some days later the minister and the politicians starve to death and the economist i fear was the only soul eventually rescued from that island and sometime in two thousand and two he was put in charge of american strategy for afghanistan afghanistan has a president yes there are ministers and ministries there are security forces but to confuse those accessories of governance with an actual capable effective government i confuse with a real live little boy they might look alike but the similarities stop there the afghan government after eight years of international sponsorship is a disaster it writ extends only as far as foreign troops can carry and its policemen are mostly its troops still cannot provide security for its people its ministries are mostly empty and the ones that are staffed often focus chiefly on graham not fighting it but pursuing it much of his decision making is not a deliberative nontransparent and mostly ineffective or not intended to benefit the public at large what was crafted in bonn in two thousand and two as a grand bargain of government has fallen apart the people of afghanistan have enjoyed thirty years of warfare salted with heavy doses of drought misfortune and are thoroughly exhausted but are still not supporters of the taliban but neither are they of the system that we had our allies have been propping up there is no strong center strong governors there is almost no effective representation there is little law and less justice afghans are not only living in something akin to anarchy but in a kind of conflict saturated and all the while they hear of the billions thirty eight billion dollars from the united states alone that is being poured into their desolate and desperate country they must wonder as i do where has all the money gone notwithstanding the complete absence of tangible or meaningful signs of success or security or development we are not in year one of this we are in year eight much as i wish the obama administration could have gotten a fresh start there is in fact nothing fresh about our struggle in afghanistan following the defeat of the moving sharply in the wrong direction the recent elections there have only served to bring the rotten to the public not surprisingly many here are feeling a bit noisy ated the august elections when the words of current senior u s officials intended to serve as a critical step toward developing a government that is accountable to its citizens instead these elections serve as a powerful demonstration of how corrupt and awful the afghan government really is congress as hard choices to make in the coming weeks and months about this many strikingly appears similar to another conflict that war on for many years before finally being cast off by an american public sick of war and unable to find either a believable strategy for winning it or convincing rationale for continuing i would suggest however that there are some very significant differences between the war in afghanistan and the war in vietnam but perhaps that is subject for a separate and different hearing the issue before us today can be thought of in three simple questions with regard to the afghan election one what happened to what is happening right now and what are the implications of these to answer these questions we are very fortunate to have with us a clear that the people of africa not only to us here but also up close to the people of afghanistan that the your recent elections held there were fraudulent and we would expect more and something different than what we got and what the people of afghanistan got in that election from a regime that we have been bolstering so many years and have and supposedly have influence over so here we are after all these years and all of this money and all the sacrifice and people losing their lives and  we are left with a display of arrogance on the part of this regime and that holds power but we supposedly believe in the united states that a regime is not a legitimate government unless it represents the consent of the governed and the consent of the governed is not what was what happened in the last election in afghanistan this government is dependent on our large us and our willingness to sacrifice our young military defenders who go there and are willing to give their lives i think that the corruption and the dishonesty of this last election makes a mockery of the sacrifices that have been made to defeat radical islam in their details from our day but mr chairman i would suggest that there is at least one path that we can take and that is we should insist that our government insists that the runoff election be held in afghanistan at the very least that would give the afghan people a chance to vote up or down on the karzai administration and bring in at least a new list of characters who might be able to do better with our help so i'm calling runoff election and finally let me just say that the corruption that we have seen from the karzai administration in other areas where hundreds of millions of dollars are being made by people within that government off the drug trade except as a cause for alarm doesn't mean we should give up but it is something that we should take into consideration when we are trying to determine whether or not we are going to send any more military forces to afghanistan if mr karzai and his government cannot even conduct a fair and free alexion then we should have second thoughts about even considering sending more troops to  afghanistan this is something we need to think about and discuss i'm very pleased that we have a hearing today so we can get some advice as to which way to go political construct our job is to independently to report what we observe and the context within which an election has been held international partners have to make judgments based on broader diplomatic and geopolitical concerns about the impact of these elections and most importantly of course the people of the country grant legitimacy based on internal an internal calculus is generally beyond our understanding cautioned that the time was not yet there to call the whole process the legitimacy of the process was far from certain afghanistan's independent election commission still needed tabulat verify and the election complaints commission had to resolve thousands of complaints prior to the election there had been prior to the election concerns about ballot manipulation there were hundreds of thousands if not millions of id cards that were presumed to be duplicate and i have to say that in the last forty days since the election significant damage has been done to the credibility of the process and to the  independent commission itself the result they have reported have been done very slowly and painfully the significant delay in the manipulation of the results has created an environment of suspicion and has that this would be a signal of that in their history even