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OBAMA: I will end this war. Not because politics
compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the
burden, as heavy as it is. But because it is the
right thing to do for our national security and it
will ultimately make us safer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: President-elect Obama is inheriting two wars
-- Iraq and Afghanistan -- both with huge challenges.
So how might the U.S. strategy change under an Obama
administration? Here to talk it over, CNN's chief
international correspondent Christiane Amanpour;
CNN's senior political analyst and a former
presidential adviser David Gergen; also, CNN's
Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware and CNN's national
security analyst Peter Bergen.
Barack Obama has made a lot of promises on Iraq and
also on Afghanistan. On Iraq, he's promised within 16
months U.S. troops coming home; perhaps one battalion
every month. Can he still live up to that?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT: Well, in
many ways Anderson, it's already in train. I mean,
the timetable that's being set between Baghdad and
Washington by the Bush administration is not that
different a timetable to what President-elect Obama
wants.
Under the current agreement, U.S. forces have to
retreat to their bases by the middle of next year.
And under the agreement --
COOPER: So does that means, what, no patrols?
WARE: This is what we're still going to have wait and
see. Basically, U.S. forces are going to be stuck in
their bases and they're going to have to coordinate
with the Iraqi government to basically seek
permission to go out and conduct massive operations.
COOPER: How does that jibe with the Petraeus strategy
of having smaller forward operating bases in
communities?
WARE: Well, they're going to have to define which
bases, how many bases are going to work, but there's
certainly the JSSs within Baghdad itself, these tiny
outposts I would suspect they're going to have to be
shut down and handed over to Iraqi security forces.
Now, if you're going out hunting and you've gotta to
ask permission of the Iraqi government, well, many of
your targets are linked to the Iraqi government.
Plus, U.S. forces have to be out of that country by
the end of 2011. Now, that's only two years away. And
Obama wants people out in 16 months. So there's not a
great deal of difference in the timetables.
The question is, what are you going to do to backfill
the vacuum that you're leaving? 140,000 U.S. troops
currently are the referee in the ring of a
heavyweight bout with at least three contenders there
if you don't include Iran which is the real story.
COOPER: Well, you also have these Sunni groups which
are still are armed, still are trained, still have
their hierarchy in place, they've just been paid to
be on our side.
WARE: Well, they're the American militia. I mean,
this is the Sunni insurgency who basically came to
the Americans in 2003 and said, we don't want to
fight you. But the American administration at that
point wasn't listening. So eventually after four
years you put 100,000 Sunni insurgents, form buffers
on the payroll. They were then sent out as an
indirect assassination program that eliminated al
Qaeda in Iraq and reduced them to what they are now.
They're also an American counterweight to the
Iranian-backed militias and the Iraqi government.
They are a stick with which to beat that
administration because that administration is more
closely aligned with Tehran than Washington.
Now, what are you going to do with them, they're
handling them under the Iraqi government, the
government hates them. These U.S. allies hate the
Iraqi government.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL
CORRESPONDENT: I think Obama also will vastly benefit
from the deceleration of anti-Americanism. The enemy
was anti-Americanism over the last eight years and
that is going to have the knees, the legs knocked out
from under it because Obama will present a different
vision of American foreign policy. And I think that
will help him a lot, particularly in these very
difficult deals that he has to make and decide.
COOPER: In his vision, though, the central front on
the war on terror has never been Iraq, it is
Afghanistan. And also I guess to a lesser extent
Pakistan. What are his options in Afghanistan?
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: They're
pretty limited right now, because even when he
assumes office on January 20th, even if he said let's
move a lot of people to Afghanistan which I think is
unlikely because of problems they would have in Iraq
--
COOPER: But that is -- during the campaign -- some of
what he said. Some of these troops from Iraq would be
going to Afghanistan.
BERGEN: You can't get them there magically. You know,
it takes -- it would take them probably until July
just to show up in terms of redeploying, there's
logistics involved. That's a problem because the new
Afghan fighting season begins in the spring of next
year.
It's also a problem because the crucial presidential
election is in August, at least it's scheduled in
August of 2009 and that election is the most critical
part of, you know, the next Afghan political cycle.
