Sunday
Jul052009
Video and Transcript: Top US Military Commander Mullen on "Face the Nation" (5 July)
Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 15:28
Nothing stunning in the appearance of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on CBS News' "Face the Nation". He offered the standard "it's a challenge, but we're doing fine" on Afghanistan and Pakistan while promising eventual withdrawal from Iraq.
The interview should be seen more as a reassurance from the Obama Administration, after stories earlier this week of clashes between the White House and the military over the Afghanistan strategy, that everyone is getting along quite famously.
Watch CBS Videos Online
HOST JOHN DICKERSON: Joining us now, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen . Good morning, Admiral. Thank you for being with us.
I want to ask you first about Afghanistan. There are new operations and they’re testing the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. Can you give us a progress report?
MULLEN: Well, I’m comfortable with the strategy. We’ve had -- launched an operation earlier this week, the first significant one.
What’s most important is that I think we know how to do counterinsurgency. We’ve done that. This is very focused on providing security for the Afghan people.
But in the south, this is where the -- we expect the toughest fighting. It’s already started out to be pretty tough. We’ve made some advances early. But I suspect it’s going to be tough for a while. And again, we have enough forces there now not just to clear an area but to hold it so we can build after. And that’s really the strategy.
DICKERSON: All right. And I want to ask you about the number of forces. You say you’re comfortable with the strategy. There was a report in The Washington Post...about National Security Adviser Jim Jones [that] seem[s] to be suggesting that commanders in the field cannot ask the president for more troops.
Was that the first time you’d heard that, in The Washington Post?
MULLEN: Well, I -- obviously, I read the report as well. But I can assure that I’ve had discussions with General Jones. I’ve also had them with the president. And we’re all committed to -- to properly resourcing this -- this undertaking.
And General McChrystal, who’s the new leader over there, is in the middle of an assessment. And he’ll come back sometime late July or to mid-August with what he needs. And his guidance is to come back and tell us exactly what he needs.
I’ve also told him just to make sure there’s not an -- you know, every single military member over there is somebody that’s absolutely required. And so we’re all -- again, we’re all committed to getting this right and resourcing it properly.
DICKERSON: When the report came out, there seemed to be some confusion. Did you call the president to ask him about this?
MULLEN: No, I didn’t -- I didn’t talk to the president. I had actually spoken with the president, along with Secretary Gates, sometime before this, in terms of how we’re going to proceed or what it looks like General McChrystal’s going to do and what the assessment is expected to cover, without knowing what the results will be. And when we get the results, we’ll move forward from there.
DICKERSON: Do you want commanders to tell you what they need right now, before this is -- do you want them to tell you what they need?
MULLEN: General McChrystal’s guidance for me, before he went, was, you tell me exactly what you need and then bring it back here, and we’ll look to properly resource it.
DICKERSON: The White House has said -- in response to talking about Jones’s remarks, they said his message was that military force alone will not win the day in Afghanistan.
Was there anybody in the Pentagon who thought military force alone would win the day in Afghanistan?
MULLEN: I’ve said for a long time, you know, that the military -- the military piece of this is a necessary piece but it’s not sufficient.
We’ve got to move to a point where there’s security, so that the economic underpinnings can start to move, and development that we can create governance so that the Afghan people can get goods and services consistently from their government.
DICKERSON: One other piece here is the Afghan government. Do they need to do more to help us?
MULLEN: They need -- I believe our focus, and certainly the focus of Ambassador Holbrooke, as well as our new ambassador there, Ambassador Eikenberry, is to work with the Afghan government to provide, at every level, not just the national level, but at the local level, the district level, the sub-district level, the provincial level.
And we’re hard at -- the whole of our government and other countries is hard at work doing exactly that.
DICKERSON: We’re hard at work. Are they stepping up, though?
MULLEN: I think -- they are starting to step up. But it’s a big challenge.
DICKERSON: Let’s switch to Iraq. This was an important week there, U.S. troops out of the cities.
Vice President Biden said, if there’s a flare-up in violence, it’s up to the Iraqis. Is that -- is that right?
Are our troops on the way out the door and nothing could change it?
