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tv   Fareed Zakaria GPS  CNN  March 17, 2013 10:00am-11:00am PDT

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here's a look at today's headlines. two star high school football players in steubenville, ohio, have been found guilty of rape. 17-year-old trent mays and ma'lik richmond were accused of assaulting a 16-year-old west virginia girl last summer. they wept and apologized to the victim's family after a juvenile court judge issued his verdict. trent mays has been sentenced to a minimum of two years in a juvenile facility and ma' lik
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richa richardson a minimum of one year. pope francis delivered his first, he greeted people outside a church of vatican city. the bishop of rome and leader of the world's 1.2 billion catholics will take place tuesday. vice president joe biden is leading the u.s. delegation to the ceremony. president obama's preparing to head to the middle east. he will make his first trip to israel since taking office on tuesday. the president will also visit the west bank and jordan. the white house says the purpose of the trip is to express u.s. support for israel's security and jump start israeli/palestinian peace talks. hazardous conditions from two fires forced a temporary shut down of i-95 in florida in both directions. the interstate was closed between state roads 44 and 46. it is now open to traffic, again. thank you for watching
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"state of the union." head to cnn.com/sotu for web extras. including our latest installment of "getting to know" with dr. ben carson. beginning tomorrow jake tapper will have the full story on his new week day show "the lead" begins tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. if you missed eed any part of today's show, join us on itunes. i'm candy really in washington. we'll start on the korean peninsula where the korean war has started, again, technically, after the north ended the armistice. could there be conflict if there is the united states is bound by
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treaty to be involved. then, afghanistan, the deadly afghan attacks on americans continue from the taliban on the one side and from president har midkarzai on the other. is it just time to get out. also ten years on since the iraq war. was it worth it? >> the price was high and the price in lives is the one i feel the most acutely. >> an exclusive conversation with paul wolfowitz, who is often seen as the intellectual godfather of that war. from war to love, what countries do americans love? and hate. we have an actual list. but, first, here's my take. just when you thought north korea could not get any stranger, it did. and the past few weeks this impoverished isolated nation has tested a nuclear bomb, threatened a preementative nuclear attack on the united states and ended the korean war and declared its intention to
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rain bullets on its neighbor to the south. no one is sure what is going on, but the most likely explanation is that north korea is trying to get attention. negotiate a deal, get some goodies and then quietly start cheating on that deal. that has been the pattern in the past. but this time, the north koreans have gotten the attention of their ally, china, but not quite how they want to get it. in a remarkable shift, china, which sustains north korea economically, had drafted and then voted last week for u.n. sanctions against pyongyang. for decades beijing saw pyongyang as a natural ally but a senior official told me last wednesday, we are clearly hearing increasing levels of frustration and concern from beijing about north korea. a few weeks ago a senior communist party analyst argued
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in an op-ed in "the financial times" that china should abandon north korea. now, talk is easier than action. china has never imposed penalties or strictly enforced sanctions against its ally. beijing's reasoning is understandable. we tend to think about north korea through the prism of two issues, nuclear weapons and human rights. but the chinese have a more pressing concern. national collapse. if they were to push the north korean government too hard, they feel, the regime could fall, leaving millions to seek refuge in china. even more important, the end game would be obvious. a unified korea on south korea's terms, which would mean that china would now be bordered by a formal ally of the united states with 28,000 u.s. troops on its soil, as well as nuclear weapons. you don't have to be a paranoid to worry about that scenario. if washington wants to deepen china's commitment at tackling
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north korea's belligerence. we will have to address beijing's concerns. the national security adviser, tom donilon who has been the administration's chief with the chinese could have a frank series of conversations with his counterparts in beijing about a streenlic plan for the korean peninsula in the event of a north korean collapse. we would have to talk through some issues in a unified korea, would we destroy the nuclear weapons immediately. would american troops remain? would america's treaty relationship with the south apply to the new nation. the north koreans know says former u.s. secretary of state henry kissinger that there is now a real danger of an accident, incident or miscalculation on the korean peninsula. if that happened, there is a danger that china and the united states would end up reacting quickly, vicerally and in a way that might make things much worse, even lead to conflict. to prevent this scenario, we should propose serious strategic talks.
