[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 113-123]
SECURITY SITUATION IN IRAQ AND
SYRIA: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS
AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE REGION
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 29, 2014
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Thirteenth Congress
HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, California, Chairman
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas ADAM SMITH, Washington
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
JEFF MILLER, Florida ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOE WILSON, South Carolina SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
ROB BISHOP, Utah RICK LARSEN, Washington
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia Georgia
DUNCAN HUNTER, California COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii
JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana JACKIE SPEIER, California
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado RON BARBER, Arizona
E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York
JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada DEREK KILMER, Washington
JON RUNYAN, New Jersey JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi SCOTT H. PETERS, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas
KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
PAUL COOK, California TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama
Robert L. Simmons II, Staff Director
Alex Gallo, Professional Staff Member
Mike Casey, Professional Staff Member
Aaron Falk, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2014
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, July 29, 2014, Security Situation in Iraq and Syria:
U.S. Policy Options and Implications for the Region............ 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, July 29, 2014........................................... 35
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2014
SECURITY SITUATION IN IRAQ AND SYRIA: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE REGION
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.............. 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 3
WITNESSES
Biddle, Dr. Stephen, Professor of Political Science and
International Affairs, George Washington University............ 8
Boot, Max, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National
Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations................. 10
Fishman, Brian, Counterterrorism Research Fellow, New America
Foundation..................................................... 13
Hunter, Hon. Duncan L., Former Chairman, House Committee on Armed
Services....................................................... 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Biddle, Dr. Stephen.......................................... 48
Boot, Max.................................................... 63
Fishman, Brian............................................... 75
Hunter, Hon. Duncan L........................................ 43
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 39
Smith, Hon. Adam............................................. 41
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
.
SECURITY SITUATION IN IRAQ AND SYRIA: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE REGION
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, July 29, 2014.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''
McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. The committee will come to order. Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. The committee meets to receive
testimony on the security situation in Iraq and Syria, the
implications for the region, and the United States policy
options.
Our witnesses include Dr. Stephen Biddle, Dr. Max Boot, Mr.
Brian Fishman, and former HASC [House Armed Services Committee]
chairman, Duncan Hunter. I would like to thank Chairman Hunter
for being here today. He--is this public?
Voice. Yes, it is.
The Chairman. I was going to say that we pulled him off the
golf course, but you can do that now. I know that your insights
and experience will be extremely valuable for the committee. I
don't know how many have read your book, but your knowledge of
the situation is very relevant.
Also, I want to thank your son, who is not here yet, for
his suggestion to get the perspectives of those who know Iraq
best. It was his idea that we do this and I think it was a
great one. And to draw from their extensive experience as we
consider a way forward.
We have a superb panel today and we are working to secure
time this fall to gain further insights from key military
commanders who were on the ground in Iraq.
Mr. Hunter, Jr., like many of the veteran members of this
committee who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a unique
viewpoint and a strong voice to bring to these deliberations
and I appreciate his engagement and leadership.
The security situation in Iraq and Syria continues to
worsen. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] now controls
large swaths of terrain in the heart of the Middle East. In
Iraq, Al-Anbar, Mosul, and Balad, all areas where countless
young American men and women made the ultimate sacrifice to
protect our security and to provide Iraqis a better future,
have fallen under the ISIS control.
Iraqi security forces have folded upon contact with ISIS.
Prime Minister Maliki has failed to create a coalition
government and instead has chosen to send Shia militias into
Sunni tribal areas to battle ISIS, exacerbating sectarian
divides and violence.
Last night, I heard on the radio as I was driving home that
the ISIS in the Mosul are destroying religious shrines,
anything that symbolizes some great treasures that have existed
for centuries. They are just going through and destroying.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad remains in power. The moderate
Syrian opposition has been marginalized, losing ground to both
Assad and ISIS. And the foreign fighter threat has become a
matter of homeland security. Meanwhile, Iran has taken
advantage of this moment to further reinforce its only ally in
the region, Bashar al-Assad, and expand its influence in Iraq
and beyond.
