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CNN Talkback Live

What Will it Take to Win the War?

Aired October 29, 2001 - 15:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: What will it take to win the war in Afghanistan?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Taliban has proved they're difficult to dislodge. They are very good at hiding and covering themselves, blending in and making themselves difficult targets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only significant achievement this intensified air raids brought for the Americans is a wave of anti- American campaign throughout the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: How long will it last?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: This is going roughly the way we have said, publicly, that it would go. We've said it would be long. We said it would be difficult. We said it would be different. And indeed it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Is the war going the way you thought it would?

(APPLAUSE)

Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: "America Speaks Out." We'll get started here in just a moment.

(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)

BATTISTA: All right, we will start again here. Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: "America Speaks Out". Earlier today Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that winning the war against terrorism will not happen without misery, and it will not happen overnight. The war, he says, is a marathon and not a sprint. What is it going to take? Does America have the grit to see it through? Joining us first today, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Maginnis, senior director for national security and foreign affairs at the Family Research Council. And Lawrence Korb, director of the Center for Public Policy Education. He is a former assistant defense secretary under President Reagan.

And Eric Margolis -- he's a former instructor in strategy and tactics in the U.S. Army. He is also a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. Eric is also the author of "War at the Top of the World."

Welcome to all of you.

Colonel, if I could start with you. We are now entering the fourth week of this war, and although it would seem very likely that this could go on for months, maybe years, there's some thought that perhaps it isn't going quite as planned. Is the current strategy working?

LT. COL. ROBERT MAGINNIS, U.S. ARMY (RET): Well, Bobbie, I haven't seen what General Franks in central command had put together as his plan, but I heard Rumsfeld today, and General Myers, and they say, yes, we're using the plan, we're following it. We are on course.

Now, I think one thing is important to remember: that when you compare this to, say, Desert Storm or Kosovo, the number of sorties are radically different. We had about an average of 1,500 combat sorties per day during Desert Storm's 43-day war. Seventy-six-day war in Kosovo, we had over 500 combat sorties a day. And yesterday, according to General Myers, there were 65.

So the appearance, at least from television, is we're not doing a lot over there. But what we don't know is what General Frank is doing behind the scenes in preparation. I would hope that the American people are going, as the president said a moment along, to be patient, because unfortunately, this is going to be a lot longer than even the people in the Pentagon, I think, are ready to admit.

BATTISTA: Eric, we heard the president just a few moments ago lay out a clearly limited strategy of what they're trying to do over there. He's obviously not going to share the bulk of that with us. But you feel like the administration perhaps went into this without a clear enough strategy. How do you know that?

ERIC MARGOLIS, AUTHOR, "WAR AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD": Well it did, because it no advanced planning for this. And it seems to be making policy on an ad hoc basis day by day. We know this because we keep hearing conflicting statements from different voices in the administration.

First of all there was the wild West talk of, "smoke them out," and "dead or alive," and "let's launch a crusade." Last week we had gone 180 degrees to, "well, maybe bin Laden isn't that important," and, "maybe we're not going to capture him," and, "maybe this war is going to take much longer than we thought."

And this is understandable, because nobody could have imagined a month ago that the United States would be at war with Afghanistan -- what I call the 21st century versus the 11th century.

BATTISTA: So, should we stay on course, Lawrence Korb, or is it time to think about plan B?

LAWRENCE KORB, FMR. ASST. SECY OF DEFENSE: Well, since we started we have no choice but to continue. But we started the military part of the struggle against terrorism before we had our political ducks in order, particularly in Afghanistan. We did not know what would come after the Taliban after we destroyed them. And consequently we held back some of our military action, because we didn't want the Northern Alliance going into Kabul before we had a coalition government.

I mean, the reason the president started when he did is, winter was coming, you had Ramadan coming, and he was under pressure from the American people to do something. But ideally, he should have waited until we knew what type of government would go in after the Taliban. We should have had a conference in which we set up who would be in the coalition government, in which countries other than the United States pledge financial aid to rebuild Afghanistan.