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kissinger who spent more time talking to senior chinese leaders than any other living american said that my instinct is that the chinese are ready to have this conversation. for more on this, you can read my column in "the washington post" go to cnn.com/fareed for a link. let's get started. joining me now, two terrific guests to explore more, the mystery that is north korea. victor cha, previously he was director for asian affairs at the national security council under president bush. donald gregg is a former ambassador to south korea. in fact, he just returned from a visit there. he was also national security adviser in 1980s to then vice president george h.w. bush. first question, what do you think they were trying to do, ambassador? this seems so bizarre. you wrote a piece about engaging
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with them. i feel as though it would be nice to get them less isolated, but then they go and test a nuclear bomb and threaten a preemptive nuclear strike and promise rain bullets on south korea. why are they doing this? >> i met with north koreans very recently and talked to them about it. and they said what has happened is that they have given up on their diplomats and the military is now in control. and what they want is talk about moving from the now disbanded agreement to the creation of a peace treaty. that's what they want to talk about and anyone who is willing to talk about that, they will listen to. anyone who wants to talk about what they call is the old way, give up your nuclear weapons and then we'll talk is going to get no where. >> do you think this is being directed by this 28-year-old boy who has essentially no
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experience in politics or government and seems more interested in basketball than anything else? >> and amusement parks. as far as we know, from all the pictures and all the statements, he appears to be in charge. it is in a sense a royal family because only one family has run the country. so, he's certainly feeling entitled to that position. but the wild variations in behavior that you just mentioned lead some people to be concerned about whether he really is fully in charge or whether the military is in charge. the three top military generals that were with him when his father died are all gone now. and we don't know what happened to them. that could be a sign of him taking control, but it could also be a sign of some real churn inside the system where some people don't like the fact that a 28-year-old is now running the country.
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>> you still think at the end of the day what we have to do is find a way to engage with the north koreans? >> yes, very much so. i went to seoul 40 years ago as chief of station and seoul, in those days, had a number of similarities with north korea today. they had a secret nuke nuclear weapons program. they were buying systems without telling us and treating their own people very badly and had an intelligence service that was totally out of control. now, the change from then to now is striking and it has been the result of continuous engagement by us with the south koreans through some tremendous ups and downs including jimmy carter who wanted to pull all our troops out. he was so disgusted with the south koreans at that point. but we stuck with them. it hasn't been easy. but the result is a magnificent relationship with a country that president obama thinks of as our most reliable ally in northeast asia. >> i take it you see differently? >> a little bit. first of all, i don't think south korea in 1970s is north korea today. secondly, i'm not against engagement either.
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i was part of administration that in the second term did reach two agreements with north korea on their nuclear weapons. i think the problem right now is that you cannot engage them directly after they have done a series of ballistic missile and nuclear tests. and we are going into a period of sanctions through the u.n. security resolution and a very difficult period for the next couple of months or so. they don't want to give up their nuclear weapons. they want to be able to have their cake and eat it. u.s. policy for the past quarter century or so has been these things are all on the table if you're willing to give up your nuclear weapons. this is the problem, this is the dilemma right now. >> how do you overcome that? >> by talking to them. i am a man who hand carried an offer to start talks with north korea to the white house in 2002, november. it had come directly from kim jong-il to me. i got there, steve hadley took a look at it and said, no, we won't talk to them.
