general paul eaton retired u s army senior advisor for the national security network dr c christine fair assistant professor at the center for peace and security studies at the wall school before the service georgetown university  make all of your written statements a part of the record will turn the clock on for five minutes you see the red light go on the in the five minutes do not look at that as a hard stop of the things that you want to tell us beyond that feel free to do so i that is at once very important to the nation and is very personal to the thousands of families who send their soldiers and marines to prosecute the nation's wars to put it into context over two hundred thousand american families wake up and look outside to see if there is a government vehicle out to give them the worst news possible happens every day so i support this administration's prudent review of our options in afghanistan i'm not going to read the entire statement submitted but i'll  highlight a few points and your base of a to retired army colonel now professor of international relations at boston university and author of the limits of power wrote for harper's magazine this month among democrats and republicans alike with the exceptions of afghanistan's importance is simply assume much in the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assume that the united states had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of south vietnam today is then the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny i don't buy mr bass of of his comments exactly but it certainly tempers the argument so before we begin the debate about numbers of soldiers and marines in afghanistan and subsequent impact on mission there and our mission in iraq it would be helpful to answer the questions why do we continue operations in afghanistan or what do we want afghanistan to look like in so many years or what differentiates afghanistan from yemen or somalia or sudan or any other failed or failing states capable of harboring al qaeda so the mission statement will inform the commander's intent from which the real campaign will be known if you don't know where you're gone any road will take  so the primary rationale i see for continuous in afghanistan is sixty or so nuclear weapons in pakistan the link to regional stability in the extremist groups operating there there is an argument unfortunately hearkening back to vietnam era domino theory that as goes afghanistan and its internal fight against extremists so can go pakistan will leave the answer to why to the to the experts now from a military perspective the we're not going to get to the six hundred thousand plus that that we need by our own math to to execute counterinsurgency operations so by definition whatever number soldier option the president elects to pursue we're going to have a a kind of coin the counterinsurgency operation light it will probably not be rural it will be urban and it will be along the lines of what my one of my smarter classmates andrew krepinevich talks about  the oil spot approach where you stablish a zone of security and derive from that a zone of prosperity which will ultimately spread out and include greater parts of  of the country now reviewing the components of u s production power i'm going to insist that there are three components not just the military as i told then candidate obama when i had an opportunity to meet with him more than a year ago and he asked me what the army wanted i responded senator we want your secretary of agriculture to be at least as interested in the outcome in afghanistan and iraq as is your secretary of defense the united states is in serious need of a review and revision of its national security architecture we prosecutor the cold war with the national security act of one thousand nine hundred seven and did so brilliantly but the world is very different now every colonel who goes to the army war college gets  the components of national power economic military diplomatic political and i'm not going to go through the list of questions that that i propose that you ask administration for the military component but i would like to emphasize the the so called civilian surge that we are embarking upon it's not illustrated well enough i don't understand from what i can find out what the components of the civilian surge are i don't who's in charge of the economic program and as a citizen i think it's prudent that that we find that out so i expect that we'll be informed relatively soon on what the civilian surge looks like what the economic program is going to be who's in charge from a diplomatic perspective there's an internal a micro diplomatic program and an external a macro diplomatic program internal to develop the  europe and the surrounding countries on what they will do to assure and to assist in establishing the security that we need to in afghanistan so this preoccupation with the number of soldiers is secondary i believe to the greater issue of economic engagement and political engagement and i'll end with a quote from richard clarke in his book your government failed you if we stop denigrating government and using its instrument as partisan punching bag if we work in a bipartisan way to rebuild our institutions of national security your government will fail you much less it could even make you proud once more others argue for separation of the counterinsurgency effort with greater focus upon the counterterrorism effort proponents of increasing military efforts in afghanistan argue that failure in afghanistan will spell out grave outcomes in pakistan this formulation reverses cause and effect pakistan's behavior and policies in many ways determine the events and outcome in afghanistan as well as the rest of south asia in part because of continued support of the operate freely there pakistan is in fact limiting its war on terrorism to those elements that undermine the pakistani state and those elements are not comprehensibly the enemies of the united states there specifically the enemies of pakistan with some justification blames the us presence in the region for the country's degraded internal security rather than viewing their insecurity specifically as blowback from their country's own dangerous policies while militants have targeted the pakistani state since two thousand and four in part because of its cooperation with united states in the war on terrorism pakistan has used militants in india since one thousand nine hundred eighty seven and in afghanistan since the early one nine hundred sevent yet rist having received thirteen billion dollars if not more from the united states to participate in the war on terrorism pakistan continues to support the afghan taliban this means that populist on is undermining the very war on terrorism that is received handsome reward allegedly to support success in afghanistan requires effective partners in kabul as well as a slum abroad yet such partners are