represents a tiny slice of the muslim experience in the u.s. trying to explain where the ultra-conservative views come from. this ideal at least we've got to get rid of this at least because many of you out so at least i or someone who believes what i did so we had very little in common that they had and i think the pushback is coming not so much from the established media itself because they don't recognize our diversity where the pushback is coming from this social media. social media is where a lot of the voices who don't have room in the list published media coming from so you have consumer media watch set up by muslim women and north america basically come and they have writers from across the world who monitor the way the muslim women are portrayed in the so-called stub bush meant major media. and you have independent writers

who because they don't have a place in this so-called established media they have to go and created online and i am fine with that because i think in a few years that will be the place to go because when i look at egypt i think one of the main drivers of the revolution is what has been happening in the region is the young people who've gone and created spaces for themselves where they've not existed before and they've used as platforms to take on these regimes, so that is what it takes here and if i have to look at the guest of which media as the regime in this country then so be it because it's not happening, we are not creating that space. they might take a muslim reporter war two but still the same story that at the end of the day makes me think of leased line there but i've got another five or ten years before they recognize that dhaka, too and a muslim in this country. >> we have had these large buckets. you did a great job, mona, describing the muslim community and they are diverse in their experiences with a come from culturally as well as ethnically in nationality as well but also exists in the asian-american

community as we all know, so with all this diversity, within this diversity to the question is should they be presenting all of these, is it physically possible, can you do that for these media companies? >> they are representatives of people who live on earth. it's not like -- it's not like somebody is sitting but people on tv that don't reflect the human being or the american population. i think the center on this is why i say it was back to what are we -- what are our values as a country, and whenever we get into those perlstein or we have to go back to the root of we are as a country, i count several as being probably the the era where we have the basic, then we start making decisions that are based on that like yes, there should be african-americans should have equal access to schools, different minorities should have equal access to hospitals. when we go back to the root of

we are as a country and once we establish, we are a representative democracy. and that should be reflected in all the major sectors of our country. and the media should be no different from that. and so it i run a major media company i do think there's a difference between the news and entertainment i won't go all into it here because entertainment is a very finite resource 100 some odd major companies per year. it is hitting the water to get a film made so that is a different discussion. television and news is different. it's not as finite. news i think should reflect the culture, and i think msnbc so far has done the best job of reflecting the way from what happened during the obama administration, before obama

msnbc on a demographic point of view was no different -- was behind cnn to tell you the truth. it was after the obama campaign started kicking up and he became very serious than people who had -- the start of pulling people in from chicago now moving to new york. people who then had access into the world and the obama phenomenon than became -- then they started being put on the air. and i think it's good for that to happen that way. but i think that somebody can be more intentional, and if you were more intentional you would be a big winner. i will give you quickly the converse. i used to work of news corporation, and it was in the very beginning years of fox news. >> still nice guy. don't worry, i got goldman and other stuff landstuhl chongging -- [inaudible] [laughter]

but fox news is in the early stages and that the beginning roger ellis came over from cnbc and he still had his ideology and political views but he was trying to program it has a broad based network. alternately with a decided is forget the broad base, let's just go back to what we do best and what was being done in the u.k., primarily what had been done in australia, and we are going to become the conservative outlet and have diversity point of views within conservatism, and they went from being the last please note this tradition in new york and l.a. to becoming the monster that they are today. and i think msnbc has tried, but it hasn't been falls road, the same thing with cnn. you know, you can't straddled between object -- for objectivity and sound point of view. i think your values shouldn't be a point of view they should be your values, period.

you planned those and then build your company are now those values and i fink within the first media company that says we are a media company within a representative democracy the first one who increases that -- increases that i think will blow the rest of the water because they will have nieces and the different points of view that represent the country as a whole. >> donna, to you. as we see the specialized media, specialized news channels and i mean not only in broadcast but also printed online as a distinguished themselves based on ethnic groups, does that help or hurt the issue we are talking about today which is race in the media? >> for the moment i think it still helps mainly because there is no representation in terms of mass media. so these outlets provide an

opportunity for people to congregate to discuss and engage a around issues that are very relevant in the communities. and i think that too will's point as soon as someone understands you can integrate all of these stories and these people into the fabric of what you're doing and actually gaining broader audiences respected for doing all of those will work and until then it still makes sense for us to have these places that are basically surfacing, stories that are not being seen other places. >> and you're saying there is a time you say that these sorts of ethnic based media organizations may not be seen that way anymore or they will be integrated in or they will buy other companies. >> two things. there will always be the need for people to find the people with like mind and to complicate

and discuss issues. i think double always be the case whether it is drawn on the racial lines, religious lines or whatever, economic lines that will always be the case. but i do believe at the time progressives you will see more integration, you have to see it about the browning of america. if you are going to win in this space you have to begin to look at how to incorporate all these voices, you must to even play long term in this business so i believe over time you will see much more integration but i think it's going to take -- it's the first move. who's going to be the first company? again i think nbc has done a good job in terms of increasing minority managers and employees and raising them throughout the company but i think we need more. and if you look at the other companies, there are very few companies that are really looking at this seriously to figure out how they are going to

win long-term. >> two things come to mind, the arab community in the u.s. right now there's a growing american comedians who started around 2003 and they perform a function very similar to a jewish comedian, and richard pryor and eddie murphy and chris rock facing head-on discrimination for comedy and arab-american communities sold-out a theater on broadway about four or five months ago it was the first time they managed to sell out a broadway theater and was a great moment, and soon after that we began to hear questions should they identify more or should they be canadians -- should they be pigeonholed and that is constantly de dial am i and for

a certain amount of time you do need to identify and work within the so-called pigeonholes because you want to present these diverse spaces but sooner or later you ought to be accepted as arab-american comedians and for the comedian in the muslim community we are not there yet. >> on that point that is the question i was going to ask when we see faces on television often you will see those of certain ethnic backgrounds they would be talking about those specific issues related to their ethnic background, and i think it was brought up earlier by the panel is there a point you think where we can get those faces on air that are talking about muslim american issues, so you will come on and talk about business, for instance, and how do we get there? >> we get there by inviting more and more people on. shaping up rolodex basically because anyone who works in the news industry you know how much time you have and that little time combined with laziness you go to the people you know so it is the same old faces over and over again, the usual suspect so

until we break out and start asking friends of friends, ten french removed who do you know and recommend, unfortunately to break into something like the opinion industry which is what i've been trying to do is incredibly difficult because when you don't have any connection how are you going to get on to these pages and then they continuously say women don't want to leave the want to read the pieces but no one goes to the women when they want an opinion piece written by women and then they complain. it is a catch-22 they get to either way, so you have to start just going to the usual names and just start fresh with people you've never heard before and give them a chance. if they don't have anything to say don't invite them back. i am not saying bring someone who is an expert or an unfair advantage but have them talk about everything because what upsets me when it comes to tv every year something i want for this, we have a piece about what it's like to be muslim and that

person is never asked about anything except what it's like to be a muslim. do they not have an opinion on the elections were on every devotee television? i spend my entire life just thinking that simple. you need to give people a chance and i'm sure we can start speaking so just opening up to more people and you see it happening with other religious groups. the focus on religion, when it comes to catholic issues for example someone who used to be catholic they will focus on someone who has a complicated relationship or talk to some of that single orthodox catholic but when it comes to muslims it's like this and it's not that simple. we are very diverse. muslims just like everybody else come in all shapes and sizes and not just about muslim issues but about a whole bunch of. my opinion about the neighborhood -- >> we can do that next time.

>> is a supply or demand problem? you wrote your having difficulty developing serious reporters and serious times is it a supply problem or is it a demand problem? something i asked myself when i entered the industry as well. some devotees reacting to the success of fox news. and what fox paid is it sold the news and so no every network is selling the news instead of reporting. >> in the stivers sees as supply versus demand. >> this is why we are seeing that so now everybody is, cnn is trying to sell the news come msnbc is on the news, abc, everybody is basically trying to sell the news. so as soon as you try to sell the news to viewers, when you get into the sale mentality what are you doing? i don't want them to report something i don't report, i don't want something on their store shelves that is and online

so you start reacting to everything out there and start getting stories from twitter and according to facebook and seeing me in a chat room, you just start getting caught up on the play-by-play, and when that happens, anybody can be an expert on the subject because you're not talking about anything that the other guys aren't talking about. you don't need experts to basically report what is being sold as news right now. as a result it gets back to what you said which is who is closest to me? who can get down to my studio in the next hour to talk about the story that just broke on twitter that is essentially daytime news right now. a big chunk of it. you know, about what just broke out on twitter, who can get to the next studio in an hour-and-a-half for two hours. so there aren't a set of values for people the media covered or at least it isn't apparent. i think you would change. i really do think when 2012 comes around, i think we will

see kind of beside the point when the campaign kicks off and the coverage happens and the tea party dissipates back to the niche that is the essential when it becomes an interest group essentially to the report showed and when people start seeing the house party, the rally they are going to be like i need people who look like those people to go out and report on this campaign again, and i think you're going to see another influx of pieces that are going to be on cnn and msnbc, you know, for sure, but it would be much better if that the top management level within the media so not just the network, but the owners of the network said listen, all of not accompany we have a mission to diversify from our suppliers to the subscribers that we go after to the customer service, and it will also be true in our entertainment products and who

reports the news, not what you report it is who, and we are going to become a more representative company, and i think once one company makes that statement and they begin to see the benefits of doing that, then i think that will have an impact on the rest of the industry. >> turning the boat a little bit, and i will move into talking about hip-hop and definitely get your view as well as a multiracial movement, and what it's meant to the discussion that we are having today which is race and media. >> he should start with will not one. >> we can start with will and circled back if you would like. >> hip hop and the rule of muslims and arab-americans as well as international hip-hop stars or rap generally because

