the hearing will come to order i actually have a wonderfully prepared written statement but i think we know why we're here we're going to talk about foreign policy national security objectives in afghanistan but also as it relates to iraq and how different out of mr was chairman in that in that spirit i've got a written statement to that i'll enter for the record in the interest of time we will go ahead and dispense with the hearing and like to thank the panelists for joining us today we appreciate your efforts we know this is a very timely and important issue and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on the current state of affairs there and where we need to go and how we can best get the themselves as they try and sort out the way ahead and i've also given you some other material relating to the platform i use as an adjunct professor at west point to try and hopefully add to the debate with informed objective and nonpartisan insights a couple of quick brief comments not to reiterate what i put my statement number one what's the situation in afghanistan it seems to me i've known this general mcchrystal lieutenant is run a parallel universe for a better part of five years publicly we don't talk too much about that effort except i have characterized him as basically the most dangerous people on the face of the earth now we've picked he listened to the president's march strategy he was a student of the enter a process conducted in january through march the incumbent military joint command underscore as a nonpolitical assessment of the situation given a counterinsurgency strategy given the situation on the ground he's tried to come up with options for the commander in chief and the only criticism i might level at his analysis and recommendations is short a go to the bottom line it's always inappropriate to use metaphors that are one wavelength off the  always wrong is hunker down under fire and hope something else changes the other two options are break contact and move back think through it and do something new and the third option is attack and so i crystal has said i heard your strategy formulation i know what you're trying to achieve and he banded his resource options to include a high end of forty's sixty thousand additional troops personally i would argue if we were going to reinforce for success it would obviously not just be military but the military component of that be more likely to be a hundred thousand troops and forty thousand obviously with a concomitant increase dramatically change the situation but i personally don't think that's politically feasible and therefore i think his analysis was probably on the downside i think in several of the i'm sure all my point if this was an academic exercise and we're talking theoretical options you can make a decent argument that we shouldn't be in afghanistan with sixty eight thousand us about to reinforce was forty thousand nato allies that we had other options but we don't where they are now and so the consequences of our actions in the coming hundred eighty days will be immediate and they will have an air impact not just in afghans on our had that option if we weren't where we where we are now would be a reasonable thing to consider so i don't think we can downsize either the end result of all this is to some extent this is an inside the beltway political debate we're taking part in with an attentive u s public that's focused on the economic recession focused on immigration focused on social security reform and not too keen about major decade long effort in afghanistan too bad so to a final comment as we look at the situation on the ground i would give great weight  affection and commitment to the afghan people but i don't think he's ever lost his objectivity in his understanding serving u s national foreign policy interest so again i think his viewpoint ought to be given special understanding and great way finally one thing i'm must congratulate the administration on one of the mars i think most bizarre and shameful periods in u s foreign policy history was after the intervention in iraq which i personally thought was the right thing to do to take down saddam at the time but remember watching sector rumsfeld on television and just in disbelief where he probably said he'd never been asked about his viewpoint on military intervention in iraq nor had he proffered one and others in the government said the same thing but i think the notion that this administration of ours is now deliberately walking through the options if nothing else is a very sound signal within the administration that when they reach a conclusion they own it collectively that it's not just the political calculus of the let me just leave those thoughts on the table and i look forward to respond in your own interests you'll have to come back and see us after you get back from your next trip general barno i should have pointed out that you're the director of the  heart having spent nineteen months out there as the overall coalition commander from two thousand and three to two thousand and five and as many of you know my youngest son out there serving in the hundred first airborne division just back in january this year it's still an arena that i spend a significant amount  my time on given my job and you and also one that i've got a personal commitment to today despite my government affiliation or my own personal views so i'd like to make that point upfront i think one of the challenges we face today with regard to our efforts in afghanistan is what i would characterize as a crisis of confidence in the united states in among our nato allies that at this particular juncture i think in the aftermath of a very deeply flawed afghan election which was set in the context of rising american and nato casualties over the summer the u s had some significant challenges in front of us and i want to talk to at least four of those here today i believe i think like gentle mccaffrey that jemma crystal's recent assessment was a very sound one very thorough deserves a very careful read in some ways however it also fueled this debate and perhaps in the in the broader scheme of things to look at where we are where we're going that that's appropriate i would start by asking the question what on a strategic level i want to take this up away from the numbers of troops for most of my remarks and talk about where are we going i think the fundamental question we have to ask is what's the end game for the united states in the region where are we going what's our ultimate objective until we can clearly answer this question i think to ourselves to our friends in the region to our allies and nato then we we have a problem with having a sound policy if we don't have a clear definition of success in my judgment worse yet a if we signal that success equals exit and our ultimate goal is exit i think that we've created an on the sound strategy and one that undercuts our actual objectives in the region this is a bit of a paradox because most americans my cousins w farmers in northern pennsylvania my aunts and uncles who are in the retirement age don't fully understand why we're in afghanistan i think we have to be clear about that i also think that the fundamental flaw in american approach to both afghanistan and pakistan lies in the lack of confidence in the region in american staying power when i left afghanistan in may of two thousand and five the biggest concern i had was the lack of the belief among our friends there that we were in this to succeed and we were really we would be in it for as long as it took to win i think this uncertainty in the region for example drives our friends the pakistanis to judge many of their decisions based upon how well this decision look the day after america leaves what position will it put us in for the ensuring conflict that's