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Michael makes his first appearance on Fareed Zakaria GPS, discussing the current situation in Iraq. Other panelists are Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack (both of the Brookings Institution) and Dexter Filkins (NYT).
This is one of the best discussions of the current situation that I have heard in a long time. It really summarizes where we are now and some of the choices yet ahead.
FAREED
ZAKARIA: Joining me again, Kenneth Pollack and
Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution, just
back from Iraq.
And we also welcome two prominent journalists, the
"New York Times'" foreign correspondent, Dexter
Filkins. He covered many of the most dangerous
moments in Iraq. And live from Baghdad, CNN's Michael
Ware.
Michael, let me start with you.
You're probably aware of the basic analysis that
Pollack and O'Hanlon gave, which is that things are
going better, the Iraqi army is more competent, also
more seen as a national army. Iraq is on the mend.
What do you think?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT,
BAGHDAD: Well, on the surface level, there's a
paper-thin veneer where that is actually true. There
are improvements in the Iraqi security forces.
It is, however, the case -- no matter how much you
want to dress it up, and no matter what an American
adviser tells you -- these are militia factions in
uniform. And if a couple of Anbar brigades performed
very well in Basra, that's true and cannot be
challenged.
The real question is, though, when you have 30,000 or
40,000 American troops here, unable to leave their
bases or project any real combat power, what do you
think those two Anbar brigades are going to be doing,
with the weapons and training that they've received?
Do you think they're still going to be answering to
this Iraqi government?
The real truth of the success or failure -- you
cannot, even for a moment, question that attacks are
down. Deaths among the civilian population and among
U.S. and Iraqi security forces are down. Al Qaeda is
under pressure like it's never been before.
But what are the second and third tier effects? What
are the prices America has to pay for this?
Apart from segregating the Iraqi society, apart from
turning this war into a competition of influence with
Iran, apart from alienating its Arab allies, apart
from building U.S.-backed militia blocs, you have to
look at the long-term interests. And we're going to
see them come into sharp focus.
So, really, the true success or failure of the U.S.
mission has been far from revealed.
MICHAEL O'HANLON: Michael's right, that we don't know
where this is going to be in three or five years. We
don't know where this will be once the U.S.
downsizes. That's one of the reasons I favor a
gradual downsizing.
You get to the issue of Obama versus McCain, you
might have a situation where Obama, if he wants to
get out faster, is going to have to accept more risk.
And he's essentially going to be either challenging
Michael Ware's analysis, or saying, "I'll live with
the consequences, because I'm uncertain enough about
the prognosis anyway, that it's not worth trying to
babysit this thing for five or 10 years."
DEXTER FILKINS, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK
TIMES": You know, we've had this very discussion
before, you know, 2005, 2006. We're going to draw
down brigades. There's been pauses before, and
they've never held.
I mean, one of the things that concerns me -- for
example, we talk about the Iraqi army going into
Basra, as they did, they went into Mosul, they went
into Sadr City -- they didn't really have to fight
their way into those neighborhoods, and they didn't
have to fight their way in. They haven't done a lot
of fighting.
In Basra, they basically took over after the Iraqi
government sent a delegation to Iran, and talked to
Muqtada al Sadr, and he basically told his guys to
stand down.
The real test is going to be when they have to fight.
And they haven't had to fight yet. And I'm concerned
about what's going to happen when they do.
ZAKARIA: Michael Ware, you brought up another point
about the division of the population, and things like
that. I mean, I look at Baghdad, which I haven't been
to in a while, but the number of walls has apparently
quadrupled or quintupled since I was there, so that
you have great security in Baghdad, but it's because
it almost looks like one of these medieval cities
with lots of walls.
Can you get around? What are the effects of the
walls? Does it make commerce very difficult?
What does normal life in Iraq look like?
WARE: Well, that's a great question, Fareed.
I mean, it's true. Sectarian murders within Baghdad
alone have plummeted by 90-something percent. But how
have we achieved this is the real question. And what
will be costs and consequences going forward?
By and large, the drop in violence has been achieved
by segregating the Iraqi community. The sectarian
cleansing that began during the civil war phase, or
the active civil war, was institutionalized by the
U.S. forces.
They essentially separated the communities, and with
mile after mile after mile of blast barrier,
literally gated these communities. And in those
communities that did not have Iranian-backed militias
protecting their populations, America created
American-backed militias and put them on the U.S.
government payroll to protect those communities.
So, essentially, neither side can get at each other.