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talking to them will be rewarding bad behavior. i was in and out of the white house in 20 minutes without a single question having been asked. the unwillingness to talk to them despite the aberrations has put us where we are are. >> can this regime survive? what is the end game? such an impoverished country. this seems to be a military firmly in control. there are no dissidents groups you hear about because they're all dead or in jail. >> i don't think there will be a collapse in north korea. the chinese will not allow that to happen, i think that's what they fear most. we have a young man who will be around for several decades who is looking for some external support for what he's trying to do. the only people who have given him that so far are the russians, who canceled a $7 billion debt that north korea owed them, which was a very estute move. so, i hope if we can get through this period of training, i hope that president obama and they
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get to know each other, i hope after we reached out to the chinese, there can be a sensible, multi-lateral approach put forward addressing some of the central concerns that the north koreans are trying to make clear to us. that is not that they want a peace treaty. >> gentlemen, pleasure to have you on. up next, anti-american rhetoric and anti-american violence, is it simply time for the united states to get out of afghanistan? it kills germs so you heal four days faster neosporin. also try neosporin eczema essentials. [ construction sounds ] ♪ [ watch ticking ] [ engine revs ] come in. ♪ got the coffee. that was fast. we're outta here. ♪ [ engine revs ]
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it's been a bad week for america in afghanistan. it started on monday when two americans were killed and ten others wounded in yet another green on blue attack. on tuesday, a helicopter crash killed five american soldiers. on wednesday, the top u.s. commander, general joseph dunford said new rounds of anti-american violence might be spurred by president karzai's recent comments, including his claim that the u.s. and the taliban are with each other. hussein haqqani pakistan former ambassador to the united states. paul wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense when the war in afghanistan began. gayle tzemach lemmon.
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>> if you were there, as chuck hagel was, and the president of afghanistan would have made that statement saying the americans are as responsible for our problems as the taliban, what do you do in a situation, what is your private one-on-one looking like that day? >> i do remember, let's say to put it diplomatically, president karzai is in impulsive. he has always been, i remember my first meeting with him. he said after we were done he was going to go out and announce fairly radical measures against warlords and i don't know what he thought would happen. maybe he thought the american army would swoop in and do whatever he would do to announce. he said, look, maybe this is the right thing to do, but there needs to be a plan and a strategy and i was really plightly trying to say, don't expect us to simply carry out your instructions announced in a
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press conference. but, look, i think it's important to take him on publicly to disagree publicly. he doesn't speak for all afghans and he's not going to be president at the end of next year. >> hussein, when people think of the afghan problem and they say at the end of the day the reason that you get, the reason you lose hope and the reason people get frustrated and say maybe the americans just shouldn't be there and maybe we should get out is that it is very difficult to defeat an insurgency when it has a safe haven. and the taliban do have a safe haven in pakistan. they can cross the border back into pakistan, u.s. troops really can't pursue them. they do a little bit of it, drones do a little bit of it. basically it means the taliban can live to fight another day and this has been the cycle now for ten years. longer than ten. how should we think about this and what should we do? >> first of all, recognize the
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problem. the biggest problem in that region has been that the local leaders sometimes tell you that we want to be our allies, but because our people are against you, therefore, we will talk against you. in the process, actually, adding to the number of people want to fight the united states. now, pakistan has under general musharraf taken the position unless the united states does what pakistan wants it to do in the region, there will by anti-americanism and we are just hedging our bets. general musharraf was not hedging his bet, but against the united states and arming people who would keep the united states on the defensive. the people of pakistan don't like terrorism. the people of afghanistan don't like terrorism. but their leaders keep telling them this is afghanistan's war. the taliban in pakistan and the taliban in afghanistan do not think of each other as their rivals or enemies, they're one. it's time to understand that
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they are one and, therefore, if the government of pakistan or the military of pakistan or the intelligence services of pakistan want to help one faction but fight the other, they should just simply not be acceptable. >> at some point, we're going to have to leave and some of these natural regional dynamics are going to play themselves out. we will leave five years from now and they'll play themselves out, but we can't be there forever. >> i'm not sure why, why bring up the specter forever. let's look at five or ten years and i think it's a little too complacent to say we can leave and the taliban won't take kabul. i don't know why anyone feels so sure about that. and i do believe that if the taliban took over afghanistan, we would have a very significant problem of an al qaeda-run state and they're never going to forgive and forget. >> gayle, finally, you worry about the state of women in afghanistan were the americans to leave. again, the issue is we are at some point going to leave. if you look at the status of women in iraq, in egypt now as