MULLEN: Clearly, we’ve had -- the initial trends, after we’ve removed our troops from the cities earlier this week, are positive. There has been an uptick in violence in these high-profile attacks. But June of this year was the lowest level of overall violence in Iraq since the war started.
I think what the vice president was focused on was this sectarian violence, you know, breaking out as it did a couple years ago. And certainly, that’s a concern.
MULLEN: But I see no indications whatsoever that that’s going to be the case.
DICKERSON: But is the military posture towards the exit we’re going to let Iraqis work out any violence if it should come to that?
MULLEN: Well, we’re still very focused on the overall strategy which keeps our troop levels at about this level towards the end of this year focused on elections in January which is key in providing security for elections and then a pretty rapid drawdown to get to the 35-50,000 troops that we expect to be there in August of 2010. It’s really up to the Iraqi political and military leadership to make sure that they tackle some of these tough problems. We are in support of the Iraqi security forces right now. And that’s where we’ll stay.
DICKERSON: OK. Our tour of the world is going to continue now to North Korea. They’ve threatened to shoot a mid-range missile towards Hawaii. What are we prepared to do if that were to happen?
MULLEN: I’m very comfortable with our defensive posture that we can protect our interests, our people and our territories. What I am increasingly concerned about is just the belligerence and actually the unpredictability of the North Korean leadership. These seven missiles that he fired yesterday which is to some degree a repeat of what he did in 2006, they’re a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution.
I think the international community needs to continue to bring pressure and stay together to let him know that he continues to isolate himself. And I’m concerned about his belligerence and instability in that region.
DICKERSON: It seems that North Korea, that it’s a black hole, in terms of our intelligence knowing what they’re up to, is that right?
MULLEN: It’s a very difficult to know what he is up to.
DICKERSON: One thing that did happen this week is the Korean ship apparently turned around. Do we know why? And do you think it’s on its way back?
MULLEN: It did. It looks like it’s on its way back. You can’t know for sure. And actually don’t know for sure why it turned around.
DICKERSON: Might it have been that it was turned away? MULLEN: Well, there’s some -- I mean there’s speculation on what it could be. I’m really not sure. We were obviously concerned about it. We’re keeping close track of it, made a decision to turn around. And it looks like it’s headed back to Korea, North Korea. But I honestly don’t know.
DICKERSON: You don’t know, OK, all right. We’ll leave North Korea in mystery there.
Let’s switch to Russia. You’ve been there. You met with your counterpart in Russia. Who is calling the shots? Is it Prime Minister Putin or President Medvedev?
MULLEN: Well, I went -- actually I just got back Tuesday and I leave shortly to go back with President Obama for the summit. The summit I think is a really important two days. My meeting last week with General Makarov was my second meeting with him. I met him in Helsinki several months ago. And we are very focused on this renewal of the military relationship.
We expect a signed work plan during this summit. And that’s important. I think clearly there are political considerations that President Obama is going to have to deal with in his engagement with President Medvedev. But that’s really up to him and it’s not up to me.
DICKERSON: One of the things the Russians are upset about is the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe. Are they making progress, conditional on our removing those missile systems?
MULLEN: The focus on missile defense is one I understand. The missile defense system that we’ve proposed is a defensive system. It’s not meant in any way, shape or form to be threatening to Russia. That’s something we disagree with in terms of how the Russians see it. And I think that’s something we’re going to have to work through. In this country, President Obama has directed a review of the third sight. We’re doing that. And that review won’t be done until later this year.
DICKERSON: They disagree with us on this position but the question really is whether they’re making it a condition, whether they’re saying, look, you’d like to have progress but we’re not going to progress until you commit to removing them.
MULLEN: Well, I think that certainly is to be worked out by both President Obama and President Medvedev. And I wouldn’t be presumptive of the decisions that they’re going to make or in fact how much of that they’re even going to talk about during this summit.
DICKERSON: OK, let’s go back to something also that Vice President Biden said about Iran. He said that if Israel wants to launch a strike to stop Iran’s nuclear capability there’s nothing the U.S. can do. Is that right?
MULLEN: Well, I have been for some time concerned about any strike on Iran. I worry about it being very destabilizing not just in and of itself but the unintended consequences of a strike like that.
