TSR: "You cannot possibly
cover all of Afghanistan. So you need to pick your
targets."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Length: 4:56
LARGE (57.4 MB)
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On the eve of the presidential address to reveal
the new plan for Afghanistan, Wolf Blitzer talks to
Michael (in NY) and Peter Bergen (in DC) about what
we need to accomplish in order to get our troops
out.
WOLF
BLITZER: We're just over 24 hours away from President
Obama's huge announcement on his new Afghan strategy,
expected to include at least 30,000 additional U.S.
forces being deployed to Afghanistan.
CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen and
CNN's Michael Ware, they're both here to discuss
whether or not the strategy might work.
Michael, you've spent a lot of time in Afghanistan.
Another 30,000 or 35,000 U.S. troops. Is it going to
get the job done?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it depends
entirely on how they're used, Wolf. I mean it's what
the focus is going to be. You cannot possibly cover
all of Afghanistan. So you need to pick your targets.
And principally, the Taliban war machine, by and
large, remains untouched, despite the troops who are
already there.
Despite the operations in Helmand Province where the
Marines have been sent, their ability to recruit,
their ability to supply, their command and control
remains intact. So how we're going to use these
30,000, where are we going to send them, and at the
end of the day, Wolf, they're still not going to be
enough.
We need an Afghan partner within the government. And
I think we need Afghan partners beyond the government
-- Wolf.
BLITZER: He's got a lot of explaining, Peter, to do
tomorrow night, the president, if he's going to
convince the American public that this is the right
thing to do.
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yeah. In
the speech he gave on March 27th, he said it was
really about disrupting, dismantling al Qaeda. I
suspect in the speech that he will give shortly,
he'll expand on that and say that there are some
other values. We don't want the Taliban returning,
that would be a strategic defeat for the United
States and for NATO and Afghanistan. We're concerned
about the stability of Pakistan, and an unstable
Afghanistan helps to make an unstable Pakistan, a
country of nuclear weapons. We have a moral
obligation to kind of get it right in Afghanistan,
having overthrown their government. There are a lot
of other things he could say.
BLITZER: Peter, there's a lot more al Qaeda -- forget
about the Taliban for a moment -- a lot more al Qaeda
in Pakistan. And maybe even more al Qaeda in Somalia
or Yemen than in Afghanistan.
BERGEN: Certainly. But you know, the Afghan/Pakistan
border doesn't really exists -- you know, it exist on
a map but it doesn't exist for al Qaeda or the
Taliban. And the 82nd Airborne can't go in to
Pakistan because of the politics on that side of the
border. So, you know, we're trying to prevent the
Taliban expanding even more back into Afghanistan
than they are already.
BLITZER: What will this exit strategy, Michael -- the
president supposedly is going to talk about an exit
strategy down the road. We know the Taliban, they've
had others who have come in over the years and tried
to deal with Afghanistan, like the Russians, for
example.
If the U.S. is going to stay five or 10 years, to
them it doesn't necessarily seem like a long time.
WARE: Well, no, it's not. As you know, Wolf, the
Taliban fight generationally. They fought the Soviets
for 10 years. They fought every other
occupier/invader before that as history tells us.
Bottom line, with American military might, you are
not going to defeat the Taliban. It's their home
soil. The terrain is against us. We don't have the
troops. The people are scared. There's a weak and
corrupt central government that does not give the
villages any confidence.
The best that you can hope for is to put the hurt on
the Taliban militarily. Make them feel the American
military presence. And that hopefully will parlay to
a political deal because ultimately that's going to
be the only solution.
And as Ambassador Holbrooke, the president's special
envoy to the region, has said, Hamid Karzai, the
president of Afghanistan, has already been in direct
talks and indirect talks with the Taliban. So there's
going to have to be an accommodation of some sort
before America can come home.
BLITZER: Can the U.S. buy off the Taliban in
Afghanistan sort of the way the U.S. bought off the
Sunni insurgents in the Al Anbar Province in Iraq?
BERGEN: Actually in the Defense Appropriations Bill,
there's a substantial amount of money to do precisely
that and certainly at the lower and even the mid
level, you can do that with the Taliban. In fact,
there already has been an amnesty program for the
Taliban over the last several years that several
thousand Taliban, lower level members, have taken
advantage of. The recidivism rate has been very low.
It's a whole lot other question about doing a deal
with Mullah Omar. He's repeatedly said that he's not
interested in a deal. And in fact, he's just come out
with a recent message making that same point.
BLITZER: We're going to have a lot more on this
tomorrow. Both you guys are going to be with us
tomorrow night for our special coverage. That will
begin at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
Peter Bergen, Michael Ware, guys, thanks very
much.