Length: 6:09
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SMALL (7.5 MB)
Michael rejoins TBFPTOT (now also including
Fareed Zakaria) as Anderson Cooper asks questions
about the speech. In the second clip, Wolf Blitzer
asks about the drug situation in Afghanistan and
how thoroughly drugs fuel the economy there and
whether we can tackle that problem.
WOLF
BLITZER: Right now Anderson Cooper is joining us --
Anderson, this is a tough day for the president. He's
got his work cut out for him because now he's got to
continue -- he and his advisers, his aides -- have to
continue to sell this new strategy and make sure it
really works.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, this is not,
certainly, a one-night speech that he's going to be
making. We're going to be hearing, probably, a lot
from the president and certainly a lot from his aides
over the next several days, if not several weeks, on
this.
I want to go back to a point Donna Brazile made, that
a lot of this is contingent on the Afghan
government's ability to reform itself, to lessen the
corruption and to actually get an Afghan security
forces that are up and running.
We're joined by Fareed Zakaria for the first time
tonight -- Fareed, just briefly, your thoughts on
what the president spoke about tonight.
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": I think
he was trying to square a difficult circle. I don't
know that he strategically entirely agrees with the
military that they have to have these troops. But I
think he recognizes that once it was public, it was
impossible for him to say zero.
So he has come up with a compromise, if you will,
that is both strategic and political. Strategically,
it gives McChrystal what he wants, but it puts him on
notice that he has to deliver some kind of results
pretty soon for it to be sustainable. And
politically...
MICHAEL WARE: Before the next presidential election.
ZAKARIA: Well, and politically, I think it gives him
the ability, before the Congressional elections, to
say we have begun to turn the corner, we are
beginning to deal -- to bring some troops out.
Look, these are not purely grand strategy decisions,
there are also political ones. He has to sustain
support for this surge in the United States, as well.
It's a compromise, clearly.
COOPER: What proof, though, is there that the Afghan
government can lessen the corruption?
I mean you said early on, back in 2002, before the
emphasis was put on Iraq, there were changes that
were made. But in terms of transparency, we have not
seen anything in recent years -- or anything really
serious...
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Well, clearly...
COOPER: -- on part of the Afghan government.
AMANPOUR: -- it's a big challenge. And, of course, a
legitimate and credible Afghan government is a vital
component to making this successful. There are others
who have said, though, that when a political
situation is underway, which it was in 2001, 2002 and
up to 2003, progress was being made. Ashraf Ghani,
the former finance minister and World Bank, the
person who knows the most about this kind of thing,
has said that it is possible...
COOPER: The man who -- who lost the presidential
election...
AMANPOUR: Well, yes...
COOPER: -- and the man who won the presidential
election, Hamid Karzai, won because he linked himself
with some pretty rough characters...
AMANPOUR: He made...
COOPER: -- in this last election.
AMANPOUR: He has made a very clear inauguration
speech. And, look, it's going -- the proof is going
to be in the pudding. Either he's going to change his
ways, hold people accountable -- his own interior
minister talked about a new accountability office for
the first time, a judge and a court where ministers
will be held accountable and tossed out if they don't
perform.
We'll see whether it happens. They're saying the
right things. But more to the point, this notion that
they didn't need more forces to actually try to beat
back the Taliban is ludicrous. The military out there
is quoted every day as saying we need more forces to
be able to dominate the areas that we need to
dominate. And everybody knows that it was because
there were not enough forces on the ground that Al
Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and his people were allowed to
escape in Tora Bora.
COOPER: In terms, though...
AMANPOUR: It's a fact.
COOPER: -- of what the Afghan government is capable
of doing, as you all know, you've all been to Kabul.
You go on the streets of Kabul and there's these
McMansions popping up. And they're owned by, you
know, some colonel in the Afghan Army who's making,
you know, supposedly, a couple bucks a week.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Corruption is widespread.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL
CORRESPONDENT: When you go to talk to, you know, the
government official who's responsible for cutting
corruption, the statistics that he gave me this
summer -- look, we're doing this to combat corruption
in vehicle licensing. I mean that's not the country's
central problem. Yes, it's one of their problems.
And, yes, they're tackling it in a small way. But the
problem is so vast.
What Karzai has done is create a government that
doesn't have checks and balances, that he hasn't
given power to provincial governors, that he's
managed it and it is set up in such a way -- and he
brought his old cronies back in to get re-elected --
that it -- that it's not possible to do it with just
one small office like this.
(CROSSTALK)
ZAKARIA: I think it's very important, honestly, that
we stop obsessing about corruption.
WARE: Yeah, I agree.
ZAKARIA: Afghanistan is the third poorest country in
the world. America is pouring in money that amounts
to several times its total GDP every year. There's
going to be corruption.
COOPER: But doesn't it matter because...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: -- when the Marines go into these villages...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: -- and try to convince people that their
government cares about them, people point to this
corruption?
ZAKARIA: What wins the argument is not, you know,
good, clean, honest government. What Karzai has to do
is win the Pashtuns back. It is an ethnic problem. If
you look around the world, the places that, you know,
civil wars have been won, it has not been the squeaky
clean guys who won. It's the guys who make political
deals. He's got to figure out how to do that.
