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Discussion of Obama Remarks on Afghanistan War; Conflict in Afghanistan to End in 2014; Vigils Honor California Murder Victims

Aired May 27, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: This is a president who says he's looking for sort of that middle point between interventionism and being isolationist.

And I think what you see today is the president saying, look, this is what I promised you I would do. Five years ago, we were -- we -- and by the end of this year, we are going to be down to less than 10,000.

And I think this is a president who's going to make his case. He's been under a lot of criticism lately, not only from Senator McCain and Lindsey Graham, but a lot of people are saying, what is America's leadership role in terms of foreign policy? They believe that this is a president who is sending drones and on the other hand he's taking troops out.

I mean, what is his kind of overall vision? And I think -- so, this is the prelude saying, this is what I'm doing in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and let me tell you tomorrow at West Point what our larger vision is. I'm sure it's not going to -- it's not going to please everybody. But I think there's a sense inside the White House that they do need to kind of lay out the strategy.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Let me go to Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

Barbara, what -- how is the military likely to respond? Because I know there were recommendations from some high-ranking military officers not just 9,800 or 10,000. Some wanted to keep it as high as 20,000 troops next year. And they didn't want all of those troops to be withdrawn over the following two years. They wanted it to be open- ended, no deadline in mind.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, certainly, there were a lot of different things on the table being discussed, different options.

But I have to tell you, in recent weeks, this is pretty much what it came down to. The U.S. military has a very clear understanding right now of one crucial fact, and that is that American support for continuing a war in Afghanistan, some 13 years later, really is dwindling.

If you do not have American support for this war, you really can't realistically continue. And they know that old saying, America supports the troops, but not the war. They understand all of that. They know that American patience with all of this and the money being spent really is sort of running out.

If you just want one measure of how much time and effort the U.S. military's put into all of this, consider this. A 19-year-old soldier that may be killed in the battle -- on the battlefield today was a 6- year-old little boy on the morning of 9/11.

That gives you a sense of the time that has passed and the utter exhaustion in the military in continuing to deal with all of this, Wolf.

BLITZER: Barbara, stand by.

Jim Acosta is over at the White House.

Jim, the president made it clear that, from his perspective, the war, for all practical purposes, would be over. But if you have 9,800 troops in Afghanistan next year, there's going to be still plenty of combat there. So for a lot of these troops, the war might not necessarily be over.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly if those troops come under attack, Wolf, the war will not be over for them. But the president insisted during his remarks -- and he's anticipating some of this criticism -- that they will not be serving in combat roles.

They will be serving in advisory roles and training roles, and in some cases counterterrorism roles. But one thing that I think we heard the president say that's important to stress, and that is, he said, Afghanistan is not going to be a perfect place and it's not the job of this nation to make it so.

That is an indication, Wolf, that he does anticipate that there will probably be some violence in Afghanistan as the U.S. extricates itself from Afghanistan over the next couple of years. And keep in mind administration officials have said that this drawdown plan in Afghanistan is very similar to the one in Iraq, leaving just embassy...

BLITZER: We unfortunately just lost Jim Acosta in the Rose Garden. We will reconnect with him.

Let's check in with Nick Paton Walsh. He's our senior international correspondent. He's joining us from Ukraine right now. But he spent a lot of time in Afghanistan.

You heard the president, Nick. What do you think?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very carefully choreographed messaging here, repeating a similar line he said actually in Bagram just days ago, that this year they will bring the U.S.' longer war to a -- quote -- "responsible end," really trying to have their cake and eat it here.

This message both says they will keep 9,800 troops, so that is effectively a continued sense of support for the Afghan government, but also too they're bringing them out very fast indeed. You have to bear in mind, they have got 32,000 troops there right now.

Even simply the action of just getting them home, dismantling the bases, bringing back to Kabul and Bagram the military presence itself, that's a months, if not sometimes possibly year-plus-long process, dwindling down that year, that decade-long war.

So, really, this is in fact many must say the zero option that many talked about, the absence of the American presence, just on a slightly longer timetable. And it could have been done -- it also, too, lays out the White House's cards, say what they want for that new Afghan president to consider before he signs the BSA, this vital security agreement too.

And you have to bear in mind that Afghan security itself is already in a state of not collapse, but deterioration. The Americans are not out there. They can't provide that sense of firepower and logistical support for the Afghan forces themselves, Kabul itself increasingly unsafe.

We're going to see within six months or so American troops moving back to those two key centers, the capital, where they have very well- fortified bases, and Bagram, which has been an enormous fortified complex now for years. They will be back from there, absent in the rest of the country, and then at some point during 2016 simply down to basically Marines protecting the embassy there.