certain to break out at that point in time i think we have to confront these fears and in we as we think about and talk about our policy and our goals and objectives in the region i'd fight perhaps for challenges in front of us as we now have gone through this very fractious election and we now are on the verge of some very tough decisions here about future troop strength the first challenge i think we have is to understand and to defeat the taliban strategy not simply defeat the taliban not simply kill more taliban but understand their strategy and to have a plan that defeats their strategy i think they're simple in simple terms our strategy is run out the clock if this were a football game they believe they're in the fourth quarter but their head on the scoreboard that they're controlling the football and they're going to simply run out the clock they're going to be the last man on the field when the game is over we have to take that into account as we think about as we talk about our strategy on the road ahead many of our efforts at home here inadvertently call into into question the very purpose and the strength of our resolve in afghanistan and the speeds directly into the taliban strategy the more we talk about as our goal the more we really reinforce what the taliban are telling the people of afghanistan that that in their terms the americans have all the wristwatches but we have all the time we the taliban will be here when the americans are gone so that's a challenge number one number two i think is to rebuild the trust and to help the afghan government next the next version that rebuild trust between their government and their people that trust has been badly fractured over the last three or four years in afghanistan i was there during the h days after the first election of president karzai in two thousand and four and two thousand five there was and then hope and optimism and positive feelings there much of that has been lost much of that trust has been squandered and i think we have to focus our diplomatic efforts in kabul on helping to shape and reform this next government to be one that's viewed as non corrupt as opposed to having corruption as its salient feature the most of all we have to do to be able to help that work at the local level our legitimacy is tied to this government we have to be able to see this government to become a better government than the one we've supported over the last three years third is to achieve unity of effort that was in some ways the bane of our existence in the last three years and bringing nato into afghanistan for all the goodness that brought  really brought a lot of dissolution of unity of effort that we had under a more centralized command before much of that's being addressed on the military side but i think we have to be careful that as we bring in new capabilities there that we bring in as many civilian capabilities to meet the need there as we do on the military side and that that includes the effects at the local level and we're going to bring a thousand new civilians into afghanistan by the end of the year those have got to be out at the local level primarily not simply in kabul and i think that there has to be a fused effort between  government its security forces the international military clo coalition and the international civil forces all the way down to local level effort to make things work for individual afghans finally i think we have to reframe the narrative here at home the rationale for us staying and winning in afghanistan has become muddled here in the united states out in your districts across the country that's true in europe as well perhaps worse so there are national leaders have got to clearly articulate our goals our end game why we're in afghanistan and what the costs of failure in afghanistan are which are extraordinarily serious for us and so the fundamental question may end up being do we stay or do we go do we invest in endure as my friend ashley tellis here at carnegie likes to talk about or do we simply declare success and leave and then have to reengage again really really invade the country again as some pundits have suggested already that i think is a choice fraught with great danger i would i would close by saying that i think success or failure afghanistan will set the terms of our involvement in that region not just central asia but south asia india pakistan a very growing important region the united states for the next generation will our credibility suffer a fatal blow among our friends out there with a nato alliance survive a defeat and withdraw from afghanistan where we see another nine eleven because once again we walked away from afghanistan as we did after the defeat of the soviets at the end of the eighty's will  adversaries the extremest be catalyzed both in the region and globally by our departure and does this victory really energize the birth of this movement and extremism that many see is waning today so i would say that short term gains need to be avoided here and we have to take a long strategic view of the cost in blood and treasure versus the downsides of failure this may be the most important national security decision we see here in the next several years thank you  mr chairman ranking member members of the committee i thank you for the opportunity to offer my personal views today that call on the senior program officer in the center for peace and stability operations at the u s institute of peace and in that capacity over the past few years i have been directing a multi year effort to produce civilian doctrine for stabilization and reconsider reconstruction missions i've been working on these missions for about fifteen years before u s troops cross the river sava to stabilize bosnia as you well know the military is equipped with a very complex system with doctrine lessons learned planning training education and deployment this complex system allows the president to time and time again look to the military leaders for guidance and for how to implement success on the ground the civil side of the united states government have no doctrine and the other elements of the system are now just emerging they're extremely  nascent the system starts with strategic doctrine that tells us what we are trying to achieve in these missions u s ip with its army partners down at the combined arms center in fort leavenworth have just released the first huge of doctrine for civilians on reconstruction and stabilization missions it follows on the u s army stability operations field manual that was published a year ago under the leadership of the tenet bill caldwell who's now been nominated to go out to afghanistan these manual share a common face because their companions the guiding principles finally fills a civilian gap this manual offers a shared strategic framework from decades for five decades of conducting these type of operations this has been  vetted by the united states government agencies by the un by nato by the e u by non governmental organizations and many others in every war torn countries from the past five or six decades have strive for five core and states a safe and secure environment the rule of law stable governance a sustainable economy and some minimum standards for well being a set of twenty two necessary conditions have been identified in this manual that we should meet to achieve these and states these are shared minimum standards much like the humanitarian community has minimum standards for humanitarian relief and assistance they were developed on the basis of a comprehensive review of some five hundred core doctrinal documents from across the institutions that have engaged in these missions of these twenty two conditions i recommend prioritizing eight for afghanistan the first is the primacy of politics the need to reach political settlements not just