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Erica Hill talks to Michael, Peter Blaber (author of "The Men, the Mission, and Me"), and Jeremy Scahill (author of "Blackwater" and a writer for The Nation). Michael explains why we have to deal with the Afghan warlords in order to stabilize the situation enough get our troops out.
(People may bristle at his ending comments, but as usual, he lays the truth on the line, politics be damned. I may not like the reality, but it is the reality, and that's what we need to deal with.)
ERICA
HILL: For more now on the president's plan and its
chances for success, I'm joined by Peter Blaber,
former Delta Force mission unit commander. He's also
the author of "Mission, The Men and Me." Here in New
York, Jeremy Scahill, the author of "Blackwater, the
Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and
also an investigative journalist for the "Nation."
His story in the current issue is on the "secret war"
in Pakistan. Michael Ware is also with us in the
studio, CNN's international correspondent who has of
course reported extensively from Iraq and
Afghanistan. Good to have all of you here.
Michael, I want to start with you because I know it
was something that you mentioned last night. You
spent so much time there. You said last night, the
key to this, really, is winning over the warlords.
The average American sitting back, you hear that, you
think, why on earth would the U.S. want to deal with
warlords in Afghanistan?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well,
sadly, it's just an unavoidable truth that the
fundamental building blocks of the Afghan society are
the warlords or the tribal chiefs, depending on what
you want to call them. It's a very feudal society. If
you're up in some remote mountain valley, Kabul can
exercise absolutely no authority over you or your
village. So if you got a land dispute or any kind of
problem, you go to the local big chief. And that big
chief will have another big chief. They're the people
that America needs to be reaching out to. At night,
in the villages, that's when the Taliban comes in.
That's when the Taliban roams. That's when they have
control. It's these people that can counter the
Taliban at night and when America is not there. But
only if we finally put it in their interest to do so.
HILL: So, Jeremy, how do you put it in their
interests? How do you make it enticing to them to
work with U.S. forces?
JEREMY SCAHILL, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, "THE
NATION": I found it very interesting to read the
communications from al Qaeda and from the Taliban
both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan -- and there is a
difference -- where they were essentially saying
we're glad President Obama made this decision because
it's a great recruiting tool for us. I think this
really it has to be part of the calculus. How is the
U.S. presence in Afghanistan affecting the swelling
ranks of the Taliban and hindering the kind of
cooperation that Michael references here when talking
about the other tribes?
HILL: In some ways wouldn't you expect that, because
a bit of that is inflammatory language, is it not? So
they're going to say that no matter what?
SCAHILL: Well, of course. But I also think that we
are seeing an increase in the ranks of the Taliban
now in an unprecedented scale since the war was first
launched. And we cannot eliminate what the glaring
factor that the U.S. occupation presents in terms of
being that kind of flypaper for the Taliban and for
al Qaeda.
HILL: Peter, you were there when the war first
launched. You went in, and you feel that small
special op groups are really the way to make this
happen. How do they end up helping dealing with the
Taliban that you're dealing with today, which is not
exactly the same as the Taliban that was there in
2001?
PETER BLABER, AUTHOR, "THE MISSION, THE MEN, AND ME":
Sure. Well, the Taliban is a guerilla-type army, they
move in small teams. They use hit-and-run tactics.
They usually fight from terrain that they're familiar
with. And they exfil using the same terrain. And you
know, to try to counter that type of tactics with
large non- nimble forces is an exercise in futility.
It just gives them more targets. And allows them to
-- it just plays into their game, which is that
hit-and-run type of operation. So I really believe
that we should go back to what we already know works,
what's been tried and tested in the early days of
Afghanistan, when less than 500 interagency forces
working together in small cross-functional teams with
their Afghan counterparts were able to overthrow all
of al Qaeda and all of the Taliban. The situation has
changed.
HILL: So are you confident from what you heard of the
president's plan, yes, the numbers were much larger
than the numbers you're talking about, but are you
confident within the president's plan there is that
strategy you that feel is needed to accomplish this?
BLABER: I believe that if any commanding general can
recognize and employ that type of strategy, it's
General McChrystal. So I am optimistic that General
McChrystal will array and allocate his forces
accordingly.
HILL: What about from your viewpoint, is this plan
something that's going to work there? Because you do
need the support of the Afghan people. There wasn't
so much talk about the Afghan people last night. The
talk was really about the American people.
WARE: Absolutely. It's all very American-centric. And
I've got to tell you despite what others might say,
America is now pretty much seen as an occupier. It
may be an occupier with good intent. But you are an
occupier, nonetheless. And as we know, occupiers have
never fared well in Afghanistan.
HILL: Does the date help with that? There's been so
much controversy about--
WARE: No, they still are seeing foreign troops in
their villages. They're still seeing foreign tanks.
And we know what they do with foreigners, even al
Qaeda. Al Qaeda, from the very inception, from the
very beginning of their alliance, Osama Bin Laden
swore fealty to Mullah Omar as the protector of the
faithful and that was a very savvy PR move. Osama
didn't want the Afghans to see a bunch of Arabs from
al Qaeda to be imposing their will on Afghans and
that's what we're doing.
SCAHILL: Let's remember, that there are, according to
General Jones, the national security adviser, less
than 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan with no
ability to strike. And he said on CNN in October that
there is little chance of the Taliban rising up.
Those are precisely the justifications the president
laid out last night. So what are we talking about
here? A career military guy in General Jones laying
it on the line and then the president contradicting
him in this address. I think there's a muddled
message there that ultimately is going to come back
to bite the president.
HILL: You think there should be no troops at all in
Afghanistan, they should all be gone at this point.
SCAHILL: We need to have a sober discussion in this
country on this question, is our continued occupation
there, as Michael says, ultimately harming our
national security? Are we creating fresh enemies that
will come back and blow back on us later? That to me
should be one of the crucial questions and it goes
unaddressed.
HILL: We have only about 15 seconds for each of you,
and Peter, I'll start with you. Is this decision by
the president is it making the U.S. more or less
safe?
BLABER: It's making us more safe. No matter what you
think about the numbers in Afghanistan, one fact
remains the same, that a small disparate group of
terrorists eat, drink, sleep, and live to kill you
and your family and destroy the western way of life.
We can either take the fight to them or sit on our
hands back here and wait for them to accomplish their
mission. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather
take the fight to them and destroy them before they
have the opportunity to destroy our families, our
country and our way of life.
HILL: More or less, I guess you're --
SCAHILL: Well, I guess it makes us less safe. By that
standard, then we should be invading Saudi Arabia
tomorrow and overthrowing the monarchy dictatorship
there. The fact is this makes us less safe as
Americans. We're creating a disaster in terms of
instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I think
we're going to pay the price of this for years to
come.
HILL: Michael, 15 seconds to answer this question.
What is a win for the U.S. there?
WARE: A win for the U.S. is leaving behind some kind
of functioning state, whether it's recognizable to us
or not, that can at least hold itself together in
some fashion, prevent sanctuary to al Qaeda and you
can walk away. Bottom line, America did not go there
to save Afghan women, to educate Afghan children.
America was tacitly accepting the existence of the
Taliban government until al Qaeda came to strike. So
America's interest is simply denying sanctuary. You
achieve that? Go home.
HILL: Those are some fighting words for a lot of
people in this country that it's not about women or
children but we're going have to leave it there.
WARE: It is what it is.
HILL: Michael Ware, Jeremy Scahill, Peter Blaber.
Appreciate your insight all of you this evening.
Thanks.