So, the American presence will be very small. I'm sure there may be some counterterror efforts that continue sort of off the books, as it were, from the military with intelligence professionals working there. But this is a stark decision to end the war in Afghanistan pretty quickly. The messaging is there to suggest they want a continued presence, they want a continued support.

That's perhaps insurance though for the White House. In reality, which this is really simply seeing that the American public opinion has not been in support of the war in Afghanistan for years now, and this is the political reflection of that, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Nick, stand by.

Jake, the president ran when he was running for office, he promised the American people he would work to get troops out of Iraq, work to get troops out of Afghanistan, end the wars in both of those places. Now five-and-a-half years later, Iraq is already history. There are no U.S. troops left in Iraq, and Afghanistan at some point down the road -- he's laying out a timetable now -- there will be no U.S. troops effectively left in Afghanistan.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: What will be interesting will be in 2016, when the final U.S. troops, except for the guards at the embassy, leave Afghanistan, because obviously that is a big presidential election year.

I suspect you will hear the Democrats say that President Obama did the right thing. The question for the Republicans is, how many of them are going to say, no, we need to send more troops back into Afghanistan? I suspect even the most interventionist, even the most supportive of the efforts in Afghanistan will not be running on that platform, because, as Nick said, the public has turned against the involvement in that country.

BLITZER: Right. And Iraq right now, as you and Gloria and everybody else knows, it's a serious mess right now. But no one is calling for the reintroduction of U.S. troops in Iraq.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: And if you look at McCain's statement -- and he's very, very critical of the president -- nobody is coming out and saying, whoa, no, no, we need to keep -- we need to keep more troops. What McCain is saying is, don't give them our exact timeline.

TAPPER: Right.

BORGER: But he's not saying, OK, let's keep 32,000 troops there.

The interesting part about the presidential campaign is that the Republican Party has now got a large strain of what I would call neo- isolationists, I guess might be a way to put it, people who are not for military intervention.

You look at the favorable/unfavorable in Afghanistan right now, 78 percent of the American public is against intervention, further intervention in Afghanistan. So I think that if you're a politician who wants to get elected, it's very hard to run on a pro-war footing right now. Troops on the ground, nobody's talking troops on the ground in Syria. I mean, we're -- it's just not a topic of conversation anymore.

BLITZER: American attitudes have clearly changed. All right, guys, everybody, stand by, much more special coverage coming up, the president of the United States making an historic announcement only moments ago in the Rose Garden over at the White House, outlining a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan over the next two years -- much more coming up right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

We're getting reaction to President Obama and his historic announcement only moments ago over at the White House that all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan, certainly by the end, he says, of 2016, right now about 35,000 or so troops still in Afghanistan..

It will be down to 9,800 in 2015 and just under 5,000 in 2016. All are supposed to be out by the end of 2016.

Barbara Starr is over at the Pentagon. Jake Tapper is here. Gloria Borger is here with me as well.

Barbara, any estimate of how much it's going to cost U.S. taxpayers next year to keep about 10,000 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan? STARR: Not at this time, Wolf. Nobody's talking about the money involved. And it's not going to be, as I think Jake was pointing out, just the actual cost of keeping those boots on the ground. It's that additional cost of bringing in food, fuel, transportation, all of it.

You have to keep that going. And, you know, you're going to keep rotating troops in and out. It's not going to be the same 9,800 people for the next two years. So the costs will still have to be calculated. It will have to be funded by Congress.

But I think there's another wrinkle here as you gather reaction to all of this. People in Congress know full well that part of this was a NATO decision, because the president, along with the NATO member countries, came to this framework basically some time ago, this timing that combat would end in Afghanistan.

One of the things the U.S. had to do was keep enough troops there to encourage NATO to keep some troops there. You don't want to wind up this with solely being a U.S. occupation force, even though the numbers would be very small.

They had to make sure other countries in NATO would still be willing to make up the balance of some of those troops. The NATO numbers will be very small, but at least they will be there, Wolf.

BLITZER: They will be there, and there will be, as you point out, private contractors supporting those 9,800 U.S. troops. We have no idea how many private American contractors will be on the ground in Afghanistan, together, do we, Barbara?

STARR: We do not.

And I think this gets you to another key point. There will be support outside of Afghanistan. The president talked repeatedly -- and I thought this was a very key phrase that he used -- about the regional issues, regional support, regional considerations.

There is still an al Qaeda and Taliban and militant element along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Once the U.S. loses the bases inside Afghanistan, how they decide to conduct perhaps drone operations against targets inside Pakistan remains to be seen.

There will have to be some understanding of how these counterterrorism operations will be carried out, because if you find an al Qaeda or Taliban cell or operation along that border region, and you do not have U.S. forces in Afghanistan, how are you going to go after that terror target? Pakistanis are very sensitive about it. Look down the road for U.S. drones to be stationed somewhere else in the region, and be able to go after those terror targets when they find them, Wolf.