colin the african revolutions can tell you of rappers in libya and tunisia and egypt and so many countries that have taken mix ackley the value of hip-hop as it started in the u.s. and the late 70's, early 80's, have taken that art form as the main expression against oppression and injustice and underrepresentation and using it in the most passionate way many of us who love the beginning of hip-hop continue so it's been amazing. it's taken it exactly and when you hear the songs now, but stick to nisha for example there is one that is the general and he wraps in arabic. tunisia is known for a lot of people to speak french but they represent the upper middle class existence and those who follow the revolution started by the young man who set himself on fire a working-class town that has nothing to do with french or upper-middle-class existence but

very much to do with the upper representing class nobody's all so this idea to point at the invisible isakson ackley what he was doing, and because of that two or three days into the revolution he was arrested by the regime and after he was released and arrested for the rap basically saying you will meet the day your people will overthrow you and they really did. and soon after he was released his next rap was come on other arab countries we need the resolutions and he's basically passing on the book on to egypt, libya, algeria has we have seen it and now there's a mix tape even the idea of mixed tapes there's a mix tape of rap, revolutionary rap in the middle east and north africa that's exciting so not only is it representing the values but it's now being sung in the language that the average working-class underrepresented person can understand and not the language

of the privileged and affluent and that is exactly the kind of value that it started with. [laughter] >> we don't have a straight up and down hip-hop credit on the panel, so i'm not just going to be as animated as i normally would. but the biggest thing about hip-hop is it is the window of culture so it is people who don't live in the same area who don't have the same life experiences but have the same emotions and are looking at the same will have a common language they can talk to each other, and that has been a movement going on since the 80's until now. like it has literally brought -- when you've show the census, the multiracial statistics, hip-hop is a big part of the reason why the raises have gotten together to the point of the essentially, you know, creating more kids

together. so it has been -- it just has been amazing. but in the same ways -- >> what is the sort of -- >> because here is the biggest problem at least in the 50's, 60's and 70's. anything before the 70's people did not know each other. they did not live together. they didn't talk to each other. white parents didn't want black kids -- they didn't want their kids to go to school together. they didn't know each other. in the deep south, blacks and whites knew each other but only in a subservient relationship, so they didn't know each other as equal and together. so in the 80's, when it became -- it could have happened some like if the rock movement had in the 80's than it would be like rock was this amazing revolution for the races, but it didn't because the races were still separate when the rock revolution happened and what stock happened. there were just starting to come

together but when hip-hop have been the they were just coming together. so it gave people a way to talk to each other. that is the reason why win obama is up and at the time hillary clinton was criticizing him he could just brushed that off the shoulder. an auditorium full of white people went crazy and blacks because they knew what that meant. so he had a lot and they were like this is our president, too. so you could just feel that swaggart and black-and-white and everybody felt it. now here's the limit to hip-hop. it is a social values of some of the way people hang out, we get along, etc.. it isn't a moral value system. like it cannot replace -- it cannot replace what religion, the role religion plays as far as morals. it's about who we are. it can get us to get there but it's not the golden rule. it doesn't tell me how i treat you. and so, for people who think

because it brought people together that now it is a new moral code, it's not. it's a social -- it is hard with a social engineering benefit. it doesn't have the moral benefit. that still has to come from the church. that still has to come from what you believe about the country, your political values. all of those things still have to be put into the individual person. it can't solve that problem, but it's done a lot to bring people together, and it's all over the boat. >> wouldn't use it devolved though significantly from the messages from the 80s and 90s to what you're hearing today? >> it's just at the bottom it's gotten better. because it is more people who are doing it. now people would say in the beginning it was just fun and party. that's not true. in the beginning there were gangs with deejays in the bronx

and you go to a party and it's just go off, turning into mass flights. if you go back to news clips in the 1980's you couldn't go to a show in the quarter without a brooklyn being in the house. when i say brooklyn is in the house and brooklyn comes in and they tore up the ladder in court or as if frank was here he was doing his part in it. [laughter] >> now he is gone you can see that. it's on tape. >> but a big part of it, it was still a lot of angst. it wasn't as pervasive as it is now. so the for the negative effects our people feel now because it's all over they are going to feel it all over. >> two now moving to questions and comments for the panel and anybody that has a question or comment, please. >> the president and ceo of the national puerto rican coalition. i also sit on the board of the hispanic leadership agenda and

the diversity of the council for the abuse corporations. it's interesting when you're talking about. i have a comment and question. my comment is it's very interesting. i've been here all day listening to different panelists and two panels i think are very crucial to the hispanic community, just the politics and the media i haven't seen one hispanic, and i haven't heard about the hispanic experience and that is a little disturbing to me. so that's my comment. maybe it's time for us to start finding the word diversity and maybe that is something to think about. i haven't heard the word of advertising agencies to read advertising agencies i call it with the media is all about because the move that had in the right direction. can you comment on it?

>> who would like to comment? >> i want to be clear on the question. are you stating specifically with your creating in terms of advertising work? >> the control the dollars from the corporations. the advertising agencies tell the corporations where and how to invest in the dollar on the media outlets. so they definitely have a very important role for us to be able to leverage them so than the media outlets will create the demand and supply that. >> i think what's happening in the advertising agency is exactly what we've been talking about in hollywood and what we have had in the news media that there is a lack of representation. if you look at most of these advertising agencies large agencies, most of them at the highest levels have very little diversity. many of the agency's recently started acquiring small warehouses that focus on the hispanic media will focus on african american media or asian media.

but for the most part of the highest level there is very little diversity and that certainly has an impact -- is certainly has an impact on what's being created, the type of advertising that you're seeing, and also has an impact on where those advertising dollars are going. does that answer door question? >> what is your definition of diversity? isn't there a lot of, you know, folks from jewish background in the advertising industry and in the media? that to me is diversity. so diversity, are you talking about color? >> it can represent in many ways certainly better its religion, whether it's race, whether it's economic status. and there is a broad range of ways to look at it. and in the end, the advertising world there are very few minorities and i say minorities i am speaking specifically about ethnic minorities and represented at the highest

levels. >> do you have a follow-up question? >> it's just it seems to me when we are having a conversation about the state of the race in america we keep using the word diversity coming and we use diversity whenever it is convenient to us and really it's time for us to find that word because if we are focusing on differences, then we are always going to perpetuate the problem that the difference exists, and all we do this with spikes that at the beginning. we talk about the same thing over and over and over and maybe it's time to find that terminology so that and everybody starts working from the same foundation. >> hispanic representation as it relates to the media and because in many ways an african-american entrepreneur is look at companies especially when it comes to television, the latinos

are a model minority in the ability to have networks that are across the nation and to go and get specific budgets from the effort pfizer's. >> we can with of the concept like hell are we going to create more houses, right? essentially was the question. the bottom line, if you -- if sponsor comes and they need, or proctor and gamble says we're going to back this showed an mtv or a network will put it on the air almost assuredly. so we went and we tried to put it together. they couldn't get on their side enough johnson & johnson, walgreens.com wal-mart, enough advertisers with in their

portfolio coming into the global media, media holdings and ad agency this isn't a boutique agency this is a major agency and they couldn't get them to come at -- connect to the several million would take to put together on that scale. now they took the same idea and probably you've worked with these guys took the same idea and said we are going to try with of the hispanic community without were latino content. do you know that within 120 days they were able to get nine figures worth of commitment for latino programming and there's many reasons for that, but one is the hispanic community is much more organized when it comes to getting corporate dollars. you won't see it in the film industry or some industries, but when it comes to television,

print, and you have your own distribution, the second player, telemundo -- >> but it isn't hispanic owned. >> but you have to -- i know that's important from the wealth building perspective, but if i am a consumer and at the end of the day tyler perry doesn't own the studios, the theaters in the neighborhoods. i don't dig deep about what percentage owned is lying in state -- lions gate. like i want to see my image, so univision is valuable for consumers. i understand the argument that you're making it at the end of today but i'm saying we had on ideas on shows that were working that couldn't attract advertising dollars and versus shows that were still in theory

that could attract advertising dollars from the latino market, and the answer to that isn't for me to be mad at latinos and for us to get into it over those limited budgets, it's to go back to the core principle which is to say media companies need to tell the advertisers we are going to be represented. across the property is what we produce, who calls the shots we will be represented at the democracy. so when we say diversity that's what we mean. it will reflect the population of the country. >> thank you so much. we've got three more minutes coming up. >> my name is carol gregory, with the economy in a director of communications of special-interest and you talk a bit about the lee zenas of journalists and to point out also and based on the old

business model that started failing and focused it and recognized the and that the internet would have of the social media, the fact that the bloggers of the press controls the news rooms have shrunken terribly and in addition to laziness you have news rooms that were cut in half, print news rooms also cut in half and a lot of the veterans are gone you have very young kids out there telling those stories. i wonder as you're looking -- i think i mentioned in a kind of shot out one econ amine launched something called the public internet channel pic.tv and we have people such as robert townsend who produces program where he can't get that on regular tv but he's doing it on the internet and not just because he can't do it on regular tv but because he's realized so many people are

getting content and it's a strategic move in reaching an audience that's growing. do you think the internet has the capability of being what television might have been 20 years ago for the media and also for entertainment distribution etc. >> i will be very quick and done i can jump in, too. as we move forward as traditional media like "the new york times" and others stop putting the ball the payrolls as budgets become a reality i'm glad you mentioned that because budgets are obviously a consideration. i think the kind of media model we give to start looking at now that isn't on the contentious relationship between traditional mainstream media i think they have to start dancing together. they have to understand the need each other because the budget cuts and because mainstream can't move that far the have to start depending on what has become known as citizen journalists or people who are on a twitter or facebook more and

to offer it very quickly. at the same time those citizens could also use the huge platform that there is a mainstream media type can offer them so this is the model we have to look at. i don't think one or the other is the and to replace the other. it has to be this very paranoid contentious relationship. i think it should be symbiotic and they can look at ways to strengthen each other because that will be the future. i spent my entire day on twittered. if someone can get me on to better i will be there. so this is the model where they learn to dance together rather than combat each other. >> 30 seconds. >> i agree wholeheartedly. basically actually if you look at the recent statistics on online dollars from advertising dollars, they are actually doing more and more toward from print to on-line journalism. also if you look at the online leadership upnews versus print,