The landscape is incredibly complex: the sanctuary that
ISIS now enjoys, the expansion that Iran is trying to achieve
in this moment, and the fragile stability of the region,
together, presents strategic challenges for the United States
security and our interest.
The administration's disengagement and inaction since
declaring victory for leaving Iraq has been disturbing. I have
urged the Obama administration to engage, to look at the region
holistically, and to continue and to outline a comprehensive
policy and strategy for the region.
However, thus far, largely what we have seen from this
administration are statements on what it is not doing and
proposals that lack the rigor to match the problem that we are
facing. For example, we received a request for $1.5 billion for
a Syria Stabilization Initiative in the fiscal year 2015 OCO
[Overseas Contingency Operations] budget request that included
no details.
I thought our Ranking Member Smith said it well when he
told senior Defense officials that we want to be supportive,
but sell us, give us something to work with. I acknowledge that
there may be good options. At this point, we may be looking at
the least bad of the bad options.
But we need more than inaction because we cannot tolerate
ISIS having sanctuary, freedom of movement, and the platform to
launch attacks against the United States and our allies. And
our moral leadership should not allow us to stand idly by while
sectarian war engulfs the region.
We are fortunate to have with us today a panel of seasoned,
thoughtful experts to help the committee understand the
complexity of the situation, examine the spectrum of possible
courses of action, the benefits and risks of those actions, and
the consequences of inaction.
Again, thank you all for being here today. I look forward
to your testimony and your insights.
Mr. Smith.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this hearing is
incredibly important as well. We are struggling with a very,
very difficult national security and policy challenge. And I
think it is the complexity of the terrorist threat that has
emerged.
You know, we, post-9/11, developed I think a very good and
a very effective strategy and that we knew who was coming at
us. It was Al Qaeda, their senior leadership.
As General McChrystal, I think, said at the time, it takes
a network to beat a network. So we built a network, we figured
it out, and I think did a very effective job of going after
those who had plotted and planned 9/11 and the attacks that
came prior to that. The threat at that time was in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and it was fairly clear. As it moved to Yemen, we
responded to that.
Now, the problem is, is that it has metastasized and we
have groups, you know, spread throughout the Middle East and
North Africa and into South Asia that are in alliance with Al
Qaeda's ideology, you know, the violent extremism, the extreme
Islamist approach that potentially threatens the West.
But how do we contain that? Which groups are the greatest
threat? I mean, you can go from Boko Haram, from the groups in
Mali, you know, AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula]. Now,
we have the emergence of ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant] in Syria and Iraq.
So now we are spread very, very thin and then we have also
got, you know, individual lone actors that come out of this,
folks who, you know, sign up for the jihad and then come back
home, as we saw in the attack in Belgium.
It is a very, very complicated picture to try to figure out
how we confront that. At the end of the day, it is simple to
say that what we need to do is we need to win the ideological
war. We need to defeat the violent extremist ideology that is
giving life to all of these various different movements that
are threatening governments. But how do you do that?
And I think the particularly vexing part about it is that
the U.S., in pretty much all of the parts of the world where
this problem is most rampant, we do not have much credibility
with anybody.
We don't have the ability to walk in and say we are going
to fix this because there just isn't U.S. credibility in those
parts of the world. We could argue about why. It doesn't, at
this point, really matter why. It is just a policy reality that
we have to deal with as we try to figure out how do we
influence things in Egypt?
I was struck that during the course of the conflict there
between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military folks, both
sides wanted to claim that the other side was in bed with the
U.S. Basically, if you could prove that your opponent was
affiliated with the United States, that undermined their
credibility by definition. That gives you a full flavor of the
problem and the challenge.
It was not just a matter of the President or anybody else
standing up and saying, here is what the U.S. is going to do,
we are going to step in and fix this. It is a far more subtle
and difficult policy that we have to develop. Because I will
agree with the chairman and I think the President agrees
completely as well, this is a threat to our national security,
beyond a doubt.
