we are back in kabul for this special edition of meet the press. on friday morning i sat down for a more in depth conversation with general david petraeus at the headquarters of u.s. and coalition forces here in kabul in the very room where general petraeus gets a daily briefing on the progress of the war. general, thank you for having us in the situational awareness room. it s good to be here. it s good to have you in afghanistan, david. this is a very difficult time in this war and we have talked about your assessment of winning versus losing. the reality that you understand is that the american public is not behind this war. our new poll with the wall street journal indicates that 7 in 10 americans lack confidence in a successful outcome to this war. and yet your position was that we re actually winning because we re making some progress. what is it that the american public is missing then? well, i think it s incumbent on us to show greater progress,
we went all around the country. did a reasonably good assessment. went back and met with secretary rumsfeld and laid out a variety of areas in which actions could be taken that could based on what we learned in iraq, where there could be improvements as it to what was going on in afghanistan. i talked about areas that just needed to be sustained as well. and then added that my sense of the situation was that given the 30 years of war and given the lack of human capital because of all that fighting given before 30 years of war began afghanistan was one of the five poorest countries in the world that my sense was that this would likely be the longest campaign in what we then called the long war. a couple of additional questions. i would like to ask you about iraq again. do you consider this a durable success? durable
was going on here. we went all around the country. did a reasonably good assessment. went back and met with secretary rumsfeld and laid out a variety of areas in which actions could be taken that could based on what we learned in iraq, where there could be improvements as it to what was going on in afghanistan. i talked about areas that just needed to be sustained as well. and then added that my sense of the situation was that given the 30 years of war and given the lack of human capital because of all that fighting given before 30 years of war began afghanistan was one of the five poorest countries in the world that my sense was that this would likely be the longest campaign in what we then called the long war. a couple of additional questions. i would like to ask you about iraq again. do you consider this a durable success? durable
to show sustained progress. i would argue that the progress, if you will, really just began this spring, late spring was when we started to see the operations in central hellman province truly were starting to improve security. taliban fighting hard as we took away important sanctuaries from them and now you can see it expanding into kandahar province and then other areas around the country in the northwest up in the north and all of these are small pockets of progress. can t you understand the american people for nine years have been hearing about incremental progress in afghanistan and remain confused, frustrated, and not invested. i can understand it. in fact, that s why i have sought to explain over the last 18 months what we have sought to do in afghanistan is get the inputs right for the first time. a lot of us came out of iraq in
government of hamid karzai here in afghanistan and leaking of secret war documents on the internet and whether president obama s july of 2011 withdrawal time line will hold. we ll explore those questions in this special hour. is nation building possible in the bad lands of afghanistan? at 57, general david petraeus is easily america s most famous warrior. on this morning, we find him in the middle of physical training as this fiercely competitive four-star general works over soldiers half had his age. good morning, marine. how are you? with the same intensity as he works the war plan. despite his reputation for taking on the toughest jobs, general petraeus admits he had his doubts about this assignment. obviously that crosses your mind. to be candid, i thought i had done my last one of this type