population centers that would have gotten troops at the god of forty will be a very few communities or how do we understand that major i think it'd be very small because as we laid out this we focused on the south and east but we also we're going to put part of small parts of the forces elsewhere so i think between the thirty seven thousand and the fact that they are flowing very quickly that we're going to be able to cover the on the ground as a civilian in both afghanistan iraq i'm left with two clear impressions during this process from my experience in the field and that's one i am absolutely confident in the capabilities of both our military forces and our civilian forces counterinsurgency program in afghanistan but my my other impression is i'm left with a very serious concern about the fact that our success here is largely dependent on what happens on the other side of the border in afghanistan general wonder if you could just comment please on the additional forces what kind of capability to give us to control the ability of our enemies to cross that border and to harm our mission at we will put some of the force along the border some partnering with the afghan border police some operating and regular military locations but the bulk of our forces will in fact be protecting the population what it will really do is if elements come from across the border what they won't be able to do is get at their objective which is the people in the key population centers so i think it's a denial that that really upsets their entire ability to operate their strategy which is undercut population security thank you i appreciate that i'm also concerned with their ability to get our forces there protecting the afghan population are you confident that will be more successful with that mission given the additional forces i am thank you very much ambassador we mentioned today the importance of not just focusing on the national level afghan government but focusing down at the local level can you just give us an idea of your confidence the ability of the afghans to work together with us to develop those capabilities so that will build a handoff we're innovating right now working closely with our military partners to try to figure out the right combinations of local governance reinforced by central by the central government of afghanistan what's the right mix of basic services delivered what are the right kind of combinations of south and the eastern afghanistan our military forces move in how do we get to that point that we can actually then transfer governance responsibility deliver services to the afghan people this is one of our greatest challenges then what how do you identify who's going to be and who's not going to be in this july two thousand and eleven timeline compared to your troop cap of thirty thousand or thirty three thousand or forty thousand whatever it's going to be that's going to be a hard and fast troop  or actual combat troops actually it's a great position to be in from the standpoint of i get to shape the force and what we need more of and what we don't need the of the thirty thousand right now my anticipation is a tremendous percentage of that will be  rs rotary wing intelligence combat engineers and what not we are going to it is my intent to move significant combat forces which will provide security but because everything's a team at this point the distinction starts to blur between whether rotary wing aviation is in a neighbor or whether it's actually a combat force so i'm very comfortable that within that force i'll be able to shape it and what i would expect to do is over time continue to shape it you to have a more robust ability to partner with host nation forces than you do in just a straight normal structure in the in the interest of time here we don't have the assets now for eighty percent of your casualties are i e d casualties you don't have the enablers now so you you flood in thirty thousand people young americans we can't do it now why are you optimistic that you're going to have to do it then when you start flooding theater with more people take the counter right counter to security there is no i as far there's no engineer asset there's no technical jammer that defeats completely so what what you have to do is secure an area that's when i go away and when you start to get security in the local start turning it i e d locations are preventing and that's what it does you do all those things at the same time and i was visiting engineers who were griev wounded in afghanistan yesterday at walter reed and they make unbelievable contributions to this but they need to be part of a team that produces security in an entire area so that's what i think that the shaping of this force will allow us to do lasley then when you when you look at this for instance a marine corps regimental combat team you have to tell them that you might have to leave some people back because you don't fall under this specific troop cap because they have an actual number that they have you're going to say no you  only get five thousand three hundred twenty two people not five thousand three hundred twenty seven people how are you going to micro manage that in and should you really be doing that why not let the marine corps bring the whole regimental combat team you're not going to be able to do that now under this hard and fast troop we always do that though i mean we grow up i grew up as a paratrooper and who you put on the airplane you get a certain number of seats and you take people based upon what the mission is on the ground and it decided the same thing to at large levels in the marines the regimental combat team and the maps are all carefully crafted for the mission at hand and they do extraordinarily good job of doing that that's why they're so effective on the ground so i'm pretty comfortable i'm not going to have to micromanage i'm going to be able to work with all the players and say here's the mission we're doing but here are some constraints you've got to live with and do the best you can there thank the gentleman we appreciate you  us your testimony the young men young women in uniform today are the finest american troops ever i'm convinced