It is not something simply happening a long way away that
we can afford to ignore. That is not the question. The question
is, what do we do about it, what are the steps that we can take
that will put us in a better position, because make no mistake
about it, there are steps that we could take that would put us
in a worse position.
It is not a matter that action is better than inaction. We
have to be smart about what we do. And to do that, we are going
to rely on the four of you to tell us exactly what those smart
moves are. But it is a complex and vexing challenge.
And I look forward to the hearing today and I thank the
chairman for conducting it. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Chairman Hunter.
Is your mic on?
STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN L. HUNTER, FORMER CHAIRMAN, HOUSE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Hunter. Great to be with you, and Mr. Ranking Member
and all the members of the committee. This is the only
committee that I would take the red-eye on to get back in time
for this hearing from good old San Diego. It is good to be with
folks that really care about national security. And this is a
very timely hearing.
Let me get right to my point here. And I have had a very
abbreviated statement that I gave, and I could expand a little
bit pursuant to the question period. But I think it is
instructive if we are trying to figure out how to retrieve the
situation in Iraq to briefly review the history.
You know, we went in in March of 2003, Marines on the
right, 3rd ID [Infantry Division] on the left, we had the 1st
Armored Division of the U.K. appended to the Marines. They
broke off into Basra. The drive to Baghdad took less than 20
days.
Saddam went down very quickly, but the occupation of Iraq
proved to be very arduous, and that the Sunni population,
approximately 30 percent of the populace, had the power, that
was Iraq's--that was Saddam's tribe. They had the weapons, they
had the know-how, the military know-how. They also knew how to
make the trains run.
And when the Americans brought the idea of--that we were
going to have ``one man, one vote,'' the Sunnis could do the
math, and we made a few missteps banning the Sunnis from high-
level positions, disbanding the military totally, fairly
precipitously, was a mistake in hindsight, but we worked
through it.
And when you had the twin cauldrons of Fallujah and Ramadi
go up, that initiated the Sunni wars in Anbar. And
simultaneously, you had the Shiite wars, almost as if they were
coordinated, although they were not, Muqtada al-Sadr took on
America's allies and the United States in a number of locations
in eastern Iraq. So you had two cauldrons going at the same
time.
And there was fierce fighting in 2004, punctuated by the
battle for Fallujah, the final battle for Fallujah in 2004. And
in fact, I can remember as a chairman of the committee, getting
a call on a satellite cellphone in the First Battle of
Fallujah. It was a Lieutenant Hunter who was cussing all of us
for the Marines attacking and then being stopped by
headquarters when they were--we were halfway through that
battle.
And I assured him I would get right back with him when I
talk to the Joint Chiefs. They didn't know what was happening.
And in the end, they told me there was a pause and that pause
lasted for 7 months. The bad guys regrouped and hit the static
Marine positions. We took some casualties because of that.
So we had a--in the end, we took them out in the Second
Battle for Fallujah in November, killed every Al Qaeda and
every terrorist that didn't get out of Dodge or surrender.
So we had ups and downs, and that the Al Qaeda--or the
Fallujah and Ramadi conflagrations basically ignited the Shiite
wars--or the Sunni wars in western Iraq.
And we went into a very difficult period in 2004 and 2005
and 2006, but we adapted, as Americans do. And the key to
winning that war, which we did in 2006, when the tribes came
over on our side, was that we drove a wedge between Al Qaeda
and the Sunni tribes.
As you may recall, Al Qaeda in Iraq was very brutal to the
tribes, although they were allies against the Americans. They
took their women, they taxed them heavily, they assassinated
the sheiks who did not kow-tow to them. And the tribes, the
shine of Al Qaeda, although they were fellow Sunnis, wore off
with the tribes.