unlikely to materialize anytime soon i recommend a realistic reformulation of u s interests in afghanistan and pakistan to identify pockets done as the most critical locus of u s national security interests washington needs to ask how it can protect its regional interests perhaps without decisively defeating the taliban in the near term while compelling pakistan to stop interfering in afghanistan over the long term this may require greater focus upon counterterrorism rather than counterinsurgency operations in afghanistan this would allow the u s over time to decrease its kinetic footprint in afghanistan and lessen its logistical dependence upon pakistan which seriously degraded washington's options to be harsher with pakistan to stabilize the region washington needs to create a base to compel pakistan to see if he's supporting all militant groups operating on and from its territory over a reasonable timeframe and a state the obvious this includes coercing or compelling pakistan to go i want to begin by discussing the impact of the war in iraq on our ability to prosecute the war in afghanistan i believe that the u s strategy in afghanistan let's say to be undermined by the decision of the previous administration to wage an unnecessary and bigger war in iraq even before our goals and objectives are realized in afghanistan the war in iraq has exhausted already cost seven hundred billion dollars in direct costs led to four thousand three hundred fifty american military fatalities nearly two hundred fifty civilian fatalities thirty one thousand wounded caused a global pandemic of anti americanism and undermined the legal and moral underpinnings of the global order that the united states has constructed and since nine hundred forty five for long wars that involve insurgencies and nation building the war in iraq has made it very difficult for our president to go to the american people and say what he must we need to stay in afghanistan for a long time we need to spend billions of dollars and perhaps lose many more american lives in order to finish what we started eight years ago i have bad news for this committee i believe that the u s at the moment does not have the political will nor the public with the malpractises in the presidential elections i suspect public support would decline further it will become very difficult for both the white house and the congress to do what is necessary what is necessary to win it all in afghanistan the united states will need to control the aspect border and completely eliminate the ability of the taliban to cross borders when things get tough on either side undermine the ability to recruit and fundraise w the hearts and minds of the people to such an extent that they are motivated to stand up with the united states against the taliban take risks to realize the dream of a democratic we also hope to create significant locales and using different models operandi bin laden is still not in our custody the americanism intimacy was an overall discontent with political realities will have to be significantly before the demand for and soldiers on both sides of the border have grown in size roughly seven thousand to twenty five thousand but the number of attacks that have gone hundred times the british intelligence reports that now the british army fight the dollars in afghanistan developing it materially developing it successfully but if you do not pull of the peace process in that always ready conflict then there will be anti americanism in afghanistan additionally the us military presence against the us garner support for extremists in general more recruits for them i like the second option with the additional the us must fight we'll need those who directly threaten us interests and security lobel wars have  costs and consequences that even a superpower cannot afford for a country like ours that agonizes for months or whether we can pay for the health care for an underprivileged americans cannot afford to fight wars indefinitely require unlimited resources to have brought devastation and violence to the very societies that have hosted it for the past two  we must send a strong statement of resolve obviously those are great conflicts so my question is how do we respond to women women legislators those who have aligned themselves with us over the last seven or eight years how do we reconcile doing what's in our national security interest with whatever commitments we have made to afghans who have been refugees and we have banned and then after that that that conflict without taking even a strong political attempt to create a post for order and yet after nine eleven afghans in the north and and committed to building the democracy money and effort required i am convinced that there isn't a political will in this country to do that and i fear that in the absence of a political more harm if you had to pull out later than now it's impossible because you could have the next presidential candidate running on this on this agenda that we need to pull out of afghanistan in two thousand and eleven general in the prosecution of his mission he's got to provide the security with the military i believe that the rest of the executive branch needs to fall in and support in providing the prosperity that we need derived from secure there are two things that i would like to point out and i want to work on build on what my colleague here said i think first of all we need to really honestly ask the question are the force of stability in the region or not  my understanding that the united presence in south asia contributed to the instability in south asia before we went there there was no suicide bombing in afghanistan before we went there there were no taliban and the level of violence was not to this level and we have been there for eight years and things have continuously and worse so i think we need to ask the question that a major military presence of the united states in south asia does  have nuclear weapons in pakistan the red entirely differently in pakistan as an attempt by the united states to neuter they fly mick was which is to deprive them only islamic country with nuclear weapons of that capacity so radical extremists and even those elements in the pakistani government the u s threat to pakistani nuclear capability continue to play with the extremists the i s i and others who support the taliban in afghanistan do it for two reasons one because the ties with your political view which is anti americanism and see america as an enemy of the m fair comment on as far as pakistan and india are for a long time pakistan has used in afghanistan as strategic assets pakistan is not interested in stability in afghanistan because instability in afghanistan has been a source of tremendous military and financial aid from the us during the seventy's eighty's ninety's and once again getting to fight with the soviet union pakistanis benefited financially and militarily because of instability