been there so they have a much better life. the economy has been growing. this is still a mess. you are right the government is not doing the job but another point, the last poll i have seen still have it comparable to western governments and what they enjoy. a certain amount of corruption is potentially tolerable. now it is way out of the hand and know have to figure out how to reduce it but as we draw down the forces we will prime the pump less, we will throw less money in to that country to coming years and that will reduce corruption. so we need to be patient and stick with the exit strategy. we are on the way to drawing down to 68,000 uss united states troops by the end of september. this is a tough moment. remember why we are there. remember how much progress we have made. shepard: important. thank you, michael.
now we re joined by michael hanna lin. thank you so much for joining us, michael, as always. how do you keep this balance? how do you keep the need to achieve a foreign policy objectiobjec objective after this moral setback? it s such a sad time, but you come back to first principles. a lot of americans doubt, especially with so many al qaeda leaders now dead, whether we need to be successful in afghanistan. but to the extent, you need some level of stability, or want some level of stability, before you depart. we have the fastest plan to get us there. we have an exit strategy. president obama is pulling out a third of our forces by september. we are, as you mentioned, getting out entirely with our main combat forces by the the
condition, possibly alcohol abuse, we ll see. at the end of the day what we ended up with is a senseless mass murder at a terrible time. poor afghanistan. you know, here we are ten years at war fair, $500 billion, 17,000 u.s. killed and wounded. the american people are growing tired of it. now we have this palpable tension between the afghans and what they are increasingly viewing as the occupying force. a very sad situation. and, obviously, it comes on the heels of the accidental burning of the korans by american soldiers. what do you think this means for americans, nato troops on the ground right now and what does it mean for our exit strategy? well, of course, it should be a data point. 90,000 u.s. troops, 150,000 nato, this is clearly not a reflective of the discipline of the armed forces. however, afghanistan has turned into a real tinderbox.
over in kabul. we re joined by mike o hanlon, a senior fellow with the brookings institute and the co-author of the new book bending history, barack obama s foreign policy. thank you so much for joining us, michael, as always. how do you keep this balance? how do you keep the need to achieve a foreign policy objective in the face of this kind of moral setback? yeah, chris, it s such a sad and tough time to think that question through, but i think what you do is you come back to first principles. now, a lot of americans doubt, especially with so many al qaeda leaders now dead, whether we need to be successful in afghanistan. but to the extent you do need some level of stability, or you want some level of stability before you depart, we ve got about the fastest plan to get us there. we ve got an exit strategy. as you know, president obama s already pulling out a third of our forces between last couple of months and september. we ll be down from 100,000 to 68,000 by the end of the sum
it puts it front and center and puts more pressure on the administration in terms of articulating the afghanistan strategy and what it expects to have left in afghanistan when fully out of the war. as you well know, republicans have been criticizing the president s exit strategy. it is timeline for some time now. they have been reacting to what s happened over the last 24 hours. let me play for you what rick santorum said this morning on the today show. my position is we need to commit and be successful, but if the presence is not that commitment, then i don t see why we couldn t continue to hold on to the artificial date that is not working for us. there s been debate with his military advisers with how quickly to get out of afghanistan, could what happened be a game-changer and the pressure clearly put on by some of the republicans? sure it can, chris. it s not there s no question about where the policy is going and how this is going to end