We didn't do any of that, and so now we have to make the best of the situation. And what we have to do is continue to keep the military pressure on, work to build the political settlement and hope that they can come together. But it's going to be much longer, I think, than the Pentagon thought. In the beginning, they thought that they could pretty easily overthrow or get rid of the Taliban.

BATTISTA: How did they reach that conclusion? I think that was very unsettling last week, when we heard General Stufflebeem say that the Taliban was a lot tougher than they thought. And I just am a little clueless as to how and why they could have underestimated the Taliban.

KORB: Well, it is. But I guess, given our successes in Desert Storm and Kosovo, possibly that's what they thought, it would work similarly by just using air power to break the will. I think they overestimated the lack of support that the Taliban has in the country, or what the opposition would be. And they way overestimated the capabilities of the Northern Alliance, particularly since their leader was assassinated two days before the terrorist attacks on the United States.

May I jump in on that one?

BATTISTA: Yes, go ahead.

MARGOLIS: I was shocked by the lack of preparedness and understanding shown in Washington and the Pentagon about Afghanistan. There are very few Americans who know anything about this country. Those who do obviously were not listened to. First of all, we dropped 400,000 leaflets, trying to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghans, in a country that's 97 percent illiterate. Then we have Rear Admirable Stufflebeem's remarkable statement that the Taliban are tougher than we thought. Nobody has obviously read a book by Kipling about Afghanistan.

And now is the unpleasant realization in Washington that even if they put this rag-tag Northern Alliance, which is really more of a Russian front organization than anything else, when they put them into power in Kabul -- and this can be done -- the question is, who is going to keep them in power?

The United States will have to garrison Kabul and the supply roots out of Afghanistan, the very same problem that happened in the British in the 19th century, to prop up a minority government. The Taliban has said they will take to the hills. The Pashtuns are very tough fighters. I was with them in the war against the Soviets and I saw it. And Washington ought to know this.

BATTISTA: Let me...

MAGINNIS: Yeah, Bobbie, if I could jump in. You know, a lot of these generals that we're seeing today grew up during Kosovo and the Gulf War. They were colonels, lieutenant colonels, at that point. They are bringing a lot of those lessons to the forefront.

Now, what Larry said earlier, I think, is insightful, and that is that we are faced with a situation we've never seen before. You know, this is a war of necessity. Kosovo, we didn't have to go in for safety and security reasons of the homeland of the U.S., neither did the Gulf War, neither did Vietnam. But this time we can't back out.

Now that we're engaged, we have to stay the course. Otherwise, we're up against an enemy not only who is sworn to destroy us, but to use things like weapons of mass destruction, which are the biological, chemical agents that we're all concerned about today.

BATTISTA: All right, well, let me run this by you then.

This was an op-ed piece by Senator John McCain in "The Wall Street Journal" the other day, saying that, "Fighting this war in half measures will only give our enemies time and opportunity to strike us again. We must change permanently the mindset of terrorists and those parts of Islamic populations who believe the terrorist conceit that they will prevail because America has not the stomach to wage a relentless, long-term, and at times, ruthless war to destroy them. "

"We cannot fight this war from the air along. We cannot fight it without casualties. And we cannot fight it without risking unintended damage to humanitarian and political interests."

It almost sounds the only missing from the "cannot" is that we cannot fight it without ground troops there. But, do we sacrifice diplomacy for military purposes?

KORB: Well, I think there's a lot of confusion here about exactly -- when we talk about the war against terrorism. The war against terrorism is one thing. The war against Afghanistan is something else. The military is only one part of this total struggle against terrorism.

Afghanistan is only one country. If you read Senator McCain literally, he's talking about spreading the war beyond Afghanistan to places like Iraq. And one of the problems we have in the Muslim world, is we have not made clear exactly what will come after both the Taliban and Afghanistan, and what's next. And I think at some point, the administration needs to say exactly where they are going. They have left it very, very vague. And the longer the bombing goes on, the more we lose the moral high ground that we had after September 11th, because you have these civilian casualties, and this is what people on the ground see.