So according to U.S. military officials the best that
they can be done is two brigades by the spring. Two
brigades is not a game changer. That's 7,000 combat
soldiers with support staff. That's not a game
changer in Afghanistan so obviously it's a campaign
promise but there are some realities about the size
of the U.S. military right now.
COOPER: Up next, keeping America safe. What can
President Obama do to reassure the more than 55
million people who didn't vote for him that he'll
keep us safe at night? Our panel weighs in on that,
coming up.
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COOPER:
Joining us again: CNN chief international
correspondent Christiane Amanpour, CNN senior
political analyst and former presidential adviser
David Gergen, as well as Baghdad correspondent
Michael Ware and national security analyst Peter
Bergen.
GERGEN: My question to you guys is, does President
Obama have to lower expectations about Afghanistan?
He keeps talking about winning Afghanistan.
WARE: Yeah, and destroying al Qaeda. Well, he's going
to have to change those expectations.
AMANPOUR: Well, no, no, you have to win. You have to
win.
WARE: Well, they're not doing what needs to be done.
AMANPOUR: Soft power. Yes, you can. You can do it. It
is a question of re- strategizing, re-prioritizing.
You can.
WARE: Agreed. Agreed.
AMANPOUR: Afghanistan was almost won.
WARE: True.
AMANPOUR: It is a massive, huge -- right here in the
middle of this volatile region -- a massive block of
receptive Muslims. Many of them moderate. This has to
be won and it can be won but it really has to have
its eye kept on the ball. It has to have a proper
military, both hard power and soft power, which
Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary, has talked about
over and over again and it has to have the focus on
it.
The reason it is the way it is right now is because
the eye was taken off the ball to Iraq.
COOPER: Can the same strategy in Iraq work in
Afghanistan in terms of --
WARE: No. The surge?
COOPER: The surge or trying to turn over some Taliban
elements negotiations.
WARE: Well, this is where we get to. The problem of
Afghanistan is not here. The problem of Afghanistan
is here.
COOPER: Pakistan.
WARE: In Pakistan.
Now, General Petraeus -- the new CentCom commander --
the GAO back in May, everyone says, it's agreed, that
the Al Qaeda leadership including Osama is here.
COOPER: North Waziristan.
WARE: Northwest Pakistan, yes, the tribal areas and
also here in Baluchistan with the Taliban. Now, they
said that the leadership is there, it's regenerated
and according to the GAO, they said they've
reconstituted their ability to attack America.
Now, you're not going to get at any of those people
physically there. Because you can throw as many
troops as you like at the Afghan mountains but they
swallow divisions whole and they can't cross the
border. And --
GERGEN: So can you win?
WARE: You can win but you've got to do lot of things
and primarily the first target has to be the
Pakistani intelligence agency, basically Islamabad's
CIA.
COOPER: The ISI.
WARE: The ISI, because elements within that are very
closely aligned to the Taliban and al Qaeda. And the
civilian government in Islamabad has very little
control over these guys.
AMANPOUR: They're fundamentally linked. Hamid Karzai
says that they are reaching out to the Taliban even
to Mullah Omar. They are apparently Saudi sponsored
talks, which is very similar to the Sunni awakening
in Iraq. We'll see how that goes.
America doesn't like it. Because they think it's
negotiated from a position of weakness, to an extent
it is. But that process may be under way and that's
really, really important to be able to try to see
whether they can bring those people on board.
COOPER: But the urgency, though, is there, and Peter,
you've traveled there a lot. We have been there
together. It is deteriorating rapidly. I mean, the
number of attacks, the number of suicide attacks;
something you really never used to see in Afghanistan
back in 2003, 2004. Something you see now all the
time.
BERGEN: A classified review by the White House is
going to conclude that the situation is dire. It is
in fact somebody involved in the review said to me
that the media -- this is an unusual thing for
somebody in the Bush administration to say -- is
actually not portraying how bad it is in Afghanistan
right now.
And a very leading indicator is that support for
international forces has dropped by 33 percent in the
last few months according to this review that is
going to be published by the National Security
Council.
GERGEN: It's dropped within Afghanistan?
BERGEN: Within Afghanistan.