at the national level where the current crisis resides but it regional and local levels as well we must redouble our efforts to separate reconcilable insurgents from those who will not for sick violence second we cannot achieve success anywhere without security physical security for the population there government centers education health economic centers we require that international forces work closely with afghan local forces to protect the population third we must prioritize territorial security by medicating the threats that our current long the afghanistan pakistan border dealing with the border will acquire a higher level of gauging between the afghanistan pakistan governments as well as elements of civil society that reside along that border forth we must redouble our efforts to achieve a legitimate nobly over the means of violence something general mcchrystal is very focused on the objective is not only to train and equip the police and military forces but to enhance the organizational development and professional leadership of those forces this we need to continue to prioritize the identification and disruption of finance networks as difficult as that may be of the insurgents organized crime and terrorist organizations fueling the fires in afghanistan this means shutting down foreign financing and disrupting the reliance on the narcotic trade and other illicit activities six improving access to justice for the population who require bolstering a rebuilding the informal mechanisms for dispute resolutions that afghanistan's have had long employed that the insurgents have now largely replaced and supporting the additional justice system that has a justice continuum from police to prosecutors judges to corrections seventh we must build the capacity of the government to deliver essential services to the population and to be seen as the deliverer of those essential services this is necessary to separate the population from the insurgents who deal with you demise the government daily by providing those services themselves eight stewardship of state resources means that essential services must be delivered by an accountable government prioritizing support now for sub institutes the national institutions of government both in formal and informal and formal will be key to ensuring an entry point for those essential services and to boosting this lack of confidence that the population has in any form of governance most of these are inherently civilian tasks we have the skills the united states government to deliver that assistance not just among our military forces we now have a civil military plan in afghanistan and we are building a civil military structure from every level from district up to the region regional command so we have a chance right now to put the wall the lessons the hard lessons that we've learned over the past eight years not only in afghanistan but also in iraq to work in afghanistan i look forward to your questions thank you  manifestly manifestly insufficient given the scale of devastation that was caused over two decades of war that it was founded on co option in other words it compounded the authority of the warlords and local strongmen  it's clear that international aid has been in many ways ineffective it's been fragmented supply driven inefficient and not responding sufficiently well to afghan needs and preferences i think also another problem of the international prochoice been that international military forces have tended to prioritize the elimination of insurgents and winning hearts and minds through assistance related  when we see the insurgents using sanctuary in support from inside pakistan and they appear to be winning it is it is understandable that afghans for reasons of personal safety are reluctant to pose the  insurgents i think that the focus of p r ts on on militarized development doesn't achieve what it what it is intended to achieve it doesn't meet core development government and the government by association with the foreign military and i think that general mcchrystal report is very insightful and i think he is right indeed about the importance of legitimacy and the population security however i think we've got to realize that international military forces have a limited capability to address some of these issues first of all building afghan national security forces is an extremely long term endeavor and we know that there are major problems with the police force and of course they are the most critical element of a counterinsurgency campaign i think also there is danger in the ethnicity ethnicity and other factors it demands a response that is political it's got to be indigenous inclusive and address injustices and legitimate grievances just some brief remarks about how we might change the strategy going forward to deliver better results firstly and i think probably five five points firstly we should acknowledge the limits that out of outsiders in effecting change in afghanistan given the enormous complexity and the scale of the challenges but what we should do is empower afghans to address these challenges so in other words a focus of focus on capabilities and building robust institutions not just delivering results secondly empathize with afghans and i think if we do affect if we empathize as i said continue considering the  history the culture of afghanistan it leads to the conclusion that we should reduce foreign military involvement in civilian yes and prioritise interventions which reflect afghan interests and preferences development are likely to do more harm than good i think we've got to recognise the need for regional political strategy to force addressed obvious flaws in a delivery it astonishes me that they're not more has been done to  address very rudimentary problems in this system of a delivery such as the wides widespread use of contractors the consultants the parallel mechanisms the lack of transparency and finally i think have suggested to earlier on that we should not expect swift results this is an incremental progress it requires real ism combined with a long term commitment and a genuine political resolve when we made the commitment then gave the president bush the authorization in mid september of zero one for military force we all knew what that was going to mean with regard to have afghanistan and some pretty strong statements were made about following comment that if you break it you own it i must admit i've never entirely bought that argument either i think there are points times and foreign policy where we intervene for our own purpose and don't pick up the follow on implied responsibility turning a place in the struggle and nonetheless here we are six hundred miles from the sea thirty two million afghans is a giant wild country much it rooted in the fourteenth century we have made promises explicit and implied and not something that greatly bothers me in the current debate the notion that we're there and can't stay  stay unless we appreciate the nature of the chief of state bothers me was there for a u s national interest reasons not because karzai is corrupt good bad or whatever but there's no question in my mind  as you look at the situation now we have told the region our nato partners and the afghan people we're going to try and create a situation where you won't be an international pariah or your agricultural system and your road network and the fundamentals of healthcare will work and that will then withdrawn increasingly turn this operation over to you i think there is a moral responsibility at this point it would be an unbelievable disaster in the short run meaning ten years  left if we withdrew and left the population to the tender mercies of taliban retribution and then one of the unique aspects of afghanistan is that we we know what failure would look like we know what man rule