the french don t like nato generally. they ve been blocking consensus. what will happen, martin, is nato will actually do the command and control and there will be stox political authority put together ad hoc to justify arab participation. but as a general statement, nato can do these operations pretty easily. the canadians, the brits, 9 french, americans have been operating together for 40 years. this won t be a problem. of course. and you must be thinking of kosovo when nato was involved in that as well with american support. well, and also isaf and afghanistan right now. there s 150,000 nato troops right now. as you well know, general petraeus is a nato commander on the ground there. so the again, nato just has enormous experience on air and naval operations in particular to putting together complex outcomes. and a lot of that will be u.s.
because yesterday afternoon the blackberries started buzzing, there were reports out of the london times that perhaps petraeus might be making a move in terms of his job and position. let s put up jeff morrell, defense department spokesperson and get a look at what he has to say about this. he says i can assure thaw general petraeus is not quitting as isaf commander but nor does he plan to stay in afghanistan forever. your take. the door is wide open for something and the tkwe is what. now, one thought, and petraeus had always rumored to be the next chairman of the joint chief of staffs, it s the army s turn for that rotating job, admiral mullen, navy officer, he s about to retire at the end of october, so it s open. it s a job opening. petraeus would be a likely candidate. if that s not where he s going, if he s either retiring, which means he s quitting, or being retired, which means he s being let go, i think that spells a lot of other problems, that means afghanistan is not going
discussing issues in which there has been extraordinarily close collaboration. obviously the french are one of our strongest allies, a nato ally, they are key members of isaf, french troops have been sacrificing alongside americans in uniform in afghanistan, and we are very grateful to those sacrifices. sacrifices. so we will be discussing our strategies there, building off the discussions we had in lisbon. we re also going to be discussing issues like iran and the impact the sanctions are currently having on their nuclear program and our hope that we can resolve this issue diplomatically but we will be building on our shared resolve to assure that we re not seeing nuclear weapons in iran. we ll discuss the middle east where nicolas and i share a deep and abiding belief in the need for two states standing side by
200. and that s it. al qaeda s largely shifted to pakistan. that s where the al qaeda struggle is. the taliban are not as tightly interwoven with al qaeda as is imagined. and the taliban, quite frankly, are not our enemy. they re savages, for sure. i m not in any way excull pating them but they re not our number one faux. groups like al qaeda, which are pakistan based, they re our enemy and this their is this enormous irony by virtue of having 150-ish troops, american as well as nato isaf in afghanistan, all of the logistical resupply moves through pakistan, which means that we have absolutely restricted in terms of our options of pursuing our real national security interests. because we re absolutely beholden to pakistan to sustain a counterinsurgency which doesn t serve, in in my view, our interests. instead, we should really pursue
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 200. and that s it. al qaeda s largely shifted to pakistan. that s where the al qaeda struggle is. the taliban are not as tightly interwoven with al qaeda as is imagined. and the taliban, quite frankly, are not our enemy. they re savages, for sure. i m not in any way excull pating them but they re not our number one faux. groups like al qaeda, which are pakistan based, they re our enemy and this their is this enormous irony by virtue of having 150-ish troops, american as well as nato isaf in afghanistan, all of the