Length: 7:39
LARGE (88.8 MB)
-----
SMALL (9.5 MB)
Anderson Cooper talks with Michael, Chris Lawrence, Peter Bergen, David Gergen, and Robin Wright (from the US Institute of Peace) about the withdrawal date of July 2011, whether we are doing nation-building, and whether corruption really matters.
ANDERSON
COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Selling the strategy -- Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton and top commanders rolling
out and selling President Obama's so-called troop
surge for Afghanistan and the date he set, about 20
months from now, for starting -- starting -- to bring
them home.
Today on Capitol Hill, tough questions for Secretary
Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen and Secretary of
State Clinton, pushback from Republicans over the
conditional deadline, and from Democrats for not
pulling out now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. GARY ACKERMAN (D), NEW YORK: My president sold
me a clunker, and I paid for it with my children's
and my constituent's children and grandchildren's
cash.
I guess the question I would ask is this. As of 8:00
last night, do we have a new war, or do we have an
old war under new ownership?
ROBERT GATES, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think we
have -- we have inherited the same war, but is it a
dynamic war. And -- and, frankly, the situation is
getting worse. The fire is getting hotter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Over on the Senate side, John McCain, who
favors sending more troops, took issue with the 2011
deadline.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: When conditions on the
ground have decisively begun to change for the
better, that is when our troops should start to
return home with honor, not one minute longer, not
one minute sooner, and certainly not on some
arbitrary date in July 2011.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: General David Petraeus, the head of U.S.
Central Command, joins us now.
General, your take on what Senator McCain said? I
mean, is this just an arbitrary date?
GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL
COMMAND: That date is when you start the transition
of tasks to Afghan security forces.
And the pace of that transition, the pace of the
drawdown is conditions-based. Those were words in the
speech last night, and, frankly, I think very
realistic and quite reassuring.
COOPER: Why that date? I mean, Defense Secretary
Gates indicated today the date was at least in part a
response to U.S. domestic politics.
PETRAEUS: Well, I think there are a number of
audiences, actually, for that kind of date. One
probably is a U.S. public, after eight years of war.
Also the Afghan people, they also want their forces
to take over. Perhaps even some of us. You know, get
on with it. We have to get going with this effort.
And having that mark on the wall out there, I think,
is -- has that purpose, if you will.
COOPER: But, you know, I mean, every village I went
to with the Marines in Helmand in September, the
local elder would say to the Marine in charge, when
are -- how long are you guys going to be here?
Because the Taliban is going to be here an awfully
long time. They're going to wait you out. What
assurances can you give me that you're going to be
here for a long time?
And the Marines could basically say, well, look, we
know when we're being redeployed. We know who is
replacing us. Beyond that, we can't tell you.
Now are we going to say, well, July 2011?
PETRAEUS: Oh, I don't think so at all, Anderson,
actually.
I think, again, if you go back to the words of the
speech, what that said is, that's when you start to
transition. And I think that's a realistic goal to
have out there. With 18 months more of quite
substantial forces on the ground, I think it is
reasonable. I think it is doable to be able to begin
to transition to Afghan security forces.
COOPER: Well, let's dig deeper now with our panel.
Joining us, Michael Ware, Chris Lawrence, both who
have spent considerable time in Afghanistan. So has
national security analyst Peter Bergen. Also with us,
senior political analyst David Gergen, and Robin
Wright, a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and
author of "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the
Middle East."
David Gergen, you just heard Petraeus trying to couch
what the president said last night. The bottom line,
though, I mean, the president did in fact announce a
date. Was that the right thing to do?
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well,
Anderson, I -- it was -- I think Fareed Zakaria said
last night he had been at the White House for that
luncheon yesterday with columnists. And he concluded
that the day had a lot to do with politics and a
political calender.
But I think it's important to understand, what the
White House is trying to say is, the public won't
sustain, won't support an open-ended war. And they
had to -- and this worked out to be a logical time to
begin the drawdown.
The danger, of course, is -- and people have
immediately said, no, this has a lot more to do with
President Obama's reelection and trying to save
Democratic seats than it does with the situation in
Afghanistan. So, it is -- I think it's going to be a
subject of deep debate in this country, and it's
going to cause the conservatives in particular to
question the president's strategy from here on out.
