"It has been challenged. I mean, witness the drone strikes and some other things."
"I hope the President will heed the advice of his military commanders."
"Those gains are fragile and reversible because the problems with the Afghan Government remain."
"Absolutely."
"We would like to see a smoother transition in Afghanistan."
"The stability of the Afghan Government still is plagued with corruption and plagued with a number of difficulties."
"We don't have the ability to walk in and say we are going to fix this because there just isn't U.S. credibility in those parts of the world."
"But how do we contain that? Which groups are the greatest threat?"
"I want to emphasize though that although we agree that some degree of conditional military assistance is an appropriate way forward, the scale of leverage we can develop through assistance of the kind..."
"At the end of the day, it is simple to say that what we need to do is we need to win the ideological war."
"I think this hearing is incredibly important as well. We are struggling with a very, very difficult national security and policy challenge."