"Between Now and Spring 2008, We Must Reduce Our Forces in Iraq"
    Corine Lesnes interviews Antony Blinken
    Le Monde

    Tuesday 04 September 2007

    Congress expects President Bush's report on the situation in Iraq next week, six months after reinforcements were sent. What do you foresee happening?

    The report will probably describe a tactical military success. But we see clearly that no political reconciliation has occurred. And George Bush's credibility loss is such that, even if he can objectively demonstrate progress, no one will believe it.

    In any case, we must reduce our forces between now and 2008. To maintain 160,000 soldiers after that, we would have to send some troops out for the fourth or fifth time. We'd have to keep them there, not twelve, but eighteen months for the Army, and twelve rather than six months for the Marines. We'd have to mobilize the entire Reserves.

    That's possible, but no one wants to do it. Tension has already broken out between the military here in Washington, who don't want to maintain that force level beyond the spring and others like (General) Petraeus, who are in Iraq and who will say: give us a little bit more time yet.

    The administration now understands that there is no military solution. But it has defined the political solution in an impossible way. Bush's logic is to increase forces to give Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki the time to conduct a reconciliation process.

    He remains fixed on this idea that reconciliation will come from the center. That's a mistake. Reconciliation will not come from the central government, unless there's an occupation that we cannot maintain or a dictator whom we cannot desire.

    Some Democrats are caught in this same false logic. For them, the sole fact of withdrawing the troops could force the central government to reconciliation. But the government is incapable of that. As long as we remain with that logic, we are doomed to fail.

    The Democrats are having trouble finding a common position.

    Since January, we've been trying to redefine the mission of the forces in Iraq. The idea is that, if the mission is limited, we don't need 160,000 Americans to complete it.

    All the laws proposed up to now had these points in common: withdraw the troops from inter-sectarian conflicts, concentrate them on the battle against al-Qaeda and on training Iraqis.

    That would allow us to begin to withdraw most combat forces. Little by little, the idea is progressing: we garnered 48 votes, then 51, then 53...

    Do you think you've gained Republican supporters?

    The Republicans in Congress and those who are presidential candidates have completely different interests. The candidates have to think about the Party's base, the 30% to 40% who have not yet abandoned the president on Iraq.

    The majority in the country support the idea of withdrawal, but it's the base that chooses the candidate. Members of Congress, however, fear losing their constituencies in 2008.

    But no one wants to be the first to defect. That's the whole question: At what instant between September and spring 2008 will a sufficient group of Republican Senators give the 60 votes necessary to change the direction of policy in Iraq?

    That said, even 60 votes are not enough. To override a presidential veto, we need 67 votes.

    Will the Democrats try to block the vote for the defense budget?

    Not necessarily. There's probably still a Democratic majority to vote for the military budget. I don't know whether that will be the case at the beginning of 2008. The up-coming deadline is important. It's not certain that this is the decisive moment.

    Don't you fear the anger from the Party's left?

    In 2006, the base thought that with a Democratic majority in the two Houses, we could change the world. It forgets that the system does not operate that way. The minority has blocking power. The president's central role in foreign policy is protected.

    To undo all that, we need super-majorities. "Bush's war" is a discourse that appeals to the Democratic base, but not necessarily to the great majority of Americans.

    It's Bush's war, but it's also the country's war. Fifteen months remain before the presidential election. We can't afford to stay on the substitutes' bench waiting for a new president.

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    Former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, whose principal adviser for European affairs he was from 1999 to 2001, Antony Blinken is personnel director for the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.