CNN "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" - Transcript: Iraq

Interview

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Joining me now, former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers, Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Thank you all for coming.

And, Senator, I want to begin with you. This clearly is another front because they're up there along the Turkish border. I want to show our audience a map again, just so we know what we're talking with here in the expanding airstrikes with U.S. and coalition planes.

What are your concerns at this point?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: Well, I have a number of concerns.

First, what we know is that you ultimately can't defeat ISIS with a military strategy alone. You need a realistic political strategy. And I just don't think we have that today in Syria right now, if we are betting on the so-called Syrian moderates to be able to defeat both ISIS and Bashar al-Assad at the same time.

I ultimately don't think that that's going to be how this ends up. But I'm also concerned about the fact that we're not able to debate this in Congress right now, because there are some serious questions that we have to ask. You previewed one of them, which is, what is our endgame? How long are we going to be in Syria?

Are we ultimately going to be conducting airstrikes not just against ISIS, but against Assad, in furtherance of our new ally in the region, the Free Syrian Army? So my concern is that, ultimately, there's got to be a political strategy, both in Iraq, which I can see if this new government actually is serious about reaching out to the Sunni moderates.

I don't see the political strategy, at least a realistic one, in Syria. And then that begs the question, how long are we going to be there and is there any end? There's just no appetite in the American public for an open-ended military conflict in Syria.

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CROWLEY: Senator, what do you make of the coalition so far? Does it reassure you about some of your worries?

Because when Americans say we're war-weary, when we use that word, what they mean is, we're tired of Americans dying in other people's lands and conducting their fights. So, as long as the U.S. is in the air, the risk is not minimal, but it is less than troops on the ground. Does that satisfy some of your concerns?

MURPHY: Well, I think the administration has done a very good job of building a pretty robust and unprecedented coalition.

And I think that that does answer a lot of the concerns of my constituents. You're seeing broad public support for the president's plan here because people do understand the threat that ISIS presents. And they are impressed with the fact that you are seeing a growing number of Arab nations, especially Sunni nations, growing -- joining the fight here.

But the question is, how committed are they? Because, as much as Saudi Arabia says they want to take on ISIS, they're still looking towards other enemies' arrivals in the region that may have other interests, like Iran. You're seeing the Turks hedge right now as to how committed they're going to be to this fight because they're worried about what will happen as a byproduct of this conflict to rise up the Kurdish constituency that presents a threat.

And so this is a very, very difficult job here. But I agree with the general that, in the end, whether or not these are significant military contributions, what happened in Iraq over 10 years of war was that it became the cause celebre, as the intelligence community called it, for the international terrorist movement, because you were fighting the United States.

Well, if you're not only fighting the United States if you're joining up with ISIS, but all sorts of other Shia and Sunni partners, it becomes a little bit less likely that it's going to draw terrorists from all over the globe.

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CROWLEY: Senator, one of the things -- I think one of the things we learned from the Vietnam War is, you got to have an exit strategy. You got to know when to declare victory and get out.

When you look at the current strategy as it's laid out, what do you see as the exit strategy? What is the U.S. going for?

MURPHY: Well, I think it's clearer in Iraq what that exit strategy is, that if the new prime minister there truly makes a commitment to multicultural government, where he's reaching out to the Sunnis, giving them a home -- and he's got to do real things there. It's not just about saying he's going to do it.

It's about releasing the political prisoners. It's about sharing oil revenues. It's bringing more Sunnis and Kurds into the government. Then you can see an exit strategy in Iraq. Harder to understand the exit strategy in Syria right now, which is why I think we need to listen to some of our European partners, who are reluctant to engage militarily there, because, ultimately, I don't think we have a partner in the Free Syrian Army who ultimately can win that fight militarily.

And so I worry that you get sucked into a long-term conflict. Here's the only thing I would add in terms of how you keep the coalition together, which is that we need to make it clear that our military support is only dependent on the political reconciliation moving forward.

What we know from the Iraq war is that if we're doing the right thing militarily, but the political leadership is doing the wrong thing politically on the ground, then there's really not much of a reason for us to be there. And so we need to make it clear to the new government in Iraq that if you don't show some real signs towards political reconciliation in the next several months, then there's no guarantee that the airstrikes will continue to give you cover.

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CROWLEY: And, Senator, I would be remiss if I did not ask you, if for some reason today, you could vote on a War Powers Act, it sounds to me as if you would vote no.

MURPHY: You know, I think the reason that we need to have the debate is so that we can get a better explanation as to what the endgame is in Syria.

I have been very supportive of what the president has been doing in Iraq, less supportive in Syria. That's why we have to have the discussion. And, really, in the end, that's the check on a war without end, is a Congress speaking for the American people who can put an end date on an authorization for military force or put a limitation, so that you can't use ground troops.

I'm certainly willing to support an authorization, but I think we need to hear more from the president as to what that endgame strategy ISIS.

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