At the same time, I’m one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that’s very destabilizing. I worry about the proliferation of the technology. I worry about other countries thinking in the region they might have to have that capability.
So it’s a very, very narrow window with respect to that. It’s something I’m engaged with my counter -- my Israeli counterpart on regularly. But these are really political decisions that have to be made with respect to where the United States is. I remain very concerned about what Iran is doing. They continue to state sponsor terrorism. They continue to develop nuclear weapons. They are a -- have been a destabilizing force in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s really been the areas that I’ve tried to focus on.
DICKERSON: But a strike is not a military -- I mean that’s not a political decision if the Israelis make a strike, that’s a military consequence you’ll have to deal with.
MULLEN: I think actually, you know, should that occur obviously all of us will have to deal with that.
DICKERSON: Let me ask you now on Pakistan, linked to Afghanistan, of course. It’s been a couple of months now. We’ve asked the Pakistani government to pick up its efforts with the Taliban. How are they doing?
MULLEN: They’re actually doing pretty well. A year ago were you and I sitting here talking about what the Pakistanis were not doing, you know, that would have been the area of focus.
In fact, they’ve actually made a lot of progress, taken significant military steps, had a significant impact and moved in a positive direction. I’ve engaged my counterpart General Kayani there many times. Basically he’s doing what he told me he would do. He’s concerned about the focus both the threat from India as well as the growing threat in terms of the insurgency. He’s addressing both of those. Actually they’ve done pretty well.
DICKERSON: They’re doing well in the Swat Valley. They seem to have cleared out the Taliban there. They’ve headed south. But in the North, militants have said they’re breaking a cease-fire and it looks like it’s a little bit stalled there in terms of the Pakistani reaction. Is this a hornet’s nest now that they’re in the middle of this and are they capable of handling that hornet’s nest?
MULLEN: Well, from what I’ve seen, General Kayani has a very deliberate plan and he’s on his plan. He’s aware. He knows his country very well. The military leadership knows their country very well. And I think they’re dealing with it. He has pushed, I mean, he has a force focused in two different directions. He’s rotating forces not unlike us. So he’s approaching it in a measured, thorough way. It’s going to take some time. Oftentimes more time than we’d like to give him.
DICKERSON: All right, Admiral Mike Mullen, thank you very much.
MULLEN: Thanks, John.
The interview should be seen more as a reassurance from the Obama Administration, after stories earlier this week of clashes between the White House and the military over the Afghanistan strategy, that everyone is getting along quite famously.
Watch CBS Videos Online
HOST JOHN DICKERSON: Joining us now, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen . Good morning, Admiral. Thank you for being with us.
I want to ask you first about Afghanistan. There are new operations and they’re testing the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. Can you give us a progress report?
MULLEN: Well, I’m comfortable with the strategy. We’ve had -- launched an operation earlier this week, the first significant one.
What’s most important is that I think we know how to do counterinsurgency. We’ve done that. This is very focused on providing security for the Afghan people.
But in the south, this is where the -- we expect the toughest fighting. It’s already started out to be pretty tough. We’ve made some advances early. But I suspect it’s going to be tough for a while. And again, we have enough forces there now not just to clear an area but to hold it so we can build after. And that’s really the strategy.
DICKERSON: All right. And I want to ask you about the number of forces. You say you’re comfortable with the strategy. There was a report in The Washington Post...about National Security Adviser Jim Jones [that] seem[s] to be suggesting that commanders in the field cannot ask the president for more troops.
Was that the first time you’d heard that, in The Washington Post?
MULLEN: Well, I -- obviously, I read the report as well. But I can assure that I’ve had discussions with General Jones. I’ve also had them with the president. And we’re all committed to -- to properly resourcing this -- this undertaking.
And General McChrystal, who’s the new leader over there, is in the middle of an assessment. And he’ll come back sometime late July or to mid-August with what he needs. And his guidance is to come back and tell us exactly what he needs.
I’ve also told him just to make sure there’s not an -- you know, every single military member over there is somebody that’s absolutely required. And so we’re all -- again, we’re all committed to getting this right and resourcing it properly.
DICKERSON: When the report came out, there seemed to be some confusion. Did you call the president to ask him about this?
