Major push is needed to save Afghanistan, US general says

General Petraeus also cautioned that security in Afghanistan would not improve if the only initiative was the deployment of more American troops; he said that Afghanistan required a diplomatic and economic commitment as well.
“There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” General Petraeus said. Although “the natural tendency will be to look to the way progress was achieved in Iraq for possible answers,” he added, it is clear that Afghanistan is different from Iraq.
Afghanistan has a higher illiteracy rate, more difficult terrain and fewer developed resources than Iraq does, he said.
The daylong conference, which was meant to highlight the foreign policy challenges facing the new administration, also included a warning from William Perry, a defense secretary in the Clinton administration, that Obama will “almost certainly” face a serious crisis with Iran during his first year in office.
Perry, who is influential in Democratic national security circles and has ties to members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team, said that Iran was “moving inextricably” toward developing nuclear weapons. “And it seems clear that Israel will not sit by idly while Iran takes the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power,” he said.