COOPER: Michael Ware, what kind of a message does it
send to the Taliban, who watch this kind of stuff
very closely?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, obviously, as
everybody openly concedes, that assists the Taliban,
to know that America is setting a deadline, no matter
how firm or fixed or not.
They will play the waiting game. There's absolutely
no question about that. However, I dare say that this
date is not set in stone. I mean, even the president
last night said it will be a responsible withdrawal,
and it will be based upon the conditions on the
ground.
COOPER: And just the start is 2011. And that doesn't
-- the start means the actual withdrawal could take
years.
WARE: Exactly. Exactly. And it could be a long
drawn-out process. I think, you know, it's right.
Let's not joke about this. This withdrawal date,
however real or not it is, is simply about American
domestic politics. It's about keeping the left in the
Democratic Party vaguely happy. And it's about
leading up to a presidential election in 2012.
Militarily, it doesn't serve a great purpose.
COOPER: Robin Wright, I read one blogger saying
today, well, so what if the Taliban just try to wait
us out. Then it will basically be the responsibility
of the Afghan forces, who presumably, by then, will
be more able to take on the Taliban directly.
ROBIN WRIGHT, FELLOW, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE: Well,
that's assuming that the United States is unable to
accomplish anything in the 18 months.
And I think that, unlike the previous eight years,
that this is going to be a time of really intense
confrontation and trying to carve out new space. And
if the Taliban steps back and goes underground during
that period, that just leaves more room for the
United States and its allies in NATO to take greater
control on the ground, create a different reality
economically with the new project on agriculture for
the Afghan people, that that strategy could backfire
for the Taliban.
COOPER: Peter, your take on having some sort of a
date?
PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, I mean, I
agree with everything that's been said, but there's
another audience, which is the Afghans themselves,
which is to signal to them that it is a not an
open-ended, you know, just long-term commitment with
no deadlines.
COOPER: You're talking about the Afghan government as
kind of a wakeup call?
BERGEN: Yeah. Yeah.
And I think -- but, clearly, it's -- it's
conditions-based. So, there's very few places right
now where the Afghan army or the Afghan police can
really take over in any meaningful way. That's not
going to change very dramatically in 18 months, but
it could -- obviously, it could be better. The Afghan
army is pretty ineffective right now.
That was true of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police,
now both of them much more effective.
COOPER: How come they're...
WARE: That's the exact point I was thinking of. We
heard this before from the Bush administration,
setting a date to force the Maliki government in Iraq
to step up and hurry up and get ready to take
responsibility. That really didn't happen. Their
troops and their police didn't really get that much
better in an accelerated way. We just learned to
accept them doing it in the Iraqi way.
COOPER: I want to talk to Chris Lawrence, who just
got back from Afghanistan, on the other side of this
break about morale of U.S. forces that he found on
the ground.
We're going to have more with our panel in a
moment.
Length: 6:26
LARGE (74.8 MB)
-----
SMALL (7.9 MB)
COOPER:
Thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan, now, the
first may arrive in the next several weeks. They're
going to be heading into Taliban hot spots, trying to
protect civilians, clearing the area, building
physical structures, governance capabilities, and
trust.
The White House, though, saying the mission is not
nation-building.
I asked General Petraeus about the apparent
difference between what's being said in the White
House Briefing Room and what the mission looks like
on the ground.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: The Marines I was with would talk about their
strategy, clear, hold, and build. I assume that is
still the overall strategy for commanders on the
ground.
And they talk about build, they talk about building
governance capabilities in villages. Isn't that, in
effect, nation-building?
PETRAEUS: Well, what they are really doing there is
trying to help reestablish the traditional social
organizing structures in Afghan society that in many
cases have been damaged or literally torn asunder by
the Taliban, by this 30-plus years of war that
Afghanistan has experienced.
COOPER: Well, that sounds like nation-building.
PETRAEUS: So, it is trying to provide security -- it
is trying to provide security for local communities,
so that the traditional structures can once again be
the organizing feature, if you will, in those
villages, in the valleys, and that they then tie into
the district and provincial and ultimately national
structures.
