their government. well, government s first responsibility of course is to secure its people so that those people can indeed declare their allegiance if you will. if the government has not been able to secure the population in an area, particularly in a country that has been at war for some 30 years and where the people have in some cases been professional camelions and side with whichever side appears is going to prevail and that s how you survive. our first and most important task with our afghan security force partners has to be to improve security for the people so they literally can cast a vote not just in the elections in september for their parliamentary leadership but for or against the afghan government, a government that has to earn legitimacy in their eyes through their actions. you talk about getting the big ideas right. it seems like one of the biggest
i think he remains an iconic 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
people and so forth, they are much more responsible for civilian casualties that afghan forces. most recently they were distinguished by flogging and assassinating a pregnant woman. they have used children and teenagers to carry out attacks. what they have done is really quite egregious particularly in the context of the religion and in the context of the normal codes of conduct. let me ask you what is the biggest threat if there are few al qaeda that are actually operating in afghanistan today, you have outlined the sanctuary difficulty that you face that is in pakistan and this is a country that the united states pays billions of dollars to and yet some of that money is going to aid and abet insurgents and terrorists who are killing our troopers. i don t know that i would buy that. our money goes to the security side to pakistani army and the
this is a country in which there are actually some common objectives if iran can look past its desire that we not succeed too easily. iran doesn t want to see the taliban come back anymore than do most afghan citizens. it s an ultraconservative extremist sunni islamic organization and they don t want to see it rule the country the way it did in the past. having said that, they also don t want to see us achieve our objectives easily and they have indeed provided over time what one might call modest amounts of weapons, explosives, and funding and some training to the taliban as well. what s worse, iran with a nuclear weapon or the fallout of an attack on iran to prevent a nuclear weapon? that s one for the policy makers. of course that s the huge question that looms out there. obviously when i was a central command commander, we had a variety of different input and
responsibility of course is to secure its people so that those people can indeed declare their allegiance if you will. if the government has not been able to secure the population in an area, particularly in a country that has been at war for some 30 years and where the people have in some cases been professional camelions and side with whichever side appears is going to prevail and that s how you survive. our first and most important task with our afghan security force partners has to be to improve security for the people so they literally can cast a vote not just in the elections in september for their parliamentary leadership but for or against the afghan government, a government that has to earn legitimacy in their eyes through their actions. you talk about getting the big ideas right. it seems like one of the biggest ideas that you have yet to surmount is the fact that there