ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI on lehrer

* Zbig was on lehrer:

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI Well, the fact that it's three years speaks for itself. Obviously, we haven't been very successful.

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Eighty-seven percent of the Iraqi people want us to leave; that says something.
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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think the benefits have been, in fact, very few, beyond the obvious one: the removal of Saddam Hussein. But we have undermined our international legitimacy. That's a very high cost to a superpower.

We have destroyed our credibility; no one believes anything the president says anymore. We have tarnished our morality with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. These are phenomenal costs. And there's, of course, blood and money and tens of thousands of Iraqi killed.

So, in my view, the time has come to face all of this, to realize that staying for a prolonged period of time until some ephemeral victory is not the solution. It is time to leave.

And I think a four-point program could be implemented that would permit us to leave in a fashion that would not be a debacle: Ask the Iraqi government to ask us to leave, first of all. And some would ask us. Some have already asked us, in fact.

Secondly, concert with the Iraqi government on the date of our departure, so it's a joint decision, I would think in about a year.

Third, the Iraqi government then convenes a conference of neighbors, Muslim neighbors, who are interested in continued stability in Iraq and in helping to prevent a civil war from exploding.

And fourth, arrange a donors conference for the recovery of Iraq. We could do that. I think we'd be better off if we did it; otherwise we're stuck, and this is getting worse and worse. The region is becoming more destabilized and hostile to us.

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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, you know, goals have to be realistic, unless they're just slogans. The notion of us occupying Iraq, creating democracy through an occupation, and then that democracy spreading throughout the Middle East was an illusion from day one.

GWEN IFILL: Not even a worthy goal?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It may be a worthy goal, but a worthy goal that's unrelated to reality is not a serious goal. This is not a serious goal.

Someday the region will be democratic, but it will be democratic because democracy has been nurtured from within. It is a potential in most societies. I don't believe that Islamic societies are not capable of being democracies, because we know some Muslim societies that are democracies.

But it has to come from within. It is not going to be imposed by an occupation army that's brutalizing the country while at the same time, quote, unquote, "democratizing it."

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And in my view, the sooner we leave, the more legitimacy that government will have, based on the formula that Walter was talking about, and the sooner it will be able to talk credibly to the neighbors.

The longer we stay, the worse the war of attrition becomes, the deeper we'll be drawn in, the more unstable the regime will be, and the higher the cost to us.

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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think the word victory is misleading, but I think we can accomplish what we set out to do, which is to have an Iraq that's not controlled by Saddam and that's not violently hostile to us, by doing more or less what I outlined a year from now, precisely a year from now.

But if we don't, then I'm afraid we're going to be deeper and deeper involved in a region that's becoming more and more volatile, potentially more explosive, and increasingly driven by anti-American antagonism that's becoming pervasive.

shrill.