Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/kerry-afghan-troop-push-goes-too-far-too-fast Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Margaret Warner speaks with Sen. John Kerry about his recent trip to Afghanistan to persuade President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff election. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: That follows our newsmaker interview with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry. He just returned from Afghanistan, where he helped persuade President Karzai to accept a runoff election.Margaret Warner spoke to Kerry today after he laid out his recommendations on Afghanistan. MARGARET WARNER: Senator Kerry, thanks for joining us. MARGARET WARNER: You said in your speech today that General McChrystal's plan goes too far too fast.Are you talking about the troop levels or his basic overall strategy of counterinsurgency? SEN. JOHN KERRY, D-Mass.: The breadth of the reach of the counterinsurgency that he wants to start with and the number of troops to do it immediately. That doesn't mean you might not get there, ultimately, Margaret.But I think you have got to show people like me and others that we have the civilian capacity to come in under underneath those troops, and the governance that's going to allow us to hold on, and the Afghan army members who will be in there with you, so it's not an American face; it's an Afghan movement immediately.I think those three ingredients are critical. And we just don't have that sufficiently there to say, oh, boy, let's just go deploy this number of troops now. MARGARET WARNER: So, are you suggesting to the president that he simply defer a decision on additional troops? Are you… SEN. JOHN KERRY: No, I think the president could conceivably make the decision with — and in many ways. He could put in some troops. He could put in a lot of troops. He could do, you know, any number of options.But I'm trying to suggest that the standard that you use before you put them out into combat and clear an area and start to hold an area and actually implement the counterinsurgency component itself, I think you need those ingredients, or you are going to fail. MARGARET WARNER: But the ingredients you lay out, some kind of effective local and national governance, Afghan security forces, a much better coordinated U.S. civilian effort, I mean, those are big projects, aren't they?