COOPER: But how is what we're doing not
nation-building?
PETRAEUS: I'm not saying that it's not
nation-building. I'm not sure what you're getting at
here.
But, I mean, what we're doing is a comprehensive...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Okay.
PETRAEUS: ... counterinsurgency campaign plan.
It is -- it has focused objectives. One of the
products of this deliberation that has taken place
over the last several months, which has tested and
retested all the different concepts and ideas and
assumptions, is indeed quite focused objectives.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Back now with our panel.
Chris Lawrence, you were just in Afghanistan. No one
in Washington wants to say it's nation-building. But
it's nation-building.
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, but
the thing is, Anderson, I think, when you talk to
these troops on the ground, they're not throwing
around terms like that, you know. And I think we have
talked so much about when we're getting out and this
date to getting out. Talk about getting in. When
President Obama announced those 30,000 troops going
in, there were a lot of happy Marines.
WARE: Oh, yes. Heck yes.
LAWRENCE: There were Marines saying: We want to
fight.
You know, we get so caught up in the exit strategy
and like that, you....
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: But in Helmand Province right now, Peter, as
we just saw on the ground, I mean, there's not a lot
of kinetic activity, as they say. There's not a lot
of confrontation with the Taliban. There's IEDs going
off. People are getting killed, but it's a lot of
going to villages, having tea with people.
BERGEN: And, interestingly, you know, there are
11,000 Marines and there just seem to be a handful of
U.S. government officials. I mean, if the idea is
that this is supposed to be largely a sort of
political, nonmilitary -- everything is being done by
the military, which is just the way the American
government is organized right now.
And it's very, very clear in Helmand. The civilian
surge which is supposed to be part of this..
COOPER: It's not happening?
BERGEN: It's happening very, very slowly.
COOPER: Right.
WARE: Yeah, yeah. It's almost nonexistent.
And the building block of power in Helmand Province
haven't changed. It's still...
COOPER: And Helmand Province here and Kandahar, I
mean, this is the main area where -- of Taliban
activity.
WARE: Absolutely. This is what we're talking about,
southern Afghanistan here.
I mean, yes, you have got Kabul, but you have not got
a history of a strong central government in this
country. There are -- so many questions that have
local answers to them. And we haven't been addressing
them on that level.
COOPER: If -- I mean, the Afghans did pretty well
fighting the Soviets.
WARE: Right.
COOPER: How come we're having so much trouble
training the Afghan army?
WARE: But they didn't do that -- they didn't do that
as a national army.
LAWRENCE: Yeah.
COOPER: It was local forces.
WARE: They did that as...
LAWRENCE: ... modeled as an American police force or
an American army.
WARE: Right. They did it as bands of guerrillas.
COOPER: But you hear from people saying, well, look,
the Afghan forces are illiterate. But they were
illiterate when they were fighting the Soviets,
Peter.
BERGEN: Right. I mean, actually, in Pashto, the word
for cousin and enemy is the same word.
(LAUGHTER)
BERGEN: So, I mean, low-level endemic warfare is just
a way of life in Afghanistan. These people love to
fight.
COOPER: Are we trying to train them in a way that's
not appropriate?
BERGEN: I think that's right.
WARE: And we're enforcing our expectations, our
models, our values.
COOPER: David Gergen, I mean, it is nation-building
when you look at it on the ground.
GERGEN: Anderson, I think it's nation-building-lite.
Yes, of course it is a form of trying to get some
fundamental organizations together, to get security
forces into villages, to get some order, and try to
leave that behind. But what the president explicitly
rejected in his councils was that there were some in
the Pentagon who called for a very significant
buildup. And they wanted to have a five- to 10-year
commitment.
That was the true nation-building proposal. And it
was to leave a lot of Americans in there for five to
10 years, put in a lot of money, with contractors
contracting out, build up the civilian side. And what
the president said was, no, I'm not going to do that.
It's too open-ended. The country won't pay a -- spend
a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. We're going to
have to start pulling the plug.