And at the same time, the Americans in between firefights
built hospitals, built infrastructure, passed out humanitarian
aid. In the early weeks of April of 2004, for example, Paul
Kennedy, House liaison, Marine Corps colonel who commanded the
2nd Battalion, 4th Marines killed 300 terrorists in the early--
in 3 days in the first week of April 2004. And on the fourth
day, he held medical open house at the soccer stadium in Ramadi
for all the old folks in Ramadi.
So here were the Americans fighting, but also trying to
stitch the country together. And we were doing--the Army, was
doing the same thing in eastern Iraq.
At one point--you know, that was September of 2006, Sheikh
Sattar, he was kind of a mid-level sheikh of the Abu Risha
tribe, and Ramadis held what I called the declaration of
independence meeting with about 30 other tribal leaders. And he
announced, under the protection of Sean MacFarland's guns who
was the colonel of the regiment of the 1st Armored Division
that was in Ramadi, he announced that he was coming over to the
American side.
And within a few weeks, we had thousands of young tribesmen
being directed by their leaders to come over on the U.S. side.
And all of a sudden, the police force that we couldn't fill
before was swelling with recruits.
And in the spring and summer of 2007, we crushed Al Qaeda
in Anbar province. The United States successfully drove the
wedge. And we did it with a lot of military leaders who
developed good relationships with the tribal leaders.
General Allen went to Jordan and he retrieved Sheikh Abu
Risha, who came back to his tribe in Karbala and turned his
tribe against Al Qaeda.
John Kelly, who was liaison with this committee for a
number of years, is now SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command]. John
Kelly ended up in very major positions in that and deployed, I
believe, five times in Iraq, had extremely good relationships
with the senior tribal leaders in Anbar province.
Joe L'Etoile went down into Zaidon, Lieutenant Colonel
L'Etoile with 2nd and 7th Marines, and wiped out Al Qaeda in
the Zaidon after he made friends with the Zobai tribe in the
Zaidon, and he brought the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, which
was the brigade that was of old time Sunni leaders, Sunni
military leaders who were old Saddamists, who had resisted the
British. They were patterned after the group that resisted the
British in the 1920s. They were fighting us very effectively
side-by-side with Al Qaeda in Anbar province in 2004, 2005. Joe
L'Etoile brought them over to our side by a great
counterinsurgency tactic of driving the wedge between them and
Al Qaeda. They ended up helping us crush Al Qaeda.
The point I am making here is that, as ISIS today comes
into Anbar province and is now embedding and having their way
into cities that they have taken is very clearly intimidating
the tribes.
And I don't have intelligence on the tribal leaders, what
has happened to them, how many of them have been assassinated,
how many of them have acquiesced. But the key to blunting the
drive of ISIS in Anbar province is to retrieve the tribes, to
develop some tribal resistance.
Now, what they had from the Americans in 2004, 2005, 2006,
is what appeared to the tribal leaders to be a strong America,
who all the way from the President on down to the corporal who
was carrying a Mark IV, they had a commitment to be with them
to the end, to endure. They viewed the American presence as
strong, as enduring.
And in Iraq, you go with the winner. These are the folks
that were occupied at one point by Genghis Khan. The contest
was a primal contest. It was brutal and they wanted to know who
was going to win. When it appeared to them that the Americans
were not only treating them better, but that we were going to
prevail, they came over to our side.
So if you apply that to today, to the situation today, I
have got a couple of recommendations. One, you have got this
great team of American leaders who have these long-lasting
relationships with the tribal leaders of Anbar province and the
rest of the country.
You had colonels like Sutherland who put together
reconciliation of the tribes up in northern Iraq. You had
obviously Sean MacFarland, who helped to broker the--help to
pull Sattar into the position in which he came over to the
American side.
You have John Kelly, a former--he was deputy commander of
the 1st Marine Division in the invasion and was there at the
end when we were taking less casualties than we were taking in
Chicago, and in which congressional delegations were shopping
in cities where you had had massive firefights in the old days.
John Kelly rode that horse to the very end. He has deep
relationships with a number of tribal leaders. And those are
assets that the United States has.
