Amid Afghan Strategy Review, What Are the Options?

JIM LEHRER:

Now, looking for a strategy in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Clinton outlined some possible choices and objectives yesterday in an interview with Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER:

Are you actually reassessing whether counterinsurgency is the way to go here?

HILLARY CLINTON, secretary of state: I think what we heard the president saying yesterday is, look, you're going to have to convince me that whatever decision — is it classic counterinsurgency with additional troops? Is it counterinsurgency at the same troop level? Is it a different mix of troops? Is it a counterterrorism strategy?

MARGARET WARNER:

Fewer troops?

HILLARY CLINTON:

Is it — who knows? I mean, what we're looking at, though, are the goals that we have. Our goal is to protect the United States of America, our allies, our friends around the world from what is the epicenter of terrorism, namely the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

JIM LEHRER:

And President Obama last night addressed the choices he would have to make. He spoke on the CBS "Late Show with David Letterman."

U.S PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

What I'm trying to do at this point is to make sure that both on the military front, on the diplomatic front, on the civilian front, training Afghan military and police, that on all these elements that we've got a coherent strategy that can work.

JIM LEHRER:

Gwen Ifill takes the story from there.

GWEN IFILL:

Both President Obama and Secretary Clinton made clear they are rethinking strategy in Afghanistan, but what are the alternatives?

For that, we get two views. Zalmay Khalilzad was George W. Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. And Marc Sageman is a terrorism consultant and former CIA case officer. He's written extensively about al-Qaida.

Welcome to you both. When you hear President Obama and Secretary Clinton talk about counterterrorism versus counterinsurgency, first of all, explain what that means.