46% of americans actually get their news now from online pleases versus the print newspapers so you're saying to see this movement and i'm not saying that no one is right. i think the models are going to be completely different. i think you're going to start seeing different ways to pay for media whether it be micropayments, you might see the subscription models the line excited to see what's going to happen at "the new york times" and recent pay models and a number of different models over the next couple of years until someone gets a right. >> yes, more every day. [laughter] last question, please. >> i just wanted to ask you to say a little bit more about the difficulty responsibility.

the shared responsibility challenge. it to the extent the problem that we face is the structural racism this matter of media representation is a critical part of the problem and dismantling the represent -- changing the representation i think is a critical priority. but could use a a little bit more about how the responsibility towards addressing these images and stereotypes and the representation that we see so often across the media ought to be shared? you talk a little bit about the importance of those who lead these organizations, recognizing the importance of the diversity but can you say more about what you think the responsibility of the consumers are, and also the

folks who participate in these programs who, you know, accept the rules in the movies that are not necessarily positive. can you say and little bit about how you think the balance ought to be struck? >> good comment there. also final words if you could to the panel, and again in about 30 seconds. i apologize as we wind it up here. who would like to start first? >> in terms of -- in terms of what you were asking i think that over the next number of years we're going to continue to see the growing diversity the major media as i mentioned before their must -- there has to be a change at the top level there has to be a change of the sort of bottom levels of what's going on in order for companies to succeed long-term i will tell you a very brief story but a colleague of mine came in the office the other day and he said

you know it's interesting to me? my child just had -- to girls the other day i asked him who they were in fighting over for a sleepover and he said his daughter explained that the girls were really smart and funny and lots of fun and when they got to the house both children were black and his daughter was white and he was absolutely baffled that his title but didn't mention that these two little girls were black. and i think as we look at this nation and we look where we are going as a nation and how we is evolving and changing the people are going to be -- we have to begin incorporating and integrating people from all different religious economic and ethnic backgrounds and in order to be representative because we have a whole generation that's coming up that doesn't see the world in the way that we have seen the world and they have to

be inclusive. >> about the american muslim community, 9/11 was a shock to everybody. muslims included the died in the attack and it made us realize whether we have been in this country or are newcomers to the country than i am it is our responsibility speaking out, and one thing i learned last year during the part 51 debacle according to the polls only 38% of americans say they know a muslim but that is two things to me. they are such a small minority in this country but most americans probably don't think i am a muslim so they wouldn't tell them that they know me as a muslim so my responsibility becomes now it's almost like being gay you try the first three sentences to put into the conversation that you are in muslim. [laughter] so that is my talent now. i will meet complete strangers whether it is in a hotel, breakfast buffet or in a supermarket and we are having a

conversation and within three sentences it is my challenge to let them know i muslim because i want them to go home and say i met a woman who turned out to be muslim and i never would have guessed she was a muslim. so this kind of like we of saying that the american muslim community recognizes we have to speak out more, get out there more, as we now have comedians, writers, actors come active in the rules to your taking and a lot of the actors are speaking out saying no more doing this because they do feed these awful, hateful images people are getting but also the community is learning to write when the ca eight full story. the community in the campaign. it is kind of grass-roots stuff but the community and all of its diversity is learning. the african american muslim community knows it very well because the have been facing discrimination as blacks in this country for centuries. we as the newcomers to this country was immigrant ascent must learn more from our african-american muslim brothers and sisters and all the others

in the community, from the asian community, the jewish community, all communities we have so much to learn that the biggest thing is to just speak out and speak out louder. >> the individual always has the ultimate responsibility for their choices in their lives, period. i just think that's a fact. when did you get into the public square and you're talking about media and government, etc., then those entities also have a responsibility. and so that's the reason why i take the point of view that the media has responsibility but i'm super optimistic because even in my adult lifetime wilder left office in virginia and people like will there ever be another black governor? it was over, like the government

there's a black president and he's not even done with a first term and they are saying will there ever be another black president? so i just think -- i'm pretty optimistic on all these questions and in the media in particular i just want to be a part of it which is the reason why i'm an entrepreneur and by immelt and active and i just believe that my -- when my kids grow up they will be able to play in a pretty much everything all over the globe. i just think there's an opportunity now if the media company would seize it. >> will griffin, thank you so much, donna as welcome impressive and so open about ale

president here at the center for american progress. this is the first of two panels that we're going to be doing on afghanistan today, and it's part of a series. it's april 2011, we're coming up on the ten-year mark of this fall in afghanistan, and so i think it's a time both to focus on current activities in the theater, but also to start asking questions in terms of the lessons learned. the ten-year milestone of combat activities is a bit unique in terms of the armed forces of the united states in terms of time and length. and so we have with our program

here today, part one will look at counterinsurgency and some of the lessons learned on the security side. and then panel number two, which will be chaired and moderated by our colleague at the center, dr. larry korb and jeff lawyer rememberty of the century foundation, they'll be talking on their recent study that included tom pickering, other senior diplomats of which larry was one of the members of the panel. they'll be looking at the prospects for dialogue and negotiation. so if you will, talking, fighting or somewhere in between seemed to be the two segments that we're going to be discussing today. now, in terms of this panel we've got two very distinguished participants, and we're going to sort of get them going, and i don't think i'll have to be a referee too much of the time.

but i think that there are clear opinions and strong arguments on both sides. but i think our focus today is not necessarily to relive the past, but instead to understand the lessons for the future. so, first, our guest dr. john nagl, is the president of the center for a new american security. he's also a member of the defense policy board where we both serve, also served on the congressional commission to look at the quadrennial defense review where we both, both worked together. a graduate of west point, he's written books, he's been on a lot of very impressive academic groups in his career. a teacher also. and has been an adviser to some of our current military leaders in the field. so, john nagl, welcome to the

center for american progress. >> pleasure to be here, rudy. >> and, of course, my other colleague here at the center, brian katulis, our senior fellow with a focus, really, on u.s. national security in the middle east and south asia. brian has served as a consultant to numerous u.s. government agencies, private entities, nongovernmental organizations, projects in more than two dozen countries including iraq, pakistan, afghanistan, yemen, egypt and colombia. from 1995 to 1998, he lived and worked in the west bank and on the gaza strip, in egypt for the national democratic institute for international affairs. he has a master's degree from princeton's woodrow wilson school of public and international affairs and a ba in history and arab studies from villanova. so thank you, brian, for being

engaged here. two very capable men, two regional experts. and so what i'm going to do is just to start this program by asking each of them to offer a general assessment on the status of current activities in afghanistan. john? >> thanks, rudy. great to be here. i would, i would take minor exception to one thing you said, if i can. i would not bill myself as a regional expert but a long-time student of counterinsurgency with an interest in afghanistan. but i make no claims to be an expert on that country. i've been watching and working on afghanistan for a number of year now but not a regional expert. that said, the principles of counterinsurgency are being applied in afghanistan, i think, to a pretty high degree. my general assessment of the situation is that we are seeing

a fragile but reversible gains, but i think clear gains. what i'd like to do, if i can, is run down the operation and the counterinsurgency campaign and just make a quick assessment against each of those. these came from an article written by major general pete chiarelli, we've used his analysis, stole shamelessly from it as we were writing the army/marine corps counterinsurgency field manual, and general chiarelli came up with six lines of operation. combat with operations and civil security operations, building host nation security forces, providing essential services to the population -- giving them good governance -- promoting economic development. all of that wrapped up in a comprehensive operations campaign. those are the six lines that a counterinsurgency force tries to follow as it conducts one of these campaigns. just making a quick assessment against eachover those.

combat operations and civil security operations we're showing fairly remarkable progress, i would say. the classic, clear/hold/build counterinsurgency strategy is working well where we have sufficient forces on the ground, and really sort of the broad overview of my argument is that we didn't really start a counterinsurgency campaign in afghanistan until 2009. it was very much an economy of force effort. we took our eyes off that ball really as early as late 2002 and didn't refocus on afghanistan and give it the resources it needed until 2009. so the campaign, in a lot of ways, really started at that point, and we've -- we're able to put forces on the ground we are able to conduct effective civil security operations. similarly, nation security forces, dramatic progress. really since lieutenant general bill caldwell took charge of

that effort in november 2009, and we've seen a dramatic increase in the quantity, but also increasingly in the capability of afghan security forces, and that's incredibly important. ultimately, we are going to hand off responsibility to an afghan government and to afghan security forces, so we have to have something to hand off to. i think we've made real progress there. those are the only two lines that are military lines. the other four are not primary military responsibilities and, frankly, they haven't been as successful. we are still providing fairly limited essential service to the population, security being the most essential service. but access to the necessities of life is still very much a problem for the afghans. their governance is improving very slowly from a very, very low base. economic development is actually a good news story. double-digit growth rates in afghanistan really for the past ten years. from, again, a very, very low

base but fairly remarkable achievements there. cell phone penetration in afghanistan has gone from zero to well over 50% in the last ten years. and that is an important part of how information is transmit inside that country. this, i think, probably the area we're least effective both on the ground in afghanistan and here in the united states in the terms of communicating what it is we're trying to accomplish and demonstrating progress toward those goals. so that's my general assessment of the counterinsurgency campaign. gradual progress more marked on the military side and with real problems in governance. i'll be interested to see what brian thinks. >> great. thanks, rudy. and before i start i would be remiss not to mention our colleagues carolyn and katherine who have worked in partnership with larry, and we've got a