So my recommendation is, take these people with
relationships and reengage them with the tribal leaders. You
have to reengage them with something behind you, and what you
need to have behind you is the will to arm those tribes, to arm
the groups that came to us during the Awakening, that is anti-
Al Qaeda groups that are made up of Sunnis.
And I agree that Mr. Maliki has squandered the good
relationship that we built with Anbar province and with the
Sunnis. But if we are to have a chance to blunt this occupation
of a big piece of Iraq by ISIS, it is going to require
participation of these tribes and their leaders.
So the President should assemble this team. He can pull
them in and guys like Joe L'Etoile who left the service, you
ought to pull them in, guys like John Kelly, instead of waiting
for the next drug shipment out of Central America in his
position in SOUTHCOM, have him head up the team.
You have got--you obviously need to employ David Petraeus,
General Odierno, who have deep relationships with leaders in
the present Government of Iraq, and especially military
leaders, and lean on Maliki to empower the tribes.
He has totally surrendered that--all of the progress that
we have made in terms of bringing the tribes on board and
bringing the Sunni dimension into the Iraqi Government. So,
reassemble the team, reengage with tribal leaders.
And lastly, you have got several very effective units. At
least you had them at the end of the war, which we won in 2008.
And that is the 1st Iraqi [Army] Division, for example. They
went down to Basra at Maliki's insistence. They took on Muqtada
al-Sadr, wiped out the Mahdi army. They pivoted and moved 400
miles to the northern and they stabilized Baqubah and Khanaqin
and the regions along the Iranian border.
The 1st Iraqi Division was a very effective division. It
had 250 American advisers. We should reassemble the adviser
team, Mr. Chairman. Bob Castellvi, Colonel Bob--then Colonel
Bob Castellvi was a top adviser. We ought to find out where he
is at, bring him back. He had relationships with a number of
the officers, including the commander of the 1st Iraqi
Division.
And we should--obviously, we have done an assessment, I
understand a military assessment has been done at the President
and the Defense Secretary Hagel's direction. And inadequacies
in the 1st Division and other divisions that have some decent
capability should be filled by the United States.
Now, obviously, that takes cooperation from Baghdad, it is
going to take a commitment by the President, and it is going to
take a program of some extent to rearm and equip the Sunni
tribes and organizations that came about in the movement called
the ``Awakening'' when they started to turn against Al Qaeda.
We need to reestablish that dynamic. That is a way to blunt
ISIS in terms of its deepening occupation of western Iraq.
So, thanks for letting me come in and give you one man's
opinion. And I just want to come and see if my picture is
ageing gracefully. And a lot better than I am, I can see. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the
Appendix on page 43.]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Biddle.
STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN BIDDLE, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Biddle. I would like to thank the chairman and the
committee for the opportunity to testify. The written
submission that I provided offers a sustained analysis of U.S.
options for responding to ISIL's offense in Iraq. I am not
going to try and summarize it here. What I want to do with my
time, however, is just briefly sketch its bottom lines for the
committee.
And in particular, the written statement argues that all
the available options, of course, have serious drawbacks, but
of them, the least bad, is probably a combination of limited
conditional military assistance, designed chiefly to encourage
Iraqi political reform, together with containment initiatives
to make the war less likely to spread and to limit damage to
the United States if it does spread.
The next best option for us would be a minimalist policy of
containment only with no direct military aid to Baghdad.
Unconditional military aid is the least attractive choice.
These options are so unattractive because of major underlying
imbalance of stakes between Americans and Iraqis that limits
achievable U.S. influence over outcomes in this conflict.
Iraq is already engulfed in a renewed ethno-sectarian civil
war, pitting its Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities against
one another. For Iraqis, this conflict is existential. Each
community fears oppression at best, and genocide at worst, from
its rivals, and this creates unusually bitter warfare among
them. Think Syria, the Balkans, or Iraq itself in 2006.
