'This Week' Transcript: Susan Rice

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (OC) But let me press that, Richard. And we may not succeed with more troops, I think the fear is that we're certainly going to fail and there will be a collapse with - if we don't have more troops.

RICHARD HAASS We have to start defining success down. We succeed in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan if they don't collapse, if they don't become completely failed states. So we've got to set the bar extremely low. That's the realistic news. The bad news is, even extremely low ambitions tend to be ambitious in places like this.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (OC) And, and that's also the Biden view from everything I've been told, George Will. That internally inside the National Security Council deliberations, Vice President Biden was arguing for a minimalist posture probably against General Petraeus who thinks that they can replicate something like the interim success we've seen in Iraq.

GEORGE WILL (OC) Let the record show that Mr Obama's problems on the left have begun with, Arianna, when Iraq was the problem, the American left said the good war is Afghanistan. We are not against wars. We're not against using military force if you want to use it in Afghanistan. And now he's done it and the left will peel off I have a feeling.

MARTHA RADDATZ (OC) And the, the civilian surge, part of what, what the Obamas, the Obama administration is talking about, that civilian surge is hundreds of civilians. That's not a whole lot of civilians. And they have had a very, very difficult time at the State Department getting people who will go into war zones. I don't know why they would be more successful with this one. So I think in this case, with the troops going in, I think that's exactly right. I think they'll think they fail if they don't do it.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON The idea that, the idea that opposition to increasing our military presence in Afghanistan is a left wing position is so obsolete. Just look around at where the opposition is coming from. It's coming from realists who know Afghanistan history, who know how much the opposition against military presence there is growing. And at a time when we're sending 21,000 more troops, the Karzai government is basically going forward with a law to regulate the sexual practices of Shiite families.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (OC) He said this morning he'd review it.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON He'll review it. But the bottom line is that they went along with it...

MARTHA RADDATZ (OC) Not to mention - Pakistan.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON ...unless - until there was tremendous opposition to it. So this is basically our ally in Afghanistan.

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