great team and a great series here, and we're glad that you're all here, and we're honored to have john here to take part in this discussion. i agree with much of what just john said and what i'll offer are complimentary observations about what's going on and then raise some broader points about the sustainability. of the strategy which, i think, is really important. i think it's pretty clear and we all read the same newspapers that there are improvements in the security situation in certain parts of afghanistan. in the southern part of the country, and it's no surprise to me, we have the finest fighting force the world has ever known. you put them in a place, it will have an impact. and i think we've seen that in multiple occasions around the world. that said, we do have a deteriorating security situation in other parking lots of the country, and if you -- parts of the country, and if you judge this based on the core metric of counterinsurgency and, john, you wrote an article with nate

thicke at the start of the obama administration which highlighted and reminded folks what counterinsurgency was. and it placed a premium on protecting the population and the civilians over killing the enemy. now, if you judge just based on that metric and look at 2010, 2010 was a very bad year for protecting the civilians of afghanistan, was the worst year, i think, since we've been in the country. and i think 2011 will be a moment of truth. that said, and i think it's important to highlight that the 2700 or so afghan civilians who were kill inside violence in afghanistan in 2010, the vast majority of them were killed by the insurgents which, i think, will lead us into a deeper discussion about how you implement counterinsurgency, whether we have the capacity to do that and are we about to turn the corner as many people had argued, say, in the middle part of 2007 in iraq. but i would say that there are

two main impediments that i think have been identified all along in the obama administration from all of this assessments from bruce riedel to the commander's assessment, general mcchrystal and others. two major impediments; pakistan and weak governance and corruption in afghanistan. here we are today two years later, and i would argue that we're not much further along in that. and we have serious questions about the sustainability of the effort in afghanistan if we were to even leave or start to leave in 2011 with the goal of handing over security by 2014 which is the current plan whether things that we're helping to create will exist, and i know we'll get into this. there's also a broader question of the sustainability of a counterinsurgency effort which, as you know, began in earnest in 2009, but we'd been on the ground since 2001, 2002. and i think we'll get into this, i think, deeper in the discussion, but i think a lot of

people are asking the question from a strategic level whether the costs actually are worth the benefits that it provides to u.s. national security interests. and i think that's sort of the deeper discussion. i know we'll talk about the tactics and the operations and different pieces. so, in essence, i think that we are still not out of the woods yet. i know we all look forward and commanders and people at the white house look for some sort of catch phrase. i think we're not certain in terms of where we are. there's an improved security situation in a certain part of the country, but the real question i'd like to focus on is the sustainability of this. are we doing things that will actually last in the long run, and then secondly, will those things accrue to the benefit of u.s. national security interests. and i think those two questions are still very much open questions. >> thanks, brian and john, for getting us going. you know, let me put one question out there that i think you'll both agree on, and that

brings us to the current budget deliberations that are going on on the hill. i think one of the things that we've learned that is a crucial component that complements our armed forces when they deploy are the career civilians that are at the state department and the u.s. agency for international development. they play a critical role, and i note their budget -- secretary gates has talked to john nagl and myself about this. you know, the role of the diplomatic side and the career civilians on the agency for international development turn out to be key partners in this. it's been an initiative that both secretary clinton and secretary gates have spoken to, but i'd ask just before we really get in to strategies and lessons learned the criticality and what these budget cuts may mean to the long-term effort. >> this is, rudy's absolutely right, this is something we

absolutely have not gotten right as a nation. counterinsurgency is not primarily military, as even general chiarelli's article pointed out that we drew from when we wrote the manual. unfortunately, only the military has the resources to operate in these conflict zones, and we have not properly resourced the civilian agencies who have greater background knowledge, greater and different skill sets in some of these areas. and so we're left with military forces doing this all too often. we had, i think, a remarkable opportunity with the quadrennial diplomacy and development review launched by secretary clinton very early in her leadership of the state department. the qddr, i think, makes a pretty compelling argument for more resources, not fewer, for the state department and for usaid. unfortunately, in the current budget climate it looks as if it's dead on arrival, and that

is an enormous risk to the progress, the fragile reversible gains we have made thus far in afghanistan. the budget numbers i just saw this morning, took a look at morning for the proposed cuts to the state department and to usaid put at risk all of the gains that general petraeus and his team, mcchrystal, mckiernan before them, have worked so hard to lock down for so many years. is and so i couldn't be more -- and so i couldn't be more emphatic in agreeing with secretary gates and secretary clinton that this kind of war fight, a state department foreign service officer, a development specialist from usaid may be even more important than a soldier with boots on the ground. and we've got to get this right as a nation. we have not done that yet. >> i agree with that. we've been talking about that, though, for about five or six years now. and if we warrant going to assemble -- weren't going to assemble the political will and the courage to actually make

those investments when we had a raging civil war in iraq, and if we're not going to make those investments while we've got 100,000 troops on the ground in afghanistan, i remain skeptical that we're going to get action out of congress. i agree with you, it should happen. but this is a function, i think, of having extended conflicts that go on for years at a time while at a time we've got economic troubles here at home. i really don't end i have some of our former -- envy some of our former colleagues and others in government who are trying to implement the civilian surge which i think is really an important part of what we were trying to get right in afghanistan. at the start of the obama administration, we had about 300 personnel, civilian personnel who were working for the state department and usaid. and what they, in essence, have done is more than tripled the presence on the ground to about 91100 -- 1100 at this point. i went out in the fall of 2009 to camp attar bury with jack lew, the deputy secretary of

state. and this is a camp where we were finally training people who were going out to serve on prts and other things, and i think it was an admirable effort. i think it was very important. but one thing that struck me was perhaps this was a little too late and a little too late. we talk so much about having civilian agency personnel who should b be deployable, but the simple pact of the -- fact of the matter is the way these agencies are structured, they don't have the time to prepare for deployment in the way that military personnel do. i have friends who work in these agencies who are pulled away to offer training for some of these individuals, and the training program is often quite short compared to one we send our military personnel out there. you look at the budget systems and how things were handled. state department has 31/61 system for hiring short-term, temporary hires or usaid foreign service limited. these sorts of things, i think, these details are important because not getting that straight or forcing our civilian

agencies to rely on temporary measures makes it very difficult to create a strategy that is sustainable in and of itself. and i know we're going to get to the problems on the ground in afghanistan and with our afghan partners, but it's not just about resourcing. at its core it is resourcing, but even if the money were available, there needs to be a systemic rethink in the civilian agencies at this point that haven't had to deal with how do you rotate individuals in the large numbers just getting to that 1100 in terms of personnel. it took a lot of beg, borrowing and stealing. and there's tremendous talent and energy. they know the country, a lot of these people. but there are operational details how how can they get out and how well is strategy on civilian coordinated. and it should give us pause that more than five or six years into this push for smart power -- and it's been that, you know, this wasn't a creation of the obama administration, essentially when

secretary gates came into office there was a much more stronger emphasis on this -- yet we haven't done it yet. and given where we are right now in a very uncertain period in afghanistan and given where we are in an uncertain moment politically here at home, i think it's fair to raise these skepticisms that our members of the congress and senate will actually come back with even stronger support than they've not offered to this point. >> i think that's a fair comment, brian. i note that if we were talking with critical decision makers, in this case army captains or majors, or we went over and polled a class at the national defense university of u.s. service members who have served in the theater, at the top of their list of critical requirements would be more, more of the diplomatic and the usaid personnel. i think each marine that i've talked to has got a story. and so it is one of those disconnects. and, actually, it precedes

secretary gates in this tour. we could go back to the late '80s and even to the '90s in particular and find at the time the civilians and their component was called operations other than war. and it was a particular dod acronym. but one of the things in the post-combat stage that is so critical is the development not just simply of security institutions, and we'll talk about that because we should be training a police force and a military force right now, but it's creating administrative authorities that can apply justice and have remedies and that create long-term structures that have sort of make the gains that our military personnel are accomplishing now to make those gains irreversible later on. let me, then, ask john looking

back on the approximately 16 months since the president's second troop surge in afghanistan and focusing particularly on security and the military component, what changes have we seen that are positive, what are negative? what parts of the surge have worked and what parts haven't? >> and i've already mentioned a little bit our ability to conduct wide-area security, to control increasingly with the surge troops in the south in helmand we've created bubbles of security that we are now spreading out. and it's really classic counterinsurgency. we clear the taliban out of an area, it's a very tough fight, and then are able slowly to expand the classic oil spot of security with batallion commanders breaking their units down into very small teams, 12-marine teams spread across a

much broader area and then integrating them with afghan security forces. so the process is working. we're seeing some good examples of it on the ground. rajiv had a front page piece in the post on sunday that talked to to some of the successes that he's seeing on the ground. so clear/hold/build works when we resource it properly. enormously resource-intensive and the most important resource, of course, we're spending in afghanistan, the lives of our young men and women. we're at about 1500 u.s. kill inside action, more than 10,000 hurt over the past ten years of fighting there. and our allies have taken about another thousand killed. the brits most, the single largest foreign component of those losses. so this is slow, hard, grinding war. and it's always been that way,

and it always will be that way. that is, that is no surprise. the, one of the interesting things that's happened that we're seeing in afghanistan that we started to see in the later years in iraq is that our focused counterterrorism operations against, initially against high-value targets and then as we've brought more resources over to afghanistan particularly from iraq but also some we're continuing to build our capabilities here in the united states, we're getting more unmanned orbits up, we're getting better at colating different sources of human intelligence, electronic intelligence. we're increasingly able to target individuals very precisely, build cases against them before we have them in custody and then visit them with a much higher degree of precision than has ever been the case before. and this is an innovation that i think general mcchrystal, stan mcchrystal is owed an awful

lot of credit for, and that's changing the dynamics inside the insurgency on the ground. and i think as we -- anytime you're evaluating a combat situation, you have much greater visibility of the costs for your side than you do have visibility into what's happening on the other side. and we're starting to get a better picture of what's happening inside various taliban cells. news reports have indicated that the taliban is now having a hard time replacing it mid-level leaders. people are being offered promotions and not accepting them because the life span of their predecessors as free acts on the -- free agents on the battlefield is so short. so we're getting very good at disassembling terror networks from outside. there are costs as well as benefits of that. a lot of those mid-level leaders are people we'd actually like to talk with as we work on reconciliation and reintegration.

