STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
On the first Monday of a new year, it's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Here's NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTESTORS)
TOM BOWMAN: More than a hundred protesters marched in front of the White House a few weeks ago, carrying signs and calling for American troops to come home from Afghanistan. Among them was Daniel Ellsberg, one of the famous dissidents from the Vietnam era.
DANIEL ELLSBERG: I know that people here understand that this war is as hopeless and wrong as the war we participated in in Vietnam and that it's not going to end by a presidential initiative. It will only be because the American public has awakened to their responsibilities and the realities of this war.
BOWMAN: One of them is Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
JIM MCGOVERN: We've lost some of the finest men and women in our country. We're going broke because we're borrowing all the money to pay for the war and we're not talking about it in Washington. It's unbelievable.
BOWMAN: Richard Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state under President Bush when the Afghan war began, says Afghanistan has largely been set aside as an issue.
RICHARD ARMITAGE: I certainly noticed a lack of debate during the campaign, in November. I was shocked by it but domestic issues ruled out.
BOWMAN: Former Deputy Secretary Of State Richard Armitage says that dynamic could begin to change in the coming months.
ARMITAGE: I think towards the spring, as people start getting more serious about both casualties and the deficit, that there will be a - somewhat more discussion about this issue.
BOWMAN: Senator J. William Fulbright organized a month-long series of hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He reviewed a half dozen separate proposals to end the war.
WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: I hope that the hearings will result in greater public understanding of the policy alternatives available and positive congressional action to end American participation in the war.
BOWMAN: Fulbright found support from a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran named John Kerry, the man who now leads the same committee. The young Kerry was blunt in his criticism.
INSKEEP: Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, the first president to lose a war.
BOWMAN: Senator Kerry is not saying Afghanistan is a mistake, though he did ask some basic questions last summer.
KERRY: Ultimately, we need a better understanding of exactly what the definition of success is in Afghanistan, and what an acceptable state looks like there and how achievable it is.
BOWMAN: In the New Year, Kerry plans on holding what he calls a robust series of hearings on Afghanistan's government and its security forces.
BOWMAN: Congressman McGovern is suggesting another topic.
MCGOVERN: And I believe very strongly that what we need to be talking about is an exit strategy. How do we extricate ourselves from this mess?
BOWMAN: For his part, Richard Armitage and other defense analysts are coming up with possible alternative strategies, if he says there's no real progress in Afghanistan this year.
MONTAGNE: Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.