MULLEN: No, I didn’t -- I didn’t talk to the president. I had actually spoken with the president, along with Secretary Gates, sometime before this, in terms of how we’re going to proceed or what it looks like General McChrystal’s going to do and what the assessment is expected to cover, without knowing what the results will be. And when we get the results, we’ll move forward from there.
DICKERSON: Do you want commanders to tell you what they need right now, before this is -- do you want them to tell you what they need?
MULLEN: General McChrystal’s guidance for me, before he went, was, you tell me exactly what you need and then bring it back here, and we’ll look to properly resource it.
DICKERSON: The White House has said -- in response to talking about Jones’s remarks, they said his message was that military force alone will not win the day in Afghanistan.
Was there anybody in the Pentagon who thought military force alone would win the day in Afghanistan?
MULLEN: I’ve said for a long time, you know, that the military -- the military piece of this is a necessary piece but it’s not sufficient.
We’ve got to move to a point where there’s security, so that the economic underpinnings can start to move, and development that we can create governance so that the Afghan people can get goods and services consistently from their government.
DICKERSON: One other piece here is the Afghan government. Do they need to do more to help us?
MULLEN: They need -- I believe our focus, and certainly the focus of Ambassador Holbrooke, as well as our new ambassador there, Ambassador Eikenberry, is to work with the Afghan government to provide, at every level, not just the national level, but at the local level, the district level, the sub-district level, the provincial level.
And we’re hard at -- the whole of our government and other countries is hard at work doing exactly that.
DICKERSON: We’re hard at work. Are they stepping up, though?
MULLEN: I think -- they are starting to step up. But it’s a big challenge.
DICKERSON: Let’s switch to Iraq. This was an important week there, U.S. troops out of the cities.
Vice President Biden said, if there’s a flare-up in violence, it’s up to the Iraqis. Is that -- is that right?
Are our troops on the way out the door and nothing could change it?
MULLEN: Clearly, we’ve had -- the initial trends, after we’ve removed our troops from the cities earlier this week, are positive. There has been an uptick in violence in these high-profile attacks. But June of this year was the lowest level of overall violence in Iraq since the war started.
I think what the vice president was focused on was this sectarian violence, you know, breaking out as it did a couple years ago. And certainly, that’s a concern.
MULLEN: But I see no indications whatsoever that that’s going to be the case.
DICKERSON: But is the military posture towards the exit we’re going to let Iraqis work out any violence if it should come to that?
MULLEN: Well, we’re still very focused on the overall strategy which keeps our troop levels at about this level towards the end of this year focused on elections in January which is key in providing security for elections and then a pretty rapid drawdown to get to the 35-50,000 troops that we expect to be there in August of 2010. It’s really up to the Iraqi political and military leadership to make sure that they tackle some of these tough problems. We are in support of the Iraqi security forces right now. And that’s where we’ll stay.
DICKERSON: OK. Our tour of the world is going to continue now to North Korea. They’ve threatened to shoot a mid-range missile towards Hawaii. What are we prepared to do if that were to happen?
MULLEN: I’m very comfortable with our defensive posture that we can protect our interests, our people and our territories. What I am increasingly concerned about is just the belligerence and actually the unpredictability of the North Korean leadership. These seven missiles that he fired yesterday which is to some degree a repeat of what he did in 2006, they’re a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution.
I think the international community needs to continue to bring pressure and stay together to let him know that he continues to isolate himself. And I’m concerned about his belligerence and instability in that region.
DICKERSON: It seems that North Korea, that it’s a black hole, in terms of our intelligence knowing what they’re up to, is that right?
MULLEN: It’s a very difficult to know what he is up to.
DICKERSON: One thing that did happen this week is the Korean ship apparently turned around. Do we know why? And do you think it’s on its way back?
MULLEN: It did. It looks like it’s on its way back. You can’t know for sure. And actually don’t know for sure why it turned around.
DICKERSON: Might it have been that it was turned away? MULLEN: Well, there’s some -- I mean there’s speculation on what it could be. I’m really not sure. We were obviously concerned about it. We’re keeping close track of it, made a decision to turn around. And it looks like it’s headed back to Korea, North Korea. But I honestly don’t know.