we'll talk more about that later, i think. but this is, i think, a real innovation in the counterinsurgency campaign of being able to identify, track, target, locate and remove from the battlefield individuals with a pretty high degree of precision, and we're so much better at it that it's almost a difference, a qualitative difference in the fight on the ground. of. .. much larger number of afghan

soldiers on the ground for a million dollars invested than we do an american. every american soldier on the ground costs about a million dollars a year. that $10 million we're spending on afghan security forces this year is only 10% of the total we're investing in afghanistan. i would argue it is actually the most important in terms of enabling and allowing an exit strategy. we're making progress on professionalizing these forces. over the last year we built service schools. we're teaching them how to fire artillery. training and educating helicopter pilots. we are making fairly, real progress and it is going to be a very long-term effort but i think american advisors required for a number of years. i want to just point to one of the real factors of difficulty. the literacy rates in afghanistan are simply deplorable and what we found is that to train people to be soldiers we have to teach

them how to read and write and literally first grade level, third grade level, are the we're trying to achieve. first grade for soldiers. third grade for noncommissioned officers. it is impossible to have a modern army even an army that fight as counterinsurgency campaign in afghanistan if they can't read and write and can't take notes. if they can't read the serial number on their rifle. interestingly we're getting better teaching them how to read and write. we find it is an extraordinary retention advantage. they desperately want to know how to read and write. the ability to do so and promise of additional school something one of the factors that led to increased retention recently. i will say two more things and then yield. we are increasingly starting to build a program called afghan local police. local village militia forces. this is traditional effort

in counterinsurgency campaigns. there is always a danger the militia will have loyalties other than to the afghan government. we played this game before and we're getting better at this process. this pilot is showing real progress in increasing number of boots on the ground. finally we're seeing great results from partnering with afghan units once they're formed. we're partnering american, nato, other allied units with them and conducting joint operations at a much higher rate than we used to, all in an effort to increase the afghans learning curve in order to make it a realistic possibility we'll be able to hand over security responsibility to them in the lead for most, if not all of their country by the end of 2014. >> okay. we're going to go, i'm going to ask brian a question. we're going one more round of long answers and tighten it up a little and go back and forth. i feel like i'm back where i was when i was a young

staffer at the armed services committee and cap weinberger was taking whole time for giving the answer. we're going to give brian one long answer here and we're going to start to see the differences. >> okay. >> you know, pakistan and then the governance in afghanistan clearly, as hard as our military men and women are working, pakistan and the governance questions in afghanistan remain. brian, you've been an election observer in pakistan but particularly most recently in the 2009 presidential elections in afghanistan. and so, give us your assessment on how afghanistan's political and governance challenges sort of intersect with our own security objectives in the theater. >> well, it's clear. this is the weakest part of the strategy and we agree with this. everything that john just articulated with the

investment. and quite massive invests for a country the size of afghanistan to invest, 10 billion in the security forces. when the government itself, the afghan government has a budget of 3 to 4 billion each year. serious sustainability questions of investing that amount of money, upwards of $100 billion the u.s. effort will be this year. and whether this money is actually having the impact. i think it's fair to raise the question, is more better in a place like afghanistan on both the security and then also on the governance and economic development front? i want to highlight the second piece of this i came back from afghanistan in 2009, really struck with one central question. do we have a partner in the afghan government at multiple levels? we observed that election, stayed engaged on i think the extensive efforts to try to build governance and democracy in these electoral systems and the institutions.

this often sound soft but very much the thing we were talking about earlier. it is the fabric to which these security organizations, the police and army, need to connect to at some point for it to sustain itself going back to that question of sustainability. and i think even more than two years into this there are serious questions about not only the capacity because there's challenges of capacity but also the willingness and the political intention of some of our partners in the afghan government. look at the kabul bank fiasco, the country's largest bank i think was just taken over by the central bank. nearly a billion dollars in assets, money was use in there, to buy property in dubai by some people who were part of the leadership in afghanistan. money was sent in these campaigns including the campaign that we witnessed in 2009, to develop patronage networks in there. dexter fikkins of "the new

york times" has done great reporting on the ground. he said no longer enough to say the corruption permeates the afghan state. corruption by and large is the afghan state. if we have hundreds of millions of dollars in the keybanc which u.s. taxpayer money has gone through to help pay for afghan civil servants salaries and to pay for some of the afghan national security forces, if we can't account for that money and this doesn't even talk about sort of all of the other flows that are going out there through usaid, through commander emergency response funds. i have yet to see a comprehensive assessment i think of the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction offered sort of tactical assessments but i haven't seen an overall assessment of the resources that have been committed over the last two years and measuring the effects of those resources particularly on the governance structures. there is a very strong argument to be made that the

strategy which is now centered on a counterinsurgency strategy, we're using our resources and our power as a weapon against us inadvertently. we're not obviously trying to do that. we're trying to identify gaps and whols in the strategy. we have a senior commander working on anti-corruption initiatives but there's a serious question i think that is out there, do we have a seriousness of purpose from our afghan partners that i know most of, all of our troops, most of our troops share out there. people are serving in the u.s. government. i think this is why we go back to that question why can't we get political support on capitol hill? there's this question of the viability of all of this. that if the two big gaping holes that have been repeatedly identified, the rural pakistan and afghan governance and their political institutions those two big gaping holes, if those two aren't fundamentally addressed doesn't make sense to continue on the current path and current strategy.

it doesn't line up with the president's stated objectives, disrupt, dismantle and defeat al qaeda in both afghanistan and pakistan. i know we need a separate panel, i know this is my long answer here but i think pakistan is the biggest complication. my only observation there is that i fear that our strategic focus has been flipped in the wrong direction. i know we're in afghanistan because we've been there and we need to get right. but when i go to pakistan and i see what is happening in pakistan nearly every single day, the news this morning they test ad surface-to-surface missile that is capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. their nuclear arsenal is growing. the cooperation, there has been a real serious attempt by the obama administration to enhance that cooperation is breaking down with the pakistani government. i fear we're out of balance. i said this several times. i fear we're focused on hamlets and villages in southern afghanistan when the real threat potentially to u.s. national security interests is across the border. that we've got an imbalance

of resources in both terms of money and senior leadership attention. >> okay. so that sort of frames it. because on one hand you've got discussion of a strategy that if you resource the security side and you have enough troops in country they're capable of having a significant impact. on the other you've got, let's just right now for this round focus on the vulnerability with pakistan, sort of being both a sanctuary and a safe haven. i talked to some of our military folks and they distinguish a sanctuary where actually your adversary can go hide and be protected versus a safe haven where the adversary can go across the border and because nobody's there, they're essentially using the international boundary to, you know, to get away from the u.s. forces.

but, with pakistan being a place of sanctuary and safe haven, can the clear, hold, build ever work, no matter how well it's resourced in afghanistan? john? >> this is now short answer to that? >> short answer. >> short answer, save the hard question for the short answer. pakistan is in my eyes the most dangerous place in the world for the united states. it has, faces an extraordinary combination of a number of internal insurgencies. it is the home base for al qaeda central. weak democracy. large number and growing number of nuclear weapons as brian mentioned. it has over time, i think, come to recognize and it, speaking of pakistan as one entity is ludicrous simplification. there are fractals and wheels within wheels inside pakistan but increasingly i think members of the

pakistani military, the pakistani intelligence service, the governing elite in the country are coming to recognize that the insurgent forces which they created which they have supported in many ways as an insurance policy against, against an afghanistan that is ruled by india, is closely in india's orbit, that insurance policy they have created and funded is increasingly turning against them. and we literally, daily see evidence of attacks on pakistani civilians, on pakistani government targets, conducted by the some of these pakistani militant groups. so we've seen slow, halting, very, two steps forward, one step back progress, i believe by the pakistani government in terms of clearing and holding the swat river valley. south waziristan. promises and clear and hold

north waziristan were upset by the flooding and interestingly, just over the weekend, very high level delegation of pakistanis to kabul to talk with president can karzai about reconciliation and reintegration about the possibility of bringing the war to some sort of negotiated settlement that at the very highest levels. so general kiani, the head of the pakistani military. the pakistan is a classic friend and enemy. it is, its actions will ultimately, are ultimately likely to be prove decisive inside afghanistan and there are glimmers of hope there i think and i'm going to be interested to see if brian thinks those glimmers are too hopeful? >> i'm very pessimistic these days about pakistan. i was more bullish i would say a year or so ago. i think the breakdown that we're seeing between the u.s. and pakistan on

security coordination is very real and i think it is multifaceted. and i think there's nothing we can do but continue to work that issue. we will never have boots on the ground or substantial boots on the ground in pakistan. we need to work those relationships as best we can and understand that the fissures are very real within the pakistani government. we know the civilian and security divide but there are serious divisions within the security agency too. understanding who is doing what and understanding that game i think is more essential than most of what we're doing in afghanistan at this point. i know you might disagree with that but from the perspective the u.s. national security interests, when you look at groups like the remnants of al qaeda, a range of groups that have free reign in pakistan. the simple fact of the matter it is not only how they assess their own security situation, it is also who they see as potential force multipliers and how they see the threats around them. and i've been in the isi

headquarters, in islamabad a number of times including, in 2009 and it's clear we're not on the same page. and it's not easy i think for people at the most senior levels of the u.s. government to understand what the pakistani security establishment inches tension is even at this phase. i don't know. i know, i understand your analysis of how this visit this weekend may be an opening but i'm not so certainty stage because we've had previous openings and previous exchanges at this point and one of the fundamentals is, you know, the security situation itself in pakistan has deteriorated. there is this lack of coordination i talked about where we have talked to senior pakistani security officials who say look, in addition to the drone strikes which for the most part privately they will say they're in favor of, they're dealing with a serious threat, we don't have serious coordination on the eastern side of afghanistan border. there is concern that part

of the strategy implemented by mcchrystal, people often talked about sort of our surge being a hammer-and-anvil with our forces being the hammer pushing them against some sort of anvil in pakistan. they have the same sort of perception that if they were to strike in certain places and there were a number of operations on the western border of pakistan, mostly, you know, surprised to hear that the pakistani air force actually conducts more bombings themselves on their population and their threat than we do drone strikes. there have been significant costs. but there is this perception that, okay, well, if we're hitting the threat in pakistan inside our borders why have you withdrawn some of your troops from the eastern part of afghanistan? i don't know who is correct but there is clearly as we were implementing the surge in afghanistan a lack of coordination and a lack of common understanding of the threat perceptions. to answer your question, this is very long, no, i

don't think we'll actually see stability in afghanistan without getting on the same page with pakistan. we may be heading there at some point but the recent metrics i see are pointing in the wrong directions for u.s. pakistan cooperation. >> one more word about that i want to give a shoutout to admiral mullen who worked this enormously hard. pretty much every month he is there or kayani is here. he put enorm murs personal resources in this stressing importance he plays on it. his departure from joint chiefs of staff later this year which will be a number of transitions that will dramatically affect the conduct of our operations in afghanistan and pakistan. you know we lost ambassador holbrooke. replaced with general grossman. general petraeus likely to leave later this year. rumors he will be replaced by lt. general allen of the marines. interesting choice. he played a very large role developing reintegration options in iraq.