KEN POLLACK: I think that Michael is absolutely right
in a couple of the points that he makes in terms of
these are baby steps. No one should take away from
anything that Michael O'Hanlon and I are saying that
somehow the problems of Iraq are solved and we're on
a glide path to success.
A second point is that, as Michael Ware is pointing
out, what we've done is effectively suppress the
sectarian violence.
Now, on the one hand you can say that's very fragile.
It is. And Michael's -- Michael Ware's description of
the situation is right. The consequences can be
catastrophic, if we suddenly walked away and just
ripped all this up and allowed the Iraqis to have at
it.
You would have these forces go right back at it. You
would have that catastrophic civil war with foreign
interference in the middle of the Persian Gulf
oilfields. That's why this is so important to the
United States.
ZAKARIA: Dexter, you listen to all of this, and what
does it make you think in terms of the American
political debate? Because it does feel to me like
there's a sort of weird disconnect, particularly on
the Democratic side. I mean, they're fighting a
battle -- you know, they're looking at an Iraq of two
years ago. And...
FILKINS: That's right.
ZAKARIA: ... what should they be saying?
FILKINS: You know, I think you're absolutely right. I
mean, I think -- I think the -- depending on who
wins, but even before that -- the Obama campaign
you're probably going to see do some pretty fast
footwork.
And they're going to have to -- they're going to have
to come up with something a little bit different than
saying we're going to be out in 18 months, or we're
going to go one brigade a month. I mean, because the
progress has been real.
And if -- I think a pretty good argument could be
made that, if we, the United States, pulls out too
quickly, all that progress is going to go away.
And so, I think you're going to see probably -- and
what you're -- is a convergence of the two campaigns,
as Ken was saying, that the McCain position and the
Obama position are increasingly going to look more
similar.
ZAKARIA: Michael Ware, you seem the most skeptical
about the idea that there's been kind of a
transformation.
Would you favor, or do you think that a rapid
drawdown of American troops could actually force the
Iraqis to make some of the political deals they need
to?
WARE: Well, in dreamland perhaps, Fareed, but
certainly not in reality here on the ground in Iraq.
I mean, what you need to realize is that the great
elephant in this room that no one's talking about is
Iran. And, of course, the American Arab allied
countries that surround Iraq.
I mean, this war stopped being about al Qaeda a long
time ago, if ever it was.
This war is really a contest between Washington and
Tehran.
And the fundamental building blocks of this
government are all political factions literally
founded in Tehran, if not still funded and supported
by Tehran, or have long-term, long-established links
with Tehran.
Indeed, General David Petraeus himself said that it's
a reality of life that the president of Iraq is an
agent of influence for Iran.
So, sure. You can pull out. But be aware what you're
giving Iran, what knock-on effect that will have with
America's Arab allies. And then factor in how you
think that will play with reconciliation, Fareed.
ZAKARIA: Why is the Democratic Party not rethinking
its Iraq policy?
O'HANLON: I think one thing is to back to the
history. You and I know that we have to think in
terms of where we are going forward in terms of
options. But obviously, for a lot of Democrats, this
is the symbol of the Bush administration's failed
foreign policy.
They threw away a war plan that had been developed
under their predecessors that could have helped
stabilize -- it may or may not have succeeded -- but
it could have made a more serious effort to stabilize
the place after Saddam was overthrown.
Rumsfeld threw it away. We didn't listen to our
allies in the negotiation process. This became the
symbol of Bush administration arrogance and
unilateralism.
And then, for four years it went badly.
So, given that backdrop, it's pretty hard for
Democrats to come around to the idea that perhaps, by
Bush finally let professionals run this war instead
of ideologues, that we have begun to rescue this
situation.
I think that's the simplest interpretation.
POLLACK: As far as whether things are going to work
out or not for the Iraqi people, they've paid a
horrible price for the mistakes that we made --
exactly the mistakes that Michael O'Hanlon was
talking about.
I don't know that we as Americans can really say
whether or not it was worth it, because at the end of
the day, it's the Iraqis who are paying the highest
price. I think they're the ones who are going to
judge.
And all I can say is that, having inflicted this
tragedy upon the Iraqi people, my own feeling is that
part of what we owe Iraq is the opportunity to pull
themselves out of it. If we can do that, if over the
course of the next four or five years we can give the
Iraqis a shot at stability and a new life for
themselves, then perhaps they will decide that it was
worth it.
ZAKARIA: And on that note, thank you all for a
wonderful discussion. And Michael Ware, an especial
thanks to you, because it is very late in Baghdad.
Thank you.