looks like we know what it means for women there are six million children going to school today about a third of those are afghan girls that were zero during the time of taliban we know what it means for justice what we watch people's beheaded in soccer stadiums for offenses that were modest by western stannard we watched obama and booted to be destroyed by the taliban some cultural artifacts a day back centuries we know what this looks like and i always felt during my time in afghanistan that that inoculated the afghan people against the taliban's return there's very little to no interest across afghanistan to see the taliban come back in we know exactly and explicitly what the outcome is going to look like should that occur more moreover those that align with side with us those are working with us you know from kabul all the way down to the smallest village out there are going to pay that price so we have a fairly clear picture in front of us here of what the downsides of what's wrong what the downsides of failing to achieve our objectives look like and i think we have to keep that you know crystal clear in our mind well i think in two thousand and one whether or not we were trying to fill a moral responsibility or national security responsibility today the facts on the ground suggests that people afghans non governmental organizations many of whom are mandated by us u s nationals and our civilians on the ground have our now great risk  chosen by by allying themselves with us in this fight against the taliban and others in afghanistan to choose a side and so we have more responsibility now to carry out at least the minimum standards which i've tried to lay out here today for how the afghanistan government itself can protect its population in the future but we have a lot of while i agree with some of the remarks that have already been made i think that at the time the intervention the fact that it did take place as it did in the promises that were made with quite  respects we are failing to do so and in some very obvious ways i mean it astonishes me that there is so little transparency in terms of the delivery of international it is very difficult to critique it to identify what is going wrong and then put it right and that is an elementary problem that could be solved if there was sufficient political will i think there's a moral responsibility  steps to do that but of course i think why did level i think it's clear that we need to address the political problems and i think the approach of the international community has supported a that thrives on patronage on impunity on nepotism and corruption and it is it is our duty to try to address some of those problems and of course there's limits to what we can do we should we should be clear we should be realistic about what we can achieve focus on those areas and and show genuine commitment to improve the situation my understand your point and i think i agree with it which is we had every right to take out the taliban to take out al qaeda and then walk away militarily but we made very strong statements that we would do a lot of rebuilding and we had every right to break the taliban and break strategy never mind its impact on pakistan but at the people level i must admit it still makes me wince every time i hear a rifle platoon leader marine corps us army promising the locals will be there for them to establish continuing security clearly they're not in a position to make that kind of compact and neither the military commander on the ground or the u s ambassador that's the job and this august body in the administration and that's where we are will  critical to u s interests and in that context is it also critical to pakistan's security interest and if so is the strategy laid out of a full counterinsurge effort by general mcchrystal the right way to go to ensure stability in afghanistan and also with that how does that relate to securing the future interest of pakistan you know i think that is the the most painful question that you can pose in this debate because i think one can make a sound argument that afghanistan is not a vital u s national security interest if you start from where we are now and you look at the secondary and tertiary effects of withdrawal particularly pakistan and our credibility in much of the muslim world certainly to include th you can get closer to it but at the end of the day i demur being with a colonel at the u s army war college or doing some kind of war game and it involves analysis of whether one should ever intervene in northwestern pakistan and afghanistan are reach conclusion that actually i'm one of the united states army is don't carry out any military operations where you can't walk down to the sea in a navy ship we are a long way from the coast we've got to get there through a fragmented and coherent pakistan and at the end of the day we're looking at thirty two million of the most suffering people on the face of here who have nothing that is vital to our economy political system social order nor are they a central or longstanding ally we are where we are so but i do believe the question you pose is the one you american people on as themselves if our current burn rate is five billion dollars a month if it will go to ten billion dollars a month by next summer which surely it will if we're going to start losing a thousand killed and wounded a month and like general barno my son just came out of combat in afghanistan a year ago on the high ground in kabul in december of two thousand and one before we had made commitments we would probably look at different ways and have different choices and options those second and third order effects on pakistan and nato on our commitments in the region would not be the and so we might have made different choices then but we are where we are today and i do think that there is a growing recognition in retrospect that this region afghanistan pakistan in particular and we should talk a bit about how this plays into india but afghanistan pakistan in particular instability in this region is going to cause some very serious trouble for the united states down the road is it is the regional stability critical to the united states is vital national interest i think it approaches that because of the prospects for once again the region becoming a hotbed of islamist terrorism you know potentially could have some access to nuclear weapons that's a worst case scenario but it is not an impossible scenario by any stretch of imagination so we are now committed we are seen with our major military alliance nato there is having a commitment to see the sort of success there is great damage that's possible there if we fail but there's also the tremendous risk of this part of the united nations office of drugs and crime are reported this month that five times as many civilians among nato nations are being killed in the as the number of casualties that we've taken in afghanistan among coalition if we think about a narco state with al qaeda on the ball sitting over the other side of the border in pakistan i think that's it that answers the question i don't think we can afford to have an unstable afghanistan in a very very bad neighborhood with supplying ninety two percent of the word world's opium i also think that it's you who take a step back and ask ourselves because we constantly  seem to forget that five decades of these missions that showed us that we can stay ally's nation cambodia el salvador rwanda many many places that have been completely torn apart and  american soldiers have a capability in a wide range of technical sis sectors beyond what they're trained for i think it assumes that if you deliver rapid material progress in  rural areas in afghanistan then you will win the hearts and minds of local people and as i said as my other remarks about the context i