general rodriguez, general petraeus's deputy will be replaced this year. rumors general eikenberry may also be rotating out. huge changes in both the leadership and political and military level over a fairly short period of time and those personal relationships that those officers foreign service officers, military officers, developed in afghanistan and pakistan are some of the most important assets we have in this fight and so that period of transition over the course of this year is i something to watch very carefully. >> so, okay. at least you're talking back and forth to each other now. so we're not -- so when i started i said here we are. it's april 2011. now tora bora where we had the safe havens and sanctuaries of pakistan, are an issue in 2001, 2002.

so we've known about this problem on the pakistani side now, it will be a decade, decade very soon. so we've got this conflict. you know it is almost straight out of the hollywood movie where the bad guys is right across the boundary and our respect of international law, you know, we don't follow into those safe havens and sanctuaris. so on one hand we've got our troops struggling, working very hard, making an enormous sacrifice and on the other we continue to have this back door that's a problem. here we come up now to two dates, july 2011, and then 2014 as the nato-announced end of sort of the military phase in afghanistan. so, you know, how do these

two dates come to play you know, still given these uncertainties? and this is no great illumination. this is woodward's book. this is, you know, these are the earlier studies. these are "the new york times" reporting on tora bora and the cornering of osama bin laden only then to be waved off by the tribal leaders saying we've got it from here. i think john's right. i think admiral mullen has been hugely significant on his senior military to military relationships not only in pakistan but in egypt. but we're thinner at the, sort of the field grade officer which are so critical on the decision-making. so let's take this tension point between, sort of the clear, hold, build on the security side, the

sanctuaries and safe havens on the other and then the approaching july 2011 and 2014 decisions. how do you start to reconcile and balance your opportunity cost versus the blood and treasure that is being expended every day? >> i don't think that the july 2011 date means much more these days, except for the beginning of a transition. i think, it is my view we need to be serious about this transition phase and defining what transition actually means. we had a panel here about a month or so ago, caroline was on and your colleague david, here we are, starting a transition but nobody fully defined metrics for what that transition means clearly from a security and importantly from a governance standpoint. and i'm a timeline guy. i have said and i know people dispute that i think it is an honest debate to be had. i honestly think many people in this administration

believe you need time lines to focus not only the minds of leaders like karzai, but also to focus the agendas and strategies of large bureaucracies that won't move. so a lot of the problems that i think we talked about, with the governance and corruption and other things i think, if used properly, and you have to be careful about how you balance all of this, you don't, certainly want to leave the methods that you're just going to abandon carelessly everything we invested for a period of time. but i think the most dangerous thing for to us do at this point is to continually go back and ask for more time because why? it actually fosters this dangerous and i think dysfunctional culture of dependency that feeds and fuels the problems that we have on the ground right now. and that i do think, i know we're not talking about the past but in iraq there was a confluence of forces that helped contribute to greater stability and then also

iraqi ownership and leadership of that and managing it and having all of these pieces and attributing sort of security success and still do this date, quite limited political success, to not only our own resources but how we use those resources to motivate leaders to take charge like we saw with maliki. i think a real key component in this period of 2011, if this is start of transition to 2014 how do you shape calculus like a man like karzai and foester leadership. how do you foster new leadership that come after him? i know people are talking about this in various working groups and thinking about it. it is a very hard thing to do especially as i said, expending a lot of resources that can not be absorbed like a small and poor country like afghanistan. how do you focus the minds of these leaders? i think this period should be used as a period i think to help build the security forces. do what we can to build, help build governance because, at the core, i

think one question is political legitimacy in these societies and how a leader becomes legitimate. but i think there's, a key dynamic here to use this moment to focus the minds of the leadership in afghanistan, the leadership in pakistan to send a signal that we are serious about drawing down our resource support and that means greater responsibility on your part and facilitating that through diplomacy. to send a signal to our bureaucracies that we are serious about moving forward with this transition. and then importantly i think the cost is a huge issue because, as we talked about many times before, we won't be aable to continue to spend the levels we've been spending in wars like afghanistan. >> this is probably the clearest point of distinction between brian and myself, so far at least, stand by, there may be more but i would argue that president karzai's mind is pretty sharp and pretty focused already. the concern i have is that he has been playing general

kayani has been playing for the day after the americans leave. i think that was a misinterpretation in the region of the july 11 date which i do think is going to be the beginning of a transition but was viewed by many people in theater in the region as a complete pullout sort of date. i think that lisbon resolved a lot of those fears but i do think that the reality of lisbon is just now being digested. one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing that is going to happen in afghanistan this year i expect a strategic partnership declaration between the united states and afghanistan leading to a long-term security relationship between the two countries. and once that is signed and the region digests a long-term security relationship between the u.s. and afghanistan, that i think is going to change further change the calculus of the players in the region. and i see a very long tail

to our involvement in afghanistan. i see advisory and assistance presence long past 2014. and i think that the american people will support that as long as american casualties are low and they can see the progress is being made and i agree that the july of this year date is the start of a drawdown. i think we could have a lot of debate over what the slope of that is going to be. i think that putting a strategic framework declaration is starting to think now about what after that, that slope levels off at the end of 2014, what that force is going to look like of some 10,000, 15,000, largely advisors, intelligence assets, air force assets. i think that will go a long way toward helping everybody make their long-term calculations for what the state of play is going to be. >> chair's prerogative.

help me. is the, lisbon, you're right, less emphasis on july 2011 but definite emphasis to 2014 is the end of the nato combat operation. are you saying that 014 2014 is a firm date or maybe just another date that's thrown out there? >> the lisbon declaration said that by the end of 2014 afghan security forces would be in the lead throughout the country. and that date actually came from president karzai. that's his goal and his objective and i think in some breaks coming our way, i think that is likely but the end of combat operations as we've seen in iraq which happened in august of last year does not mean that withdrawal of all american troops. in fact we've had 50,000 troops in iraq conducting advise and assist missions. there is some possibility they will be asked by the

iraqi government to stay longer in iraq and secretary gates indicated he would be likely to view that favorably. i think in the same way we're going to see a long-term advise and assist presence in afghanistan with, again in s had. alah a small number of u.s. casualties but continuing to develop the afghan ability to govern themselves and secure themselves. >> okay. so one of the things that has been unique about the status of force agreement in iraq is that for the, which was concluded in december 2008, is that it's almost been a formula type exit and it has been very smooth and the transfer of authorities, very, very clear-cut. would it be your view that this security arrangement between the united states and afghanistan would be similar and would spell out the transition from nato to afghanistan forces, or would

there be more ambiguity? >> i don't think this strategic partnership declaration will have that. i think those will be separate documents which will be negotiated differently. this is purely a u.s.-afghanistan relationship document. the nato handover i think is going to be conducted in a different forum but i do think the reason they handover has been so smooth is that the political situation on the ground changed fairly dramatically by the end of 2008 in iraq and allowed for the smooth transition and drawdown we've seen since then. it is going to be important that not just that the capabilities of the afghan governance and security forces improve between now and 2014 but also that the taliban becomes less capable over that same time period. we're doing some pretty good work in making that happen. >> if i would add, it is not just the security agreement but in iraq also there was a separate strategic framework agreement which sent the signal of enduring support and cooperation on a range

of issues including police and security work and the state department and also economic development in a range of things. the state department, now the ball is starting to be in their court especially if this transition is executed. i'm not so certain iraqis may ask us to stay around for number of political reasons related to their own environment. . .