WARE: Fareed's right. The Afghans are not expecting a
Washington-style, squeaky clean Afghan government. No
Afghan is waiting for that. That's never going to
come. The whole society is built on a feudal system.
ROBERTSON: But to win the Pashtuns back, they have to
have trust in the government of the country.
WARE: Yes, but what...
ROBERTSON: And that's completely eroded.
WARE: The trust they want is that...
(CROSSTALK)
WARE: ...the trust is that Kabul isn't going to keep
screwing them. Essentially, the Pashtuns lost the war
and the Northern Alliance won. And among the Pashtu,
America has picked its few favorites like Gul Agha
Sherzi and Karzai himself and a couple of other
tribal leaders and they're America's pets.
The largest Pashtun tribes have been left totally out
in the cold. And you're not going to bring the
Pashtuns back until you start engaging them.
ROBERTSON: And Gul Agha Sherzi is one of the leaders,
one of the governors who's actually shown promise in
Nangarhar, Nangarhar Inc. He's cut down the drug
growth there. He's improved the infrastructure. He's
actually shown some positive -- some positive
results.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: Interestingly, Michael, there are a lot of
local tribal leaders now, a lot of sort of indigenous
military militias that are growing up to actually
combat the Taliban.
WARE: That's exactly what I'm talking about.
AMANPOUR: This is a big deal.
COOPER: Where...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: We want to talk about that...
WARE: This is exactly what I'm talking about.
COOPER: We want to talk about that and how it
compares to what happened in Iraq...
WARE: Yeah.
COOPER: --in terms of local militias and whether
that's a viable possibility...
WARE: That's where we go.
COOPER: -- that the U.S. could get behind.
We're going to take a quick break.
Our coverage continues. We'll also talk about all the
political aspects of this back in the United States
with our political panel.
Our coverage continues.
Length: 3:31
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SMALL (4.3 MB)
WOLF
BLITZER: The president delivered a very, very
detailed speech. But he left out some critical
details as far as Afghanistan is concerned.
Christiane Amanpour, we heard nothing from the
president as far as opium and poppies, the drug trade
in Afghanistan. It's the largest supplier of opium in
the world. And there was no mention of it.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: That's right. It's really big
problem right now. We just had the head of the U.N.
Drug Interdiction on our program. It's a very, very
big problem. What you actually didn't hear is almost
anything about the whole civilian effort under which
drug control does fall. It was remarkable in the lack
of detail. In fact, he said no nation building. And
this is a real contrast with what he said in March,
when he talked about investing in Afghan's future, in
really making sure that that place and Pakistan
stayed secure by investing. He said it was much
cheaper to give them the wherewithal to create a
better future for themselves, than the U.S. paying
for it. None of that tonight.
BLITZER: The number one source of revenue, Chris. You
were just in Afghanistan. You saw what's going on
over there. More money exporting drugs, heroin,
opium, if you will, poppies, than they do anything
else.
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT:
Wolf, 100 meters from one of the police stations,
huge marijuana, hash field, as far as the eye can
see, stalks 10 feet tall, 100 Meters from a police
station. That tells you how pervasive that it is
there.
BLITZER: So much of the economy, Michael Ware,
depends on this.
WARE: Look, I lived in Kandahar. Every time I went to
see the police chief, his guards would have red
palms. That's from they had just been smacking and
shaping the last hashish batch. It's the whole
currency of -- it's the oxygen that fuels or allows
the economy to breathe. I'll just spend time with
Karzai's brother, the president's brother. They grow
opium. Their tribe, the Popalzai, grows tons and tons
and tons of opium. And I said to the president's
brother, can you get your own people to stop growing
opium? He went no, are you crazy? He said, I'd be
finished if I did. He said, one thing at a time.
Security first, opium second.
BLITZER: Nic, are the NATO allies going to really
step up and help the president right now?
ROBERTSON: There's no indication that they are. I
mean, the numbers that have been talked about
recently have been 10,000. In Europe, right now,
they're talking about 7,000. And Europeans are only
talking about coming up with perhaps 3,000 to 4,000.
One of the interesting things, Prime Minister Gordon
Brown last week talked about a draw-down and a
hand-over of security to the Afghans in the north of
the country. That's where the Germans are. It may
impact, as well, the Italians and the Spanish, who
have stayed out of the fight.
So what you may begin to see -- this is reading the
tea leaves here -- is that the Europeans will be
corralled in a way that they haven't been until now
towards the fight in the south. But, no, the numbers
are not going to be forthcoming.
BLITZER: Barbara, you're heading off to Afghanistan
tomorrow. What's the most important thing you'd like
to discover when you're there?
BARBARA STARR, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT:
Well, I'd like to see what the troops actually think
about this and whether they think they can succeed. I
think Alex said it all really a little while ago,
when he said what this is about is not the U.S. exit
strategy, but what did we hear tonight that will lead
to a Taliban exit strategy from this war? Maybe not
very much.