joining me here to discuss this is barnett rubin, associate director of new york university's center on international cooperation. he previously worked in the obama state department. why 17 years out are we talking about our adversary controlling 40% of our country? >> we never defined what we had accomplished. we had a long list of goals which were exirg and killing terrorists. and we were never compactly clear where the boundary around that category was and trying to stabilize afghanistan, those two missions got in their way. we were distracted by iraq. we never really had an adequate understanding of what the problem was, and we did not pay attention to the region around afghanistan which has changed very radically in the 16 years ago osh so that we have been there. >> sreenivasan: it seems like there are two goals now that are countering each other. you can either stabilize the country or road out the terrorists. >> you can have a permanent u.s. military presence there to try to strike at terrorists and other enemies and so on in the region or you can try and stabilize the countr