just do not think that that is that is the case i think it's secondly it assumes a vast and detail knowledge by soldiers of afghan society and actually the demands placed on soldiers in the counterinsurgency manual are enormous and i think rarely met even by civilian aid workers who stay there for many years and speak the language is possible and delivers the results and i think actually i think that it's clear that the insurgents thrive on this overlap this is this is this is good news for them because the all i mean it's a little bit of of you know nation building versus national security and i think clearly the american people right now are conflicted as well certainly not with the kind of information that you all of exhibit expressed today but nevertheless the the the the fear that it would be years and years before and generations before you are able to actually turn a situation around in the extent to which that truly isn't in our in our in our national interests but as as you as you all speak on and certainly mr waldman as well i mean security has to be at the forefront of all of that and i recall it one of the times of being in afghanistan that remember some of the n g o s saying to us that the our ambassadors or the people from the state department have to travel with military  support but they they basically use their relationships that they build that kind of support has clearly been on the able to do that and help me with this issue because we are continuing to raise the issue of the role of women and whether or not we are abandoning them in any way if we move into  how we're able to have some kind of reconciliation in afghanistan and we want to focus on them where where do security lie because clearly the military has paved the way for many efforts in afghanistan and there's no doubt about that and yet on the other hand i understand that it's perhaps overly ambitious for us to believe that all of those  efforts with the military and civilian capacity both are not necessarily in the best are picking up the the best interest of the afghan people or the region assuming that pakistan where we're talking about as well i think like with governance and all of these other issues that we have to enlarge our view of security i mean security is not just something that military forces can bring to the communities of afghanistan and the united states we think it security of this school guards and bank guards and people who protect judges and it's not just a question of military or police forces border guards people that are dealing with looking at monday laundering money laundering and bank operations and we in that sense the debate about troops is is a very very important debate but we have to think about the other assets that we have to bring to bear include including with the afghans including putting women as police officers in certain places or as school guards which is we've shown we can do in liberia  this this you know this question of just having soldiers that are armed to the teeth and gauged in combat operations has a thinking i think too narrowly we have people that know how to do witness protection in the marshal service we have people in the department of justice to understand how to train police how to do police mentoring and development we have people who know how to friends of investors you would look at money laundering i mean this is a this is much more than just  just the military and and if we think about it that way i think that we can arrive at the actually producing security in a much more efficient way to have two thoughts i think one on the issue of security i think you're actually correct it's not a sequential problem of security and then reconstruction and development it's really concurrent these things have got to go on in parallel with each other in based on the amount of security or lack thereof in areas you'll have a greater or lesser military presence and a greater or lesser civilian presence but i think clearly because of the security dynamic you're always going to have to have these elements working together and i disagree a bit with mr waldman on that the other question i think you allude to is this idea of what does it mean to  women if we negotiate with the taliban i think that's a paraphrase i think of what you perhaps you were saying and i do think we have to be aware that in my estimation i think from a policy standpoint right now having the taliban be part of the government afghanistan is not where this is going is not the objective having reform taliban x taliban taliban and rejected violence put down their weapons and join the political process that's a very different outlook the small t if you will the individuals not not the movement and i think that's where we have to be careful that we don't inadvertently send this message that we're willing to negotiate with the taliban because we're really trying to exit as opposed to we're willing to see these taliban former taliban fighters lay down their arms and become part of this political process or our goal when i was there was not to kill the taliban collectively in the big strategic picture it was to make the taliban irrelevant make no one want to become part of the taliban and no one aspired to the taliban and that takes a very nuanced approach of many different elements of them simply security and military forces mr waldman can i just quickly get a response from you so i mean in terms of security i mean it really varies and it is a very serious situation at the moment i mean on average every national security is much broader and of course really security will be achieved if there is a proper political strategy which is indigenous which is inclusive which addresses some of the actually right to raise this thing is a very serious issue i think the when one travels the country talks to afghans very clear that for example they want their girls to go to school if you look at the numbers now over two million girls in school universal desire to see that happen and for women to have the most areas of women to be able to work and to have rights freedoms and rights the men have it is alarming that this year law was passed recently which you're probably aware of the work to try to empower women and to support opportunities and rights but you're also right that there is concern about women's rights as negotiations move forward now of course reconciliation truth and reconciliation political engagement an accommodation with morsi and thems the taliban and not respect i think great deal of caution is required and indeed the essential rights reflected in the afghan constitution should be respected as realistic goals and objectives for our military in the short term and by that i mean the next two to three years what's unrealistic i think some of the things that we're talking about long term here i'm not sure that our military needs to be used for that so you know general mccaffrey mentioned and i think he's accurate that this is for things civilization and apparently a lot of folks there won't keep it that way but what can we do with our military that's realistic that's the afghanistan did in frankfurt london hamburg and indiana which currently where we worry about them i think secondly you can say we're not there to fight the taliban and indeed i would argue the taliban  not across the border they're also across the border because there are forty million pashtoon on both sides of the duran line but but i don't think we're there to fight the taliban and had the taliban not active the sanctuary for disastrous attack in the united states we wouldn't be in afghanistan today we would have left it the way it was i don't think we're there to free the population that are women the plight of women in that region is abysmal as we went in as one of our intel officers of  allow us to withdraw in