with a partially successful election day on balance we have to conclude at this point that these elections were not conducted well at all before the election we knew that they  numbers of local staff who either assisted in or failed to report significant election day fraud the commission itself has been opaque in its strategy to release election returns and despite of repeated assurances failed to screen out potentially fraudulent results through qualitative or quantitative evaluations have been promised this lack of clarity and transparency in the inability to produce election returns has led to the extraordinary process of using statistical sampling of the suspect polling stations to determine whether or not a second round is going to be necessary even if there's unusual auditing approach results in a runoff election and it is not at all certain that a run conducted in october will generate more credible results than has come from the first round the same people will be running it there will be no time to train further the security situation is going to be worse the number of observers likely to be we think there are some things that can be done if there is a second round election perhaps it can be somewhat that in the first round to begin with we would recommend that president karzai replace the leadership of the independent election commission he has the power to do that there is time to do that and there are people who can serve who would be acceptable to both presidential candidates we think the commission should prohibit those employees who work for them and did not perform as they should we think that there should be investigations and the beginning of some prosecutions of those who so blatantly defrauded this process we think perhaps most importantly the commission should be the afghan government and its international backers are linchpin of a successful stabilization strategy in afghanistan victory is not guaranteed with improved governance and accountability but without them failure is assured reversing the current crisis of confidence among the afghan and american people will require the trust the just and transparent resolution of the ongoing election conflict as well as a serious campaign to address the culture of  undermines our efforts there we need to put afghanistan's unresolved election in a broader context of the struggle for this country today the election represents a pivotal moment in a pivotal year public confidence in the political process and the afghan leadership is so important because i believe that we do know what success looks like in afghanistan success is that the path offered by the afghan government in partnership with the international community is more attractive more credible and more legitimate than the path offered by the insurgents on paper the government offers a comprehensive array of rights it promises to subordinate the powerful to the rule of law it promises education health care and economic development while combating criminality corruption and drug trafficking these are all things that most every afghan yearns for and indeed would fight for the taleban on the other hand offer much less  material terms and their ideology is far more extreme than the solidly pragmatic majority of the afghan people but the afghan government and its international partners have failed to deliver on many of these key issues many afghans do not feel secure the government and the international forces are unable to protect the people from the taleban at the same time private militias drug mafias and criminal gangs act with impunity throughout the country many of these bad actors are government officials or closely associated with those in the government no government that is unable to provide security and which is seen to be corrupt and unjust will be legitimate in the eyes of the population and i believe that the most dangerous direction for afghanistan and indeed the united states is if we are seen to be propping up by military force an afghan government that is no longer legitimate in the eyes of the people and i think the narrative of the two thousand and nine elections reinforces this legitimacy crisis in three important ways the first is that insecurity and apathy gravely depressed turnout on august twenty which may have been as low as thirty percent a striking contrast to the seventy percent turnout in the first presidential election in two thousand and four during the campaign several figures whose avarice and brutality during the civil war in the one nine hundred ninety s actually precipitated the state takeover of afghanistan by the taleban were brought back into the national political arena to f narrow and cynical political agenda and finally massive organized fraud affirmed the worst fears that the election would be stolen the ongoing recount of over three thousand polling stations statistically sample encompass up to two million votes or thirty five percent of the entire total it is possible for example that seven hundred thousand votes could be invalidated and yet president karzai would still win simultaneously in the electoral process and ratifying the victory of the candidate in whose name over eighty percent of the fraud was committed the continued uncertainty and sense of corruption that had surrounded the results have injected deeper doubt into the minds of afghan american and european populations about our objectives in afghanistan and the likelihood of achieving them so let me briefly go to two recommendations the first the way forward on resolving the election the ongoing uncertainty about the outcome of the election has created turmoil but also presents some opportunity it's very much worth noting that the existence of afghan civil society organizations and the excellent work of the electoral complaints commission are a welcome presence and change from previous elections there the current process of investigating and recounts has the potential to on do some of the harm of the electoral process and may serve to demonstrate in the end that the powerful can in fact be subordinated to the law but i agree as representative rocker said that a runoff election may ultimately be the only way to restore the legitimacy of the democratic process at this point and i'm happy to go into more detail about that on a broader level the u s must act aggressively with its afghan partners in the lead to break the cycle of impunity and corruption that is dragging down all sides and providing a hospitable environment for the insurgency i believe a few clear steps need to be taken after the election is resolved to set a clear tone for the next afghan government and i'll just say briefly to point a demonstration of afghan leadership must be accompanied by the empowerment of an anti corruption and serious crimes task force independent of the government agencies that it may be investigating in the first few months there