Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/plan-to-increase-troop-numbers-comes-under-broad-scrutiny Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The proposed influx of more than 20,000 American troops in Iraq will change the composition of the U.S.-led operation. Middle East experts Zbigniew Brzezinski and Walter Russell Mead survey the current situation and discuss the implications of increasing troop numbers. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: Comments, once again, from Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter, now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, author of a new book, "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower."And Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, author of "Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World."Dr. Brzezinski, President Bush said today, told the troops in Fort Benning, this is new, this is something different, meaning the strategy that he outlined today. Do you agree with him?ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, Former National Security Adviser to President Carter: Well, I suppose, in some degrees, it is new, in the sense that he is escalating the military presence and therefore the military effort. And it is also somewhat new in the sense that he has now publicly admitted that we're not winning, which not long ago he was proclaiming to be the case.So, in that sense, it's new. But it is a policy, in my view, that is suffering from two fatal flaws. It is essentially not a military strategy, but a military tactic, a marginal escalation which is not going to alter the problems that we confront, in terms of the military confrontation in Iraq.And, secondly, there's not even an inkling of a political strategy, of an effort to create a political framework for dealing with the problems that we face. And increasingly, the problem that we face in Iraq is a political problem, that's not only inside Iraq… JIM LEHRER: You mean internal political? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Inside Iraq, but also in the region. And we need a regional political strategy, and the president didn't say one word about it.