BATTISTA: I have -- you know, I've got to take a quick break here, so we'll continue this in just a few moments. Let me do a couple of e-mails as we do.

Jim in Lakeland, Florida, says, "I believe the Muslim world is laughing at the United States military. We are the most powerful military in the world. Hit them and hit them hard. They only understand force." Greg in Idaho says, "We can't even define what winning this war means. Getting rid of evildoers? That might take a while -- like forever."

Well, one of the rules of engagement is know thine enemy, and our next guest says that you should know that the code of honor in tribal groups is that of revenge. We'll be right back.

How long do you think the military campaign in Afghanistan will last? Take the TALKBACK LIVE on line viewer vote at CNN.com/talkback. AOL keyword: CNN. While there, read my note and send us an e-mail

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: The name of the game at TALKBACK LIVE is interaction. And today, something new. Taking part in our discussion will be voices from colleges and universities from around the country. Consider them our own TALKBACK LIVE student body, via the all-new Intel Pocket Digital PC Camera.

Today, it's Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. If your school wants to be part of our student body or just want information about the Intel PC Camera, check out our web site. That address is CNN.com/ talkback.

JUSTIN BROWN, STUDENT: I'm Justin Brown from Ball State University. I don't really see how anyone can succeed in this conflict with Afghanistan when we don't really know who we're fighting against.

BATTISTA: Welcome back. Joining our conversation now is Akbar Ahmed, the chair of Islamic studies and professor of international relations at American university. Among his books: "Discovering Islam: Making sense of Muslim History and Society." Let me start by asking you, what is it that these two sides do not understand about each other which could impact victory either way?

AKBAR AHMED, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: These are two very different systems at war. A highly industrialized, advanced, literate society like America and a preindustrial, really tribal society, impoverished, on the verge of starvation, like Afghanistan -- and the end of three decades at civil war. So really two mutually uncomprehending systems facing each other. And I think that must be taken on board when we discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

BATTISTA: And what do you think is the feeling among the man on the street, if you will, in the moderate Arab world?

AHMED: Interesting question, because I have been watching the moderates. They are the key to this whole campaign, and you can see the shift in their position, increasingly getting alarmed. They are seeing images of women and children being shot at, being killed escaping from Afghanistan coming to the border to Pakistan.

You can see the tension in Pakistan yesterday. Almost 20 people were killed in a church -- Christians killed in a church in Pakistan by Muslims. Three people killed in Quetta. Tension building up and President Musharraf of Pakistan is now seeing president bush in a weeks' time -- or ten day's time.

And the top of his agenda will the duration of the war, because the longer the war lasts, the greater the pressure on Pakistan, the greater the pressure on the Muslim world and the greater the pressure on the moderates to really find a solution to this.

BATTISTA: So Eric, would you say that the other side then is winning the P.R. war, the propaganda war?

MARGOLIS: Absolutely, which is also remarkable, considering the United States monopolizes most of the means of information and has a powerful clout. And nevertheless, there is a perception abroad, particularly across the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia and in Europe that the United States' -- sympathy is being lost for the United States after the tragedies of September 11th, and now the United States is increasingly seen as an enraged giant which is stomping this poor backwards country to vent its fury at its inability to find Osama Bin Laden.

For example, I am watching on European television broadcasts, we are seeing pictures of civilian casualties, dead babies, etcetera, that are not appearing on the North American media. There is much sharper criticism of the United States across Europe and Asia and across the Arab world, and particularly in Pakistan.

See, so many of our Western journalists talk to the educated elite. They don't know what's going on down in the suk and the bazaar. And what I am hearing from my friends and acquaintances and sources there is -- and I write for one of the major Pakistani newspapers "Dawn" -- is that there is growing fury inside Pakistan across all spectrums, and particularly in the Pakistani -- the army, which is keeping General Musharraf in power and over the fact that he fired some of his leading generals, who were much respected in Pakistan.

Now, just two days ago there were 10,000 armed Pakistani tribesman that went over the Malakan (ph) Pass into Afghanistan to fight. People are rallying to the side of the Taliban. So America is not winning the information war. And every day this war goes on and every bomb that falls is going to militate against the United States.

BATTISTA: Well, Larry, how do we -- how do we turn that tide?

KORB: Well, I think one of the things you do is right now you convene a U.N. conference in which you set up a coalition government and be prepared move into those parts of Afghanistan that you control; the northern part, if we can control that. You get a list of countries around the world who pledge money to rebuild Afghanistan and then you come up with a solution like we had for Austria in the world war -- at the end of World War II during the Cold War, where the great powers basically guarantee Afghan sovereignty as long as it doesn't harbor terrorists.

BATTISTA: The audience has had a little bit of time to absorb this, so let me get some opinions from them. Jim, go ahead.

JIM: OK. The way I look at it, this has been a process that our president has outlined very clearly in his message to the Congress that we are not at war with Afghanistan, that we are going to do punishment for those like the Taliban who are protecting Bin Laden and all his cohorts, and we are really after the network.

And we keep saying we are at war with Afghanistan. That is not true. We are at war with the terrorists who have created the New York scene that we all feel so bad about. So...

BATTISTA: So I am getting the feeling from you that you are willing to be patient.

JIM: I'm very patient.

BATTISTA: All right, Jim, How about you? Patient...

JIM: The president's doing the right thing.

BATTISTA: Patient or a little frustrated?

JIM: I'm a little frustrated. I don't see it progressing as fast as I like to see it progress. But I don't know -- when you think of the gravity of the situation we're in here.

We are fighting an enemy that has established terrorist cells in over 60 different countries over many, many years. And we saw on September 11th what a handful of those terrorist cells did to this country. And that was -- that was planned over a two-or five-year period.

You have got to wonder what else have they got planned? What else are they going to execute? And we are sitting here debating this as whether or not we should go after them or not. We are just going to wait until we see another -- they bring down the sears tower, they kill several thousand of people at a Super Bowl game with sarin gas before we decide to go full ahead with some sort of action. And the long...

BATTISTA: You are actually saying that you think that they should move ahead with a stronger strategy?

JIM: When I hear reports back that we spent a 45-minute bombing campaign against the Taliban lines the other day and then just stopped bombing. Why didn't we continue bombing all day and bring these people in ? Anybody that has ever lived through a B-52 carpet bombing attack know that even if you're not killed in it, that thing creates such terror.

BATTISTA: You are clearly former military.

JIM: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a...

BATTISTA: Go ahead.

MAGINNIS: Bobbie, there is a -- there is a point here and I think that it is very important that, you know, the administration, in order to satisfy the American people, had to strike fast. However, they should have waited much longer. And as Larry said -- indicated earlier, we needed put together some sort of firm coalition and perhaps even a government that would follow in behind us.

Now we are playing catch-up ball. We're, you know, doing what I call fragmentary orders on the side, here and there. And quite frankly we are not up where we need to be. And that is why 45 minutes of bombing. We cannot afford for the Taliban to be knocked out because if the Northern Alliance goes into Kabul we have nothing to backfill it and they are probably just as bad as the Taliban except they aren't part of Al Qaeda.

MARGOLIS: May I jump in on that too? I'd like to say yes, it's true. Look, I covered the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. The Soviet Union ravaged Afghanistan for 10 years. They carpet bombed it, they napalmed it. They dropped over 10 million mines on the country. They killed two million Afghans. They used poison gas. They used bacteriological warfare, mass torture. They did everything that the United States would never do, and they did not break the will of the Afghans.

And my old friend Abdul Haq, who was killed the other day by Taliban sneaking in on an aborted CIA operation, he said before he died -- and he was right -- that the Americans should not be bombing Afghanistan because they are simply driving its people into the arms of the Taliban and into the arms of the extremists and it doesn't work.