must be high profile cases against people associated with the government the elections fraud and other criminality and you should be highly publicized and finally the u s needs to approach this mission in afghanistan with the same vigor as other key elements of our counterinsurgency strategy thank you you just briefly describe what we did we had about one hundred people on election day including international and afghan observers we faced the same constraints i think is every other delegation in that we had limited access to the country because of the security situation nevertheless we were able to get to nineteen of the thirty four provinces and a as you all know and in early september the sisi declared that there was a clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations and ordered a recount of polling stations in which there were over six hundred ballots in boxes six hundred being a key figure because that in excess or the maximum number of estimated voter per bowling station and polling stations that also had more than ninety five percent of the ballots cast for for one particular candidate and they've been identified over three thousand ballot boxes that fall into that category and well over one million ballots could be affected clearly of all those ballots are excluded from the agreed to use a statistical sample instead of inspecting every single affected ballot box declaring the december approach would both save time and if a runoff was to be held it would permit it to be held in a timely manner the commission delegation was shaped by a variety of it was shaped by the purity environment that really affected every aspect of the election because it was so much of the area was insecure there were there was a decrease in the number of provincial council candidates seeking office in security affected the ability to recruit polling stepping in many areas and is there much of domestic and international observers had limited access to the much of the country in addition to all of the problems that i think we're seeing unfold now there were also more systemic problems related to the election that were clear i think from the very beginning back to the two thousand and four and two thousand and five elections in which there was a very lax registration process that led to the the generation of really millions of excess ration cards there were reports of the registration to the conduct of the election itself i'm going to concentrate my written remarks upon the impact of these elections for the insurgency and the united states efforts to secure its supreme national interest in afghanistan what are the obvious implications of the insurgency stemming from these elections in truth going into the elections there were a few outcomes that could advance the cause of stabilizing afghanistan politically or otherwise the karzai government along with international partners has done little to advance in governance yet governance is not simply a bromide providing good governance is likely a fundamental element of defeating the insurgency rana studies of how insurgencies end find that governments with high popularity defeated most of the insurgencies they fought in contrast unpopular governments lost to insurgents more than half of the time yet the data suggest that a successful counterinsurgency campaign of gonna stand will require the confidence of the citizens in the government there's no data that actually have that support in fact polls conducted by a b c b b c among others since two thousand and five show a continued downward trajectory in support for their government cars i repeatedly demonstrated the lack of political will to deal with the corruption the trafficking of narcotics and to find some way of providing better governance at all levels of the state despite the large sums of international assistance many programs cannot succeed with all agree that it is indeed a priority now and it was a mental issues in securing the election the efforts of training i've gone police have certainly been hampered by the constrained international human in financial resources but they've also been constrained by the political environment in which these efforts have taken place the current program is called the focuses or development program or f d d it was devised to deal with police corruption the program takes all of the police out of the district it submits them to two week or excuse me eight weeks of training and then returns them to the very district from which they came the provincial governor stays in place the district governor stays in place all the other corrupt notables stay in place so this is akin to dusting off the police officers and putting them right back into the same corrupt system from which they emerged and then people wonder why recidivism seems to be taking place at a minimum this important international activity should be happening in concert with cooperation with kabul to replace those districts in provincial level leaders who are found to be corrupt as opposed to simply moving them around making them someone else's problem so the training of the police the really good example of how we can't succeed unless kabul does it part so how can the united states secure its interests in the wake of these very problematic elections as evidenced by this hearing the elections of crystallized cleavage is in domestic political opinion about the next step forward in afghanistan with intense discussions surrounding the request for additional troops while the debate over scaling up or scaling down troops has seized the public's attention reconfiguring the footprint or mission of u s and international troops alone cannot address mcchrystal in his recent assessment lays out the problem clearly and it is joint the mission faces two principal threats he says the first of which is the existence of organized and determined  t groups the second threat is the crisis of poppy our confidence that springs from the weakness of the government of afghanistan arguably analysts and policymakers focus upon the footprint and mission of u s troops because it is the one thing that the united states has the most control over washington washington cannot direct its nato allies military and civilian commitment to afghanistan it cannot quickly produce foreign service officers or use data officers or other civilian capabilities while sustaining quality cannot quickly reconfigure or improve the way the united states delivers aid and it apparently has very little influence over the government in kabul to provide better governance but if one considers what can be done as opposed to what would be the ideal thing to do victory in afghanistan is unlikely if winning means establishing a competent reasonably transparent government capable of providing even limited services and increasingly able to pay for itself in other words the united states needs a plan b in plan b is not