Petraeus: No Success Without Taliban Talks

At a time when the bloodletting in Afghanistan is on the rise, the American commander there says success will mean sitting down and talking to Taliban fighters and others who have "American blood on their hands."

In an interview broadcast Sunday morning on NBC's Meet the Press, Army Gen. David Petraeus said the U.S. faces the same tough question in Afghanistan today as it did two years ago when it chose to fight the Iraqi insurgency with dialogue as well as bullets.

"That doesn't mean Mullah Omar is going to stroll down the main street of Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan," Petraeus said, referring to the spiritual head of the Taliban. "But there's every possibility of low- and midlevel [officials'] reintegration and indeed some fracturing of senior leadership that could be defined as reconciliation."

See coverage of Military.com's 2010 embed in Afghanistan

Petraeus succeeded Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan this summer after McChrystal's career ended over an embarrassing article in Rolling Stone magazine that evinced contempt and disrespect by the general and his senior staff for the U.S.' civilian leadership, including President Obama.

Petraeus, widely credited with the success of the surge in Iraq and viewed by political leaders on both sides of the aisle as a hero, left his job as commander of U.S. Central Command to take the reins in Afghanistan. The Meet the Press interview was part of a media blitz by an administration that's attempting to shore up support for the surge now underway in Afghanistan.

During the interview, Petraeus once again underscored that any troop withdrawals slated to begin in July 2011 will be contingent on the situation on the ground. Republicans have repeatedly criticized Obama for setting a deadline to begin withdrawal, arguing that it sends a message to both friend and foe in Afghanistan that the U.S. has no resolve.

But even as more hawkish elements in Congress criticize telegraphing a date to begin withdrawal, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll cited during the interview revealed nearly 70 percent of Americans lacked confidence that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is going to end successfully.

The disenchantment with what was widely thought in its first years as "the right war" because of the direct link to the 9/11 attacks comes as the U.S. nears its tenth year of combat operations there. American casualties have spiked, rising from 19 KIAs in April to 60 in July, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the toll, Petraeus acknowledged that the U.S. would likely talk to the Taliban in order to end the nearly decade-old war and keep al-Qaida out. "These are the kinds of questions people talk about when they talk about reconciliation … with more senior leaders of the Taliban and other elements," he said. "I think there is the prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups."

Petraeus added that some groups already have indicated to the Afghan government that they would consider accepting the Afghan constitution, laying down arms, and renouncing al-Qaida. "The way these kinds of endeavors typically end [is] as with the case in Iraq," he said. "Ultimately, we had to face the question in Iraq: Will we sit down across the table with people who have American blood on their hands? The answer was 'yes,' " he said.

Since the worst days of the Iraq insurgency, he explained, violence there has dropped by better than 90 percent. The success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and what that success will look like will have more to do with what Afghans want than what American forces can deliver, according to Petraeus. American arms and civil assistance are not going to turn Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy.

"At the end of the day, it's not about their embrace of us, it's not about us winning hearts and minds," Petraeus said. "It's about the Afghan government winning hearts and minds." Petraeus conceded that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government has been hampered by corruption, but the general also said that the Afghan leader has taken steps to eliminate the problem. "This isn't to say that there's any kind of objective of turning Afghanistan into Switzerland in three to five years or less," Petraeus explained. "Afghan 'good enough' is good enough."

And that means keeping some of the warlords and local political alliances that have ruled Afghanistan's rural areas for centuries. Afghanistan must have "traditional social organizing structures as part of the ultimate solution, if you will, or tribal shura councils and so forth -- which are quite democratic by the way," Petraeus said. "They then connect at the district or province level about what goes up to Kabul and what comes out as well."