MTP Transcript for Dec. 10

MR. RUSSERT: Tom, Tom Ricks, based on your report, your understanding of the situation, where do you see us a year from now?

MR. RICKS: I think we’ll still be in Iraq. I think we’ll be in Iraq probably for 10 to 15 years with American troops, much reduced in their numbers. That’s kind of the best-case scenario. I think if things continue to fall apart, the American people will not tolerate having American troops dying in a civil war, the cross fire of a civil war.

MR. RUSSERT: How do you take large numbers of American troops out of Iraq quickly, if that’s the decision? With the roads to Kuwait and to Jordan and the number of equipment and vehicles and armaments we have, is that possible? And could there not be a great possibility of significant hostage- taking?

MR. RICKS: I think it will be fairly easy to get U.S. forces out. The irony of it is that U.S. military can go wherever it wants in Iraq, it just doesn’t have much of an effect. It’s a hand put in a bucket of water. My great concern would be the allies in Iraq, the Iraqis we’ve surfaced over the last few years, have pulled into our effort and have promised them that, “We’ll take you to a new Iraq.” Those people will be extremely exposed. Now, a lot of them have left. Basically, the middle class has fled into Jordan, Syria, Europe and the U.S.—the doctors, the lawyers, the professors, the glue of democracy. What you have left now are the hard men, the men of the gun. And it’s really a shame that we didn’t focus early on on protecting those Iraqi allies. And I would really worry about them if we left.

MR. RUSSERT: Where do you see Iraq a year from now?

MR. HAASS: Again, at best, a messy country with a very weak central government, regular violence, pretty much what we’re seeing today. That would be to me, sadly—sad enough, the optimistic scenario.

I don’t see democracy taking hold. I don’t see a national consensus. This is not a reasonable society right now where reasonable ideas can take hold.

My concern is something far worse, which is, one or the other sides looks like it’s victorious, either the Sunnis or the Shia, to the extent one can generalize at all, and outsiders begin to get more involved. One can imagine, in particular, a lot of people, Tim, as you know, are now talking about a so-called 80- percent solution, where the United States essentially goes with the majority of Iraq, which is...

MR. RUSSERT: The Shiites.

MR. HAASS: ...the Shiites and the Kurds, and lets the Sunnis essentially lose. The problem with that, it seems to me, is their kith and kin around the region will get involved. And suddenly you’ll see so- called “volunteers” streaming in across borders. The Saudis and others will make sure personnel and money and guns get in there.

MR. RUSSERT: To the Sunnis.

MR. HAASS: To the Sunnis.

MR. RUSSERT: So a proxy war between Shiites and Sunnis.

MR. HAASS: That’s the nightmare. As bad as Iraq is now—you know, people always say things have to get worse before they get better. In the Middle East sometimes, things have to get worse before they get even worse. And the danger in Iraq is, as bad as things are now, one can imagine it worse. Which again, I’m all in favor of what I’ve heard around this table. Yes, the United States ought to make a big push to try to get things right. It’s a long shot, though. Let’s be—let’s be honest. It’s a long shot. Odds are, we won’t succeed. Not because of us, but more because of Iraq.

We have to start thinking. It’s not a blame game. What it is is a preparation to try to reduce the cost, to contain it. We may have to, quite honestly, as bad as it sounds, think about letting a civil war rage for a while, but hopefully keeping it from spilling beyond its borders, bringing in the region. We have—we may have to think about how we insulate the rest of American foreign policy.

I don’t like saying these things because what we’re talking about are accepting costs, accepting a degree of failure. But we may find that the only courses available to the United States now are bad options and degrees of failure. You can call that realism, you can call that defeatism. I’m, I’m afraid, to answer your question, that is going to be the future.

MR. RUSSERT: A year from now?

MR. COHEN: You know, I think we’re at a real crossroads, so I, I do think that it could either be quite as horrible as Richard Haass has argued or I think it’s conceivable it could be getting—it could be getting somewhat better.

One of the problems, again, to go back to the study group report, is I think once people have the idea that we’re just kind of covering up with a—we’ve got a cover for our gradual disengagement from this thing, if you’re an Iraqi, particularly an Iraqi who’s been working with us in the military or in the other parts of the security forces or simply the government, you’ll immediately begin cutting deals with all the different kinds of cutthroat organizations that are out there, whether it’s the Jaish al-Mahdi or al-Qaeda in Iraq or the Badr Brigades, or, or, or you name it.

So I think we are very much at a crossroads. We may very well end up with the worst solution, in which case, it’ll be time to think about containing damage. But for the moment, at least, I would hope that we would make an effort to try to succeed.

MR. RUSSERT: Will the war in Iraq go down as, what? How will it be described in history?

MR. ADELMAN: I tell you, my view on this is a little different from—probably from everybody’s. I think it was the right thing to do. I think that after September 11, with the “evidence” that we had with weapons of mass destruction and—that turned out not to be true, but no one knew it wasn’t true then, and certainly Saddam didn’t act like it wasn’t true—and with the intelligence during the first Gulf war that the nuclear program of Saddam Hussein was further along than we suspected at the time—with all those factors, I think it was a courageous thing for President Bush to do. I think that part of it was wonderful.

I think that the MBA part, the master of business administration and the competence that Eliot, who was talking about, in just implementing it, I think it was a shameful exercise. So I think it’s a good idea gone terribly bad by terrible implementation on that.

And for a year from now, I think that it’s going to be close to what Richard and Eliot says and Tom, but I want something a little different—and I think we all want that: a feeling that somehow the Iraqi government has bottomed out, that they’re going to be OK, that if you’re putting your smart money on things, you’re going to go with those guys rather than the sectarian groups, rather than the insurgents, because eventually they’re going to win. And I hope to God, for the sake of our troops, as I say, that that is the case.

MR. RUSSERT: We just have 20 seconds. Tom Ricks, the military spent two decades learning about Vietnam. What will the military take from Iraq?

MR. RICKS: It’s too early to tell, but it’s going to be a series of, I think, very bad and worrisome and ugly lessons that derive from this, probably being the most profligate and worst decision in the history of American foreign policy.

RUSSERT: Tom Ricks, Ken Adelman, Eliot Cohen, Richard Haass, thank you very much for a very important discussion.

And we’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week. An exclusive interview with a man who may run for president on the Republican side: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, next Sunday right here. Because if it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.