Iraq Roundtable: Withdrawal, More Troops or Same Strategy?

Nov. 29, 2006 — -- As President Bush meets with international leaders in Jordan, partly on a search to sort out what the U.S. should now be doing in Iraq, there are basically three options -- send more troops to Iraq to stop the violence, continue with the present course or set a schedule for leaving Iraq and get the troops out.

ABC News decided to put these options to three experts and get their opinions on the best course of action. The follownig is a partial transcript of Charles Gibson's roundtable discussion with Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, former Army Vice Chief of Staff, retired General Jack Keane and the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass.

Charles Gibson: There are some who contend we ought to send more troops. More troops. Good idea? Viable option?

Gen. Jack Keane: Well, from my perspective, certainly that is one of the options … The strategy we have, which was in its essence a defensive military strategy, it was never designed to defeat the insurgency. It was simply designed to transition to the Iraqi security force as its core principle …

So now with sectarian violence and insurgency and instability and insecurity, does it still make sense to try to protect and support the people? I still believe that's a realistic option that should be looked at.

Fareed Zakaria: More forces would have worked if the only problem we were dealing with was the insurgency. What you're dealing with now is a civil war.

Richard Haass: Let me give a different perspective. We've already sent more troops. We're already up to about 150,000 American soldiers.

We could send a few more, it won't do a lot militarily, but what it may do is help the administration, politically. We're probably reaching a point where the president's trip and, more broadly, U.S. policy now is what you might call the last hurrah.

Gibson: So you're saying it would just be one last sign that we're trying.

Haass: Exactly right, I do not believe that the challenges we face are the sort that, that -- are the sort of challenges that can successfully be met with more firepower.

Zakaria: The problem is, it's not sustainable. And the one thing that the bad guys in Iraq know, is all they have to do is outlast us. So, in that fundamental context, it's really not much of a strategy because you can't send another 50,000 troops for five years … We can send another 50,000 troops for five months. And the bad guys know that. And all they have to do is wait.

Gibson: The second option, which is, Gen. Abizaid has said, look, we need to continue doing what we're doing for now, with roughly the same number of troops, and continue to build up internal Iraqi forces.

Haass: That's why this is probably likely to fail. Because all of this effort to train up an Iraqi army doesn't happen in a vacuum.

If you think the principal dynamic in a society is civil war or near-civil war … but if you think that's the fundamental divide and that people, when they get up in the morning, don't think of themselves so much as Iraqis, as they think of themselves as Shia or Sunni or Kurds, then … this strengthening of national institutions is really a veneer. Because as soon as push comes to shove, they take off one uniform and adopt another, or, or switch loyalties. And that's why, again, this whole national effort is probably not gonna succeed.

Zakaria: And this is where American strategy has foundered.

Stay the Course?

Gibson: Let me come back to what is essentially, I think, the Abizaid proposal, which is to essentially say, 'leave me where I am for four to six months, give me a chance to try to bring stability here.' Is it viable, does he have a chance?

Keane: No, that -- all of our intelligence services are telling us that the violence in '07, with the current strategy in place, will increase over, over '06. So I completely agree with you, the current strategy is not working. And, we have to make some changes if we're gonna make some progress in this country, and to think that another four to six months somehow, is, is gonna make a difference with the current strategy, just doesn't make sense.

I have been down this road myself … the next six months are the critical six months, I've been there two or three times. And I'm not going there anymore.

Gibson: Which leaves us then with the third option, which is some kind of stated, phased timing for withdrawal. Is that a viable strategy, and is it something that you think the president can bring himself to?

Haass: If you mean by viable, will it succeed in what it leaves behind in Iraq, no.

My hunch is somewhere in the next few months we will make it clear that certain conditions need to be met by the Iraqi government if the United States is going to continue doing pretty much what it is.

Gibson: If we're gonna stay.

Haass: Exactly. It isn't likely those conditions will be met, it'll be unlikely those conditions will be met in terms of political and economic arrangements. It's unlikely those conditions will be met in terms of security performance.

Gibson: So you're saying, the president essentially says to the Iraqis, 'do this, this and this, or we're gonna start leaving,' they can't do it, that gives us cover to leave.

Zakaria: Think of this as a push-and-pull strategy. You push the Iraqis to do more, to make some of the hard political decisions that they haven't made, and you simultaneously start thinking about pulling back.

Keane: Well I think a time-tabled or phased withdrawal is just a face-saving cover device for -- to accept defeat. That's what that is.

Gibson: Bottom line, there is no good option.