military advice informed certainly by an awareness of the context within which i provide it but not driven by it. that s the same way we approach the very difficult recommendations that we made during the effort in iraq. over time i think those worked out and over time they can work here as well. let s talk about the afghan government. hamid karzai, president of afghanistan, is he a friend, a foe or something in between? he s a president of a sovereign country and we have to understand that. in many cases, most cases, we have converging objectives as is the case in any of these situations but in some cases we see things a little bit differently. that s natural. we went through this with prime minister maliki on numerous occasions. there s a situation in which the security forces from outside and the government officials of that
the inputs are already enabling some outputs and of course what we ve got to show is that these additional inputs can allow greater progress and that that s progress that can be sustained over time by afghanistan forces and officials. can you prevail in this war if you don t have the backing of the american people? it s not just american people. it s the citizens of all of the 47 or so troop contributing nations and of other nations to are contributing money and not forces. they have to have a sense that we can achieve the very important objectives that we have here. we re here so that afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary the way it was when al qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks.
we are back in kabul for this special editionof meet the press. on friday morning i sat down for a more in depth conversation with general david petraeus at the headquarters of u.s. and coalition forces here in kabul in the very room where general petraeus gets a daily briefing on the progress of the war. general, thank you for having us in the situational awareness room. it s good to be here. it s good to have you in afghanistan, david. this is a very difficult time in this war and we have talked about your assessment of winning versus losing. the reality that you understand is that the american public is not behind this war. our new poll with the wall street journal indicates that 7 in 10 americans lack confidence in a successful outcome to this war. and yet your position was that we re actually winning because we re making some progress. what is it that the american public is missing then? well, i think it s incumbent on us to show greater progress, to show sustained progr
figure and capturing or killing osama bin laden is still a very, very important task for all of those engaged in counterterrorism around the world. if the taliban comes back into government in afghanistan in any form, do you automatically believe that al qaeda comes back? these are the kinds of questions that people talk about when they talk about reconciliation and that is of course with the more senior leaders of the taliban and other elements. i think there is a prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups. i didn t mention another element that s out there that s made a number of overtures and reportedly is entertaining thoughts of agreeing to the red lines that president karzai put down accepting the constitution, laying down weapons, renouncing al qaeda, being a productive element in society. the way these kinds of endeavors typically end as with the case in iraq, ultimately we had to face the question in iraq of
again after what presumably would be a very bloody civil war. different countries in the regions take side. again, the prospect is, i think, is pretty frightening. if we succeed on the other hand, obviously, we are, again, succeeding in a region that has implications and links to the security issues throughout the world. if afghanistan can become the central asian round-about to use karzai s term to where it can be the new silk road, think of the implications for that. we re calling that afghanistan is blessed with the presence of what are trillions with an s on the end, trillions of dollars worth of minerals if and only if you can get the technology and human capital operated and lines of communication to enable you to get it out of the country and all of the rest of that. very big if. there s a foundation of security that would be necessary on which to build all of that.