Ricks and Gordon: U.S. In Iraq for Years to Come

By: E&P Staff Two of the most influential military reporters -- Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post and Michael Gordon of The New York Times -- appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" today, offering little reason to think that the U.S. would be out of Iraq any time soon, sooner, or perhaps even later.

Gordon, for example, noted that the U.S. surge was still in some ways in its "early" stages. He previewed an article he wrote that will appear in next week's Times Magazine that apparently hails some of the progress under the surge.

Also appearing was NBC's longtime Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel who observed that a civil war was already underway and would likely go all-out before long.

Here are are few excerpts.
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Let me start, Tom Ricks, your paperback edition of ?Fiasco? is out. You wrote a postscript for this book in April, and I want to use it to frame our discussion. It?s astonished??It astonishes me that in early 2007 it appears? ?the two most likely outcomes of the current turmoil in Iraq are either that the country will break up, or that Sadr?an anti-American ally of Hezbollah?will become the country?s ruler. However, neither of those events is likely to end the violence, but rather simply to open a new and even more dangerous phase.? You still stand by that?

MR. THOMAS RICKS: Yeah. What strikes me is that all of the options carry bigger downsides than benefits, and things that look like solutions in the short term carry the prospect of long-term violence. I think that?s true of every single policy option out there, and so I think the beginning of wisdom is to understand that we?there are no good options. All we have to now think about is what is the least bad option.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael Gordon, since you wrote ?Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq,? what?s your current thinking about how it?s going to end?

MR. MICHAEL GORDON: Well, I spent most of the summer in Iraq in Diyala province and then south of Baghdad, and really a lot has changed on the security front in Iraq. And there?s been a very important development which has been the enabling of the Sunni tribes and some of the former insurgents. This is not just in Anbar. And there?s a very delicate political game under way right now to try to find a way to connect these disparate Sunni groups who are working with the American military, with the Maliki government, and that?s a work in progress. It?s really just in the early phases.

MR. RUSSERT: If we, in fact, are arming the Sunnis and we?ve already armed the Shiites, are we arming both factions in a civil war?

MR. GORDON: Well, we?re not arming these groups. They?re not being given arms by the Americans, but you?re pointing to one of the very real risks. I mean, the potential here is by organizing these Sunni groups in Baquba and...(unintelligible)...and...(unintelligible)...and all sorts of places in Iraq, we do have a mechanism to provide local security and really to drive out al-Qaeda of Iraq. The downside is unless this becomes institutionalized and these people become either Iraqi police or somehow approved by the Iraqi government, we might be setting the stage for more intensified civil war.

MR. RUSSERT: Richard Engel, I, I quoted your conversation with Prime Minister Maliki to Senator Warner, saying that Sadr, the leader of the Shiite militias, is of the same school.

MR. RICHARD ENGEL: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Joe Klein in Time magazine wrote this, that ?US Ambassador Ryan Crocker? said, ??The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing.?? And then Klein asks, ?But replace it with what?? Half of Maliki?s Cabinet has abandoned his government. Are his days numbered?

MR. ENGEL: His days are certainly numbered. This government is going to collapse. The problem is, it?s going to take several months to form a new government. And there?s a very likely and real possibility that you could have a series of unstable governments that come and then collapse, sort of like a parliamentary system you may have had in Italy in the 1980s. And that weak political structure is not one that is suitable for Iraq?s problems. I think we need to totally change the, the rules of the game and change the political structure in such that the president or the prime minister has much more authority. This idea of a power-sharing government, while it may be the pinnacle of democracy, is not one that is strong enough to get the?help Iraq get over its very real problems.

MR. RUSSERT: How do you find a leader who would be Shiite, who can maintain strength within his own community and support with the?his own Shiite community and still capable of reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds?

MR. ENGEL: I think you need to accept that they?the blue finger day was a disaster, and you need to have new elections. Probably a good idea to have new elections in Iraq right now while the troop surge is still in place. Then, after that happens, you would have a new leader emerge, hopefully with some enhanced powers, and then really change the rules of the game.

I was listening to this debate, pulling back 5,000 troops or 10,000 troops to send a message to Maliki. I don?t think it?s going to have any, any impact on Maliki at all. He would like to have more authority. Iran wants American troops to be out of the country right now. If the country breaks down into more chaos and more civil disobedience, then the, the Shiites will ultimately win and people like Maliki will end up on top. I think you need to change the, the rules of the game, not just try and move around the, the chess pieces. We need to be playing a different game.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Ricks and Michael Gordon, you cover the Pentagon, both in an extraordinary way. You?ve heard all the testimony, all the reports that the military is being strained terribly by the war in Iraq. Do you expect that there will be significant troop withdrawals recommended by the leadership in the Pentagon for 2008?