AMANPOUR: Because of the killing of the civilians.
BERGEN: Civilian casualties is an enormous kind of
problem. We just -- 40 people at a wedding party.
COOPER: Because there haven't been enough U.S.
forces, because there's concern about going into some
of these regions, they've been using air raids to go
after targets but there's a lot of civilians getting
killed, as well.
AMANPOUR: Correct and that the one Hamid Karzai said
that has to stop in order to keep the goodwill. It's
happening in Pakistan, too.
COOPER: Which is something that Barack Obama
referenced during the campaign and got hammered for
by McCain and Sarah Palin.
BERGEN: No, so the situation is not good as
Christiane said, it's still winnable. Afghanistan
still, you know, there's still favorable views of the
American-led invasion unlike in Iraq from pretty much
the beginning. And in counterinsurgency, the center
of gravity is really what the people think.
We're losing -- the United States and its allies is
losing some of the goodwill but there still remains I
think a reservoir on which it can be built. And by
the way Obama, when I was in Afghanistan in July,
just doing informal polls with the Afghans, I mean,
they love this guy. They think that he's going to
take it to Pakistan and sort of be more aggressive
there which --
WARE: Yeah, good luck with that.
BERGEN: He may or may not do. But that's their view;
he is very popular politician --
GERGEN: But he now seems to feel that Karzai is
actually a reliable partner in all of this.
AMANPOUR: Interesting you say that.
GERGEN: One keeps understanding that he's corrupt and
he's weak and he's lost the support of the people.
COOPER: There's been allegations about his brother in
the narcotics trade.
WARE: No allegations; it's fact. I mean, to survive
in Kandahar as a power player, you have to be a
warlord. And his brother is currently the head of the
Karzai tribe. So to lead their tribe, you think he
can disrupt the peoples' opium fields? Do you think
he can disarm his men? If he does he's got no stake
at the table.
COOPER: Right now 95 percent of the world's heroin
comes from Afghanistan.
AMANPOUR: But again, that was something that had been
lower in 2001 and could have been turned around to do
other kinds of crop harvests and another kind of
economy and again, the eye was taken off the ball.
WARE: But what ability does he got to extend power
beyond Kabul? I mean, he's in this tiny little
enclave here.
GERGEN: Can we get to victory with Karzai? Or we have
to have somebody else?
AMANPOUR: He is who you have right now. You have an
election coming up that he says despite what the
Americans want which is to delay the elections that
he says he doesn't want to. And I think the strategy
has to be reshaped and you can bet your bottom dollar
that's what General Petraeus is doing right now. He's
just recently been there and they're looking at it
and trying to figure out how to turn it around. And I
don't think it's impossible.
COOPER: Up next, we continue to look beyond our
borders. How can President Obama boost our image in
the world and at the same time handle potential
nuclear threats like Iran and Russia? We'll dive into
those challenges in a moment.
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OBAMA: And all those watching tonight from beyond our
shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who
are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of
the world, our stories are singular but our destiny
is shared. A new dawn of American leadership is at
hand.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Let's look at some of the other extreme
challenges in terms of foreign policy for Barack
Obama. Russia. North Korea. What are the other major
challenges?
AMANPOUR: Iran, of course.
WARE: Yes. That's who you're really at war at.
AMANPOUR: Might be number one because none of this,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Middle East -- in
the considered view of many former U.S. officials,
Secretaries of State and many people in the region --
will not be fully resolved and solved without a
mature relationship of some sort based on mutual
interest with Iran which believes itself to be the
superpower in the region and is certainly acting as
if it is.
WARE: Yes, regionally it is a super power. As Tehran
tells the visitors from Iraq, from the Iraqi
government, "we are a regional superpower. We will be
a nuclear power of some sort and unlike the Americans
we're never going anywhere." So they're the practical
political realities within that region.
AMANPOUR: And from all my conversations and deep
reporting over the last couple of years and
particularly during this campaign, I believe that
they want to do business with the United States.
In other words I think they want a paradigm shift. I
think the door is open. You saw from the letter of
Ahmadinejad, I know people in the United States tend
to laugh at that, but it was unprecedented that an
Iranian president sent a letter of congratulations.
