tlair minority who want to see an islamist state along the lines of iran or sudan. they are small minority. but they are a very violent and brutal minority. when i was flaft pakistan, four major terrorist attacks, including one on what is the equivalent of the pakistani pentagon. it lasted 25 hours. pakistan is in danger. right now the troops that are guarding the nuclear weapons in pakistan are pro-western. if they ever become pro-iranian or pro-al qaeda, we ve got a very big problem. all right. christine fair and clifford may. great discussion. thank you both for joining us. thank you. coming up, a new plan to make president obama the president of no. but will it work? we ll be right back. i think it s also to widen schisms that already exist within the democratic party to try to force vulnerable members and members that aren t on the same page with the white house on these regulatory issues to stand on the other side of the aisle and join the republicans against the presiden
policy i d rely on general petraeus. he knows more about this than any of us do. he s got his troops there. not as many as he would like but we give him a chance to work that out and see what happens. this will not be fast. it s also very important to keep this in mind. there are some people who believe, i don t think christine is among them, that the taliban represents an indigenous, insurgency that s against the american occupation. and is very popular inside afghanistan. not true. they are savages. they object to such things as women getting an education and having jobs. they express that not on tv shows and op-eds but by throwing asnid the fafss little girls who go to school. christine and i disagree on what the most effective strategy is to defeat the taliban but we agree taliban should be defeated. in pakistan, there s a great range of people from those who absolutely want to have a secularized state and have all the freedoms that we have to those.
on the u.n. but we ve got a problem with karzai. he is not the perfect leader for afghanistan. but he s the leader we have right now. and general petraeus is addressing that. he s put general mcmasters in charge of a program and a task force that is meant to try to wipe out you ll not wipe it out, obviously, but try to greatly diminish the corruption and provide better leadership. and the other big problem is that taliban can retreat across the border into pakistan into those parts of pakistan, wild and woolly parts. christine has been there. i ve been to sections of it. where you do have al qaeda. if they were a way to get al qaeda and destroy al qaeda up there in waziristan and fatah and those regions, we should absolutely do it. i think christine is wrong to say if we would just withdraw our troops from afghanistan we d have a better chance of guesting at al qaeda. but if we but that s not what i said. i said counterterrorism. if we could destroy taliban in afghanistan, that
to the october map, just very recently, you see the area of high risk and is increasing the areas of low risk of diminish diminishing. christine, do you think we are winning or losing at a simple military level? i was actually with unama. i ve seen those maps going back to 2002. in 2002, people could drive from cab towel kandahar. now that would only be a lunatic s folly. so in terms of being able to control the terrain, i mean, the evidence is overwhelming. that simply hasn t happened. and point of fact, the true troops that are required to win in this insurgency are not there. admitting that the entire country is not at war, even if you only look at the south and the east, i ve done the math. we still need approximately 300,000 troops to succeed using petraeus own doctrine. and we re nowhere near that. cliff, i m sure you have a
2010 is the deadliest year so far for american troops in afghanistan. reports point to a worser be security situation. new intelligence points to rival militant groups joining forces in deadly raids along the afghan/pakistan border. this is just months before the u.s. troop withdrawal is supposed to begin in july 2011. joining us to discuss conditions in afghanistan, from washington, d.c., christine fair. she spent the sumner afghanistan and pakistan and says the war has become mission pointless. and clifford may, president of the foundation for the defense of democracies. he argues that pulling american troops out will hurt the fight against terrorists. thank you both for joining us. thank you. christine you said the mission in afghanistan is pointless. why do you say that? i think tlair number of reasons. first of all, the known estimates of al qaeda operatives in afghanistan range from 50 to