MR. RICKS: Yes. If things go beautifully, better than expected, you?ll see troop drawdowns beginning by April of next year. If things go horribly, you know, much worse than they are now, you?re going to see troop drawdowns beginning in April of next year. They?re going to come down by about one brigade, say about 5,000 troops a month, from April to October of next year. The question is, after October, how far?how much further do you go below 130,000? And then what becomes the mission of the troops that remain?

MR. RUSSERT: Michael:

MR. GORDON: Well, the natural life of the surge, if you were to do nothing and just let it run its course, would be around March or April. Because at that point the troop levels in Iraq need to?will decrease unless they extend the tours further, which they?re?have already ruled out doing, going beyond 15 months. So force levels will begin to recede, and indeed, that?s anticipated by General Petraeus? two-year campaign plan which he?s projected out for the summer.

But there?s really?in the latest N.I.E., people are focused on the message that there?s not political reconciliation at the national level. But there was a second message in the N.I.E., and the N.I.E. said that a large-scale withdrawal of American forces and a change of the mission from fighting counterinsurgency to advising the Iraqis and just going after al-Qaeda would erase the security gains that were made over the summer so far. So that?s something that also has to be taken into account in this upcoming congressional debate.

MR. RUSSERT: So what do you do? If, in fact, you stop the surge, you could erase some of the gains you?ve made. And yet, we do not have the capacity to continue the surge because of the strain on our military.

MR. GORDON: Well, the surge will run its course, and then, as Tom said, we?ll begin to reduce our forces. There?s no question we?re going to reduce our forces, and it?s going to be more than 5,000 next year. The issues is at what pace these forces are reduced, what their mission is?no one likes to talk about the mission, they simply talk about the numbers game?and how this is connected up with the politics of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Richard Engel, is an all-out civil war inevitable in Iraq?

MR. ENGEL: Absolutely. It is going on right now, but it?s just contained. You have so many American forces that are keeping the lid on this civil war, but Iraqis are, are fighting. And you pull them back, it?s just going to come right up to the forefront....

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Ricks, you write this, and we?ll end on a literary note. ?Shakespeare?s tragedies have five acts, and I fear we have not yet seen the beginning of Act IV.? What?s Act IV and V?

MR. RICKS: Well, Act III is the Petraeus phase. Act IV, I think, would be the spreading of the war, the next phase, maybe the post-American phase. And Act V will be the regional consequences. I think the point is Iraq, I think, is going to be much more difficult for this country than the Vietnam War was.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

MR. RICKS: Because we could walk away from Vietnam. And it was bad for the Cambodians, bad for many Vietnamese, but we could wash our hands of it. I think Iraq is not going to be so easy to get out of. We have stepped into something in the middle of a economically vital region for the entire world.

MR. RUSSERT: Richard Engel, you wrote a book called ?Fist in the Hornet?s Nest,? describing the invasion of Iraq. What do you see as Act V?

MR. ENGEL: I think, ultimately, they?re?if they?if we stay on this current plan, you?re going to have a series of governments, eventually American troops are going to get pulled back to bases. They?ll be left there. There?ll be a civil war going on with the?in the country. It will divide naturally up into these three to five mini states, and the American troops will be mostly forgotten about. Because if they?re sitting around on the bases, the debate won?t be so intense here in the U.S., and I think they?ll be there for 10, 15 years.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael Gordon:

MR. GORDON: I think we?ll have a substantial number of forces in Iraq through the life of the Bush administration. And I agree with the point that Iraq is more difficult and more complicated than Vietnam because, unlike Vietnam, we have no one to lose to, so to speak. There?s no North Vietnamese government that can come in and establish control of that region and, ?OK, we?re out of there, but the place is, is orderly and, and controlled.? If we leave the chaotic situation and it becomes much more chaotic and the civil war intensifies, then that?s really the dilemma for the United States.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Ricks, is there any good solution?

MR. RICKS: No, I think that?s the beginning of where we should be in the debate now is to understand there are no good solutions, and if we can all come together and discuss and say, ?Yes, there are bad risks associated with every possible policy; let?s get beyond that and talk together as a nation about how we can at least minimize or mitigate the damage done.?

MR. RUSSERT: It?s tough to do during a presidential campaign.

MR. ENGEL: I think there?s always been solutions, by the way. And it should have done?taken place the day after Baghdad fell. Iran was scared to death. The army that Iran had fought, Saddam Hussein?s army, was obliterated in three weeks. They would have talked. We didn?t want to talk. We told them, ?Shut up or you?re next,? and it was the wrong message. And I still think there?s an opportunity to talk, to rearrange the, the political situation on the ground.

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued.