sent by president obama weren t sent to kandahar where there was just that recent attack you were talking about. they were sent off to another province of the country that was far less populous. and so we wound up squandering key months, key year of the build-up over there. so, you know, had we fought this differently, and had washington not been so consumed with fighting amongst itself, i think we could have been in a better position. i m not saying peace in our time over there, i m not saying jeffersonian democracy, but an afghanistan more stable and secure. i m wondering if you can tell me how big of a factor do you think pakistan s been? if you had to break it down percentage wise, what percent would you say pakistan s been helpful? and which percent would you say pakistan has sort of undermined our efforts? oh, i think there s no doubt about this, pakistan has been largely undermining our efforts. there s very little help. i think the big question is how much of this is pakist
discuss all this. then we go overseas to egypt s election of muhammad morsi. what can we expect from an islamist president? two of the top egypt experts tell us. next, how do you count and catalog 1.2 billion people? i ll ask the man creating a revolutionary biometric i.d. for every one of india s citizens. also, the housing bubble caused the crash. will the coming housing boom finally power this anemic recovery? first, here s my take. what to do about syria. western military intervention looks fraught with difficulties, but the situation on the ground is a humanitarian nightmare and is producing greater instability by the week. i was recently in turkey and russia, and i ve been persuaded that there might be a path forward. the pressures on bashir al assad s regime are mounting. it is running out of cash, and it now faces a real military threat from turkey. these pressures could be combined with smart diplomacy to push assad out of power. but it would mean trying to w
their way. i think too heavy a hand by the united states over the next few months can make the situation worse rather than better. this is not going to be pretty. it is going to be ugly. from all that eye heard from my sources particularly in the that i ve heard from my sources, particularly in the pentagon. it looks like they ve got the right motives. not will tell you they are politically stable. they will sort this out. democracy is new to them. given time and once gadhafi is again, i think eventually we ll have a stable government in libya. perhaps not a jeffersonian democracy. greta: you are more optimistic than i am. this transnational council, i don t know who they are friends with. it is a ragtag organize just got formed. the united states just recently recognized them as a group of people under horrible conditions trying to create a
i think too heavy a hand by the united states over the next few months can make the situation worse rather than better. this is not going to be pretty. it is going to be ugly. from all that eye heard from my sources particularly in the that i ve heard from my sources, particularly in the pentagon. it looks like they ve got the right motives. not will tell you they are politically stable. they will sort this out. democracy is new to them. given time and once gadhafi is again, i think eventually we ll have a stable government in libya. perhaps not a jeffersonian democracy. greta: you are more optimistic than i am. this transnational council, i don t know who they are friends with. it is a ragtag organize just got formed. the united states just recently recognized them as a group of people under horrible conditions trying to create a
comes into play from a symbolic standpoint. it is important to maintain a degree of a presence in afghanistan, but i think we can be more effective, so i believe taking the troops home, bringing them home, is a good thing. the question is when and how to do it and how publicly to do it. tom, the numbers are incredible when you think about it. 100,000 on the ground there. 30,000 as you point out with the surge all along. when we think about the ally and some people use that word loosely when we talk about president karzai there in that country. if it is to help their government to sustain and become a viable government, is that possible that you don t have a reliable partner? is that one of your concerns? i mean, the bottom line, whatever the criteria we re going to use to determine success in iraq and afghanistan, success is ultimately going to be determined by this generation and how we care for them. i mean, it s important whether it s complete jeffersonian democracy in afghanist