And he's come up with this compromise plan. It's not
pleasing anybody. It has got a very small number of
people in the middle. But I do think -- I don't think
it's appropriate to call it the true nation-building.
COOPER: Right.
GERGEN: It's nation-building-lite.
COOPER: Robin, can the Taliban be co-opted?
WRIGHT: Oh, I think that's a very good question.
I think this is not like Iraq, in that the dynamics
are very different. There may be some that can be
peeled away, but I'm not sure we're going to see an
awakening, like we did in Iraq.
COOPER: I mean, the -- the military is saying 60
percent to 70 percent are not hard-core ideologues
and may be folks that can be dealt with in one way or
another.
WRIGHT: Well, it depends on what the alternatives
are. And this is why what -- this whole idea of
nation-building is really so important. And what the
administration is talking about is not
nation-building in the classical sense of propping up
a strong central government.
It is, as you've been discussing, dealing with the
local environments, with the provinces, and trying to
help them take over. And that's where we're looking
for a similar kind of awakening, by making the local
agents, the local leaders, the traditional powers
strong enough that they can take on the Taliban, and
that some of the Taliban may be lured away from the
Taliban to side with their traditional leaders.
COOPER: All right, we are going to have more from our
panel after this break.
We want to tackle the question of corruption, how
important that is, whether it puts the entire mission
in jeopardy, or whether it's a red herring, whether
it's not as important as a lot of people say it's
been.
Length: 6:26
LARGE (74.8 MB)
-----
SMALL (7.9 MB)
COOPER:
During a discussion earlier about nation-building,
General Petraeus said we're not trying to turn
Afghanistan into another Sweden, which would be a
miracle. In a recent study, Sweden ranks as one of
the least corruption nations on Earth, Afghanistan
second worst on the planet.
But if building another Sweden is impossible, is
building any kind of legitimate government any
easier? I asked the general about it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: How important is limiting corruption in
Afghanistan? The White House says it was looking for
promises from President Hamid Karzai before making a
decision on troop levels. He gave reform lip service,
certainly, in his inaugural speech.
Whether or not they're able to deliver on that, can
we win in Afghanistan without limiting corruption?
Does it matter?
PETRAEUS: Well, clearly, it matters enormously,
Anderson. As you know, clearly a government has to be
seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people for them
to support it. And popular support for, again, the
government at whatever level is a necessary component
to achieving progress in this kind of endeavor.
We did hear, as you noted, some encouraging words
from President Karzai, clear recognition of the
importance of combating the corruption that has
characterized some of the governmental institutions
in Afghanistan, some in quite a severe manner.
And, in fact, in recent weeks, actually, there have
been some arrests, charges brought against some
fairly senior governmental officials, a border police
commander, some ministers, and so forth. And we will
have to see if this now follows through, if indeed
this is a commitment that is really turned into
action and is operationalized, if you will, because
it is a very important element in the overall way
ahead.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Let's talk again with our panel, many of whom
-- all of us at this table -- have spent a lot of
time in Afghanistan over the years.
Peter, do you agree with that? Does corruption really
matter?
BERGEN: Well, it matters, but I think order is more
important than corruption. I mean, bringing security
is -- that's what Afghans want.
There's been quite a lot of polling on this issue.
The last government really that brought a lot of
security to the country was the Taliban, which is
hardly a very legitimate government, but they did
bring security. And, so...
COOPER: So, it doesn't matter changing the essential
nature of the Afghan government; it doesn't matter,
necessarily, to eliminate the opium trade?
WARE: Oh, no, that's not going to change at all. I
mean, that's the oxygen that the economy is
breathing.
And, I mean, no matter what government is in place --
for example, Spin Boldak, which is just south of
Kandahar, is a border crossing between Afghanistan
and Pakistan. If you're made the police chief or the
border patrol chief of a border checkpoint, you are
now a rich man. And that's how it works.
COOPER: Because you're taking taxes. You've got a cut
of everything that goes through.
WARE: That's how it works. Why on earth would you
want to be a district chief of your village, when you
have got all this responsibility, you have got to
protect people, unless you are getting something for
it?
COOPER: But -- but...
WARE: That's what -- that's what runs this place.
