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Some outputs and of course what we ve got to show is that these additional inputs can allow greater progress and that that s progress that can be sustained over time by afghanistan forces and officials. can you prevail in this war if you don t have the backing of the american people? it s not just american people. it s the citizens of all of the 47 or so troop contributing nations and of other nations to are contributing money and not forces. they have to have a sense that we can achieve the very important objectives that we have here. we re here so that afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary the way it was when al qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks. and of course other attacks have emanated from here or the region ....
And of course other attacks have emanated from here or the region because it s a regional issue as well. you talk about unity of effort but the national security team under this administration has not had that. i wonder what you think the impact is, the residual impact is of general mcchrystal being fired because his speaking publicly aired some real differences within the national security team which undermine the effort. first of all, let me just start in afghanistan and state very clearly that there is very good civil military unity of effort. ambassador ieikenberry, the nat senior civilian representative, we are like this. in fact, we have done numerous meetings with president karzai together when there have been particularly important issues at hand. for what it s worth my sense is from dealing with the national security team that since president obama made this decision that everyone has linked arms and is moving ....
Sacrifice that our afghan partners are making because the afghan army, the afghan police, are taking much higher casualties than our forces are. talk about u.s. troops. i asked you before when we talked about this july deadline of next year, how stifling is the concept of this deadline and this washington debate to what you re trying to do here? i don t find it that stifling. i m not bowed over by the knowledge that july 2011 is out there. in fact, the president has been very clear, vice president biden has been very clear as well more recently that this is a date when the process begins that is conditions based. as the conditions permit, we transition tasks to our afghan counterparts and security forces and various governmental institutions and that enables a responsible drawdown of our forces. could you reach that point and say i know that the process is supposed to begin but my ....
david, we have a very good cooperation with the government of afghanistan to work at the challenges we have here of helping to build a capable government. this is a hard task and my role here as united states ambassador is to take forward the president s strategy here. we ve got a very clear strategy, david. we ve got for the first time we ve got the proper resources. we ve got an array of good programs here in working with the afghan government and law enforcement, their judicial sector and we remain cautiously optimistic about our ability to make progress. during our visit with general petraeus, he focused on examples of that progress. security gains in the center of the country. you can see again the construction going on here. ....