MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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Good evening. I"m Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight:
Why are we in Afghanistan? The war was already losing public support, and Democratic votes in Congress were getting harder to come by. And then along comes today"s bombshell, the release of tens of thousands of classified, on-the-ground reports on the war. The Afghanistan papers contain evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service and military encourage and support attacks on Afghan and American forces. My question:
Will President Obama"s Democratic base rebel against the war he has made his own?

Also, should affirmative action programs be ended? Democratic senator Jim Webb basically says yes because they discriminate, he says, against poor whites. We"ll debate that one.

Plus, the tax debate. It comes down to this. Democrats will argue that Republicans want to protect the rich. Republicans will argue Democrats just want to raise taxes. We"ll have that one out here.

And don"t meet the press. Remember this bit of video of Senate candidate Sharron Angle running away from reporters? Well, she"s not alone. Why are so many Republicans, tea party people especially, running away from reporters? They can run, they can hide. Can they win?

And you have to love this. Tea party favorite Ken Buck out in Colorado calls birthers "dumbasses." And it was recorded. Wow. That"s in the "Sideshow."
We start with the leak of documents about the war in Afghanistan.
Congressman Chellie Pingree is a Democrat from Maine who sits on the Armed Services Committee, and Congressman Jim McGovern is a Democrat from Massachusetts.

Congresswoman Pingree, let me ask you this. Knowing what you"ve learned today in the paper, this huge story by "The New York Times," picked up by other papers, where do you stand on Afghanistan and our continued war there?

REP. CHELLIE PINGREE (D-ME), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Oh, I oppose the war in Afghanistan. I opposed it before we got into there. I oppose continued funding for it. And the fact is, a lot of things we"re reading about today many of us knew about before, we"ve been hearing about. But this only reinforces how badly things are going, how much information people need to have about this war, and frankly, for my constituents, how upset people are about $7 billion a month we continue to spend in what seems to be a continuing failed effort.

MATTHEWS: Jim McGovern, Congressman, my question here--and this is a nasty question, but I think it"s at the heart of this report today. You know, we keep being told we"re fighting for Afghanistan to save Pakistan. Now we find out that Pakistan is fighting us and killing our guys in Afghanistan. That"s a revolting development.

REP. JIM MCGOVERN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Oh, lookit, the documents that were released paint a very grim picture. And our men and women who are fighting this battle are doing an incredible job, but what is clear is that they have no reliable partners. They can"t trust the government of Afghanistan because Karzai"s corrupt. They can"t trust the Afghan police or the Afghan military because they"re corrupt. And now we have, you know, news that the Pakistani intelligence are working to undercut the American men and women we"re putting in harm"s way. This is an outrage. And quite frankly, it should cause members of Congress to start asking some of the tough questions.

MATTHEWS: Well, let"s go to "The Times" reporting. According to "The New York Times," the documents charge that Pakistan"s intelligence service, the ISI, helped coordinate Taliban offensives against American forces in Afghanistan.

Quote, "On June 19, 2006, ISI operatives allegedly met with the Taliban leaders in Quetta. At the meeting, according to the report, they pressed the Taliban to mount attacks on Maroof (ph), a district of Kandahar. The planned offensive would be carried out primarily by Arabs and Pakistanis. The foreigners agreed to this operation and have assembled 20 four-by-four trucks to carry the fighters into the areas in question, the report said. While the specifics about the foreign fighters and the ISI are difficult to verify, the Taliban did indeed mount an offensive to seize control in Maroof in 2006."
Congressman Pingree, this question. We"re there to defend Iraq--I mean Afghanistan, in order to prevent the overthrow of the Pakistani government. Who do we trust in this environment, where the Pakistani intelligence services are seen here helping to kill Americans who are trying to save Pakistan?

PINGREE: Well, you"re right. I mean, we"ve had a lot of distrust of Pakistan all along, but many of these things that we"re reading about today only confirm it. Congressman McGovern mentioned, you know, we just continue to put our soldiers in harm"s way. There is no way they can trust many of the people around them and we"re not having successes.

You know, I read in the paper, and I know from being in the Armed Services Committee, we spend a billion dollars a year in supporting Pakistan. And I know that shouldn"t seem like a lot, given that we"re spending $7 billion a month on this whole effort. But the fact is, we trust them. We need them in this effort, and they"re not necessarily on our side and it"s costing us a lot of money.

I mean, frankly, I just don"t understand why more members of Congress aren"t voting to stop the funding for this war because when I"m back home, I hear from my constituents they don"t think we"re winning. They don"t understand why we"re continuing the effort, and they want to see some end to this conflict.

MATTHEWS: Well, let"s go back to Congressman McGovern and then back to you for the political question. It"s not political, it"s policy. Should the Democratic Party, which is generally skeptical about overseas adventures, about overextension of the U.S., some might say neo-imperial designs on the world, on the left--is the Democratic Party in its heart for this war in Afghanistan, Congressman McGovern?

MCGOVERN: I don"t believe it is.

MATTHEWS: On the Hill?

MCGOVERN: I don"t believe a majority of Democrats are. We had 60 percent of the Democratic caucus vote with me on an amendment essentially calling for the formulation of an exit strategy in Afghanistan. And the Speaker of the House, who traditionally doesn"t vote, actually voted with us. So the majority of the Democratic Party wants us to figure out a way to get out of this thing.