and the continued to do so the pakistani military and the pakistani political elite genuinely believes that it can manage afghanistan on its own and that is why they created taliban and they believe that i s i with its control and links with with  extremists and the various military groups in afghanistan can manage afghanistan and if you talk to them now they will tell you we kept pakistan afghanistan very much under control before you came and it is after the us that when you're in afghanistan that we see that that the chaos as been escalating so in spite of the fact that i've got a stand produces tremendous amount of refugees who go into pakistan and having an impact on pakistan's social fabric pakistani elite believe that  istan is their regional or where they would like to have influence they are even though pakistan has had good relations with iran they have not tolerated iranian interference in in afghanistan but what they pakistan or it could even bring in other international players such as china and other players so pakistan will continue to agitate afghanistan in order to have global leverage with out of ghana's then they have no leverage secure and isolated from all other threats coming from the middle east foreign fighters and taliban coming in and then you build your bill state institutions and it is not enough to just build the police and the military but you also soldiers to do a country wide by doctrine counter insurgency operation then you are driven to something less than that a light is the phrase being tossed around out there where you perform our counterinsurgency doctrine but in smaller places specifically urban areas got out you've got that approach and i'd like to just make one short comment about a letter that was written by the translator for the new york times reporter who was rescued and a translator killed in the operation the brits conducted a few months ago he writes from germany and he says i look forward to returning to my country afghanistan and to leave the manicured parks of germany and the concrete and the asphalt i look forward to returning to my village which is miles from the closest where it's natural where i can once again have the dust of afghanistan on my now that's a different guy from what general mcchrystal is focused on the degree of motivation that is demonstrated by the taliban in the fight is significantly higher yet some analysts believe that it is a soft core and there's a hard core to the taliban enemy like either the nato forces or u s forces that legitimacy for granted which is something very interesting when they operate in areas which they control there is no question of whether they are legitimate or not because they conduct us military presence is a provocation and see that as an occupation paula driving around in trucks with guns is normal that is not a publication that's not a reason for them to become a fighting for report but when i was reading that endorsement i didn't see any commitment to additional troops so i realized that i mean what nato is doing is it's a half hearted effort even they're fighting forces have we don't drive off tonight we will not going to rule areas all these limitations on needed troops clearly suggest that nato is going to fail eventually the key question really is for us is how much america is going to commit to that region and if america succeeds in  nato was established to conduct a combined arms high intensity war it was not designed and everybody understood the rules what we've asked nato as model as in the operations that we're trying to conduct in afghanistan is simply not computing  involved in the narcotics racket that would be one example of a very concrete steps for example when he pardoned narcotics traffickers because a tenuous connection campaign should actually be a pretty strong signal that he doesn't want it taliban and the lack of security for them provided by the state why wouldn't they simply acquiesced with the taliban what i would like to see is much more leadership coming out of kabul to deal with issues like corruption the deep involvement encountered that i think when you were talking about what we can do to work with president karzai i think i picked up that you didn't necessarily see the kinds of actions that dr phil mentioned as good leverage that that's only you know that cars i saw as highly risky or potentially against his interest but he did so in a way by creating confidence in karzai that the united states was standing behind him and was working with him to manage those risks that was several years ago and cars i was actually on tethered and didn't have that kind of relationship with subsequent ambassadors and underperformed as a result because i may have changed in that previous model may not be able to be isn't pakistanis need to want and they need to show to us that they want this but the question is what is this one that we are talking about do we want the pakistanis in afghanistan is to fight for american national security more than  or do we want pakistanis in afghanistan is to fight for a democratic pakistan in afghanistan which may provide us with security what is interesting is that because of our presence there is so much anti americanism that even auden that he's feeling and citizens are not affected for example pakistanis who live in karachi pakistanis who live in the united states and europe and elsewhere who are not directly affected by the the polygon and al have this strong desire to see the united states fail and because of these anti americanism his desire to see the united states fail to be understated the threat to the and in the areas where the extremists pakistan especially in the areas where culturally very backward and tribal you will have less success sending someone who actually belongs to that tribe and i think that one thing that we have ignored that we should not be having soldiers who have served in theater we are not toxic to the environment that we provide the service security which is the first role of government and those who find life in a secure fashion in afghanistan are appreciative of our soldiers and finally with respect to the civilian surge and some of dr ferris comments on the p r there is a failure in this city on our ability to do what the pentagon does by by its nature when you give the pentagon a mission they take all the assets available to the pentagon create a coordinated integrated plan with a unity of command and they're able to execute very efficiently we are not able to do that with the rest of our department no agency that is designed to take command of all the president's house all the executive branch has in expeditionary approach so that you task the different departments to provide assets that respond to an integrated plan that is thoroughly coordinated and then deployed that's that's something new since eleven nine eighty nine that the nation needs to be able to render influence not just military