necessarily have the best strategy in afghanistan. i will argue that we have the best american general who is heading up that strategy, general petraeus. his full complement of troops has arrived only this fall. we sharks lou him time to do what he wants to do. we all want to play arm chair general but we should be supporting this general and, by the way, this president in what is a very well considered if very complicated and difficult strategy that the obama administration would say is, and i think they re right on this is making progress, particularly in what was the al qaeda the taliban hot land of helmand and kandahar and they ve also done a pretty good job prove tecting kabul. they re not everywhere in the country. they are making progress, it s uneven but we ll allow that to continue. if we can put up the maps that were internal u.n. determinations about whether we were making progress. there s a map from march and then october of this year. that s march. you can see the red
logistical resupply moves through pakistan, which means that we have absolutely restricted in terms of our options of pursuing our real national security interests. because we re absolutely beholden to pakistan to sustain a counterinsurgency which doesn t serve, in in my view, our interests. instead, we should really pursue what vice president biden has argued for, albeit in my view with some modification. a counterterrorism-plus strategy that really focuses on groups like al qaeda as well as groups like laskar taiba that are not only based in the federally administered tribal areas along the border with afghanistan but also deep within pakistan such as the punjab. cities like karachi where most of the high-value operatives have actually been arrested. so that s it in a nutshell. cliff, as i understand it, your perspective is that the premise of what christine is saying is wrong when she says al qaeda and the taliban are fundamental dedistlinkt.
majority to pass the resolution in disapproval. so they signaled, you know, just a week or so ago that this is something they are really strongly looking at. who do you see as some of the democrats who may be vulnerable to this kind of thing? ben nelson is basic leil the most conservative democrat in the senate. he s also up for re-election in 2012. clair mccass kel is a moderate. also up in 2012. i think you could see a few more defections. maybe mary landrieu. this is justnymy speculating based on voting records in the 111th congress. they d need about four for all of these if they keep all the republicans united and, unless harry reid draws a really tough line on this, they could pretty easily get that. what you have now is a third republican strategy. obviously you can repeal a law, which is something that would be hard but has been talked about in terms of health care in particular. you can defund certain efforts on the part of the executive branch, which is something they v
what vice president biden has argued for, albeit in my view with some modification. a counterterrorism-plus strategy that really focuses on groups like al qaeda as well as groups like laskar taiba that are not only based in the federally administered tribal areas along the border with afghanistan but also deep within pakistan such as the punjab. cities like karachi where most of the high-value operatives have actually been arrested. so that s it in a nutshell. cliff, as i understand it, your perspective is that the premise of what christine is saying is wrong when she says al qaeda and the taliban are fundamental dedistlinkt. you see the two as almost being merged theathip and if we are fighting al qaeda we have to fight the taliban. am i correct in that? basically, i think you are, eliot. for the u.s. to be defeated by the taliban after all these years and after two presidents have made commitments to the battlefield in afghanistan, that would be a very significant and consequenti
sure. obviously this president is not going to pull troops out suddenly. he s probably not even going to pull all of them out when he pulls them out. we re going to be there for some very long term to come. is ct plus, counterterrorism plus, essentially what s been named the joe biden option, is that a realistic alternative to what we re doing now and is it being seriously considered? is it being seriously considered? i m sure people are still pushing for it. but i think eventually that s what we re going to end up with. we ll end up with a smaller footprint and a fairly active counterterrorism program there so eventually we re fighting our way to get to a spot that one would think we could get to without fighting our way there. as thomas friedman said, afghanistan was probably we d have been better off if we would have left afghanistan on sort of a slow boil rather than escalating like we did. now the dye is cast, they re committed to the strategy and hopefully it works out fo