The president and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice.

First and foremost is to not allow the reestablishment, if you will, of an extremist sanctuary that can export the kind of terror that ended up with terrorists taking down the World Trade Center and plowing into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. That's the point: We started this war because the Sept. 11 attack came from this area. And we do not fight alone, but with some 40 allies who share that view.

The Sunni Arabs began to realize that they had made a huge mistake by not voting in the election of 2005 and by not being part of the new Iraq. They had reasons for this: They were effected by the disestablishment of the military and by de-Baathification (the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's party) in winter 2007-2007. They increasingly recognized that their future lay in being part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem.

I am not a politician, and I will never be, and I say that with absolute conviction.

Don't forget Yemen, where there are also extremist elements, as we saw recently.

Money can be a very important form of "ammunition," although we should never forget that when you're being shot at the most important ammunition is real ammunition.

Afghanistan has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years.