said musharraf and bush made the agreement ten years ago. looking at that poll that s interesting. we certainly have talked about it on the set. last night, i did the graduation speech at cane university and dr. ferahi is the only afghan born university president in the united states. he came here in 1973 and we were sitting on stage and we were sort of chatting as all the students, 4,000 of them were walking in. i said what do you think about afghanistan? should we be moving out? and he turned to me long pause and he said, i don t know what the objective is. that s the critical point. i mean it was interesting seeing senator kerry, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee beginning to address this in the larger form of the national in the nation. one of the seminal events of the 20th century was the fullbright hearings on vietnam in the 60s when finally more americans became aware of the fact that we
been watching, with his perspective from here, and doesn t understand the objective. very intelligent. does he support withdrawal? too dynamic man. does he support withdrawal? talking about the money being spent. we heard it here on the news script. just such a massive amount of money, is it really achieving an objective and what s the objective and is there a better one? these are questions i have never heard a straight answer. it was interesting and encouraging to hear senator kerry begin to hint at perhaps it s time to look at afghanistan and think about how we can get out of there. does the killing of osama bin laden in any way give president obama and democrats some cover to begin the process of pulling out? i wouldn t use the word begin, let s get out. there was no reason to be there for all these years. we were gaining nothing bite spe by spending hundreds of billions of dollars when it was intelligence and a small team
reach that american dream and that s why immigration reform is an economic imperative. it s an economic imperative. good morning, it s 8:00 on the east coast, a beautiful day on tap in new york. returning to the set of morning joe, mike, jonathan and mark. your book signing was good. you sent me some interesting pictures. they had me signing pictures of mika. odd for me but we might want to think of doing these together. mine is self-help. yours mocks self-help. not your book. i love it. i say we do it. all right. moving on to the news now, senator john kerry is scheduled to travel to pakistan early next week to smooth over tensions following the bin laden raid. on capitol hill yesterday, kerry, the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee suggested it was time to rethink the u.s. strategy in afghanistan in light of bin laden s death.
running central government. i think the larger issues are an afghanistan good enough, can you basically fight to something of a stalemate at least tips the balance in this favor of the united states of it not becoming a failed state again? i think as has been talked about, the longer we re there, it doesn t matter how long, frankly, because the pakistanis and afghans still know there is some end point there and enough hedging going on in the region that makes achievement of all our goals very difficult. it s willie. i ask you the question i put to dr. sachs, does in political terms, the death of osama bin laden, does it help president obama. we talked about the difficulty of democrats, they don t want to look weak on defense. they certainly don t now, the president doesn t after he s the one that took out osama bin laden. does it give him political cover to say, i m not weak on defense just think it s a bad idea to be in afghanistan? i think it does.
history when he went in with russians and ultimately felt very badly how the taliban was able to come back in with the success they had with the soviet union. again, it s an epic struggle in that part of the world. polls are showing people are feeling again, afghanistan somehow has to be put to the focus of our debate about money and what our national moral crisis is as we try to move forward. it s not, though, our own budgets and wallets, in washington, that s what they re bickering about with a deadline for deficit looming. meeting with the caucus union the past two days and budget gathering led by vice president biden continues to sound hopeful about a possible deal. optimisms an occupational requirement. i remain optimistic. had a really good discussion set a date for the next meeting. we re making real progress.