MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Iraq

Interview

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MATTHEWS: Well, joining me right now is Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Senator, thank you for coming on tonight. And I don`t think...

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R), MISSISSIPPI: Glad to be on. Thank you.

MATTHEWS: ... that`s the popular or at all near the majority opinion of either party right now, very much an isolationist statement by a man who has that position. Where do you think that fits into Republican or anybody`s thinking today, that sense of too messy over there, too hard to pick sides, we better stay out?

WICKER: Well, let me just say there were 12 Republican votes against the resolution, 10 Democratic votes, and I don`t even think most of those people would agree with the language of Senator Paul in that respect. I think there were budget reasons, a number of doubts about the strategy that caused those no votes.

MATTHEWS: I see. What do you make of the -- I want to ask you the same tough question because I don`t know the answer. Do we know Syria`s politics? Our country`s politics, we can figure it out. It`s pretty much 50/50 now, left, right. But where is Syria in terms of finding people that share not our values -- that`s asking too much -- but are willing to take on this fight against ISIS and we can arm and train them?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... other side.

WICKER: Those are very, very good questions. And one thing that your viewers need to know. This is a three-month authorization. This expires mid-December. In that time, the president has an opportunity to get the coalition going, to answer some of the questions that have been asked about who`s going to participate, which Arab nations, which Muslim nations are going to step forward and actually be involved in this war. And then the president will have an opportunity to come back in December during the lame duck session after the election and make his case for a more permanent authorization.

This, I think, was viewed by a lot of the people who voted yes as not wanting to turn our back on the commander-in-chief, not wanting to send a signal that we`re not willing to stand up against a group that he says we`ve got to crush, that the secretary of state said we have to use all of our power, secretary of defense says they`re unlike anything we`ve ever seen before. They`re a threat to everything that we represent both at home and abroad.

So if they`re that serious, I think 78 members of the Senate and about that percentage of the American people want to give this commander-in-chief an opportunity to make the case and to show us over the next three months that he has a plan that can win, and a plan that if he`s successful, we can hold those gains, unlike we did with the gains we had after the surge.

MATTHEWS: You know, I was thinking about the whole idea of training another army. I mean, the British were able to do it with the Indians after -- India -- for a couple hundred years, they developed that relationship with India, really bought into democracy, and that worked.

But we`re over there in Iraq for a number of years, over there in Afghanistan for a number of years. We created an Iraqi army, probably paid their salaries, gave them uniforms, gave them rifles, taught them hand-in- glove, American GIs over there teaching them.

They folded the minute ISIS attacked them. The South Vietnamese were struck by the North Vietnamese and the VC in that amazing -- well, it was tsunami attack, basically, in `74 and `75. Nobody thought -- they folded. How can you create the willingness to fight and die for a cause in somebody else besides the person who really has that fight in their heart?

WICKER: Well, I think the mistake made was after the surge, which wasn`t, in fact, successful. I think the mistake was made by President Obama in not following the advice of his generals. I do believe we could have negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement. We could have gotten the Maliki government, which was in charge at the time, to allow a residual force to stay there. And I think -- I think that history will determine that 15,000 or 20,000 American troops would have prevented this sort of disaster...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

WICKER: ... that has now occurred with large portions of Iraq having been taken by these terrorist groups.

MATTHEWS: That`s a good argument, but it would mean that we would be fighting -- we would be doing at least a good portion of the fighting ourselves again.

WICKER: You know, I don`t know -- I don`t know that that would be the case. But let me just say, we`ve kept residual forces in Europe, and it`s worked.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

WICKER: My son was stationed in Korea. Our troops aren`t fighting there, but they are a stabilizing force. And I honestly believe...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

WICKER: ... we could have kept a stabilizing force there and we would not be having the chaos.

MATTHEWS: Yes...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I`ve got to go now...

WICKER: ... the president needs to convince the American people that if he is successful within his wildest dreams and we actually gain every goal that he wants to...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

WICKER: ... that we won`t throw it away yet again, and we`re being called on a few years from now to take this hill a third time.

MATTHEWS: I understand that. By the way, in Germany, though, we were fortunate when the Germans lost Hitler, they quit. I think we took one casualty after VE Day in Germany. It didn`t continue to be a battle front from -- from the German side. Of course, we had the communists on the other side there.

Anyway, thank you, Senator Roger Wicker, for joining us from Mississippi tonight.

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