following you is greg mortenson who you know.ell me what it is about him -- because you gave him a huge award personally in pakistan -- what is it about him that makes him a person that the u.s. military and others want to hear from. >> let me just say that i haven't yet had the opportunity of meeting him in person, although i recommended mr. mortenson for the pakistani star of service, which is a huge honor in pakistan conferred by president zardari on mr. mortenson. i read his two books and i am familiar with his work. what he brings to the u.s.-pakistan relationship is the human dimension. pakistan is a nation of 180 million people. half that population is below the age of 18, and greg mortenson stays engaged with these people, teach the children, when you go in to build a school you have no enemies. it's when you are talking only politics and military strategy that you actually have people who disagree with you. so embrace the people, and that is what will win hearts and minds. that's what makes greg mortenson important to us

. >> rose: greg mortenson was on the program here recently and has been in contact, obviously, with people in afghanistan and pakistan, saying that some of the elders across afghanistan had convinced general petraeus and even general mcchrystal not to go ahead and delay the kandahar offensive. >> well, that's true. i don't know, it's very difficult to do what they want to do in kandahar without an afghan partner. when i was there in april and in kandahar province, i was in a district that was 80% taliban controlled and there was no afghan government presence. there was a district governor, but he lived on the american base. there were 40 afghan police whose job it was to protect the local warlord. so unless you have afghans actually providing services, it's very hard to do the kind of transformation in kandahar that petraeus did in the neighborhoods of baghdad where you had americans and iraqis working together to secure neighborhoods. >> rose: your column says the forest and the trees. forget the secret documents and all that and even forget afghanistan for a moment. what counts is how we