BLITZER: Good point, Barbara.

You know, Jake, a lot of us remember that when the U.S. sent those special operations forces into Pakistan to kill bin Laden, they all came from Afghanistan.

TAPPER: That's right. They came from Jalalabad, Forward Operating Base Fenty.

One other point is that it is a great neighborhood to have a base. I'm not saying whether or not we should have troops in Afghanistan. But when you think about it, there's Pakistan, there's Iran, there's China. Now, you can solve the problem of Iran from a U.S. military standpoint because we have so many troops in the Gulf. You can solve the problem of wanting to be near China because of the troops that we have in Japan and the troops we have in South Korea.

But what about Pakistan, the point that Barbara just made? How do we get drones inside Pakistan? How do we perform counterterrorism operations? Now those are the questions that the military has got to be asking itself.

BORGER: And that's a question I think that the president has to answer in his speech tomorrow, because he's clearly going to talk about U.S. leadership in the counterterrorism role.

And the question is about drones, which is a very controversial issue here at home. Where do you -- how are you going to do that in this new world? And there's also a question of, once you leave Afghanistan in 2016, how do you leave Afghanistan?

Our global affairs correspondent just e-mailed us, Elise Labott, and said, do we leave Afghanistan in the same way we left Iraq, which is just with a small, small presence there, no different from anywhere else we have a presence, or will our presence in Afghanistan in the end be larger, precisely for the reasons that Jake pointed out?

TAPPER: And Elise was talking about the diplomatic effort.

BORGER: Exactly.

TAPPER: How much are we going to be -- how much is the United States government going to be engaged with what's going on in politics?

Obviously, not going well in Iraq -- one other point, Wolf, we were talking during the break about those who argue, how can you give a date certain? All al Qaeda has to do right now is just wait. They know that the U.S. is not going to be -- have any serious troop presence after 2016.

That was asked on a conference call with senior administration officials. And what the senior administration official who answered the question said was, we never signed up to be a permanent security force in Afghanistan against the Taliban. He said, the point was to disrupt al Qaeda and train Afghan security forces. So, there was -- he said he had no compunction about giving a date certain.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Because one of the criticisms is that al Qaeda, the Taliban, they're patient. They will wait out the U.S. withdrawal.

BORGER: Yes. BLITZER: And then they will do, in two years, if the U.S. were to withdraw completely tomorrow, they would do it right away. But they will wait a couple years just to do what they want to do.

BORGER: Well, the administration argues in the same with senior administration officials that they have struck significant blows, and that al Qaeda is not very well-equipped at this point, and that -- so they have done damage to them. And that is why, if there is a deadline, it's not going to make much of a difference.

TAPPER: Except, of course, there's a major al Qaeda presence in Iraq.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: In Yemen.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: But in Iraq right now, and also...

BLITZER: In Syria.

BORGER: Right.

TAPPER: ... in Syria coming in from Iraq.

BLITZER: Yes, and plenty of other countries in the region.

You know, a lot of will depend -- and let's go back to our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.

A lot of depend, Barbara, right now on whether the Iraq -- the Afghani military, the Afghani new leadership -- and there are two candidates who are emerging to succeed Hamid Karzai -- if they will in fact deliver. Will they step up to the plate militarily and politically? Are officials at the Pentagon 100 percent confident that they will do what Hamid Karzai, the outgoing president, has refused to do, sign that so-called bilateral security agreement?

STARR: Wolf, I think they're as sure as they possibly can be. The administration feels they do have assurances from both candidates, whoever wins, that they will sign this bilateral security agreement.

But even a new Afghan president, he can sign it, but can he actually deliver security? You know, this is the big problem. You can train all these Afghan military forces. The Afghans are very tough fighters. There is no question about that. Jake and I both have traveled around Afghanistan with them.

They are tough. They will fight. But Afghanistan is a country that does not have a tradition of recognizing a strong central government. So the big security issue perhaps are the police forces out in these remote towns and villages, in mountain valleys, along the border, deep into Southern Afghanistan, where there is very little concept of a central government even today. And there are police forces with huge issues of corruption, who run operations in their areas as they see fit, who are very much in many cases aligned with Taliban elements in those regions. So will those police forces be able to maintain security in their areas, or are we going to see them sort of chip away in the coming two years and after that? Big question, Wolf.

BLITZER: Barbara Starr is going to be following the story, obviously, for a long time.

Barbara, thanks very much.

Jake, I know you have more coming up at the top of the hour on "THE LEAD," right?

TAPPER: Yes, absolutely. We will be talking about this to a great extent.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Also, we have a visit with Sebastian Junger about his film which takes place in Afghanistan. And it's called "Korengal" and it takes place in Eastern Afghanistan.

