he s gone too far i think in an exit strategy. july 2011, i was over in afghanistan over memorial weekend and that pressure bearing down of having only one year left to fix afghanistan really weighs heavily on all the military commanders over there so i think we ve done enough when it comes to setting deadlines, we ought to be talking about achieving victory, that should be the exit strategy. you mentioned that deadline. dana bash caught up with general petraeus and put that question to im. reporter: do you see yourself doing anything to change the 2011 deadline to begin troop withdrawal? no, as i said, i support the president s policy a and i will also provide my best professional military advice as we conduct assessments. so am i right here, congressman mcgovern, you want a sooner date and a firmer date and congress man human hunter, . i want a mission including an exit strategy. the president talked about seven
already there should be allowed to fight nor aggressively. i spoke a short time ago wiaski them about the president s assessment. short answer is that what we saw yesterday was a change in personnel but not a change in policy. congressman mcgovern, is that good enough for you? it isn t. i have great admiration for general petraeus and president obama but i think our policy is flawed. all of the things we were told seven months ago were going to happen today haven t turned out the way the administration told us they would. here we are to consider another supplemental. we re in a war that is not clearly defined, and it s a war that can go on forever and costing us hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money and i think some of that money could be better spent here at home. do you have the votes to block the president from getting his money? i m going to vote against the supplemental and i m going to push for an amendment calling for an exit strategy. i think if you go to
pakistan. we have less than some quantifiable metrics regarding afghanistan, but if the real focus is the ex termination of al-qaeda s safe haven in pakistan, we have not been provided those by the administration yet, and that s the only way we re going to know if it s working. would general petraeus be able to change that? i think these metrics are not hard to provide, and yes, i don t think this is just something a general can provide. he provides his input but then there are also issues like is the civilian government in pakistan supporting it. without a question, this can be done, but americans want some practical leadership now. we know we ve got a sound strategy, we think, but now we have to see what the plan is, because as you also mentioned, the key word exit strategy. every warrior knows when you go into conflict, you have to be ready to exit to an alternative strategy or something, and you can only do that if you have
certainly not in a very long time. they ll get behind david petraeus, but that doesn t mean that they re going to ask him tough questions central to this being what does it mean when we talk about an exit strategy in 2011. i want to bring back in lawrence eagleburger. when the president spoke today, mr. secretary, several repetitions of phrase struck me. he talked about full agreement on policy. i won t tolerate division. renew our sense of common purpose. how does that happen and do you hear a very clear strategy here as he put it, make no mistake, we have a clear goal? they may have a clear goal, which is to win, but unless you do what you have to do which is to win, the goal is nothing more than shimera. and i m afraid that s the case if the enemy feels we re only going to be around for a year. beyond which, let s face it.
i do think it was very important for president obama to be very clear that the military could not undermine what is at the core of our democracy which is civilian control of the military. but i fear that he hasn t yet, though there is the possibility of engaging the real exit strategy, that s not the exit of general mcchrystal to be replaced by a general, a new general with the same old strategy, but it is time to have ta debate, president obama says he welcomes, not division but debate, a debate americans deserve about what i would argue is a counterproductive failing strategy in afghanistan with no achievable mission with 46 americans killed this past month. billions poured into a country every month at a time when this country needs the resources to rebuild. and when there are alternative separate jazz, ed, in fact, vice president biden who was knocked out by general mcchrystal as you recall, when the debate was under way last year, has more of