simply trying to make plan a work again the united states needs a contingency plan which defines victory to more narrowly address the most critical u s national security interest if the international community cannot prevail in the counterinsurgency campaign against the taliban and allied fighters due to shortcomings on the international community's configuration or due to the shortcomings in kabul washington can secure its preeminen objective of protecting itself against al qaeda this involves separating out the counterinsurgency from the counterterrorism efforts of the united states and international efforts can and should focus its resources on helping the  ownership of the counterinsurgency campaign while the united states reorient and prioritizes its assets and resources towards defeating al qaida which is actually localized largely in the kumar province and i don't need to tell you there are probably more al qaeda operatives in burton members of the subcommittee thank you for the invitation to testify today mr chairman it's become fashionable of late to say the people in certain usually poor countries are not ready for democracy in afghanistan some in government may not be ready for democracy but the people are as they showed during the campaign the pre election environment was namak and energetic with candidates reaching beyond their ethnic strongholds in issue rather than personality based campaigns private media's campaign coverage was very balanced most striking where the unprecedented first presidential debate one of which included the head of state in terms of pre election administration the independent election commission is to be commended for the training of election workers despite a lack of international funding turnout was not as high as in past elections but as gary hart who co led in the delegation i do not know of one country including my own where with the threat of death from voting the turnout would be forty percent and afghans expected that their votes would count in july iraq survey revealed that ninety two percent were confident and sixty one percent believe that the electoral complaints commission was doing a good job in other words afghans believe that their investment in this election would be rewarded with a legitimate outcome over one hundred delegates and domestic observers on election day monitored more than two hundred fifty polling stations i pre election environment pre election administration and election day voting work we were able to observe still seem credible we also stated that much attention will be paid to the vote counting on post election adjudication in these two areas the trouble first became apparent and as the u s government continues to formulate its policy i recommend adoption of the following principles number one legitimacy precedes capacity governance is critical but cannot be achieved unless afghans believe their officials are legitimately elected many site afghanistan as the graveyard of empires including the intimate the united states they forget a crucial difference as an iraq partner a member of the afghan  war of the one nine hundred eighty soviet occupation political puppets place and office by those outside afghanistan cannot bring the afghan people together it doesn't matter how many troops are deployed without legitimate leaders the effort will fail to afghans have told me on separate occasions you're the only invaders we ever loved because unlike the british or russians they say you want what we want for afghanistan not honoring afghans expectations for credible action means that afghans will lose trust in their titular leaders and in the international community including the united states in other words the afghans will conclude that like the british or russian empire we don't want what they want number two a rule of law matters a legitimate government can only come about due process provisions to adjudicate electoral irregularities are followed these issues have been at the root of the dispute involving peter galbraith who was just yesterday by  third if needed an interim leader must be selected through a transparent mechanism acceptable to the people and fourth after the election we must focus on good governance election of legitimate leaders must be followed by addressing the needs of better qualified than me to address the issue of resourcing currently being discussed with pentagon but in doing democracy work i've got to know a few things about ineffective leaders early public misgivings by the administration about president s and abilities disappeared in the spring when there was an apparent conclusion that he would win the election pre election polls however show cars i was substantially less than fifty percent of the vote and even with an apparently large amount of fraud  he was able to gain only fifty four percent provisional pre election polling all shows strong voter interest in a joint ticket of a bill and this is not a question of historical interest according to the september twenty  thousand and nine york times even before the results are determined which might lead to a second round of voting the administration has told the government of cars that it believes he will be reelected and is currently attempting to fashion a policy based on that perception the clinton administration in a number of countries russia nicaragua decided that it was legitimate to make its preferences known regarding elections that would shape our future policies towards those countries thank you thank our entire panel there seems to be a general consensus on the paddle questioning the legitimacy of the of the election and a sense of direction that we have an obligation to try to set things right or to encourage them to set things right because the government under the current cloud is not legitimate i guess my question may be more about us than that about afghanistan and their election if we have that as a moral obligation do we have a right to pick and choose where to apply moral obligation there seems to be a more aggravated population at least judging from the street reaction in iran and yet we've not insisted pronounced that that government is not legitimate and should have an election we seem to pick and choose we seem to pick and choose and i think based that based on the ability of pushback of the administration country that we're talking about is it legit for us to do that certainly it would be in our interest if we're talking about where our interests lie to see a different result most likely in iran based on the leadership choices that were before their their public  how do we how do we deal with that and a follow up question i guess i would have and i'm going to strictly observe the five minute limitation on our members and be less generous with us than we did with the paddles i'll be mindful and my follow up question would be if we make that determination and insistence