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popular forces take over these countries, sad to say the situation for women often worsens. so, is this a kind of natural cycle that, unfortunately, is going to play itself out in these countries where the popular movements take over. they are often religiously oriented and quite anti-women. >> well, i think, an interesting thing happening in afghanistan. even under the taliban women found ways to keep school going and oftentimes the only breadwinners in their house and people don't know that. what they have done is take the opening taken by the international community's presence and really used it to make progress, not just for themselves, but for a more stable society. if you believe that what secretary clinton said was true, this is a security issue and not a women's issue, then it's in everybody's interest for half
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the population to have its economic potential tapped. what you will see, women continuing to use any opening they have to make communities more secure and the hope is that they won't be on their own and left to do it solo. >> gayle lemmon, hussein haqqani and paul wolfowitz. thanks for joining us. paul wolfowitz will stay with us for a discussion about another war, the iraq war. tuesday will mark the tenth anniversary of the beginning of that long conflict. paul was instrumental in its planning and execution, but before that, what in the world. why hundreds of chinese have suddenly decided to get divorced. searching for a bank designed for investors like you? tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 schwab bank was built with all the value and convenience tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 investors want. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 like no atm fees, worldwide. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and no nuisance fees. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 plus deposit checks with mobile deposit. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and manage your cash and investments tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 with schwab's mobile app. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 no wonder schwab bank has grown to over 70 billion in assets. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 so if you're looking for a bank that's in your corner, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550
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may i respond negatively about your porcelain poodle? this should be in the trash. score planner is free to everyone. free score applies with enrollment in freecreditscore.com fancy bear slider still in beta. now, for our what in the world segment. a curious phenomenon is unfolding in china. hundreds of couples are rushing to marriage bureaus across the country. perhaps the first signs of spring are bringing on a sudden impulse for romance. nope. it's the opposite. these couples are filing for divorce. in each case, a husband and wife mutually agrees to a quick separation, no arguing. no quivaling over money or assets.
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how, why? well, actually, it was about money and assets. you see, a vast majority of these couples are getting divorced so they can avoid a new chinese tax. beijing recently decided to impose a 20% capital gains fee on sales of second homes. so, the theory goes, if you have two homes and you get divorced, you can register each home under separate names. then, if you sell one of those homes, you escape the new tax and then, i guess, you can get remarried. the bizarre exploitation of this loophole tells a larger story. at an individual level, it shows the importance of housing as an investment in china. but at the macro level, the story shows how beijing's new leaders are struggling to deal with what some are calling a property bubble. on the one hand, prices are soaring in the big cities. in shanghai, for example, developers say property prices have risen 40% in one year. this is because demand has stayed well ahead of supply, as more and more people migrate to
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big cities. on the other hand, second and third-tier towns have a different problem. here, supply exceeds demand. too many houses. look at these pictures of ghost towns in china. you can see building after building, mall after mall, but no people to live in them. essentially, china has a two-speed property market. one is booming and the other is languishing. you might say china has a property bubble, but not a big deal. they don't have the kind of mortgage and credit card problems that americans had in 2007. it was our debt that caused the problem. and the chinese national government is suddenly doing fine. the consumer is doing fine. but there are those who say china actually has a huge hidden debt problem. according to morgan stanley, china's total public and private debt has soared to more than 200% of gdp, the highest level in the developing world. points specifically to private debt, a category that includes
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all kinds of quizy state borrowers. if you look at the rate of increase of private debt, china's levels are at dangerous highs. they are higher than the peaks experienced by many countries before they entered a crisis. japan in 1989, the united states in 2007, spain in 2008. if china actually faces a credit crisis, it will plummet the whole world into recession. china needs to cut down on its rising debt, which means cutting investment, which means an economic slow down. that, too, has consequences, not only for china, but for all the countries that have come to depend on china's demand. beijing's leaders have a number of problems. but the new proposals announced this month do show that they're trying to act. these are leaders who have studied the mistakes made by their neighbor japan and examined the credit binges of
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europe and america and they have a good track record at handling their problems. let's hope they can manage this one, even if it causes marital stresses and strains in china. up next, ten years on from the start of the iraq war. what lessons did we learn? paul wolfowitz, a chief architect of that war will join us, again. use neosporin to help you heal. it kills germs so you heal four days faster neosporin. also try neosporin eczema essentials.