For Americans, by contrast, the stakes are real, but they
are not existential. ISIL poses a terrorist threat, but
terrorism with conventional weapons doesn't threaten our way of
life, not even 9/11 achieved that and ISIL is a long way from a
9/11 attack.
Iraq poses major humanitarian stakes, but the U.S. rarely
uses force on humanitarian grounds alone. Probably the most
direct threat to U.S. security interest is the danger that the
war could spread across Iraq's borders to embroil its neighbors
with both humanitarian and economic consequences for Americans.
These stakes are real, but they fall short of the
existential issues that Iraqis face. Economic projections
suggest that even a region-wide Sunni-Shia war that took half
the GCC's [Gulf Cooperation Council] oil exports off the market
and doubled world oil prices as a result would probably cut
U.S. GDP [gross domestic product] by somewhere in the
neighborhood of 3 to 5 percentage points.
That is serious money. It could very well tip the U.S. into
recession and at current levels at somewhere between $450
billion and $750 billion a year in lost output. But even that
is a long way from a new Great Depression.
Our stakes are far from trivial, but they fall into that
awkward region between the vital and the negligible. And this
means that our real influence over the Iraq war's course is
going to be limited.
Our stakes don't support massive intervention. We are not
going to send another 160,000 American ground soldiers back to
Iraq at this point. But without this, Iraqis are unlikely to
take risks with what they are going to see as life and death
decisions just to please Americans.
In particular, most regimes and sectarian wars like Iraq's
try to crush their communal rivals. And this often yields long
bloody internecine and civil warfare, which historically
typically runs 7 to 10 years in duration.
The longer the war, the greater the danger that it spreads.
For us, a settlement in the meantime that shortens the war,
stops the bloodletting and caps the risk of spread is certainly
a better approach. But a settlement that would accomplish this
would require major political change in Baghdad to accommodate
legitimate Sunni interest and create a demonstrably non-
sectarian, professionalized Iraqi army and police, neither of
which exists today.
These reforms are going to look dangerously risky to Iraq's
Shiite regime. With its survival on the line, it is unlikely to
accept such policies quickly and the limited leverage inherent
and limited U.S. assistance is unlikely to move them as far or
as fast as we would like.
And that leaves us with an unpleasant choice. Between
helping Iraq's Shia crush Sunnis via simple unconditional aid;
simply staying out altogether while containing the damage; or
playing a long-game strategy using conditional U.S. aid to
gradually and incrementally nudge Baghdad toward the reforms
necessary to shorten the war by splitting the Sunni coalition,
marginalizing ISIL radicals and settling the war before it runs
its natural course.
But given our limited influence, this is not going to
happen quickly and it is not going to happen easily. If we are
patient, persistent, and consistent, we might be able to help
shorten the war in this way, and I prefer this option for
reasons that I present in my written statement. But staying out
altogether is a viable alternative.
The least viable of the three is simple unconditional
military assistance. This is likely to reinforce Baghdad's
worst instincts, to lengthen rather than shorten the war by
forcing the Sunni community to dig in its heels and defend
itself against what it will view as a threat of extermination,
and it risks mission creep and entrapment without compensating
upsides and an ability to meaningfully shorten the war.
If we are unwilling to be systematically conditional,
staying out would be better than that.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Biddle can be found in the
Appendix on page 48.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Boot.
STATEMENT OF MAX BOOT, JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK SENIOR FELLOW FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Mr. Boot. Thank you for inviting me to testify. I have
finally mastered this high-tech microphone here, push the
button. Again, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I know I
speak for everybody here, that it will be a very sad day when
you are no longer wielding that gavel.
I think you have done tremendous service not only to this
committee, not only to this Congress, but also to the armed
services and to the entire country. And it is a privilege to be
here with you today.
I think the threat from ISIS is a clear and present----
Mr. Hunter. Give him more time, Buck. You want to give him
some more time.
Mr. Boot. I will take an hour or two to give my views more
fully. You know, I do think that the threat from ISIS is a
clear and present danger to American national security. The
fact that you now have this fundamentalist caliphate, this new
state spreading across the borders of both Syria and Iraq, is
something about which we ought to be very, very alarmed.