the leverage we have it appears is whether or not we send more troops if we send more troops or don't send more troops based on their reaction to our suggestion that they would not legitimate who are we punishing us or united states are potentially too high for us to simply assert that governor it is not legitimate and we will not deal with it ok let me let me in the interests of getting everybody and i'll pass on an answer to the first question which is probably more philosophical and esoteric and as you reach the comment for half a minute maybe on on if there's no runoff and our insistence or suggestion is not as heated do we send troops anyway i think that depends on your view as to whether or not those troops can reasonably participate in a fully interagency solution  i do want to say to your first question that in the case of afghanistan we are not neutral commentators what we do will be seen as a decision if we allow the election to go forward without a recount we will seem to have been supporting that decision and so whatever we do bears weight alternately the reason that i believe that maybe not fully but the likelihood that additional resources are needed in afghanistan is because the crisis today in afghanistan is not predicated on these elections the crisis is predicated on three or four years of decline and unless we are able to get our arms more effectively around this problem of insecurity and injustice that afghanistan will collapse and i think that afghanistan could collapse has very grave repercussions for afghanistan pakistan and the united states it appears that my time has expired  you know i really appreciate mr chairman the testimony and i think mr obama can i were just talking a minute ago and we think the testimony has been very very good but one of the missing missing links in this whole issue is having a direct testimony from the people in the field i think general mcchrystal needs to be here and we need to make the request as quickly as possible to get a marry if time is  the essence and if we are going to need forty thousand troops if we're going to have to have another election over there we really need to get from the ambassador on the commanding general as much information as possible no disrespect to those who are here because i think your testimony was very very good but i think it's extremely important that the foreign affairs committee and the armed services committee make a request to have them here as quickly as the ambassador who's over there and kabul also ought to be here so i hope that's included in the mix  what i'd like to ask is and i don't know that the pals should maybe this is just a general question that out of anyone can answer they want to but in a situation like this and i don't want to be partisan but i think it's important that when you have something in this that that's of such gravity is this issue is this decision shouldn't the president be very very engaged and shouldn't he be contacting or being come to be contacted by the officers in the field the commander in the field more than once in say seventy days i mean i know when we were in other conflicts because of the political significance as well as the military significance of the commanders in  chief we're in contact at least a by weekly basis with the commanders in the field so that we could make decisions rapidly of if we needed more troops are needed more equipment over there so if somebody wants to answer that question how frequently should do you think that the commander in the field should be in direct contact with the commander in chief and the secretary of defense anybody if you're afraid of that one i'll ask another one nobody wants to tackle that well let me they go a minefield when they see what i see well let me just say that i think that the that what whoever the commander in chief is whether it's president obama or whoever it is issue is as important as this mr chairman the president needs to be engaged on a very regular basis i'm not saying every day or every week but on a regular basis he and the secretary defense and i know that they had a meeting the other day the national security council did and they had mcchrystal on a teleconference which i think was was a step in the right direction but i hope they do more of that  let me just ask this question in the short run and i'd like to have your opinions on this if we don't send the troops can there be a free and fair election and is the threat of people losing their hands their fingers or their lives if they go vote is there a risk that people simply won't come to the polls and that you won't get a true picture of what the people want to over there and  the forty thousand troops be able to if we get start getting them over to rapidly will that will that be an encouragement for people to vote and will that stabilize the situation congressman i think if there is a more stable and secure environment you will see more people voting but i think no matter how many people vote if the government is not committed to having an honest election you would have a repeat of what just happened and i to go back to mr ackerman second question before you get to that let me just because we only have about thirty five seconds here you know it's a big country and there's an awful lot of people that are going to be needed to to watch the election poll watchers to make sure this is an honest election do you think we can get the number of poll watchers there to make sure that there is a free and fair election especially with the taliban running around threatening people you know i do i think the number that were out there at this time provided the early reports of early problems within a few days of the end of the election clearly you would need more in the south because that's where the most problems occurred and that's where the greatest insecurity but certainly with more troops on one observer's you have an even better picture troops is what the troops are actually doing we're enforcing a situation where putting more troops to engage in kinetics the enemy focused operation has really put us in the unfortunate situation of killing about as many civilians as the insurgents do so that's not a terribly good track record and they do not blame the insurgents for the civilian casualties they blame us even the civilian casualties caused by the taliban so we have to say not only about the number of troops but also what those troops will be doing training versus kinetic you thank you mr chairman first let me thank each of you for being here i appreciate the information i was in afghanistan about a year ago and i remember looking down as we were flying in on a military flight and that my immediate reaction was this is a hell hole i didn't see it wasn't a road there was in a stream there wasn't a farm there wasn't any housing and i just looked down and i was astounded at how barren the landscape