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hello, everyone. i'm fredricka whitfield with a check of our top stories. two high school football players from steubenville, ohio, are found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl who was allegedly drunk after a night of heavy partying. malik richardson was sentenced to one year and trent mays received a two-year minimum sentence. both could be incarcerated until the age of 21. pope francis has delivered his first angelus prayer. he blessed the crowd of more than 200,000 in st. peter's square this morning. breaking from tradition, the pope spontaneously walked out from the vatican grounds to greet cheering well wishers. a car loses control and goes airborne and slams into the pits at the race track at california.
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the accident caused a deadly chain of events. more on that, next. "fareed zakaria gps" starts right now. >> shortly after 9:00 on the evening of march 19, 2003, president george w. bush announced that coalition forces had begun military operations in iraq. tuesday will make the tenth anniversary of that day. paul wolfowitz was then deputy secretary of defense and he is seen by some as the chief architect of that war. i asked him to come on to have an honest conversation about it in retrospect. paul, thank you for coming. >> thank you for inviting me. i have to say, i'm not the architect. if i had been the architect. many things would have been done differently. >> we'll talk about that. letter to paul wolfowitz.
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"harper's" magazine story. he says at the end of it, help us learn the lessons of iraq so we might extract something of iraq so that we might extract something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country. what do you think are the primary lessons of the war in iraq? >> i think there are important lessons and some still apply to what we face in that tragic part of the world today. i think it's important, many of your viewers were still in grade school, i imagine, when many of the events that led up to this took place. one has to go back to at least 1991 and the gulf war and the end of that war. i was with secretary baker on his first trip to saudi arabia right after that war when the rebellions were still taking place and i heard senior saudi officials plead with him to support these uprisings. they said the worst thing you can do is leave saddam in power.
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for complicated reasons we didn't respond to that request. the shia were slaughtered under the eyes of our aircraft and our army sitting on the other side of the euphrates river. >> this was in 1991? >> yes. then saddam proceeded despite every invitation to come back to the world community, including when we had a new president with president clinton, he constantly played hide and seek with the u.n. inspectors, in spite of that, they were able to find that he restarted the nuclear program that the israelis had bombed ten years before. his son-in-law defects in 1995, it turns out he had a substantial biological weapons program, including anthrax. and then in 1998, he kicks out the inspectors, bombs iraq and the inspectors were out for five years. that's the scenario leading up to 2003. things didn't start on march 19th, 2003.