BATTISTA: Let me get Akbar back into this conversation here to talk about that will that you were referring to, Eric. Akbar?

AHMED: Yes. I think that is a important point Eric is making, because the war from the Taliban as a focus is shifting now to the Afghan people and, I'm afraid, shifting further into the Muslim world. So the perception is forming that perhaps this is a war between Islam and the West. And this is what, if you will recall, what Osama Bin Laden wanted all along.

So there are two wars. There is a military war and there is a propaganda war. And I think we need to be very conscious of the second war, because with the month of Ramadan approaching -- the holy month when young people say their prayers every night for 30 nights -- emotions are heightened, there is excitability in the air. I can see that the situation could become very inflammatory throughout the Muslim world.

BATTISTA: You...

AHMED: So the people planning this war need to be aware of the deadline approaching in the middle of November.

BATTISTA: I -- I have to take a quick break here, but I want to come back to that as soon as we come back and talk about this decision facing the Pentagon about whether to continue this military campaign through Ramadan. We'll be back.

Still ahead on TALKBACK LIVE: AMERICA SPEAKS OUT, fighting bombs with bravado.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We told the Americans, if you are really men, come here. We are waiting for you. Come and fight. Come on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe we need to start investing in an American version of al Jazeera.

BATTISTA: The propaganda assault. Next.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDY: Hi, I'm Andy Vandergriff (ph) from Ball State University, and my comment is this: if an American is looking for a distinguishing line of a win or loss in this war, you are not going to find it. The United States, along with Britain, is actually trying to set a precedent, saying that we are not going to lie back and take terrorism. This isn't an acceptable behavior.

And what they are doing is winning battle by battle and setting a precedent for the future so that the terrorism will stop.

BATTISTA: Welcome back. Jan is on the phone with us from Minnesota. She's been hanging on for a little while. Jan, go ahead. JAN: Hi. Yes, I've been hanging on. We are determined breed up in the northland. We have to be.

BATTISTA: Thank you very much.

JAN: On this question of bombing through Ramadan. We need to stand 100 percent behind this government. We need to back them up, and to stop the bombing during Ramadan only gives these people that much more time to regroup. Absolutely keep the bombing up as hard as we can, as long as we can to show them -- they had no absolute regard for where they caught us. They will do it again if we do not stop them.

BATTISTA: All right, Jan. Thanks very much. I -- obviously lot of agreement from the Americans here in this audience. Akbar, if I can go to you on that on the other side of that coin, what you think the downside to bombing during Ramadan might be.

AHMED: Bobbie, the downside would be this: that the emotions would be very high. A lot of many Muslims are beginning to feel that the killing of civilians -- civilians are being killed, women and children are being killed -- is something that is highly unfair. That is injustice.

They have many expectations of a power like America. They have respect for America. But what they are seeing on the ground is something entirely different.

And I can tell you if you were in Afghanistan you would have lost your job. You would be sitting at home. You would be fed up of the Taliban, and you would expect some kind of a future for you once the air was cleared up. But what you are going to be seeing is your home blown up, perhaps you are checking to the borders of Pakistan, being pushed back from the borders of Pakistan.

And there is no future at all, with winter coming, salvation coming, your family dispersed. You are going to be very angry and very bitter, and you are going to say, "Why is America bombing me?" So there is a slight, I would say, shift of focus in what is going on, and we need to be very clear that we must not involve the entire Muslim world in this equation. We must keep the focus on our objectives.

BATTISTA: Colonel, this is -- this is very typical of a lot of the e-mail I'm getting here. Larry in Virginia says, "It is hard for a lot of us to understand how the greatest power on earth must take four weeks to defeat a less-than-third-rate army. Don't get me wrong, I don't want one American soldier to lose their life. But if it were -- but if we are a superpower, then let's show it."

