WikiLeaks document dump increases focus on Afghanistan

But on the war itself, Meet the Press's David Gregory hit Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen hard about what exactly is the nature of the mission itself, which Gates told Amanpour was nothing too complicated.

But Mullen seemed to get tripped up when Gregory focused for a moment on the cover of this week's Time magazine, which features an Afghanistan woman who had her ears and nose torn off by members of the Taliban, asking whether we are in Afghanistan in part to protect that from happening to similar women, or is the mission to actually make Americans safer at home — a traditional fissure to some in American foreign policy between the U.S.'s role (as in the Balkans) to be the world's policeman and fight human rights abuses, vs. fighting purely to protect American lives.

MR. GREGORY:  It--it's--it seems to be an important point, if you look at the cover of Time magazine, which has a pretty striking photograph of a young woman whose nose was cut off by the Taliban, a--just one indication of how brutal and horrific these people are.  And, and they've done this when they were in power and, indeed, even when they've been out of power.  The grim reality, if that's an argument for why the U.S. should not leave, is that our central mission, the central mission of the United States is not to protect the women of Afghanistan.  Is that fair?

ADM. MULLEN:  I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity.

MR. GREGORY:  But you said a year ago our central mission was to get at those who threaten us.  Our central mission is not to protect the women, who could still be brutalized if the Taliban comes into power in any fashion.

ADM. MULLEN:  Well, the Taliban are incredibly unpopular with the Afghan people, even as we speak, and they have--as they have been for a long period of time.  The mission--the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda.  But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.  Afghanistan has to be stable enough, has to have enough governance, have to--has to create enough jobs, have an economy that's good enough so that the Taliban cannot return to the brutality of the kind of regime that you just showed.

MR. GREGORY:  However, the United States could still withdraw and, and do so having achieved the mission, and yet women like, like those on the cover of that magazine could still be in danger.

ADM. MULLEN:  Certainly, the, the, the long-term goal is to make sure that the--with respect to the population in Afghanistan, that there's a governant--governance structure that treats its people well.  And I--but to say exactly how that's going to look and what specifics would be involved, I think it's just way too early.

Mullen spoke on the same day that the lead story in the Sunday New York Times reported that the U.S. that's counter-terrorism, and not counterinsurgency as announced earlier this year, that is the war strategy that is "working" currently in Afghanistan.

The article also reports that the U.S. soon hopes to begin doing in Iraq what was known to have a quantifiable effect in reducing the number of bad guys (In Iraq it was called "The Sunni Awakening) — that is, start paying them:

A long-awaited campaign to convert lower-level and midlevel Taliban fighters has finally begun in earnest, with Mr. Karzai signing a decree authorizing the reintegration program. With $200 million from Japan and other allies, and an additional $100 million in Pentagon money, American military officers will soon be handing out money to lure people away from the insurgency.