MTP Transcript for Dec. 17

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: Of course I’m thinking about it. I mean, I can’t have guys like you talk about it and not think about it.

MR. RUSSERT: And you’re going to position yourself that if there’s a vacuum in September, you’ll probably go.

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: And I hope between now and September to help create with every candidate in both parties, a wave of new ideas, a wave of new solutions. And see how that ferments. I’m going to send a letter to the state parties, both Democrat and Republican, in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina urging them to hold bipartisan forums. Get the candidates on the same stage. I mean, have Obama and McCain. Have Hillary and Romney. Have a real dialog of Americans. Not just two partisan groups getting their armor on to fight each other.

MR. RUSSERT: When you sending that? This week?

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: Send out in early January. My—and my goal is to make 2007 a year of, of solutions and dialog. Really modeled off Lincoln-Douglas. We’ll, we’ll have the 150^th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 2008. And I hope, possibly, that they could be launched at Cooper Union where Lincoln gave his great speech in, in 1860.

MR. RUSSERT: Newt Gingrich, we thank you for joining us and sharing your views on American solutions. We’ll be watching.

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: Thank you. Great.

MR. RUSSERT: Coming next, you read their columns in The New York Times. The opinions of David Brooks and Tom Friedman on the war in Iraq and presidential politics 2008. They are both coming up, next only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: Our MEET THE PRESS roundtable: David Brooks, Tom Friedman of The New York Times. Their opinions, after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we’re back. David Brooks, Tom Friedman, welcome both.

Tom Friedman, your column December 8^th. Let me show you and our viewers what you said. “Our real choices in Iraq are 10 months or 10 years. Either we commit the resources to entirely rebuild the place over a decade, for which there is little support, or we tell everyone that we will be out within 10 months, or sooner, and we’ll deal with the consequences from afar. We need to start the timer - today, now.” What happened?

MR. TOM FRIEDMAN: Well, basically what happened, Tim, is that, in some ways, Zarqawi won, the arch-al-Qaeda Sunni terrorist. Iraq was always a long-shot, but I was of the view that, after the invasion, the Shia of Iraq—or the majority—were basically ready to work with the Sunnis. They were basically ready to write off the last 30 years as Saddam’s problem. And the Sunni al-Qaeda strategy was to provoke the Shia with murderous, really outrageous attacks on their mosques and on their markets until they finally rose up and said, “No more.” And we basically split Iraq into a sectarian war. And that’s where we are right now.

And therefore, it seems to me that—you know, there’s a lot of talk now about a surge of troops or whatnot. I’m for trying anything, basically, but, but here’s the problem, it seems to me, Tim: The issue that we need to be focused on is what would be self-sustaining. We can put in 30,000 or 300,000 more troops now, and yes, we’ll tamp down the violence. But can you produce something that is self-sustaining so the minute we pull them out, it doesn’t just revert to form? And that self-sustaining solution requires an understanding, a political understanding, at the core between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. And right now, we do not have that. So more troops, necessary but not sufficient. Without that understanding at the core, nothing is possible.

MR. RUSSERT: Is that understanding attainable?

MR. FRIEDMAN: I’m not sure anymore, you know, is the real problem. When, when I look at the Iraqi factions today, it seems to me, Tim, they want—democracy, that’s not their first choice, they want justice. They want justice before democracy. The Shiites want justice for the last 30 years. The Kurds want justice. The Sunnis want justice for a war that overturned their, their dominance. My, my fear about Iraq right now and the reason I wrote that column is that I get the sense, Tim, that our vision of Iraq, a democratic, or democratizing pluralistic Iraq, is everyone’s second choice there, all right? Their first choice is a Shia theocracy in the south, a Sunni return to power, an independent Kurdistan. And we cannot go on having our first-choice boys and girls dying for Iraqis’ second choice.

MR. RUSSERT: David Brooks, you wrote a column which was a, last Sunday, a prediction, in effect. You say “In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and so began the Second Thirty Years’ War. This war was a bewildering array of small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again across the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme.” Is that what you see happening, playing out?

MR. DAVID BROOKS: If things continue to go badly. I think there are two big things happening in the Middle East. The one is the nuclearization of the Middle East, starting with Iran but soon, then Saudi Arabia and possibly a nuclear weapon under every tent.

And the second big thing is the collapse of a lot of nation states. We see it in Iraq with subnational groups and supernatural groups thriving, but the nation states falling apart. Whether they’re Shia and Sunni, whether it’s Hezbollah in Lebanon. We see it this week in Palestine with Hamas and Fatah fighting each other. So these are subnational organizations.

MR. RUSSERT: You see it spreading to Saudi Arabia, Egypt?

MR. BROOKS: Absolutely. And Bahrain, where there’s a Shia majority. A great historian, Michael Oren, says there are three authentic nation states in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran and Egypt. All the rest are phony nations. Sometimes with family—run by families with armies. And that’s—that is fragile. And that could all come undone and that could all be part of the spreading wave of chaos. And that, that is the worst-case scenario, but completely plausible these days.

MR. RUSSERT: Your paper framed the issue this way on Wednesday: “A central thrust of the discussions at all levels of the administration is how to pressure Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to move faster to provide basic services and quell sectarian violence - some of which stems from his powerful supporter, the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr - and whether to force him to meet certain benchmarks or face penalties and rewards, also to be determined.” Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, wrote a memo which questioned Maliki’s abilities. The president says he’s the right guy for Iraq. Is Maliki capable of doing what has to be done in order to secure that country in time?

MR. BROOKS: You know what’s changed about the administration? Used to be you’d go in and you’d talk off the record to one person and you got a sense of what they all thought. Now you talk to one and then you hear 180 degrees from the other. So now there’s no consensus on the Maliki government. And no sense that they really can control the government from the center—the country from the center in any case.

What I think the administration is about to do is to embrace an idea promoted by a retired general, Jack Keane, and Fred Kagan, a think-tanker, which is to surge 20,000 or 30,000 troops into key Baghdad neighborhoods. We’ve been fighting this war just enough to lose, and they’re going to make one last effort, and this is the, the plan that’s been laid out before the president, is a two-year plan. And it’s going to involve significant commitment of troops and significant sufferings and probably casualties. And they’re, they’re going to try to, for the first time, devote just enough sources—resources to win.

Whether it can work goes back to something Tom said: Do the Iraqis want to—want to have a unified country? Does the butcher in Baghdad who lost his brother because he got drilled in the back of the head, does he want to forgive or does he want to kill? And ultimately, I think the success of any strategy, as Tom indicated, depends on the Iraqis.

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