And another one I got was, "How is it possible that the most technologically advanced nation in the world is bogged down and getting nowhere against people who for all intents and purposes are still in the Stone Age?

MAGINNIS: Bobbie, we are fighting on the other side of the earth. We're fighting a light infantry in subterranean areas. They've been fighting, as the professor said, for 30 years. So it's a tough environment. But what he said -- and I want to clarify something from a western perspective -- you know, when you look at Iran and Iraq during the '80s, they fought through eight different Ramadans. And even Syria and Egypt -- I mean, Yom Kippur, which also happened to coincide with Ramadan in '73 -- attacked Israel.

So our -- are all Muslims respective of their own Ramadan? And, you know, it really begs the question. And of course, this further, as the professor indicates, complicates this tough decision that Mr. Rumsfeld has already indicated that he wants to proceed.

BATTISTA: Let me go to the audience. Kurt has a comment regarding a victory in the conflict.

KURT: Well, I was rather disturbed when president bush outlined as one his goals was the elimination of terrorism. Well, by definition, then, that is a war that we will never win and cannot been won, because you cannot defeat terrorism. By definition, it is a war that we cannot win. The goals have been so ill defined or defined so loftily that as we plod along here, we don't really know what we are doing, why, and how it's ever going to end.

BATTISTA: So Larry, what would it take to convince Kurt and other Americans? What do they need see and/or hear to be convinced of some sort of victory?

KORB: Well, I think the president has to make it clear what exactly we are trying to do -- and he hasn't. And I think we -- the person who just spoke was 100 percent right. It is not a war against terrorism. It is a struggle against those who perpetrated this horrible thing on us in September and to make it more difficult for them to act like that in the future.

You will never get rid of terrorism, like you can never get rid of poverty or drugs. And I think we have to make that clear. And we have to make it clear that it is not the military that is going to win this war.

And I think the other question that came in talked about the fact that, well, we have this great, overwhelming military power. Why can't we win against the Taliban? The fact of the matter is, given what we're good at, we -- they -- we don't need over there, because there is not much to bomb. And so the struggle is going to have to be waged on many other fronts.

Having started a war, we cannot stop it during Ramadan, because I think what that would do would be to give them more of military advantage. But we really have to bend over backwards to eliminate the civilian casualties. We should do it all the time, but particularly during Ramadan.

BATTISTA: Let me go to Jamie -- no, I'm sorry, not Jamie -- Steve in the audience here.

STEVE: I just thought the U.S. acted too fast with the bombing of Afghanistan. The World Trade Center tragedy happened. 5,000 people lost their lives. The U.S. had to do something or they would have completely lost that P.R. war.

And by going into Afghanistan and doing this, they won at the very beginning but now -- they did not go in with their full information about the Afghan people. And now they are trapped into it. And if they pull -- which is what I think some people in the government do want to do -- then they would completely lose the P.R. war, because they have already said that they are going to come in and eliminate the Taliban.

But now that they are trapped into it and they can't find a way out, because if they keep going they fear that they will just completely lose that war over there.

BATTISTA: And I've only got a few seconds left. So Beth, go ahead.

BETH: 5,000 Americans went to work in New York and Washington, D.C, on September 11th and no one stopped to consider that they would lose their lives. The Taliban and the Al Qaeda networks flew three planes into two different buildings and 5,000 people were lost. Why should we stop just because it is Ramadan?

BATTISTA: All right. The poll question today is: how long will the military campaign in Afghanistan last? 16 percent of you said several months. 53 percent said more than one year, and 30 percent said more than five years. We didn't ask whether or not their patience would last that as well, but we can assume maybe that it would. I'd like to thank all of my guests for joining us today. Eric Margolis, thank you. Colonel Robert Maginnis, Lawrence Korb and Akbar Ahmed, thank you all very much. Very interesting conversation.

For more on military strategy, tune in tonight at 7:00 Eastern to "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" for a round table of military experts. Right now Judy Woodruff tells us what is ahead in the next hour right here on CNN.

Thanks for being with us.

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