COVERITLIVE.COM

11:46

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Good morning and thanks for being here. We're going to have a live q and a with Michael O'Hanlon at Brookings starting at noon about Afghanistan. The take off point is his piece in POLITICO this morning.

You are invited to submit your questions starting now and Michael will try to get to as many as he can once he's signed on.

12:01

[Comment From Guest]
What I've read indicates that the Afghanis above all want peace and justice. How do you see our mission in Afghanistan basically changing the culture of corruption among the politicians and police?

12:05

Fred Barbash-Moderator - We're having a technical problem folks. Michael will be right there

12:06

Michael O'Hanlon - Thank you, and I agree with your premise about peace and justice (and a little bit of prosperity wouldn't hurt either, at least relatively speaking). The second part of your comment is harder. There's only so much we can do. Working with reform-minded Afghans is key. President Karzai is medioce on this, but some of his ministers, including at Interior and Defense, are good and we have to try to support and strengthen them.

12:06

[Comment From Dan Edie]
Mr. O'Hanlon, what would the conflict in Afghanistan look like today had the Bush Administration not invaded Iraq? Many pundits like to say that without Iraq we'd have victory in Afghanistan and against Bin Laden. Do you think this is true, or would we still be involved in a quagmire, as other nations have found out in previous attempts to invade Afghanistan?

12:08

Michael O'Hanlon - Good question. If we had not invaded Iraq and also had devoted serious force from the start to Afghanistan (two separate if related issues), I tend to think we'd be in a good place because most Afghans clearly wanted us to succeed from the start (and in fact they were much more patient than Iraqis were in this regard). Other nations truly invaded Afghanistan; we are working with a coalition to try to help Afghanistan develop the capacity to protect itself, which is I think a crucial difference. In fact it makes me hopeful even at this point in the war.

12:08

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Michael: Allan Meltzer, one of our Arena contributors, the distinguished economist, sent this in..It goes right to the heart of things I would think:

“I make no claim to expertise on Afghanistan. I ask two simple
questions? What is our objective and do we have some clear objectives?
Do we have a strategy for achieving the objective? My perception is
that the answer to both questions is no. My reading of the past--Korea,
Vietnam, Iraq-- is that the public tolerates wars that we win if we do
so at reasonable cost. They turn against wars that appear to be
stalemated and fail to realize a clear objective.”

12:10

Michael O'Hanlon - I agree with your thoughts about Vietnam, Korea, and public support for war in general. However I thnk we do have clear objectives in Afghanistan, finally--beginning with helping protect the population and thereby also promote economic growth, while building up Afghan institutions as quickly as possible so that we don't overstay our welcome or lack an exit strategy. We just want to leave the place reasonable stable and self-sustaining; anything else is secondary.

12:10

[Comment From Carl Owen]
We're using the DOD as point man on all these operations but shouldn't we have wider involvement from State, Education and other agencies to propel the mission forward? Commerce might be useful when talking about improving the economic reality of the average Affghani.

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