Transcript for Aug. 20

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, I—you know, first of all, I applaud the efforts by Secretary Rice and by others, Steve Hadley, trying to start the beginnings of building an alliance to confront the Iranians. The notion that we can threaten them with conventional air attack is simply insane. First of all, we’re more vulnerable than they are to having the Persian Gulf closed, to leaving 135,000 troops 400 kilometers up into Iraq with a Shia population on our supply lines. Never mind our allies who I think are terrified by this, the—you know, the notion that we would use air power to go after 70-some odd nuclear sites.

The Iranians are going nuclear. It’s going to change the region for the worse in the coming 10 years, and hopefully not provoke the proliferation of WMD, where you end up with an Arab Sunni bomb to counter the Persian Shia bomb. So I think the answer to this one is diplomatic, economic: build alliances, stop threatening military action.

MR. GREGORY: Dr. Nasr, on that point?

DR. NASR: I do agree with the general. First of all, there’s very little—the only difference I would have is that our allies in the region are not going to be able to do much. In other words, the ascendent forces in this region are with Iran. Hezbollah is a pro-Iranian force and in Iraq also, the upper hand is going to be with the Shia militias who are now very pro-Iranian.  And Iran has the capability to fight the U.S. if it comes to multiple different arenas: in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan as well. So I do think that we have to have a much more nuanced and much more effective diplomatic strategy of dealing with Iran, in terms of being able to contain and regulate its power. Because a frontal confrontation I don’t think will work, and as we saw with Israel and Hezbollah, it can actually be counterproductive. You’re going to turn Ahmadinejad into a second Hassan Nasrallah, strengthen the Iranian government and you—and not accomplish what you want in terms of curtailing its nuclear capabilities.

MR. GREGORY: You actually suggest direct dialogue, negotiations with the Iranians between the Iranians and the U.S. government at this stage.

DR. NASR: I think that we are—what our strategy’s lacking is having a diplomatic tool. Everything we have in our sort of tool bag is, is, is military threats and threats of sanctions and trying to build a regional alliance—a regional containment strategy around Iran, none of which has worked so far and are not likely to work. And I think we should have a diplomatic strategy vis-a-vis Iran, one that does not outsource U.S.  diplomacy to the French or to the Saudis, but rather we deal with Iran as we dealt with China, with the Soviet Union. It does not mean we give them a pass on a host—whole host of things—democratic reform, terrorism.

MR. HARWOOD: And yet you still have within the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party support for more confrontation with Iran, and that’s one of the areas of emerging split. You know, you’ve got some intellectual ferment on the right. George Will, influential conservative columnist, recently said this strategy is completely unrealistic. But you do have some who continue to believe in what the president’s doing, who want more force and more ability to confront Iran.

MR. GREGORY: But—and you heard the president this week confronting Iran more forcefully than he has over Lebanon and Iraq. But is it realistic poetically to think that this president and his national security team could build momentum, political momentum here and abroad for any kind of military confrontation with Iraq?

MR. HARWOOD: No, it isn’t. But the political significance is that it could split the party.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. HARWOOD: And you get, you get—you know, in modern American politics, the way you win elections is by unifying and mobilizing and creating enthusiasm among your base. And the way you lose one is to split your base, and that could happen.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you, you mentioned conservative commentary turning against the war in Iraq and against this president. George Will writing this week, “Intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism.” And Tom Friedman wrote the following—he’s an early supporter of the war, with The New York Times, wrote this week, “We are on a losing trajectory in Iraq. ... We need to reassess everything we are doing in this ‘war on terrorism’ and figure out what is worth continuing, what needs changing.”

I mentioned another conservative commentator, Rich Lowry, with Senator McCain, also comparing this to Vietnam. Is there a kind of what might be called a Walter Cronkite moment, when he turned against the Vietnam War happening now with Iraq?

MR. HARWOOD: Well, that’s the question. First of all, there are no Walter Cronkites in the American media any more. They augment the—the audience is too fragmented. You simply don’t have anybody with that kind of clout and direct access to the American people. However, when elites, especially elites on your side, begin turning against a president or a Congress on a particular issue, that has an echo effect. It reverberates. We saw that. For example, if you talk to White House officials about what took down the Harriet Miers nomination...

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. HARWOOD: ...from the Supreme Court last year, they say it was the intellectual—conservative intellectuals who started attacking her. If they start attacking the adminstration’s strategy on Iraq and throughout the Middle East, that’s a big problem for them.

MR. GREGORY: General McCaffrey, has that been significant, both comparisons to Vietnam and increasing opposition to the war?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, you know, from the start, I’ve done everything I could to say there is no point of connection between Vietnam and Iraq. Completely different strategic connotation. However, the domestic politics of this are starting to look eerily, uncannily, like the late ‘60s. You know, one of the, one of the other problems that I think the administration is trying to face up to finally, certainly the National Security Council is, we drained $55 billion out of the U.S. Air Force and the Navy and we’re putting that money into ammunition, medical care for wounded soldiers. We’re, we’re literally giving up our modernization program for the forces that need to be there in 10, 20 years to deter the People’s Republic of China. We don’t need the F-22 to confront the Iranian—Iraqi insurgents; we need that high-tech capability to make sure we maintain stability in the coming years.

So the danger is, we end up 36 months from now with our military fundamentally broken. And that’s what I’m concerned about.

MR. GREGORY: And, and if things get worse in Iraq, as our own generals have predicted the possibility of civil war, does it become a new kind of moment of truth for this mission and whether U.S. troops stay in Iraq?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Sure. We’re on the edge of it. You know, listen very carefully to this guy General John Abizaid. He’s bilingual in Arabic, he’s thoughtful, he’s very loyal to the administration, as he should be. But this thing is clearly sliding toward the edge, and the bravery and the casualties of the Armed Forces, in and of themselves, can’t stop it. This is the point at which we probably need new civilian leadership in the Pentagon to buttress the diplomatic approaches by Secretary Condi Rice.

MR. HARWOOD: And, David, that’s where the domestic politics is going to go in the near term. I talked to a top Democrat strategist yesterday who said, “What we’re going to do in the fall is try to focus on accountability questions on Rumsfeld, try to look at some way of pressuring the administration and Republicans in Congress on Rumsfeld.” And when that happens, you will have a moment when Republican candidates may have to choose, are they going to stick with the administration or are they going to try to go along with Democrats on some resolution, for example, calling for the president to replace Rumsfeld as a way of showing daylight between themselves and the Bush administration.

MR. GREGORY: Dr. Nasr, I’ll give you the final word on this, on this question of what’s next in Iraq. What is the tipping point, for you, that you’ll look for?

DR. NASR: I think it’s in the number of dead, first of all, that, that has been escalating. And I think we’re reaching a very close—close to the edge, where essentially, the number of people being killed per day, whether or not we call it a civil war or civil conflict, convinces the people in—on the ground that the political process of trying to build security forces, build a central government in Iraq, is no longer working. That the game is actually being played out by the militias, and they’re the ones who are deciding the fate of that country. And if the U.S. is not really able to control the violence, it essentially means to the Iraqis that its presence is largely irrelevant to the end game. And I think the number of the dead will, will, will suggest that.

MR. GREGORY: We will leave it there. Vali Nasr, General Barry McCaffrey, and John Harwood, thanks to all of you.

And we’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY: That is all for today. Tim Russert will be back right here next week with an exclusive interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That’s next Sunday, right here. Because if it is Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS. Have a good afternoon.

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