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it's important to understand that. >> what made 2003 possible was 2001. that is to say after 9/11 there are people like richard clarke at the national security council who said there were people and he specifically mentions you and your boss donald rumsfeld who started diverting attention away from al qaeda towards iraq. that this was, that you reviewed this as an opportunity to deal with what you regard as the unfinished business of iraq. >> no one was arguing to divert attention from al qaeda and afghanistan. that was clearly part of the problem. the question was whether iraq was part of the problem. we could spend an entire show going into the historical detail. but i think the important thing is to say, well, we had this experience, was there a way to avoid this war? was it necessary? and what did we learn from it? i think it's important that the reason this has been so painful and lasted so long and cost
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4,000 american lives and i've spent a lot of time with wounded soldiers and their families and families of the fallen, i understand the pain involved, at least, well, as well as someone who hasn't experienced directly can. but the reason it was so difficult and lasted so long is it took us so long to understand that we were dealing with an insurgency and to deal with an insurgency you need a counterinsurgency strategy and instead we were out trying to kill terrorists. but the essence of counterinsurgency but it wasn't about putting in more troops, but it was primarily about using men a different way. you have to get the population on your side and you can't get the population on your side because taking on these killers is dangerous. if we have not forgotten everything we learned about counterinsurgency 30 years earlier in vietnam, i believe this would have turned around much more quickly. look how quickly it turned around in 2007 when things had
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already spiraled wildly out of control. the insurgency had grown, we had sectarian conflict. so, i think that is the fundamental mistake and we can talk about others and whether they contributed or not, i think it's, those you can argue around are flat, but the success of counterinsurgency is quite clear. >> look at what you were able to achieve, which is iraq is now, it's almost divided state. the kurds in the north issue their own passports and speak their on language and have their own army. there is no national compact. the sunnis still feel deeply discriminated and shia militias and terrorism every day. so, if the goal was, which i'm sure was for you, the creation of a modern, you know, potentially liberal, open democratic country, you look at iraq today. it's tough to come to that conclusion. >> well, first of all, what i'm saying is if we had done the right thing from the start, many
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of the things you're describing would have followed a different course. so, the time lost was a terrible loss. no question about it. but i think, also, you're painting a somewhat gloomy picture. for example, the kurds in the north are operating a mini state which is amazingly prosperous and amazing relations with turkey, which we always thought would be difficult. it's democratic maybe by a very low standard. but it's, it's night and day in improvement over how these people were suffering under saddam. >> bottom line. given what you know today, would you have done it, again? >> i certainly would have done it differently. particularly with respect to counterinsurgency strategy, let's be clear about that. there might have been other ways of pursuing this problem, but it was not going to go away. the notion that we did it or didn't do it, something was going to happen. and everything we know,
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including from the report and the interviews with saddam make it clear that he hadn't given up on the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, he may have removed his stockpile so he could survive an inspection. his goal get rid of the inspecks and get rid of the sanctions and as the report says clearly, start these programs all over again. so, i think the most likely alternative to going to war in 2003 would be go to the war in 2005 or 2005. containment was collapsing? why are you still bombing iraq 20 years after the iraq war? why are you killing iraqi babies? which was his primary rhetorical point? i think the sanctions and the containment was collapsing and, at some point, his defiance was going to lead us back into a confrontation. if it didn't do that, then i think the odds are today we would not be dealing not just with iran seeking nuclear
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weapons, but an iraq seeking nuclear weapons and possibly already generating biological weapons and very likely libya seeking weapons. >> what do you think about the issue of -- was it worth the price in american lives and treasure? probably some estimates $1 trillion. >> look, the price was high and i think the price in lives is the one i feel most acutely. but this is a critical part of the world. i would like as much as anyone to be able to say, let's forget about the persian gulf. let's forget about the larger middle east. let's focus on asia where i spent a good part of my career and much more satisfying part of of work. al qaeda isn't leaving us alone. pakistan isn't leaving us alone. we have secured some real gains at very high cost admittedly in both afghanistan and iraq. but if we throw away those gains now and if we throw away the lessons that have been learned and it seems to me in syria we're throwing away the lesson,
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not of iraq 2003, but iraq 1991. we're abandoning the rebels in syria and, more or less, not the same way, we don't have an army overlooking them in syria. but when they need our help and we could provide help at very little risk to ourselves, we're letting them be slaughtered, 70,000 now. we're going to pay a price for a long time to come in syria for that abandonment. i think we have gained something by sticking with the afghans. we have gained something by sticking with iraqis. i think our interests and our values would be advanced if we stick with it. >> paul wolfowitz, pleasure to have yon ow. >> thank you. up next, a different perspective on the iraq war. how did a british anti-war activist become a key adviser to two american generals? don't miss this story.