We"ve been there for almost 10 years. We have lost thousands of brave men and women. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on supporting a corrupt government and nation-building over in Afghanistan when, quite frankly, we should be doing some more nation-building here in the United States.

MATTHEWS: Well, let"s take a look at another document before we go back to Congresswoman Pingree. One document from September 2007, three years ago, discloses how Afghan district officials made brutal assessments of the Afghan government to American civil affairs officers.

The report says, quote, "The people of Afghanistan keep losing their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials. The general view of the Afghans is that the current government over there is worse than the Taliban. The oldest member of the Afghan group told the civil affairs team, quote, "The corrupted government officials are a new concept brought to Afghanistan by the Americans,"" close quote. I don"t know if I believe that. "And a civil affairs officer wrote the report warned, quote, "The people will support the anti-coalition forces, and the security condition will deteriorate."

I guess that"s the question. But you know, it seems to me, Congresswoman, that we"ve got a problem. We went over there, according to the neocons, to extend democracy. We"re defending a defeated government in Iraq. We"re supporting a defeated government in Afghanistan. I noticed the neocons have stopped saying that one of the reasons we"re over there now is to extend democracy, since we"re backing two people that lost elections and are both accused of being, well, in this case certainly, corrupt.
But do you buy the argument in this report that Americans corrupted Afghanistan, or they just have a history of it and we joined it?

MCGOVERN: I"m not sure I believe that we corrupted Afghanistan. I think that you"re right, this is a government that was corrupt. We haven"t been able to improve it, as you mention. Many Afghanis feel that they"re actually safer with the Taliban, which is a crazy notion when you"ve given how much time and money that we"ve spent there.

And I just have to continue to say if we don"t have a democracy that we"re working with, if we can"t succeed with our efforts--Congressman McGovern mentioned the fact that we are democracy-building over there. I mean, we"re nation-building, as well as democracy-building. We can"t afford that level of investment there when we need it here.

I just don"t see any signs that things are improving. And so many of these documents showed how vulnerable our soldiers are. You know, many of us in Congress, we make the phone calls, we go to the funerals for our soldiers who don"t come back. It"s hard to keep telling families that this is an effort that they should be participating in.

The fact is--you mentioned it--we don"t hear that much from the Republicans anymore about the importance of this effort. I think they"re backing down because they"re hearing the same things. Many of us wanted to give the president a chance. You know, he took over a very tough situation, and we"ve done our best to be there and be supportive. But I haven"t been able to vote for this, and I don"t think I can in the future.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of people who charge that this is a--well, it"s what we call disloyal to our country to release this report by "The Times"? Where are you on that?

PINGREE: Well, you know...

MATTHEWS: All this information about our problem over there.

PINGREE: You know, this information was going to come out. It"s generally known. Look, we read some of this stuff in "Rolling Stone." We hear it from our own military. I think "The Times" was very careful in trying to protect those people who could be vulnerable in these situations. But this is the information you have to have when you"re making tough decisions. This is exactly what Congress should be debating.

MATTHEWS: Congressman McGovern, let me ask you the toughest question
in the world that I can think of. It"s bugging me, as a person watching
this. If we get out of Afghanistan, and we may well do it under this
administration starting next July, according to this timetable--we might
what does that say about the chances of al Qaeda coming back in there?

MCGOVERN: Well, nobody"s saying we should take our eyes off al Qaeda. I mean, in fact, to the contrary, what I"m arguing is that us being bogged down in Afghanistan, doing nation-building there, is taking our resources and out eyes off of the enemy. We want to go after those who were responsible for September 11 and hold them accountable, but they"re no longer in Afghanistan. We need to go wherever they are.

MATTHEWS: OK.

MCGOVERN: And if they come back to Afghanistan, we go back. But you know, I will say one thing, Chris. There"s nothing wrong with a little sunshine. These documents have kind of exposed the truth, and Congress needs to deal with them.

MATTHEWS: Are you afraid of the old tag, Who lost Afghanistan, from
the right? If we pull out and Afghanistan goes back to the Taliban, which
it could well do, and could offer sanctuary to al Qaeda like it did before
Congresswoman, let me ask you first, and it"s a tough one. Are you willing to take the heat as a Democrat for having let that happen?

PINGREE: Absolutely, at this point. I mean, after the longest war we"ve been in and no signs of success, I"d be happy to (INAUDIBLE) soldiers, You can return home. You can be safe. We"ll go back if we have to. But we need to put our eye on a lot of other places right now that could be danger zones. And I think this just is not succeeding, and this information only reinforces that more. Look, we got to--we got to do those tough things in Congress. That"s why we"re here.

MATTHEWS: Congressman McGovern, same question to you. Will you take the heat? Will the president take the heat from the right? And it will come. You Democrats cost us Afghanistan by pulling the plug on this.

MCGOVERN: The Taliban are awful, rotten people. But there are a lot of awful, rotten people all over the world. We can"t occupy every country. But here"s my hope. If we can set a timeline, if we can set an exit strategy, then that will put pressure on the Afghan government to either step up or not. You know, the responsibility lies with the Afghan government. We have been there for almost 10 years. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. We"ve lost thousands of our soldiers. Are we going to be there forever? That"s the question. We can"t afford to do so. We"re going bankrupt.

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Congressman McGovern. Thank you, Congresswoman Pingree of Maine.

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