And just recently after that, the speaker of the
parliament in Iran has told all his MPs not to talk
to the foreign press. They don't want to make a
mistake.
BERGEN: I think his biggest test is going to be
potentially a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.
Because I don't think that Israel -- at a certain
point they regard it as existential, the nuclear
program in Iran. And they are not necessarily going
to ask permission.
And so what happens when you get either information
or intelligence leading to believe -- this obviously
changes the game enormously in Iraq. American
military commanders in Iraq are extremely concerned
about such an attack because they believe that the
Iranians would interpret it as something that we have
sanctioned.
COOPER: How likely do you think such an attack is?
AMANPOUR: Well, there's been a lot of fear about it.
And not just the Israeli attack but an American
attack. Both the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff
here in the United States and seniors officials like
the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had
sort of walked military resolution back.
In other words, Olmert has said, all these hard
liners, all these people in Israel who are talking
about a military solution to Iran, they need to
really think carefully about -- he said that in an
interview on the record. Remarkable.
WARE: I don't even think there is a military
solution.
COOPER: Striking Iran is not like striking Iraq.
WARE: No, no it's not going to work.
AMANPOUR: And the truth of the matter is that the
Israeli part of this equation will put pressure on
the next administration and it will be more difficult
to open dialogue with Iran because they do -- they
are suspicious about that.
GERGEN: Does that mean the first task of the next
Secretary of State should be to take all this on?
AMANPOUR: For the Middle East peace process.
GERGEN: The Middle East peace process.
AMANPOUR: I think it's going to take a very
considered, very careful look because obviously,
Iran, both inside Iran and inside the United States
is a very political hot potato.
You've got hard liners on both sides who don't want
it to happen. In Iran, you've got a presidential
election that's coming up that both sides, reformists
and hard liners seem to want to use opening the
American door to benefit themselves.
On the other hand, very, very senior people in the
U.S., all the Secretaries of State that we've
interviewed have all said --
GERGEN: You had five.
AMANPOUR: Five. Across --
GERGEN: Republican and Democrat.
AMANPOUR: Republican and Democrat from Powell to
Baker, to Christopher, to Kissinger and Albright, all
have said that that must be a priority. Sensibly,
properly, the right way but without preconditions to
start some kind of change of paradigm here, a change
of relationship.
GERGEN: A dialogue.
AMANPOUR: A dialogue, yes, of course.
GERGEN: A serious dialogue. A diplomatic offensive.
AMANPOUR: Absolutely.
WARE: And I've actually sat down with the man America
has been talking to so far. It's the Iranian
ambassador in Baghdad. Now, he himself is a member of
the Quds Force, the very elite military unit that's
been helping kill the American soldiers in Iraq.
Now, while as stony-faced or as poker-faced as he is
in that embassy or in the two talks he's held with
the American ambassador, the fact that he is there,
the fact that he's shaping a framework for any kind
of a discussion, even though it may not have
progressed too far yet is a positive sign. They're
there to listen but they want to see what you got to
put on the table and unfortunately for them that's
mostly about leverage within the nuclear issue.
AMANPOUR: And just very quickly, it was Iran that
helped the United States in Afghanistan.
GERGEN: How important is it to get to Russia engaged
with the Iranian issue?
WARE: It's vital.
GERGEN: Do we need Russia as a partner in all of this
and therefore all these other issues we have got with
Russia become -- you know, complex?
WARE: Absolutely. Russia's also looking for its own
leverage.
COOPER: Russia's already testing Barack Obama. I
mean, threatening to put missiles on their border if
the U.S. goes ahead with a defensive missile shield.
AMANPOUR: They are. They're breast beating, chest
beating. Again, I think they also will have a problem
because up until now, for the last several years,
they have been able to capitalize internally on
virulent anti-Americanism that has spread over the
last eight years of the Bush administration. That's
going to decrease and it's going to be more difficult
for them to use the American bogeyman to justify
their actions.
COOPER: Up next, your health, your wallet. As
president, Obama has said he wants to make sure
insurance is available to everyone who wants it. With
the shaky economy, though, can he still follow
through with that promise?