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how do you go from being an an-tiwar human rights worker to being one of the iraq war's most important military advisors? that's what my next guest emma sky did. this british peace activist became a right-hand woman, if you will, to american generals petraeus and odienrno. >> you were in iraq twice. '03, '04 and then during the surge. what was the first time to actually be in a war zone with the americans? >> well, in 2003, i was somebody
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who was against the war. but when the e-mail went out around the british civil service and they went to ask people to run in around for three months before they hand back to the iraqis. i thought the decision is taken to go to war, i will volunteer and a chance for me to apologize to iraq iraqi i met for the war and let them know that a lot of people in europe were against the war. >> that's why you went there? >> that's why i went there. that was my rationale. >> then you get there and did you start working with odierno immediately? >> i arrived and they said we have enough people in the palace in baghdad and they said go north. i got in another plane and went to mosul and they said, no, go to ibill. they said we have enough people. then i'll told you're the senior
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civilian here, you're the ambassador's representative. >> really? that's how you got appointed? kirkuk is a important area, the kurdish area, oil rich. >> a highly contested area. the kurd were trying to take it, and others didn't want that to happen. it was very unstable, if you like, because it was a dynamic going on. >> how did you decide what to do? >> there was no job description, no job plan. i quickly met with the american brigade commander there. he said, this is great. civilians are coming. the military can go home. so he thought we need to do what he termed, he briefed me and hand told me that he and his 3,000 paratroopers were leaving, so he
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thought. what we tried to do was put the iraqis in charge. when the military had come in, they tried to take over everybody. that's not success. success is not the u.s.' military. it's the kirkukis setting up, getting involved in running their own affairs and we would help them do it. >> what was it like to work with the american military, for a brit, for a woman? >> any preconceived ideas i had on the military, i had never worked with the military before. was never somebody who had anything to do with the military. so arriving in kirkuk, at the beginning, i thought, okay, i have to work with americans. then my first week in kirkuk, my house was blown up. so i actually went to the military base and asked, could i move on to the base because i had nowhere else to live? and my whole interaction that i had with this brigade completely changed my opinion about the
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military. i found guys who were absolutely dedicated to the mission. they were so dedicated to kirkuk, helping kirkuk get back on its feet, they had a great sense of humor. they were very talented, very well educated. i was thinking, why are you guys in the military? it really, really surprised me. >> and did you feel that, you know, when you were there, were you feeling fascinating on the part of history or were you feeling this was dangerous? my god, i have to get back to england? >> for me, when i was there, i was working so hard day in and day out, i didn't think, gosh, this is history. just thought, my goodness. you know? what to do each day. how to try to make the situation a bit better. every day, it was about breaking even.
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trying to battle a balance all e different dynamics. in kirkuk, we had kurds, christians, sunni arabs,tia arabs. such a rich tapestry of different people, different cultures, speaking different languages intermarried. that was the most fascinating places i have ever gone. >> when you left iraq, did you feel, you know, success? did you feel sad? what were you thoughts? >> always mixed emotions. because at one level, my time in iraq had been the most amazing experience of my life, and i'll never have such an experience again. i think, you know, when we look back on what are the lessons from that, is the limitation of our power. there are things we can do that really do make a difference. and we have to identify what those are.
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and be more modest in what we can do. i think the idea of going to another country and administering another country, almost like a colonial power, i don't think that's going to happen again. >> pleasure to have you on. >> thank you very much. >> up next, does history repeat itself, or do we simply forget? a poll of which countries americans like least and which we're most enamored with. you'll be surprised. a locknut w. no way! i'm like, what is this, a drainpipe slipknot? wherever your business takes you, nobody keeps you on the road like progressive commercial auto. [ flo speaking japanese ] [ shouting in japanese ] we work wherever you work. now, that's progressive. call or click today.
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this week, japan had an earthquake and tsunami that killed 16,000 and displaced many more. it also damaged the fukushima nuclear plant which sparked a global debate over nuclear energy and how safe it is. this brings me to the question of the week. what percentage of electricity consumption in the united states comes from nuclear energy? is it a, 1%, b, 5%, c, 14%, or d, 19%. stay tuned. we'll tell you the correct answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gps challenge and lots of insider