less than is long term cannot be done in three to five i personally think attend a twenty five year job the first five years may involve a lot of combat but essentially it's a long term commitment and building a police still appalled that we're not in afghanistan was an engineer two star general five hundred person staff and three or four u s army engineer brigades hiring thousands of afghans and mentoring and tutoring  don't believe that many of the civilian agencies in the short wrong or the medium term can operate in afghanistan and that's one of the perils of the u s armed forces as we can do and we can do neighborhood councils call in radio shows members possibly on this i do not believe in the short run what we're talking about afghanistan as witness protection programs there is no district capitals there is no operational police force no court system no jail nothing is there except a raw power and i also don't even i wouldn't characterize this as an insurgency that implies central government against which we're fighting brief i appreciate everyone's testimony on this complicated issue that we're spending a lot of time trying to sort through as we think about what should happen next and i really appreciate all of your perspectives i'll start with mr alterman if anybody else agrees on this particular point i'd be happy to hear from anyone else's perspective but you know you brought up this issue that i think often pointed out but very difficult for us to think about in terms of our military involvement because we like to think about a military  you suggested this point that people say perhaps our very presence the paradox of our presence is the problem and so when we think about committing to more troops training even further involvement of our military to deal with the chaos  there we often think about the other side you know maybe our presence is the problem and so i just would like to hear you talk about that a little bit more particularly in light of the fact that even you said on the other hand many of the people doing civilian aid and the n g o s there are corrupt there's not a lot there's not enough transparency around that so we can talk about philosophically will put more people in the country to rebuild the institutions there and really get back to the kind of place where perhaps there could be a major shift in this power struggle we haven't been successful at that either so can you talk a little bit about something that i think for many people is a dramatically different difficult concept to swallow but perhaps is exactly what we should be  of the major problems i think we also need to address the imbalance of power between the center of government and local government and again trying to support the development of some some just some basic functioning representative institutions  these are the sorts of steps that really could could see you know we could start to see a solution in sight i think the question of whether the united states troops are drawing attack and if they were gone their words that they wouldn't have a problem is is is is maybe not the right way to look at this i mean if you think about post nine eleven has been attacked the international committee the rest red cross has been attacked humanitarian workers are constantly under attack the brits all these other all of our allies are constantly facing attacks so the witnesses for testimony obviously great expertise that you bring to our committee and we're grateful for that two things first a quick follow up on my colleague's question on the issue of afghanistan being a vital asked in fact congress i think was asked in one thousand nine is it a national vital interest to be there and the answer was no and we in essence walked away and we learned twelve years later it was when it came to the lives of three thousand american citizens that were taken on nine eleven that it's going to be difficult but just standing back and watching what happens was not you know in the best interests of our citizens so i think goes to where we are today is unless we want to repeat that error and allowed again to become a safe haven for those who want to take american lives it clearly is of vital interest so not going to be easy how to ensure that that doesn't happen going forward from where we are today but my specific question and actually is regarding the comment of the military presence is one of the problems for us in  an army lieutenant colonel and just doing amazing work and you know in our time with them we met with the local mullahs gathered tribal leaders and came in we met with and was clear of what i posit environment in without that partnership hand in hand because i wouldn't want that usa i d s are out there without the military security to protect i think it's more than how we approach it so i guess it's really mr waldman how do you do the development in the environment today without the security that the military brings to those u s id and other officers thank you i think i mean i think that's an excellent question and it  poses a real challenges for aid workers men civilians that are operating in development in afghanistan and i think we do have to at some point consider the fact that of the twenty six provincial and a number of other factors including the action of insurgents now is it possible that how we resource has played an important role that we have a team there but what we actually give them on the development side no i don't think that's the problem and in fact i think the problem is is different because they exist a lot of the aid has gone to those p r t and in fact what you're doing is you're breaking the accountability of afghan leaders to the afghan people because there's a parallel foreign mechanism that's been inserted into the society so while the real focus is to build afghan institutions i can deny zation on that real quickly in pakistan eddy's doing some development work that is in the reno counterinsurgency but where it's actually done under the name of the pakistan government or a partner where so we're not the lead  is that what you think is a better approach not just in pakistan but in afghanistan well i think what really we should be doing is the military should focus on security issues and i think the military have some legitimacy in that area and i think afghans expect the of a mission and the sensible nation and my point of view point if the american people and the congress and administration supported it would be to build a viable state over the decades to come and we can do that at significant cost probably sixty billion day eighty billion a year and another thirty to forty thousand killed and wounded we probably achieve that objective now caviar and i think  community they are beyond belief to include oxfam but there's a handful of them in afghanistan is big muscle movement thirty million people nobody moves in the south except a marine rifle we still have a choice but i don't think there's a choice of waving a magic candid saying we can turn it over to an agency we can turn it over to the state department treasury agriculture they can't do it they won't do it when i asked to is we have about a half hour of votes and then there will be a motion to recommit so we will come back right after that vote before the motion to recommit will have the time for debate and then it will probably have another half hour of questions for anyone who wants to come back so we're in recess be about a well that didn't quite work like we thought it would did it i apologize for that they change the order of votes and then have a vote we are going to have missed whitman has accomplished i appreciate your patience you all of been public servants for a long long you if you would comment on without me leading you down a road when you saw the twelve month number what does that mean to