was and after we arrived in spent time on the military base talking to our people and meeting time it's the year later and i'm still conflicted i am not surprised at the results of the election or the way the election was conducted it is just the tip of the iceberg and punctuates i have seen as a dissent in good governance or any government governance over the last few years it doesn't appear to me that karzai either has the will or the interest in leading a government that can be of benefit to his people the corruption is widespread and well known and i do not believe he has the support of his people consequently we saw a great a great amount of fraud deceit in this this past election i was very interested in mr ackerman's question and i would like to give the rest of my time to the panel to answer mr ackerman question and if i may start with whoever you left off with i think that would be a benefit because that was my question and i think it gets to the very heart of the issue and i thank you again for being here this train heading for the crash before election day if we do have this obligation to after the fact be critical and demand a redo are we not guilty of the crime of being  fact and alerting the government and the rest of the international community that we think a fraud is about to be perpetrated so that perhaps their behavior would change before they commit the crime what counts is not the territory but it's the people the people of afghanistan are more rugged than the territory or they would have not succeeded in surviving all of these years i agree with you seen in other parts of the world where life is much easier the afghan people for those of us who know them have earned our respect over and over again for their personal integrity and courage a greatest threat to our own national security and then after nine eleven after we had walked away from that after the war with the soviet occupation they then rose up again and it was the people afghanistan not american troops that dislodged and drove the taliban out of their country we only had two hundred american troops in afghanistan when the taliban were driven out they were driven out by the northern alliance but also a coalition of people of afghanistan and then we decided to shift our focus and go to iraq and left to sleep in the rubble election that is not conducted in the question that is not conducted by the afghan government itself but conducted by international organizations is that possible that  would have international organizations rather than the government of afghanistan which we all know is so corrupt on to actually conduct the elections rather than observe the elections although conducted by the colonial power the south the un oversaw all those elections in every polling station in the country that is a model that is possible in afghanistan but not possible in the near term international afghan hybrid are capable of running a free and fair election the problem was not that those institutions couldn't run the election it's that there was so much fraud and a lack of independence in that commission so i think we could do a notwithstanding we probably will never know i think the process by which these votes are counted and the auditing process now taking place is not a legitimate way to done this and i do not think we will ever know what the real vote would have produced he certainly could have come close whether or not he did in the event is unclear and will probably never be a matter of fact take those those results as planned said we'll probably never know but i think the point some of us are making is this is not it's not our fate to accept these elections we have a say in whether there's another round of elections  we just had published reports today that he's been terminated in his post with the united nations because of a dispute he had with the the chief u n official observing  responsible for these elections what is your take on that i haven't seen peter's letter that was in today's new york times i'd have to look at that but i think as a general matter peter was sticking out for the most rigorous possible examination of this election and that's what i mean by saying it is not our face to accept those first round it is it is within our control to insist that it be better done and if i can clarify my question greater that's exactly what i'm getting at but it looks like with that terminations the united nations is prepared fortunately perhaps to do just that certify an election is alleged to have been achieved by widespread fraud again we are afraid is not decided by the united nations and nor as the afghan people state i think we as a government have a right to insist that the u n which is renowned for running a lections in the world and ran the old for no five afghan elections that they do a decent job here again if we don't get this issue straight of the legitimacy of the government or sending another forty thousand troops or even continuing it really needs to be fixed the approach on elections it's often a top down approach it's a national election often sometimes irrespective of the fact that local governments have not in fact built up a  democratic tradition and it seems to me that generally democracy is built from the bottom up not the top down and didn't we just witnessed that these elections were trying to impose or help create a structure that has in fact never existed in afghanistan and the local tribal culture may involve democratic elements but certainly in towns and villages across afghanistan they don't have such a culture or tradition graham indicated that it's within our power to compel a further election or runoff if you will just walk me through that assess because i think what i sat here and learned is i think everybody in this room agrees that there are higher regularities in the election that it's probably the best interest of the afghan people and the american people in the world that is a cause that is not remains in that position but you know coming from local politics in new york it's not the first time that i looked at the results of an election i was unhappy with it but how do we get through the process how do we how do we get we i think we all see the same goal here but tell me how we get there well we have there was an independent election commission an unusually there was a separate election complaints commission usually don't have that but two are usually together so clearly there was an understanding there was going to be a problem there might be a problem here the election complaints commission has insisted on being quite regular us throughout the process they have and again gets to the dispute between the head of the mission and mr  e about how rigorous the election complaints commission was going to be in looking at these results i do not think given our stake in afghanistan but also given our presence there that we are the