the ral callizati the radicalization. things are getting worse for this country. i think there needs to be a change of strategy. this is not a successful strategy. mr. khan, what would a successful strategy look like? for me, it should be talking to all the stakeholders. there should be an immediate cease fire. you can t have dialogue and at the same time military action. unfortunately, this policy is dictated by the security personnel, by the generals. it s not a civilian-backed or political backed policy in afghanistan. the key issue is afghanistan. if you have peace in afghanistan, if you can have a cease fire, get people around the table, talk about, you know, when there s an exit strategy, maybe have muslim forces, peacekeeping forces to have a government of consensus. it is the only way to go about in afghanistan.
as the afghanistan conflict continues, who knows where else it could lead. yemen, somalia. who knows? will americans become war-weary? i think they will if things don t improve. right now, the mission in afghanistan is ill-defined. general petraeus has yet to come forth with a victory plan. we moved the date of withdrawal from afghanistan now by three years. the president is changing marker as the days go by. he will have problem with the base unless he comes up with a viable exit strategy. jamie: what do you think, christopher? can he? has he? i think he must. he has to rely on conditions on the ground. he can t say politically we have to do something. he s been very good at doing that and listening to his generals in the field. i think he will continue to do that and rely on general petraeus and others in the administration who are
richard holbrooke s heart. there s a sense of no way out. there s a sense of how can we do this? there s a sense of can we turn afghanistan around without turning its government around? can we turn its government around? can we make karzai different? can we make their culture different? the biggest thing i think we have learned or among the big things in the past ten years is that the minute you commit u.s. troops anywhere in the world from that moment there are 15 reasons those troops can never leave. and it s something we always have to remember in the future. the minute you go some place you can t get out, you better watch out where you go. better have an exit strategy out before you send the first troop in and we have been there for a decade and we ve never had an exit strategy. never. the exit strategy was win. what we find impossible is a defined win, b, be secure that the win will last. senator, before you go,
should, also author of war, which is a great read as well. peter, you just got back. president obama described his exit strategy in afghanistan as on track. while in some shape or form, may be true, he didn t give clues as to what that, starting in 2011, will look like. joe biden has publicly said the drawdown? july 2011 could consist of as few as 2,000 soldiers and sadly all the soldiers i spoke to in afghanistan on the u.s. side, the afghan side, you know, anticipate a pretty large scale continuous presence of the united states until december of 2014. imagine if a republican president had basically just announced that we re going to be there for four more years in large numbers. i think the liberal side of the democratic party would be up in arms. already 72% of democrats are opposed to the war in the poll you just cited earlier, anderson. so i think this is you know, it hasn t really sunk in this is a really major commitment. i think personally it s the right thing to do, but
we will continue to face huge challenges in afghanistan. progress does not come fast enough. progress comes slow at a high price. much more work needs to be done. it s not going to be instant. it is a big, messy process. but it s important that the american people know we are making progress. and i m absolutely convinced we will succeed. the president some saying trying to telegraph the mixed situation there, others say he s trying to have it both ways receipt torically and also on the ground with lives of troops on the ground. i m joined by peter bergen who just got back from afghanistan tuesday and sebastian young, co-directed a brilliant documentary about it, which if you haven t seen you really should, also author of war, which is a great read as well. peter, you just got back. president obama described his exit strategy in afghanistan as on track. while in some shape or form, may be true, he didn t give clues as to what that, starting in 2011, will look like.