you and his report in terms of what we need to be thinking about as we're making decisions looking at well part part of it may well be that general mcchrystal having served here understands the dynamics of washington as well as he does of the battlefield i personally can't imagine that thirty days sixty days ninety days hundred eighty days one way or the other actually makes much difference but he's also understanding it takes us normally two years to make a policy decision in this capital of my own rules and it takes a year for the military to make substantial reinforcements of the war seven thousand mile away or so i think his assessment on the ground and i'll probably have a better informed point by the end of november is that the tactical situation is deteriorat four hundred man outfits who are doing reconnaissance for thirty to ninety days of a target and then using rockets indirect fire mortar fire maneuver it is astonishing some are using electronic conclude which i totally agree i think in a way this goes back to my my comment about the taliban running out the clock and they realize the clock in washington is moving in a more rapid pace than the clock in afghanistan or pakistan even among our nato allies in some regards and i think john mcchrystal is looking at that from a standpoint of the enemy is moving very rapidly he has the initiative right now he's doing offensively a great deal he's getting to choose the time and place their actions without a lot of constraints in it i think mcchrystal and sense of resting that initiative back from the enemy feels he has to do that the next year or the enemy simply going to be too strong for us to have the capability to turn this around that also i think plays into  german crystal's perspective that this is a strategy behind which after another year or so there may be inadequate public support to continue so i think he sees the next twelve months as critical  i'm asking you to say what you think he meant but put it this way it would be a mistake for folks on this side of the us to say thirteen fourteen months from now well it's been twelve months and we're still having problems that's not the lesson we should take from the way mcchrystal has phrased that language is that if there is they medieval e o absolutely i cannot imagine i must have met i know i think  y gates is one of the most remarkable public servants we had an office for fifteen years however the notion that we're going to make a substantial change right here at eighteen months strikes me as the inappropriate level of expectations i still believe this is two to five years of hard very hard work with him including some serious fighting followed by decade or so nation building  perhaps longer than that and it takes time as we saw in iraq for those those units to actually get on the ground get established and then begin to have an influence i think the next in my judgment a way to i would look at this is the next twelve months is basically the time to stabilize the patient and then after that you're going to look at basically getting you know the patient back into into full health and going to a counter offensive to take the momentum away but you're not going to see you know a complete turn around the situation in twelve months by any stretch of imagination because it's i mean i think you probably talk the most general barno in your opening statement about framing that's right for the american public so they understand we need to make sure that people understand this is this is going to be some hard fighting now maybe things will go better than we think things c how do you evaluate where we're at right now today well the good news with no short on you know if you fly over afghanistan which all of you in a room of done and you saw right after some have occurred the other tiny bit of good news is on i remind military audiences we've lost the us armed forces lost a brigade sized unit a sensually twice in vietnam we had divisions dismantled twice and korea we lost a field army most of it twice in world war two it on the battle of bulge so we're there's no reason why we're magic  out there in a rough world in afghanistan today it's hard for me to imagine a tactical disaster any serious consequence you can overrun the us marine battalion with the entire nation today so that's the good the bad news is the situation is spinning out of control and clearly the answer isn't military it's a lot of things at the same time legitimacy of the government economic rebuilding most of which ought to be agriculture so but those one of our panelists mentioned witness protection programs i mean those kind of things that are step ten of ten step process we're still a step on and i would agree with that but i would also maybe take a step will a bit higher and i think the pervasive feeling in afghanistan today is broadly uncertainty as they look at the international effort and i think that's a debilitating perception because it causes people to have to judge based on not knowing what the u s military is going to do not only what  the nato force going to do not knowing what the united nations is going to do not knowing what n g o s you know they don't they don't know who's going to be standing at the end of the day out there and they're having to make tough decisions without really seeing a clear path so i endorse the thought that this is a deliberate decision making here in washington but but there is also a need once that the shooting gets made violently and aggressively and fully executed and implemented as rapidly as possible in afghanistan because there is a perception every day that we go on with our mr chairman again thank you all for wading through the votes we certainly appreciate that you know your have very full schedules i wanted to just follow up for a moment because there was the article today and about the gnawa area and  there's been a lot of discussion about whether or not troop levels even of forty thousand is really what would be required they mention the fact in this particular articles like this is the  post of a one to fifty ratio to the population and that's basically what they tried to do in that area they've had something sas but you know sometimes that's a fleeting success it doesn't necessarily mean that it stabilise the whole area so could you responded that perhaps general mccaffrey and burn whoever would like to do that i mean i actually hate to get into this question of exact number of troops but on the other hand isn't what is truly required if we were actually going to be trying to change the projections that you would need so many more troops and that well there's probably two different aspects of that very legitimate one is i personally don't buy algorithms that are fixed such as one to fifty i think some of that nonsense the brits ran a lot of these places was five smart oxford boys who studied greek and  native levies to you know achieve balance among the tribes my own view would be and i think my crystal report is focused on the only center of gravity of the struggle in afghanistan building the afghan security forces along with jump starting the economy social institutions political institutions at the end of the day it's the afghan national army and the police the police are a fifteen year job the army's a five year job you can't do it overnight you got to get off for a quick mn training they've got to have their own helicopter live for the afghan national security force is the answer i do not think the notion that we're going to join bad is challenge to be to muster as much energy from washington to help him get that done as he can because if that doesn't work then the rest of the enterprise is not going to work for so those are going to eventually have to be not marines  army just added that i think that we also need to step back again and