main the united states is the main presence there that it is out of the question for the united states to say we think this is an important issue and we think it should be decided in a particular way that it should be looked at rigorous but who has the power to impose that decision does that commission have the procedural power to say you know afghan you are you are free nation in mind we're telling you to do a new election final results cannot be validated until the election complaints commission have signed off on the issue has you know what small portion of the vote is the after is election commission complaint election complaints commission going to be allowed to look at to determine that it's partly driven by a desire to get this over with it's partly does driven by a desire to get this over with quickly so if there was going to be a second round it could have been held before the winter if you open up other options if you say it'll be ok if we have a second round in the spring time because this is a really important election and the election complaints commission can be freed up to do the work it should be doing but can't the karzai government then in a in a room here in far far away saying yeah what should happen i'm just not seeing the process that would that would bring that about if there were a popular perception in afghanistan that the been a very clean election i think you would be able to do that i think the popular perception in afghanistan is probably very much like it is here which is this was a very bad lection and so i think for him to say well this election complaints commission really doesn't have any standing in the afghan people have have made their wishes known the afghan people have not made their wishes known through the selection process i understand i agree i'm just not clear how procedurally you make that happen is that there let me say  that i think that you're right to point out officially there is a gray area and it would be very difficult because ultimately it is the independent election commission that will certify the results i think what we haven't dealt with effectively over the last number of years and certainly is pertinent right now is that the united states pays for most of the afghan government budget we provide the security we paid for most of this election and ultimately we have to decide not only our principles lie but where our future lies in afghanistan and if we determine as i think virtually every witness that we cannot succeed in afghanistan over the next five years with the incredible pall of illegitimacy that this election has left then we have to get down to brass tacks and that means that we can make very serious and it's not just us we are there with forty one other nations i don't believe that president karzai with a lack of popular support for the legitimacy of the lab and the lack of popular will amongst the international community that successful i think the american people truly need to understand the significance of the financial commitment as well as the the manpower and the lives that are out there could you give me an assessment of how long you think it would take to have been there eight years to straighten this out given the the lack of think that it's critical to note that although we have been there for eight years we have not been trying to accomplish many of these clearly ill objectives and so i don't know that the eight years is necessarily a good metric because i think it's a scary number i believe that going forward that essential e a five year plan of transition where we focus very heavily on developing afghan capacities over the next two years using smart power combined with our military force exactly i still believe i lived through four years of the civil war in afghanistan in the one nine hundred ninety s and things can get a whole lot worse the afghan people are very resilient and what exists in a lot of the country right now with the exception of the east in the south is relatively positive to where that country has been for the last thirty years so for those when you talk about the east in the west like that what percentage of the population that you're saying things are relatively and many people have economic growth has been considerable over the over the last years it's a question of being able to balance positive growth with the downward trends that we've seen over the last three to four years one of the most important things about this whole debate i believe is that while the national elections are important ultimately politics society and economy in afghanistan are local and we need to pay a lot more attention than we have to dealing with things at a local level and with people living in rural areas that's a more difficult challenge it is a more difficult challenge but at the same time those people have survived through decades of conflict and even greater terrorist threat and of course the enduring nuclear proliferation in recent years quickly my last question i don't know if you can get had not even our agreement among all of you but president karzai who many of us have met  me just offer my thoughts of a country then i went into shortly after the probably in the spring of two thousand and two i recall and i think at that time it was chairman karzai palace in kabul dark and riddled with bullets and so i saw it in its raw state if you will certainly there have been many steps toward progress in afghanistan that i think we should give credit to in talking to afghan parliamentarians there is still a concern about the treatment of women and girls we have made some strides and we fall in bank and i all just point that out in terms of governance and where we are and how we relate to these elections let me pose line and answer the questions one i was speaking to some international press and i was speaking in an off the record conversation also to a british parliamentary and says that the united states has gone on record internationally that we want our man to win if i missed it in the domestic threat somebody needs to let you know that would be karzai and we and we made our point when i thought we were trying to stand back and let the process go forward second i'm going and we have this into this question of the dilemma that is facing the administration on surging up or looking at some other options my understanding of the defeat of the russian was the nationalistic posture that afghans take and they don't let up and so my question is how do we think we're going to change that do we not need to find and let this not be humorous and who are taleban and we've gotten that name so maybe it should be a different name and you can help me out to be able to engage to work on this thing called counterterrorism which i think is a valid point i need to understand it but i think it's a valid point which you can work be able to always get to the leaders of a counterinsurgency