American Morning
McCain: Avoid 'historic' error in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Sen. John McCain said any added military deployment in Afghanistan smaller than the 40,000 troops reportedly requested by the top U.S. commander there "would be an error of historic proportions."
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/POLITICS/10/11/mccain.afghanistan/art.mccain.sotu.cnn.jpg caption="Sen. John McCain talks with CNN's John King about Afghanistan, health care reform, and Sarah Palin."]
Asked whether he thought the war in Afghanistan could be won with fewer troops than Gen. Stanley McChrystal has reportedly requested, McCain said, "I do not."
The Arizona Republican, who was defeated by President Obama in the 2008 presidential election, spoke in a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
"I think the great danger now is a half-measure, sort of a - you know, try to please all ends of the political spectrum," McCain told CNN chief national correspondent John King. "And, again, I have great sympathy for the president, making the toughest decisions that presidents have to make, but I think he needs to use deliberate speed."
Disregarding requirements that have been "laid out and agreed to" by Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen "would be an error of historic proportions," McCain said when asked whether 10,000 or 20,000 additional troops in Afghanistan would suffice.
Is Afghanistan another Vietnam?
Critics of the war in Afghanistan are quick to make comparisons to the war in Vietnam, but is it valid to compare the two? Peter Beinart, senior political writer for the Daily Beast, says no.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/08/beinart.jpg caption="Peter Beinart says there are other historical analogies one can make for the war in Afghanistan."]
Beinart spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.
Kiran Chetry: You wrote an article called, "Bury the Vietnam Analogy." There have been a lot of people saying there are comparisons to be made between Afghanistan now and Vietnam then. Why do you think that's off base?
Peter Beinart: First of all, South Vietnam, a country we were trying to defend, was not a real country. It was an artificial country created in 1954 by the French as they were leaving. The country was to be reunited with North Vietnam in two years.
The problem in Afghanistan may be that we have a government partner that's problematic. Afghanistan is a real country that Afghans generally believe in. They have an Afghan national identity. That didn't exist in South Vietnam.
That's why we might be able to do better in Afghanistan than Hamid Karzai. We could never have been done better in South Vietnam than Diệm because South Vietnam itself was not a country that people felt loyalty to. That was one of the big differences. There were other big differences. For instance, the fact that the Taliban is much, much less popular in Afghanistan than the Vietcong were in South Vietnam. In Vietnam, the Communists essentially controlled the nationalist movement. They had the nationalist legitimacy. That's not true in the same way with the Taliban.
U.S. 'not leaving Afghanistan,' Gates says
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a rare joint interview, said Monday that the United States is committed to a regional strategy to build long-standing relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/POLITICS/10/05/clinton.gates/art.clinton.gates.cnn.jpg caption="Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour."]
Speaking at George Washington University for a program to be broadcast Tuesday on CNN, the two members of President Obama's Cabinet insisted that the president's deliberate approach to set the right objectives and policies for Afghanistan was necessary and proper.
The Taliban insurgency currently has the momentum in Afghanistan, Gates said, adding that a Taliban takeover of the country would empower the al Qaeda terrorist network.
"Because of our inability and the inability, frankly, of our allies to put enough troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now," he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour and former CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno in the panel discussion that included Clinton.
An eventual Taliban victory would provide "added space" for al Qaeda to set up in the country and enhance recruiting and fundraising, bolstered by the perspective of a second victory over a superpower by Muslim forces after having driven out the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Gates said.
Dr. Gupta: I went to Afghanistan and all I got was H1N1
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
It started as a cough. It wasn’t the kind of cough where something is temporarily stuck in your throat. It wasn’t the kind of cough where simply clearing your throat would’ve been adequate.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/09/23/art.sanjay.sick.jpg caption="Dr. Sanjay Gupta, contracted H1N1 in Afghanistan, receives treatment."]
This was the kind of cough that hurts when you do it. A stinging pain that makes you wince and guard and hope that you don’t have to cough again any time soon. I thought I might have a fever, but of course, I was in the middle of covering a war in Afghanistan, and the conditions were… well, hot.
So, maybe it was that. Problem was, the next day I wasn’t feeling any better – in fact, I was worse. I woke up in my dusty desert tent and tried to step out of my sleeping bag. Two steps later, I almost hit the deck.
Incoming. Except this wasn’t due to any sirens going off, this was due to my own body simply being unable to hold myself up. I was lightheaded and freezing cold – even though it was over 100 degrees outside at that early hour of the morning.
Watch Dr. Gupta talk about his experience 
I was nauseated and my entire body hurt. I tried to explain away my symptoms with lots of different excuses. You don’t sleep much while covering a war. My bulletproof jacket didn’t fit perfectly and was very heavy. There was a lot of dust and dirt, and maybe I had what the Marines referred to as the Kandahar Krud. It turned out to be none of those things.
US general: Deliver troops or lose Afghanistan
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan says we have twelve months to get more boots on the ground or the U.S. risks “failure” in the war-torn nation. President Obama told CNN’s John King, any decision on Afghanistan won't be driven by "the politics of the moment" and that the goal remains getting al Qaeda.
Bob Woodward is a veteran journalist for the Washington Post, the first to get General Stanley McChrystal’s report, and he broke the story. Woodward spoke to John Roberts in an exclusive interview on CNN's "American Morning" Monday. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/09/21/am.intv.woodward.art.jpg caption="Bob Woodward says it will take years to put more troops in Afghanistan."]
John Roberts: I want to pull a quote from the report that you have posted on "The Washington Post" Web site, in which General McChrystal said, "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months), while Afghan security capacity matures, risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." That's a pretty dire and striking statement.
Bob Woodward: It really says: 12 months, I need more troops, I need to have really have a full counterinsurgency strategy, which is protect the people, go out into the villages, set up the kinds of security stations in contact with the population that was done in Iraq by General Petraeus. If I don't get that, likely failure, defeating them is impossible.
This is a striking thing for a general to say to the secretary of defense and the commander-in-chief. It really takes his finger and puts it in their eye. Deliver or this won't work. And he says, "If they don't endorse this full counterinsurgency strategy, don't even give me the troops, because it won't work."
War zone ER: Dr. Gupta called to duty in Afghanistan
Program Note: Watch “American Morning” all week for more reports from Dr. Gupta in Afghanistan. And don’t miss ‘Inside the Battle Zone’ tonight on “AC360,” 10 p.m. ET.
Our Dr. Gupta is reporting from inside Afghanistan this week. And get this. While covering a story about a doctor from his hometown, Sanjay was asked to scrub in – because they were one surgeon short.
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