Representative Dan Maffei does not want an escalation of US troops in Afghanistan, especially without a clear exit strategy.

There was a defined military mission in Afghanistan after 9-11, says the freshman Democrat, whose district stretches from Syracuse to Webster and Irondequoit. Troops were breaking up Al Qaeda cells and dismantling the terrorist group's hosts, the Taliban. But now Maffei sees a military campaign without defined goals that has taken on the appearance of an occupation.

Two weeks ago, Maffei joined with dozens of his Democratic and Republican colleagues to sign a letter to the president that opposes a troop increase for a "counterinsurgency war."

The war isn't getting the attention it should in the halls of Congress and in the press, Maffei says. But other issues are also on his mind. For one, farmers in Wayne County have complained of labor shortages due to immigration raids. Maffei's talked with Department of Homeland Security representatives and has arranged meetings between agency staff and farmers and immigrant advocates.

Like most Congress members, Maffei's paying close attention to evolving health-care reform legislation and is pushing for a bill that includes a public insurance option.

The following is an edited version of a conversation that City had with Maffei.

CITY: Clearly, the military effort in Afghanistan is picking up. What do you think of the administration's approach?

Maffei: I think the administration is quickly running out of time to show that there is a feasible mission in Afghanistan that can be accomplished within some sort of a reasonable time frame. Making sure that there's no Al

Qaeda in and around Afghanistan is just not realistic. We don't want to put our men and women in harm's way for a mission that is going to be endless. And there might be other ways to do it.

I have been looking at what George Will suggests: When we see activity which is clearly terrorist-related in Afghanistan, we would have an air strike or something like that. We wouldn't put our men and women in harm's way quite so much.

I do think there is some military mission, but it needs to be far better defined and we have to have some sort of a sense of a timetable. Not an absolute timetable, but unless I have that I'm not interested in supporting more troops or even continuing to support indefinitely a ground-troop presence there.

The air strikes in Afghanistan have caused many civilian casualties. Is it the best approach to rely on air strikes?

It's not a perfect policy, which is why I'm not adopting George Will's idea, but I think he brings an interesting argument to the table. I have a great deal of concern, and that's why we have to be as sure as possible. In upstate New York we are actually on the forefront of developing the kind of detection technologies that would allow us to really differentiate, as much as we can, between the bad guys and the innocent civilians. But no system is ever going to be perfect.

It seems to me the country is not willing to take on a fight that goes in to Pakistan. You can't really have any kind of mission that you would limit to Afghanistan if it involves Al Qaeda, because Al Qaeda can just move across to the other side. To the extent that we have involvement, it needs to be diplomacy, with military as little as possible. I think right now we're far more in danger of falling into the same trap that Russia and other countries have in Afghanistan - appearing to be the aggressors and the occupiers. I know that's not our intention.

What are your thoughts on the Obama administration's approach to Iraq?

At least an exit strategy has been established. It's not as fast as I would like, but you do have a policy that's at least, I believe, now going in the right direction. To be fair, a certain amount of this change was done under the Bush administration, ironically enough.

I think you have to have far more diplomatic efforts. We need to not tie our foreign aid to necessarily western contractors. We have to make sure that we are allowing the Iraqis to decide their own destiny. I don't know if I have much more to say on that. Like I said, I'm pleased we're at least following a timetable.

Our continuing problem with Iraq is that we are seen as - whether partly true, not true at all, whatever - the perception becomes the reality, and we were seen as occupiers and, at least in part, for our own gain.

You've been hearing from farmers in WayneCounty who are having trouble getting laborers - many of their workers are traditionally immigrants. Where do you see the immigration debate heading?

What we should be doing, if possible, is comprehensive immigration reform. It's got to have a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers. It's got to allow guest workers in industries, particularly agriculture, where there clearly is no sufficient domestic labor force. It's got to protect our borders to the extent possible - particularly from potential terrorists - and set better standards for enforcement; give law enforcement reasonable guidelines and people reasonable assurance that there's not simply racial profiling. Whether or not that's achievable right now, I'm not sure. Certainly not this year. But I'm hoping this Congress. I reject that this is a political hot potato that shouldn't be dealt with in an election year.

If we can't do comprehensive, then we absolutely have to make sure that our farmers have the workers that they need that they cannot find in the domestic labor force, and that those workers can do their jobs without undue harassment. So we have to figure out some way to register them and get them into the system.

I have a bill called Ag Jobs which I'm a cosponsor of that I will be pushing as part of comprehensive immigration reform, or if we can't get comprehensive immigration reform, as a stop-gap.

Do you think aggressive immigration enforcement is having a chilling effect on farm labor?

I do. Remember, the Department of Homeland Security denies that there are raids. The farmers will tell you otherwise. I'm not a judge. I don't want to judge the facts of any of these cases. But as a federal representative, I want to make sure I'm there to help ensure the situation doesn't get to a point of crisis.

What are your thoughts on Senator Max Baucus' health-care bill?

I want a public option. I think you can have a public option but just because a public option is in there, doesn't turn it in to a public mandate automatically. I'm also for strong private options. I'm not interested in putting everybody into a particular kind of system, because I clearly have a large number of constituents who don't trust the government; a lot of my constituents don't trust private insurance. They all agree, by the way, that it should be the physician and the patient that are certainly the most important deciders in the health-care debate.

I don't believe the Baucus plan goes far enough in making sure that the individual has such choices. But I do think there are some things there that I want to look at in terms of trying to find some middle ground between where Democrats are and Republicans are. If we're going to have the bill at all, what we're going to have to realize is it's not going to be everything that we want.

My biggest concerns, though, involve some of the pay-fors in the Baucus bill. There's a tax on device manufacturers that would really, really harm an employer in the Syracuse area and I think some employers in the Rochester area. It seems like in the end they just had to cobble together enough money over 10 years.

Is the public option your make-or-break point in terms of supporting health-care legislation?

I would say it's an extraordinarily important piece of the health insurance part of the bill.

That said, I think it's wrong for either side to continue to emphasize health insurance over health-care reform. Health-insurance reform is an important piece, but if we make the health-insurance reform a litmus test for everything we do on health-care reform, we're not helping ourselves either.

I think we will get a public option of some sort by the end of the day, but it's tricky. Right now it seems like the Senate can't pass anything with one, and the House seems like it can't pass something without one.