BLITZER: And Gloria will be with us. I will have the president's deputy national security adviser. Tony Blinken will be joining me at 5:00 p.m. Eastern in THE SITUATION ROOM. So, we will continue to cover this and all the day's major news.

That's it for me. Thanks for watching.

Brooke Baldwin getting ready to pick up our coverage -- Brooke.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf and Gloria and Jake, thank you all so much. We will stay tuned to all that coverage coming up in the coming hours.

But we have to pivot and just go back to California. It's a day of mourning in California. You have students all across the state. They're coming together at several vigils this evening to honor those young lives lost over the weekend in that shooting rampage and stabbing rampage. We will talk live to a student who has organized one of those gatherings for tonight.

Also ahead, the raw data used to calculate that possible location of the missing plane, it's finally released to the public. So, now that we have it, what are we learning from it? And can it finally help find this plane? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

It is a day of mourning all across the state of California, not just in those communities of Isla Vista and Santa Barbara, but University of California campuses all the way from San Diego northward to the Bay Area, because when you think about these young victims, they were sorority sisters, roommates, a visiting friend, and a college student just stopping by to grab a sandwich at a deli, these six innocent people caught in the middle of a young man's deadly plot of revenge.

And now grieving parents are bracing to do the unimaginable, bury their children.

The mother of George Chen, one of Elliot Rodger's roommates, says she would do anything to trade places with her son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY WANG, MOTHER OF VICTIM: We would die 100 times, 1,000 times, but we don't want our kids to get hurt. This shouldn't happen to any family. This should be the last one in the United States.

JOHNNY CHEN, FATHER OF VICTIM: Should take (INAUDIBLE) steps to stop it. It shouldn't have had to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Weihan Wang's mother also left asking why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JINSHUANG "JANE" LIU, MOTHER OF VICTIM: Any time (INAUDIBLE) I feel heartbroken. I go to church a few times a week. (INAUDIBLE) nice to everybody. I don't understand why this happened to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: A memorial service will take place on the USB campus at 4:00 local time today. Janet Napolitano, the U.C. president, says the entire University of California system will keep flags lowered to half-staff through Sunday.

And it sounds all too familiar. A young man with mental health issues, socially isolated, angry, depressed, takes revenge on a world he feels has somehow wronged him. The story of Elliot Rodger seems familiar, but the solutions are far more complex.

In the wake of this tragedy in Isla Vista, blogger and author Liza Long wrote this -- quote -- "It seems as if, after Newtown, we just gave up. We decided that this is the kind of society we're going to live in, a society that has too many guns, and a society that chooses to ignore people with mental illness and their families at great cost."

And Liza Long is good enough to join me now. She's the author of "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" and the upcoming book "The Price of Silence: A Mom's Perspective on Mental Illness."

And, Liza, you have been on the show a number of times, always, sadly, in the wake of tragedy, but welcome back.

LIZA LONG, AUTHOR, "THE PRICE OF SILENCE: A MOM'S PERSPECTIVE ON MENTAL ILLNESS": Thank you, Brooke. Thank you for calling attention to this issue that affects so many families.

BALDWIN: Absolutely.

And that's why we want to talk about this. I read your most recent blog post in the wake of the shootings over the weekend. And you wrote specifically just talking about your son that it usually takes two to three police officers and a tranquilizer to get him into care, Liza. Can you just remind us of you and your son's story?

LONG: Sure.

So I wrote "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" after the Newtown tragedy, which has so many echoes to this current tragic situation. And it was because I was so frustrated by my inability to get help for my child. We all want what any parent would want for their child, just a happy, productive life. But our mental health care delivery model is so broken, as this latest tragedy reminds us.

In my own case, my son is a sweet, wonderful, promising child. I hope the world for him. But when he goes into a manic rage, it's nearly impossible to control him. And I know I speak for many parents out there who go through the same personal tragedies every single day that only become highlighted when we have this very public tragedy of a Newtown or an Isla Vista, so many tragic young lives lost.

BALDWIN: Each of these cases is entirely unique. I want to make that clear.

But when -- I know I think you felt the same as I did when you really get into reading about the shooter from over the weekend in Santa Barbara -- Santa Barbara. You know, he had been seeing therapists since he was 8. Apparently, he had had two therapists. His mother was vigilant enough to see something he had written or posted online in April, called the therapist, who then called police.

LONG: Right.

BALDWIN: There was a welfare check. I mean, I could go on. It seems like the red flags weren't missed. Yet, Liza, he was able to do what he did.

LONG: Right.

And this case, maybe more so than some of the other cases, again highlights those major gaps in our mental health care delivery model, first of all, that we have to rely on the police as first-responders for mental health crisis. That's a huge burden on law enforcement. And, sometimes, they lack the training.

I believe all law enforcement officers are heroes, but sometimes they don't have the training that they need to spot something, like when they did that welfare check.