but you have to starve them of their foot troops and if you have a counterinsurgency strategy with a legitimate government you can do the karzai capable of pulling people together as my communists the world might have succeeded and might be a totally different world today well i believe that unless we succeed in afghanistan it will be a totally different world but it doesn't necessarily mean that we need  all based on our military forces on sending people like my father when he was a young man into korea to do their fighting it seems to me that as in the cold war the outcome was the fact that we did chairman seems to me we've tried to al ourselves with an elite in afghanistan and create some sort of alternative elite in afghanistan rather than going to the people themselves and allying ourselves with what is what i to the people of afghanistan it will undermine our efforts to actually succeed there because our success depends on the alliance with the people there and not with a coalition of alliance with a coalition of c and you seemed to take issue with the fact that there was my assertion that there was not really a tradition of democratic elections certainly at the national level in afghanistan i want to give you a chance to comment on both because one wonders about how accurate polling would be in a country like afghanistan with eighty percent illiteracy at least with a sense of no nationhood most afghanis if you ask them where do you come from will cite their tribe not afghanistan so the sense of nationalism in afghanistan is very limited i was there in february  and so and i don't i can't remember a national election afghanistan to put in a relatively free stable government or even a free and stable government so i'd like you to have a chance to respond to that but point number two anyone else on the panel real quickly even if we succeed in getting a runoff election one of the concerns i've got is were raised the expectation that if we only got to a free election with that individual who would back really is elected all will be well and i am really worried about raising that expectation because i think it's just not true and i think even with a freely elected government relatively freely elected government we got a lot of trouble and in afghanistan and elections sadly may not be the crux of the problem  nobody raised this issue of are the afghan people ready for democracy in two thousand and four and two thousand and five on the elections were pretty well it's come about because there was a fraudulent election but the fraud was not committed by the afghan people as as alex not interest in their welfare and they're not i think that's a problem but thank you mr actually i'm on a marathon could you say again no troops i'm just going did you say an outside force with their tribal otherwise and that was i think part of the defeat of the russians question is is it any value for us to be there and that military point if we are not doing democracy and and focusing on who we can  the if you would answer that but any value let let's say the election gets a reelection we have some unity in the government we talk about democracy get into this point about you know where we go next with this so called democratic government d answer quickly yeah i believe fully in the premise of your question about nationalism but i think that the benefit for the united states is that fundamentally afghan nationalism has been consonant with american goals since two thousand and one i believe that there are great and strong national traditions in afghanistan and i think that for the most part they have been supportive i think that the talk of xenophobia and graveyard of enterprises has largely fallen flat in afghanistan i it is not that the afghans fear the judeo christian armies of the united states taking over afghanistan it is that when they see what we have developed and what we have delivered with the karzai government that they have grown skeptical and so what they want then we w in their hearts and minds without a surge of troops i think that the question of to support what mr crater said is less important than the question of how we deal with the fundamental premise of creating a responsible and legitimate the insurgency on political terms thank you  remedy that situation regardless of how long it might take them that our alliance with that regime gets overturned does not sit well with the people who are demanding justice and i could cite examples from huber to the shah of iran and everybody else before or after and in between if we continued to back assuming that whatever insistence we might have in the final disposition of mr about his suggestion of insisting on a runoff that they may not accept and we continue to send troops do we look like participants in a sham government that is not legitimate that we look like enablers of that process of elections dealing and are we no longer welcome parties so there are no political parties in the country and they act and they do not act as a check on rivaled executive power that is one of the central problems in the country in comparison with the fact that we didn't are we are we are we the if if we are please if we make them are ignored for a run of legitimate will action and we continue to be supportive of cooperative with the regime which is really them being co operative well i think it comes down to ultimately how the next year plays out i think that this election crisis will flow into the question of how we effectively deal with the accountability of the government and again it's not the election that precipitated this crisis it's the fact that the government has not performed credibility or legitimately i think that there are steps that could be taken regardless of who becomes president that would improve the performance of the afghan government and would improve people's perceptions of us and the effort to meet the other contestants that was then construed as united states trying to find another alternative but i think i look at policies in very similar to the pakistan policy and we're always trying to find our guy to execute our interest i believe that you can actually secure our goals against al qaida irrespective of what happens with the counterinsurgency had there been a more credible outcome in this electoral process irrespective of that our major challenge right now is to keep faith with people like that that young man with such courage and integrity and knowledge and and a longing to make his country better and allied with us in order to do so i don't know if you survive or not but i do know that hawke did not survive after nine eleven he went in to try to reorganize and try to help people fight off  election we will know in the next couple of days whether or not there will be a runoff i think a runoff would be one way of adding some legitimacy to the process but it is not at all likely that