>> the incentive structures were quite different, and i think most people understand and, again, there's a range of issues, and it wasn't just about the introduction of additional u.s. forces. there were a number of factors that at this day in april 2011 i don't see present b in afghanistan pushing the reconciliation or reintegration at two different levels, pushing people into a political process. nor do i expect that it would when you rook at electoral processes like we've just seen in 2009 and 2010 or when you look at the rampant corruption among afghan officials and just the waste of resources. so that's a substantially different, i think, dynamic which relates to both countries' different histories and sort of their experiences with governance which, i think, presents a strategic challenge for even moving forward with long-term security agreements if we don't know who our partner's going to be, you know, in the long run after 2012, 2014. >> so i would now like to open up the program to questions from

the audience. we've got half an hour the go. to go. and so we'll start with this gentleman against the glass wall in the corner. >> thank you, gentlemen. my name is john. i want to ask, if you wouldn't mind if i not state my agency because i'm expressing personal perspectives here, but i did spend four years in afghanistan, just got back again several weeks ago. brian, my mindset is pretty much along the lines what you're talking about. and, john, i agree with a lot of what you said, but i want to challenge you just on a couple of key points, and that's i don't believe we are really doing a coined strategy there. and this might be something in your studies and with the officials that you talk to to explore that a bit. certainly, at the strategic level mcchrystal, petraeus, a lot of the usg officials, all our strategic documents do say

that, but at the tactical/operational level it's really a stability fight because we're just never going to resource the coin fight. and i think it came out in this discussion that, certainly, the support we would need from the hill on this is not going to increase. so we can certainly clear and hold any place we want in the south and the east, but the problem is having an honest broker in the afghan government as partners which, i think, you both mentioned. and that's just not there. the ill literacy deals not only with the soldiers, but with the afghan officials. and because of what's going on in the security or environment, you know, if it calls for 60 positions in, for example, a delivery program, the most they'll get is ten people, maybe three competent. so we can't get to the hold and build piece. so i'm arguing we're going to be managing the problem from here, and that might be just something to bring out in your discussions in if relation to pakistan -- in

relation to pakistan. the only thing i'd say on the transition piece, i think you're both right on this. i think the afghans have a year and into 2012, that. i think a strategic agreement would help, but i think what we haven't done so far is the messaging. my discussion with the afghans they really do believe that we're not going to be there long term. you talk to the usg officials, they'll say, no, we're going to be there until 2024, '25 with the longer-term stuff that we have to do which is a longer discussion in the transition, but certainly the afghans fear that, and i'll just leave it at that. it's less of a question than just more some of the context i'm getting from the field because we're not getting to the impacts that we want in the counterinsurgency strategy. >> brief comments? >> just quickly. john, thanks for your service and the time you've put on the ground there. this is the, to me, one of the huge tragedies of afghanistan. that we've been there so long, and that we neglected and all

but ignored the raising of afghan security forces from the very weak human capital that was there after 30 years of war. so we're able to clear and hold, but we have to hold with u.s. troops, nato troops because we don't have an afghan partner to hand off to, and i would argue we're five years behind on raising afghan security forces from where we ought to be. and when, so that when the political leadership in iraq decided that it was going to play, the iraqi security forces were actually, had a pretty high degree of capability given the threat they faced. and in afghanistan we're working from just ground level to try to build that capability, and it's one of the reasons why i think we're going to have such a long tail of advise and assist as we continue to build these afghan forces to hold off to -- hand off to. >> i mean, those are great points. again, thank you for your

service there. the question i'd raise again, and i started at the outset, is that all of the moving pieces and the investments, and i don't think we've covered this in our discussion yet, how much does it matter for u.s. national security interests at this point? i, in essence, agree with john's assessment about pakistan being a very dangerous country. it changes the dynamics, i think, in the middle east, and yemen in some ways may present a more imminent threat if you're looking at it from the perspective of u.s. homeland security. and i might then ad lib ya, too, in the complicated dynamics we have to see there. but if you look at it from that perspective which i think was the perspective many people had heading in there in afghanistan in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, i think we're a far ways from what it is we're trying to get done, and there's this disconnect that i've noticed in many think tank reports, but also in the president's speeches and in strategy documents that are produced by the various agencies. it identifies a clear goal of

dismantle and defeat al-qaeda in the these two countries. and then it also says we're not doing nation building, and they take great pains. president obama stressed this again in his speech of november 2010, but then most of what we're doing in the documents and a lot of what we're doing, in essence, you can fairly call if we're not doing it ourselves, we're trying to get others to do nation building, but we're bearing a heavy burden, both our development professionals and especially our military to try to help the afghans help themselves. and we've lost sight of the connection between those two things. i know people make those arguments, but i think there's a reason why we don't debate afghanistan as vociferously as we did iraq. but part of it is just a general confusion among american publics, not only the public messaging problem in afghanistan, but in the u.s. people understanding that which, you know, the commanders and others are saying. and there's a seeming disconnect of why is it we're trying to

grow literacy in a place like afghanistan, and how does that relate to keeping us safe from another attack? and i just think it's a very hard sell in this current political environment here at home. >> right here. >> rachel martin with npr. i wanted to ask about u.s. efforts in if bringing about peace talks and a negotiated settlement that everyone agrees has to happen in order to bring conclusion to the war in afghanistan. can you talk a little bit about what you know of u.s. efforts to ignite these talks, and more specifically what pakistan's role should be in these talks should pakistan get a seat at that table, or are they potentially a destabilizing influence on those talks? >> well, i don't think we want to preempt the second panel, but i'll say a few things, and maybe john can add to it. this has been identified, this piece of reconciliation and reintegration as a key part of the strategy, and in the

conversations we've had with friends who are working on this issue, they've been studying the issue, they're looking at the issue. they've been looking at reports like the one that will be discussed at this point. there have been efforts, as we know, that have been well reported where somebody who claimed to be a taliban leader got into kabul and had discussions with people when it turned out he didn't have that credibility that he claimed to have. so i think it's very complicated. and the one question i would raise and to bring the discussion back to john is the question of, yes, we are hitting the insurgency very hard, but there's a rell question of does that actually -- real question of does that actually deter the possibility, if you're cutting off the command and control, do you make it much more difficult and impossible to create a political settlement that is viable in the long run? i think there's a general perception, and people have talked about the military hitting the insurgency very hard. this would increase the calculus to enter into a political process, but we've not seen that

yet in a clear way. again, i think the second panel will discuss that, but why is that? and is it because there's a fracturing that's going on as a con scwebs of -- consequence of, i think, probably well thought out and well-intentioned military cam pays. but it may take us further from our goal. the reintegration efforts, i don't think it's met yet the expectations or hopes that people had, say, when initial investments were made in early part of last year at the london conference. so all of those pieces, i think, are very ill-formed, and the last thing i would say is that in some way it needs to connect back to this issue of governance and the political system and structure in afghanistan. people often, i think, put it in some sort of isolated bubble like a peace process that we could set up, say like the dayton accords, or we look for models and things like this. the one thing that really needs to be, i think, discussed -- and the next panel will talk about this -- is that this is about

power sharing. and this is trying to get groups that are reconcilable and can move beyond those three nos which used to be at the front end of discussions and talks and now, as secretary clinton talked about, are now on the back end. reject al-qaeda. if that's the case, then what is on the table in terms of the discussions in reconciliation at high level? >> uh-huh. and brian just pointed to the difference between reconciliation, reintegration. reconciliation, high-level political decisions, reintegration is low-level fighters. we've seen some pretty good progress on reintegration, starting to see small groups of taliban, as many as 50 at a time, deciding it isn't fun anymore and deciding to join the afghan government and afghan security forces. i think as with everything in afghanistan the government has, has not been as responsive or as proactive in terms of providing those offramps for the taliban, and i'm hopeful we're going to

see more progress there. i do think that the reconciliation process is going to be more difficult in afghanistan than it was in iraq. in iraq saddam actually encouraged the tribal nature society, reinforced it, used it to his own purposes. in afghanistan the tribes have been shattered by the many years of conflict there. and so i don't think we're going to see a large flip, a single large flip as we did in iraq over the course of 2007, 2008. i think we're going to see a number of small flips. and so it's going to be harder, it's going to be more, it's going to put more demands on low-level, largely soldiers. we go back to the problem of not having sufficient civilian resource to do this who, presumably, are better schooled in it. and it is interesting at least that lieutenant general john allen who played a huge role in the awakening in the iraq is now being considered to replace general petraeus. not a lot of afghanistan time on the ground, but an understanding of how these processes work and a real personal willingness to

talk with people who have been our enemies and try to get them to come onboard and come out of the cold. and can that, i think -- and that, i think, that reconciliation/reintegration process over the next year is going to be the key story. >> um, the lady back against the wall. >> thank you. kimberly doze your from the associated press. one quick comment before i throw some gas on the fire with some questions. just got back from from pakistan and sat down with the 13th corps commander and a couple of the folks that work for him, and they talked about having close cooperation with general campbell nrc east on the border situation. they said it's gotten a lot better than six months ago. so that might be something too, you know? i'm an american reporter, maybe they were telling me what i want to hear, but i hadn't heard of

any incidents on the border, so maybe one positive sign. on the positive signs in security, what happens if this summer the white house decides to go down 25% in forces by the end of the year? is there a chance of upsetting the progress by taking too many people out too fast? and another question, you all keep -- i keep hearing about the civilian surge, but the latest reports i'd heard in kabul were that something like two-thirds of the embassy employees who were supposed to work outside the embassy couldn't leave the embassy because of security concerns. while i was there almost nobody could leave isaf headquarters either. is it time to recognize that the folks you'd like to give this job to simply can't get to it, and it does have to remain the province of the military? and then third question, you've talked about the need to get rid

of corruption in the afghan government, but what tools are available to the u.s. military or the ambassador when this is a democratically-elected government doing what it wants to do, and it seems like every time we investigate and uncoffer something they upend the investigation? that's it. >> so, kimberly, it's always great to see you. and seeing you reminds us about our troops and particularly those on the medical side. it's a pleasure to have you here. well, look, i think, first, on your second question i'd respond to, i think if you look at the dod directive that was put out in 2008 on a regular warfare, it already made that decision in terms of the military personnel will take the lead. if civilian agencies aren't capable. and that's what happened in iraq, as you know. i wrote about this in a book i wrote in 2008 in the first chapter where a guy who was trained to drive tanks had to

end up doing the job of what the prt was supposed to do. and part of it is related to those issues i was talking about. it's not simply about funding. yes, that's a core issue. but even if state department and usaid got a lot more money and a plus-up in their budget, there's absorptive capacity challenge they have themselves and then i think essentially since 1998, since the bombings of the embassies in africa, they have adopted a force posture that is even more risk averse. so that's a huge challenge that has not been reconciled. the downside to going where i think your question implies we should go is the continued militarization of development assistance which creates a lot of dysfunctions on the ground in afghanistan and iraq and a number of places. we know not what we do, and we often spend a lot of money and bolster certain local forces without having enough intelligence. i think we've gotten smarter to a certain extent, but that when