realize that part of the country we're trying to stabilize the other part of the country we're actually doing reconstruction it's not all combat all the time and so whether algorithm you want to arrive at it's we need to identify the areas where there is hi insurgent activity and try to stabilize those while keeping our eye on the other places we're actually we have stabilized and we're actually in a reconstruction mode it's not all combat all the time  political engagement and addressing some of these problems until some of these fundamental problems are addressed in society then these conflicts will continue  mean this is an incredibly complex area is very very difficult for outsiders to understand but i think we can at least recognize that that is the case and to take steps to help you know actually in the south in the southeast there are many that do operate today and i mean n g o s operated under the taliban regime right up until the intervention there are mechanisms of doing that and of course you know the priority is got to be those organizations which are going to be that into the future and that afghan can respond to afghan needs and you then you're starting to build up accountability within society for  how resources are used to benefit people so i would stress that that side of the of the state building agenda yeah thank you i appreciate that i think that what the american people are having a very difficult time understanding is whether or not we would continue an effort where we don't perceive nor do the people that we're trying to help perceive that there's a legitimate government in the midst you know in that context is their role that you think we should be doing differently in the upcoming election and is are we using whatever leverage we have which should be great but i think we haven't necessarily used it much  in trying to to really i think impress upon the leaders that we need to see some action whether it's in the corruption area  or what have you what is our leverage at that you see and how do we how do we explain to the american people that this is an effort down with you know really with a void in terms of the governing and always the  matter during the two thousand and four pressure election and you know we made the main effort for the military that year setting conditions for that election because we recognize it was the most important strategic event in afghanistan in two thousand and four the election this year was the most important strategic event in afghanistan in many ways it was a serious failure the international community united nations took a very minimalist role where they had the ability to take a much greater role to prevent the outcome that we saw occur and after august twentieth so now there is almost a an opportunity this is second time so one of the things i think that absolutely has to happen is a much deeper international and united nations effort to ensure this election is held in a supervised manner which the last one was not now the timelines make that extraordinarily difficult to do so i think that's an area on the other side of the coin i would say the fact we're going to a runoff reflects some strength in the process there were enough safeguards in the process so that the initial election result rightfully was called into question which challenge was evaluated and it was another votes were thrown out to force runoff that's that's a success story although it's a dusty muddy want to afraid but it's still a success story in the in this next election is critical to ensure that the outcome of that has the competence the afghan  people i think we actually have an opportunity right now as we as this demonstrated with senator kerry negotiating with with president karzai to identify those people and the government who we know that are corrupt we know the afghan people don't respect and to try to deal with them at this moment and then to embrace and empower the ones that we know are legitimate and are accountable and we have all worked with wonderful afghan leaders ministers and others who are the leaders for the future but i i think we have a moment in time right now where we have to press this case the international community all of those nations that have invested in afghanistan and do it with the afghans themselves work on governance if you look at the thousands of consultants that are deployed in what is an uncoordinated fashion many have little experience some have very talented but many of the  course they're necessary to some extent but i think we have to accept there are deep flaws in the contracting in the consulting system that currently exist what appears to be some very very difficult work on the pakistani side of the border how do they view this discussion this going on what do they want to have happen on the afghan side of the bar border with regard to the nato forces i'm always military couples were talking about this before i'm not an expert on pakistan but i'm sure one thing that is not a single monolithic state is four separate nations under one week federal system and when you look at the federal statute on this been a history of corruption and incompetence  the part of the political parties and the leadership and one institution that's been load bearing in pakistan was the army and the army is also the i s i and the army is a front here corps any army loans or generals to run ministries so it's tended to be and it's also disturbs people the most respected institution bar none in pakistan so we end up with a situation by the way neither the army have intervened in these border areas there are a remarkably small professional badly equipped force there primarily if you talk to back military spend ninety nine percent of their time worrying about the indians and the confrontation to the east gradually they've come to support us i personally think that without the support of the pakistani government in the military our presence in afghanistan would disappear and die of lack of oxygen within a year so we have to be very careful what we say in public and what we do in private initiative provide nonmilitary aid to pakistan as it is really a good ones that we're year they are conflicted in some ways because now they recognize they have an internal security threat the so called pakistani taleban who are somewhat different and distinct from the afghan taliban across the border the now their activity in the pakistani army in fighting this august on the taliban in swat and now about to start in waziristan is impressive it's notable which is a major change in it very much supports our interests and their interests they have a bit of a different approach i think with regard to the taliban in afghanistan and i think that at most positive that their relationship there is ambivalent that they they need your support them directly or or fight them directly in historical connection to that  group that has given them capability to influence events inside of afghanistan they don't want to let go of that connection entirely because there are certain simply uncertain about what we're going to do and whether we're going to be there three years or five years now so i think they deserve full credit for what they're doing in fighting their own internal threat which they now recognize and i think we need to continue to work with them on convincing them we're there for the long haul so they can disassociate themselves further from the afghan taliban there are fighting our forces now once again i apologize for the for the delay due to votes but you all been through that before we appreciate your service we appreciate your attendance here today feel free to send us anything written for us to look at that will also be made a part of this record if you think of something that you would like to add but thank you again for being here today