Tim Pawlenty went on Bill O’Reilly’s show earlier this evening to react to President Obama’s Afghanistan speech:
Here’s the transcript of Pawlenty’s discussion:
O’Reilly: … Now, you heard President Obama basically say that he has control of the Afghan situation. That what he’s doing is a methodical disengagement that the American people want. Do you support it?
Pawlenty: Bill, I thought his speech tonight was deeply concerning. Look how he phrased the outcome of this war. He said we need to end the war “responsibly.” When America goes to war, America needs to win. We need to close out the war successfully. And what that means now is not nation building. What it means is to follow General Petraeus’ advice and to get those security forces built up to the point where they can pick up the slack as we draw down.
O’Reilly: If you were elected president, would you put more people military people in there?
Pawlenty: I supported the surge and I would have supported it even at a higher level as General McChrystal originally recommended. And I supported President Obama’s decision to surge it even at the level that he did. But it shows you a window in his thinking that on the very night he announced the surge, he also quickly announced the deadline for withdrawal to placate the left wing of his party.
O’Reilly: Well, that was a tactical mistake and I think most people agree.
Pawlenty: But Bill, he’s doing it again. He’s doing it again tonight.
O’Reilly: Why is he doing it? Is he doing it because he sincerely believes, as 56 percent of the American people do? We have to get the heck out of there. Because all the polls show the majority of the people want out of there. Does he sincerely believe that or is he doing it to play to his base to get votes for his reelection campaign?
Pawlenty: The latter. I have been there three times – late last summer – and met with General Petraeus. He said ‘Look, we’ve stalled out the insurgency. We need about two years to get this thing to the point of security, stability and we can draw down the troops responsibly.’ And I think that’s what he told the President. And now you have the President saying to General David Petraeus, I think the smartest and the most insightful guy in this debate, ‘You know what, I know better, and I’m going to put artificial timelines even within the next year and half.’ This decision should be based on conditions on the ground and success, not some vague notions of a responsible wind down and then jumping over what the real mission is now which is stabilizing the security of the country.
O’Reilly: How do you sell your point of view to a very skeptical American public? Colonel Hunt said even after 10 years we only have 10 percent of the Afghan provinces under control. We have a corrupt guy running Afghanistan, Karzai. By all accounts, this guy is a nasty piece of work. He can’t even rally his own people, Karzai. They hate him. So how do you sell after ten years, a half trillion dollar investment. We got 1,500 dead, and thousands more maimed in Afghanistan. How do you sell that to the American public who said we’ve had enough?
Pawlenty: Two things, keep in mind where most of the people are in Afghanistan. You know from your trip there – Kabul and Kandahar. So you can’t count the provinces.
O’Reilly: You can’t tell and you can’t pacify the whole country, no matter how many troops are there.
Pawlenty: You could have swung those surge troops from the south where great progress had been made to the east to the hinge to Pakistan and it would have been a good next move.
But here’s how you sell it: we’ve been there ten years. Everybody knows we are there for justified reasons but now we had so much money so much treasure so much sacrifice so much blood so much loss of life, to leave now when we’re so close a successful completion of what I described earlier I think is a grave mistake It not only dishonors that commitment that people have made.
O’Reilly: Did you notice that he stuck in the clean energy resources deal? Where did that come from? And like the clean energy stuff? I think we all want clean energy but in a speech about Afghanistan?
Pawlenty: It goes back to the political point and then he throws in this idea that Libya and an international approach is the centralized way forward for us. If he would have acted promptly and decisively in Libya, he’s the one who has now created the vital interest in Libya, which is if you leave Moammar Qaddafi sit there and become a renewed terrorist, guess who his number one target is going to be as he thumbs his nose at the United States of America. You can’t let Qaddafi stay now and it’s President Obama who’se created the new and different vital interest in Libya, which means you can’t let Qaddafi stay there now.