you, you know, a big challenge, i think, on the civilian side of trying to scale this up. we've not yet addressed that. if we go down that path of the military should just do this, then you continue to have problems which, i think, are fundamental and core to the problems of counterinsurgency generally. one being that the foreign troop presence in many places is just simply not welcomes, that in some cases causes more security challenges than they actually seek to address. it's very costly in the long run because we invest a lot more in these forces. and great point on pakistan. i'm glad to hear that news. the question i have is even if you have a quiet period of six months of cooperation, do we see -- the point i'm making is do we see the strategic threats, and are we on the same page? i think there's a lot of work to be done, clearly. you know, the public statements, i think, and the dust-ups belie a cooperation that continues and

endures because there are some common interests there. but also those public statements that are made by both pakistan and u.s. officials point to some serious problems that have not yet been fundamentally addressed which go back to not just tactical cooperation on important issues like border patrol, but strategic cooperation and making sure that we're on the same page. i hope that we'll actually do this, and i should be quiet. [laughter] >> no. kimberly, i want to draw you on your first point, actually, i was very surprised because you seemed to me to indicate that american reporters want to hear good news which i had never understood to be the case. i am, also, hearing some indications that border -- on both sides of the border that we're getting closer and better, so i'm pleased to hear that you were told and given some indications of the same thing. general petraeus is, of course, staying in afghanistan through this fighting season. he's going to make a recommendation to the president on what the pace and scale, slope of the withdrawal will

look like. because of the discussion i had with john, the limited capability of afghan security forces to hand over to the forces that we've cleared and are now holding, i predict that petraeus and the commanders on the ground will try to hold on to as many u.s. troops, nato troops for as long as they can as they simultaneously work to build afghan security forces. they can feel confident handing control of clear territories off to and as they also continue to put pressure on the taliban. so i think we're going to see a very interesting civil-military tug-of-war, and i think the decision will, ultimately, be one that recognizes the continuing strain on the force, the continued dollar costs that brian has talked about but, also, the extraordinary cost of giving back some of the gains that we purchased at such a high

price. um, putting tank drivers in command of prts actually isn't that bad contrary to popular rumors about tank drivers. [laughter] when we were putting nuclear submariners in charge of provincial reconstruction teams, that's wrong on every level. the money we've invested in those specialized skill sets, it's hard to imagine somebody less, less predisposed to understanding how to operate in that environment, and they're very, very bright people, but we do have -- i want to say one word in the defense of civilians. we do have people who have worked government support teams in garmsir, he's going to come back just before his first child is born. we've got some high quality people in there out in the field taking the risks. not as many as we need, and i think as a nation we need to have a discussion about whether this capability which we keep

discovering we need more of where we're going to actually make the investment as a nation in it, i think the return on investment is enormously high. and just underlining the importance of that, of those decisions we have got brigadier general h. republican mcmaster, another tank driver, working the anticorruption issues with the afghan government. enormously bright, talented bulldog of a man but probably not the right skill set. somebody we'd probably rather have a civilian expert working that, the corruption problem for us. so we're seeing pretty heroic efforts by the folks we do have on the ground. we haven't yet built all of the capabilities we need to back here to deploy forward to increase our chances for success. >> just one thing on security gains. i think it's really important for people who are making the decisions here to keep focused on the threat to the united states, and if we start talking about and making arguments related to some costs and whether or not we need to stay there because we're there,

that's a very dangerous thing because it takes us further away from the reason why we're there. and i really think that, you know, there's a dangerous dynamic to talk about security gains after a year that was the deadliest year for afghan civilians, 2010, since we've been there. so, yes, as i said in the intro, localized security gains, a security situation that remains uncertain and actually has gotten worse in other parts of the country, and then the reason i think it's important to go back to our focused goal on the terrorist threat is because if we don't do that, we'll continue to be in this circular argument of how do we actually administer resources at a time when it's just not going to be politically viable later this decade to continue to do that. >> we'll go to this gentleman in the front row. if you just wait for the microphone so that the audience watching can -- >> hi, i'm doug. i'd like to ask the two political questions.

i'll state 'em explicitly but then commentate them both a little bit. first, do we need an explicit statement or restatement of american policy from this president? john alluded to the fact that both our friends and enemies in the region seem to have misread what the president has said. i don't think very many parallels between iraq and afghanistan are helpful, but if you compare it with president bush's january 2007 speech, you may have liked it, you may have disliked it, but you didn't walk away wondering what he had said. we do seem to have some confusion about what july 2011 means. both of you seem to try to walk the president back off of that, but he has declined to do so, most mote my repeating that in the state of the union speech. that's the only afghanistan statement i remember hearing in january. so does the president need to make an explicit statement of u.s. policy so that we can get cooperation from our partners in the region and, for that matter, state our long-term commitments that our enemies might relook their commitments and strategy?

is and, second, just taking a quick look at the afghan constitution we've made it clear as you said, brian, that, you know, we're still making that some type of precondition, acceptance of the afghan constitution, but at the same time that's clearly a document that is, couldn't have been designed better to maximize corruption despite our and the international community largely imposing that on them. as i tell people your audience may not understand the afghan constitution. picture america in which the president can appoint all 50 state governors and every county commissioner in the america, and, you know, while that might be popular here given the current president, that wouldn't play well in idaho, georgia, nor does it play well in their afghan analogs. what steps can and should we take to do a relook at the afghan constitution? >> i'll let john take the political question because he's the politician. [laughter] on all of this. but, first, it's not a precondition anymore except in the constitution. i think you said precondition

and that, i think, is the importance of hillary clinton, secretary clinton's speech earlier this year which made it a little bit more open. and i don't think we fully and adequately answered rachel's question, but i think the next panel will o do that in terms of what's going on. but i think that was an important shift and change. and the only point i would make is that this is hard to do. i raised this in my analysis on iraq quite a lot, and i actually thought at one point mistakenly that constitutional reform was essential, and this was part of sort of the key benchmarks and other things. i still think it's essential for the long-term sustainability, viability and power sharing in a place like iraq, and i do think it's also the case in afghanistan. my own point was how do you actually connect the internal political processes and also multiple processes, some of which are driven by our own security establishment and the different committees that are developed at local levels and other things? nobody has drawn all these pieces together and then

connected to the constitution which is quite flawed and then do it in a way that allows the afghans to drive this process. and that's, i think, a deeper, longer discussion than simply how do we actually get to a security agreement for the longer term. all of these things need to be threaded well together. my answer to your question is we don't know sort of that pathway until we engage with the afghan leadership and the full range of it. and what they would like to do. becausewe're seen driving that process, the we being the u.s. or international community, then there's this problem of legitimacy. if we let them sort of lead, and i saw this in iraq and other places. in a political development, this is a big challenge. i saw this in egypt when we were trying to help promote democracy 15, 20 years ago. there's this sort of if you do too much yourself as outsiders, then you taint the process. if you don't do enough to push -- so there requires a deftness and coordination of diplomacy that i've not seen yet

coming from the united nations, the u.s. diplomats spanning across a number of different, different administrations. so perhaps less is more. >> first, doug, thanks for your service. doug just spent the last year working at rc east with general caldwell advising him as part of our counterinsurgency advise and assist teams, something i think has accelerated the learning properties in the department of -- process in the department of defense. i'll talk to your question about political will and political understanding here, if i can. i thought that the president was very clear at lisbon. the nato secretary general, nick rasmussen, who's been fantastic in building nato support, admiral staph' it is a, the nato commander, also very good. and we saw a fairly remarkable event, i thought, at lisbon in december in which the understood american departure date shifted about three years to the right with astonishingly not a ripple

in the american body politic. and that, i find, astounding. i don't think it resounded as deeply in theater. i think that they are still thinking 2011, and i don't think anything the president says or does between now and july will change that. i think when they still see lots and lots of american boots on the ground in the fall of this year and into 2012, that that will be what really changes the calculus of the people on the ground. although as i said, i think the political leaps in the both pakistan and afghanistan and the region are starting to understand that america is committed for the long haul. i think that the fact that the american people although public opinion polls suggest diminution of american support right around the 50% level, the depth of that feeling is not very strong. it was not an issue in the midterms, and what we're seeing is, i think, an american faith

in general petraeus personally and in the american troops on the ground to make this thing come out to some reasonable degree of satisfaction. >> well, i want to thank both of you for participating in this discussion. um, one of the reasons that we're doing this series is to continue a policy debate. i can't think of a time in the washington where there have been as many hot button issues all on the agenda at the same time. from the budget to the debt extension to taxes to medicare and the other entitlements, and yet we have 130,000 troops that are in afghanistan, we have core policy issues there, and i think we deserved them a continuation of the debate that we focus on these issues and we really,

also, try to inform ourselves this terms of lessons that we should be learning for the future. i know in my tenure at the pentagon the notion of a ten-year war which is likely to be 12 or 13 in afghanistan with a huge disruption in the middle that will be debated by historians for a generation in terms of the swing to iraq and to the neglect of afghanistan in 2004. but that with our troops in the field we're going to continue this series. i want to thank brian katulis for his contribution, and i want to thank our guest and visitor, dr. john nagl, lieutenant colonel nagl, for his comments as well. you know, i think the deepness of the discussion back and forth shows that these are two guys that are very committed to our

country's security, to our robust standing in the world, but that also that taking the can country to war is the most consequential decision that a command in chief and his congress need to make. and so we thank both of them for their contribution. now, i'd ask the audience to just sort of stay in place because what i'm going to do is to yield -- >> lock the doors. [laughter] >> -- our senior fellow, dr. larry korp, who is going to take us in a different direction. and that is to the century foundation's report and looking at the prospects for negotiation and reconciliation. there's a very divisioned group here that's about to step in, so, dr. korb, if you'll take the podium, and we'll step off. we're actually going to be like a relay team and hand our mics off to the next group. thank you, audience, you've been very good, and we apr