COOPER: Robin, do you agree with that? I mean,
doesn't that undercut the legitimacy of what the U.S.
is trying to do there, if they're trying to instill a
sense of trust in a local government, governor, and
in the national government in Afghanistan?
WRIGHT: U.S. strategy is today almost as vulnerable
politically as it is militarily, because of the
central government, because of the widespread belief
that President Karzai and many in his government are
engaged in, not only corrupt practices, but the drug
trade as well.
I disagree with Michael a little bit on the impact of
the drug trade, in that -- on the average farmer in
Afghanistan. They don't make that much. And many of
them -- I have walked through those poppy fields many
times and heard from many that they would rather grow
something else, but that this was more profitable.
Now they have found studies that pomegranates and
there are other commodities that could create
alternatives. The key here is creating security, so
that you can begin getting some of those farmers to
look at alternative crops, and not get -- not have
their whole lives wrapped up in this corrupt
practice.
COOPER: One of the problems, of course, the thing
that promotes opium is that it's something that can
just be stored for long periods of time, doesn't go
bad. So, if there's a bad season one year, if the
market is bad one year, it can be still sold the
following year.
WARE: And you can warehouse it for that bad season.
COOPER: Right.
WARE: And the price is going to go up. I mean, we saw
the Taliban actually did that. When they stopped
people growing, they had massive stockpiles, and they
profited enormously.
COOPER: Let's take a look at the map in terms of
strength of the Taliban and where they are. I mean,
where is the -- where are the biggest hot spots?
WARE: Well, obviously, the Taliban, you know, has
always come from and always shall have its power
bases in the south. Principally, this is the
heartland of the Taliban.
COOPER: Kandahar.
WARE: That's where it was born. That's where it was
born bred. And, from there, that's where it spreads.
COOPER: And it's a major city, Kandahar, in this
region, which is not really under control of U.S.
forces.
WARE: Oh, absolutely not. I mean, there's a token
Canadian presence there, but I was just in Kandahar,
what, about eight weeks ago. And Kandahar itself is
divided into, you know, 14, 17 neighborhoods.
There's a couple of neighborhoods the police can't go
into.
COOPER: And we're seeing...
WARE: And every -- every district around it is
controlled by the Taliban. The capital, Kandahar, is
under siege.
COOPER: And if you look at the American flags, this
is where American forces are. And it's in the heart
of the battle zone.
LAWRENCE: Yes. We went to one police checkpoint in
the Arghandab River Valley where...
WARE: The Arghandab, perfect example.
LAWRENCE: Yes, where the Taliban control, where the
police literally are afraid to leave their police
station, because they get shot at when they leave.
WARE: And Arghandab used to be denied to the Taliban.
But the ancient -- or the elderly tribal leader who
controlled the area died. Now, during the three days
of mourning for his funeral, the Taliban literally
flooded back in. But, while he was alive, he kept
them out.
COOPER: David Gergen, I want to -- I know I cut you
off -- David.
GERGEN: No, I just wanted to add one thing, Anderson,
about where we are domestically 24 hours after the
president's speech, because I think a couple of
important things have happened.
You talked last night a lot about this started the
president's selling last night with the speech.
Anderson, the last -- the last 24 hours already have
been his best shot, with his speech and then the
testimony today.
Starting tomorrow, the -- you know, the picture
starts becoming more cluttered. He has a jobs summit
Thursday. Then he has jobs numbers Friday. He goes to
Copenhagen for climate change on -- next week. Then
he goes to Oslo.
He -- they have now had their best shot. And I think
two things have emerged. First, I think it's
relatively clear he has not achieved the unity in the
country that he is seeking that he spoke of last
night. People are still -- you know, there's a lot of
skepticism about it.
But, very importantly, for him, it has emerged now on
Capitol Hill that it looks like the Congress will
support him, a majority will support him financially,
so it will give him permission to go ahead. And that
was a big achievement for them today, that they could
hold the Congress.
COOPER: I have got to leave it there.
David Gergen, Robin Wright, Peter Bergen, Michael
Ware, Chris Lawrence, appreciate all of you being
with us. Thanks very much.