DICKERSON: You don’t know, OK, all right. We’ll leave North Korea in mystery there.
Let’s switch to Russia. You’ve been there. You met with your counterpart in Russia. Who is calling the shots? Is it Prime Minister Putin or President Medvedev?
MULLEN: Well, I went -- actually I just got back Tuesday and I leave shortly to go back with President Obama for the summit. The summit I think is a really important two days. My meeting last week with General Makarov was my second meeting with him. I met him in Helsinki several months ago. And we are very focused on this renewal of the military relationship.
We expect a signed work plan during this summit. And that’s important. I think clearly there are political considerations that President Obama is going to have to deal with in his engagement with President Medvedev. But that’s really up to him and it’s not up to me.
DICKERSON: One of the things the Russians are upset about is the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe. Are they making progress, conditional on our removing those missile systems?
MULLEN: The focus on missile defense is one I understand. The missile defense system that we’ve proposed is a defensive system. It’s not meant in any way, shape or form to be threatening to Russia. That’s something we disagree with in terms of how the Russians see it. And I think that’s something we’re going to have to work through. In this country, President Obama has directed a review of the third sight. We’re doing that. And that review won’t be done until later this year.
DICKERSON: They disagree with us on this position but the question really is whether they’re making it a condition, whether they’re saying, look, you’d like to have progress but we’re not going to progress until you commit to removing them.
MULLEN: Well, I think that certainly is to be worked out by both President Obama and President Medvedev. And I wouldn’t be presumptive of the decisions that they’re going to make or in fact how much of that they’re even going to talk about during this summit.
DICKERSON: OK, let’s go back to something also that Vice President Biden said about Iran. He said that if Israel wants to launch a strike to stop Iran’s nuclear capability there’s nothing the U.S. can do. Is that right?
MULLEN: Well, I have been for some time concerned about any strike on Iran. I worry about it being very destabilizing not just in and of itself but the unintended consequences of a strike like that.
At the same time, I’m one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that’s very destabilizing. I worry about the proliferation of the technology. I worry about other countries thinking in the region they might have to have that capability.
So it’s a very, very narrow window with respect to that. It’s something I’m engaged with my counter -- my Israeli counterpart on regularly. But these are really political decisions that have to be made with respect to where the United States is. I remain very concerned about what Iran is doing. They continue to state sponsor terrorism. They continue to develop nuclear weapons. They are a -- have been a destabilizing force in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s really been the areas that I’ve tried to focus on.
DICKERSON: But a strike is not a military -- I mean that’s not a political decision if the Israelis make a strike, that’s a military consequence you’ll have to deal with.
MULLEN: I think actually, you know, should that occur obviously all of us will have to deal with that.
DICKERSON: Let me ask you now on Pakistan, linked to Afghanistan, of course. It’s been a couple of months now. We’ve asked the Pakistani government to pick up its efforts with the Taliban. How are they doing?
MULLEN: They’re actually doing pretty well. A year ago were you and I sitting here talking about what the Pakistanis were not doing, you know, that would have been the area of focus.
In fact, they’ve actually made a lot of progress, taken significant military steps, had a significant impact and moved in a positive direction. I’ve engaged my counterpart General Kayani there many times. Basically he’s doing what he told me he would do. He’s concerned about the focus both the threat from India as well as the growing threat in terms of the insurgency. He’s addressing both of those. Actually they’ve done pretty well.
DICKERSON: They’re doing well in the Swat Valley. They seem to have cleared out the Taliban there. They’ve headed south. But in the North, militants have said they’re breaking a cease-fire and it looks like it’s a little bit stalled there in terms of the Pakistani reaction. Is this a hornet’s nest now that they’re in the middle of this and are they capable of handling that hornet’s nest?
MULLEN: Well, from what I’ve seen, General Kayani has a very deliberate plan and he’s on his plan. He’s aware. He knows his country very well. The military leadership knows their country very well. And I think they’re dealing with it. He has pushed, I mean, he has a force focused in two different directions. He’s rotating forces not unlike us. So he’s approaching it in a measured, thorough way. It’s going to take some time. Oftentimes more time than we’d like to give him.
DICKERSON: All right, Admiral Mike Mullen, thank you very much.
MULLEN: Thanks, John.