The following was an notable excerpt from Anderson Cooper 360 on Sept 14, 2007. Michael Ware, CNN Correspondent, raised some great questions to consider about our responsibility with regard to Iraq:
GRAPHIC: U.S. opinion of war in Iraq, September 7-9. Favor, 34 percent; oppose, 63 percent.
COOPER: Those were some of poll numbers that greeted General Petraeus as he testified in Washington this week. Support for the war, now in its fifth year, has been declining. And as we learned this week, there are still going to be large numbers of U.S. forces here going into next year's elections.
You're going to hear politicians trying to come up with solutions, though there are no easy solutions at all for what's happening here. The end game, that's what we want to talk about with CNN's Michael Ware, who joins me now here in the Green Zone.
In the United States, some, mostly Democrats, want a date set for withdrawal. They say, those who support that, that it would pressure the al Maliki government, it would pressure the Iraqi military to stand up faster. Would it?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's a dream-like state. Anyone who's telling themselves that is absolutely deluding themselves. Maliki's under no pressure from the presence or not of American forces. I mean...
COOPER: Really? He's not under pressure from American forces?
WARE: No. Whilst America, on the one hand, is propping up his regime, on the other hand, they don't answer to the Americans. They don't feel beholden to the Americans. And they have a ready-made sponsor waiting in the wings to step into the American vacuum, as the Iranian president this week himself said.
So the presence of American troops is meant to serve U.S. interests, Western interests. They're not necessarily the interests of the government that America has created.
COOPER: But the U.S. can pressure them to some degree, no?
WARE: It can and it's trying that. It's failed abysmally until this point. Right now the greatest stick that America has, that it's jabbing this government with, the only thing that's forcing them to even pretend to meet any of the benchmarks on de-Ba'athification or reconciliation is that America is now supporting the Ba'ath insurgency. It's supporting the Sunni tribes, and this is terrifying this government.
This government's trying to block it at every turn. Iran has said that you're going to pay a severe price if you keep doing this, but it's the only thing.
COOPER: You know, there are a lot of folks in the United States who say, look, why should the U.S. troops be here? I mean, why should Americans be losing their lives here when Iraqi politicians are going on vacation and are not even passing, you know, reforms that would work towards reconciliation, which would seem -- I mean, everyone seems to admit that's essential for progress here.
WARE: And that's right. And that's not going to happen. You may get it on the surface. You may get some bells and whistles, but you're not going to get true reconciliation, no matter how much people are working to...
COOPER: Still too much hatred and too much desire for retribution?
WARE: And too much vested interest. I mean, it doesn't suit peoples' agendas to come together in the middle. And there's external players all around this country who don't want to see that happen, and they're having much greater affect here than America is.
COOPER: Those who support the U.S. effort here say that American troops should stay because they're a vital national security interest here. If American troops did pull out in great numbers, withdraw totally, even, say in the next year or so, do we know for sure what would happen? Or is it a roll of the dice?
WARE: No one knows for sure. But one thing that we can count on is the blood will flow. And American foreign policy interests will suffer such a withering blow I'm not sure that they would be able to recover from this region.
America can leave tomorrow, as long as it's ready to pay the price. And let's not forget: everyone wants the American sons and daughters to go home. But this is a dilemma facing liberal America. You can do that, but you're going to have such death and misery on your conscience.
There is a moral imperative here. America chose to invade. America created this environment that's not just hurting the Iraqis but it's hurting American interests. It's fuelling al Qaeda and fuelling Iran. You can walk away from that, but it's not without price.
GRAPHIC: U.S. opinion of war in Iraq, September 7-9. Favor, 34 percent; oppose, 63 percent.
COOPER: Those were some of poll numbers that greeted General Petraeus as he testified in Washington this week. Support for the war, now in its fifth year, has been declining. And as we learned this week, there are still going to be large numbers of U.S. forces here going into next year's elections.
You're going to hear politicians trying to come up with solutions, though there are no easy solutions at all for what's happening here. The end game, that's what we want to talk about with CNN's Michael Ware, who joins me now here in the Green Zone.
In the United States, some, mostly Democrats, want a date set for withdrawal. They say, those who support that, that it would pressure the al Maliki government, it would pressure the Iraqi military to stand up faster. Would it?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's a dream-like state. Anyone who's telling themselves that is absolutely deluding themselves. Maliki's under no pressure from the presence or not of American forces. I mean...
COOPER: Really? He's not under pressure from American forces?
WARE: No. Whilst America, on the one hand, is propping up his regime, on the other hand, they don't answer to the Americans. They don't feel beholden to the Americans. And they have a ready-made sponsor waiting in the wings to step into the American vacuum, as the Iranian president this week himself said.
So the presence of American troops is meant to serve U.S. interests, Western interests. They're not necessarily the interests of the government that America has created.
COOPER: But the U.S. can pressure them to some degree, no?
WARE: It can and it's trying that. It's failed abysmally until this point. Right now the greatest stick that America has, that it's jabbing this government with, the only thing that's forcing them to even pretend to meet any of the benchmarks on de-Ba'athification or reconciliation is that America is now supporting the Ba'ath insurgency. It's supporting the Sunni tribes, and this is terrifying this government.
This government's trying to block it at every turn. Iran has said that you're going to pay a severe price if you keep doing this, but it's the only thing.
COOPER: You know, there are a lot of folks in the United States who say, look, why should the U.S. troops be here? I mean, why should Americans be losing their lives here when Iraqi politicians are going on vacation and are not even passing, you know, reforms that would work towards reconciliation, which would seem -- I mean, everyone seems to admit that's essential for progress here.
WARE: And that's right. And that's not going to happen. You may get it on the surface. You may get some bells and whistles, but you're not going to get true reconciliation, no matter how much people are working to...
COOPER: Still too much hatred and too much desire for retribution?
WARE: And too much vested interest. I mean, it doesn't suit peoples' agendas to come together in the middle. And there's external players all around this country who don't want to see that happen, and they're having much greater affect here than America is.
COOPER: Those who support the U.S. effort here say that American troops should stay because they're a vital national security interest here. If American troops did pull out in great numbers, withdraw totally, even, say in the next year or so, do we know for sure what would happen? Or is it a roll of the dice?
WARE: No one knows for sure. But one thing that we can count on is the blood will flow. And American foreign policy interests will suffer such a withering blow I'm not sure that they would be able to recover from this region.
America can leave tomorrow, as long as it's ready to pay the price. And let's not forget: everyone wants the American sons and daughters to go home. But this is a dilemma facing liberal America. You can do that, but you're going to have such death and misery on your conscience.
There is a moral imperative here. America chose to invade. America created this environment that's not just hurting the Iraqis but it's hurting American interests. It's fuelling al Qaeda and fuelling Iran. You can walk away from that, but it's not without price.
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