The fact that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed
caliph of this new state, is saying that soon we will be in
direct confrontation with the United States is even further
cause for alarm. There is very good reason why Attorney General
Holder said that this is more frightening than anything he has
seen in his years as attorney general.
This is a new Taliban-like state that will be a magnet for
international jihadists, many of whom will wind up going to
other countries and directly threaten the United States and our
allies.
And what makes this even worse is the impact on Shiites of
this growing Sunni fundamentalism, because what we are seeing
in both Iraq and Syria is that those two countries are being
split between Islamist extremists of some Sunni, other Shiite.
And the stronger that the Sunni fundamentalists of ISIS get,
the stronger that you see the backlash which is being led by
Iran and its Quds Force and its proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah
and the various Shiite militias in Iraq.
It is hard to imagine a more frightening scenario from the
standpoint of American interest. But, and I want to stress this
point over and over again, the fact that the situation looks
dire does not mean that we do not have options, it does not
mean that we should just throw up our hands in despair and say
let them fight it out.
That is not a good option. We have seen the fight-it-out
option play out in Syria, where the result has been more than
170,000 dead people and the destabilization of neighboring
regimes.
In fact, it was the civil war in Syria which led directly
to the resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and
their ability to take over large portions of western and
northern Iraq.
We don't want to see this scenario play out until Jordan
and other neighboring states are likewise destabilized.
So what can we do to confront this horror that we face in
the Middle East? Well, I think we need a strategy on both sides
of the rapidly disintegrating border between Iraq and Syria. We
need to keep pressure on ISIS on both sides, on both Iraq and
Syria.
Now, in the case of Syria, what that means, I think, is
backing the Free Syrian Army, which is the only moderate
element left in the fighting in Syria. Now, I will admit to
you, this would have been a heck of a lot more effective if we
have done more a couple of years ago, as a lot of people urged
that we should do.
Because we have let the Free Syrian Army basically dangle
out there by themselves, they have been getting more and more
marginalized as the extremists of ISIS and the Nusra Front on
the one hand and of Hezbollah and the Quds Force on the other
hand as they have been growing stronger and stronger.
But I still think we don't really have any option other
than to do what we can to buttress the Free Syrian Army, which
is why I urge you to back the administration's request for $500
million in aid, even though I am very concerned about how that
aid will be spent.
I am very concerned when I read in the Wall Street Journal
the Pentagon representatives being quoted saying that even with
all that money, all they are going to do is train about 2,300
fighters for the Free Syrian Army, and that won't even start
until next year. That is thinking far too small to deal with
the size of the threat that we face.
But, while there are no great options in Syria, I do think
that the Free Syrian Army has an interest in fighting our
enemies, chiefly Hezbollah and ISIS. The Free Syrian Army is
opposed to both. They are willing to go out there and kill
people who want to kill Americans.
That to me is a pretty good deal and I think we should
certainly support them, not with ground troops, not by putting
a lot of our troops in harm's way, but simply by providing them
the arms and training they need to be more effective against
the extremists of both sides.
Now, when we turn to what is happening Iraq, I would
certainly agree with the general consensus that Maliki has to
go, and I think most Iraqis increasingly feel the same way. I
am glad that the administration seems to be committed to that
policy, although I wish there was a higher level of interest in
the administration in getting that job done.
I am concerned that President Obama, even to this day, has
been very hands off in his handling with Iraq. I don't think he
is according it the priority that it deserves. He has been
delegating it to Vice President Biden or our ambassador or
others, who are all capable individuals, but they don't have
the power and prestige that the President of the United States
has.
And I think it is imperative for President Obama to get
more directly involved in trying to work out a more acceptable
political outcome in Iraq that would involve somebody who is
more acceptable to Sunnis than Maliki becoming prime minister.
But now I don't think there is a debate about to what
extent we shut off our military aid while this Maliki regime
remains in power. I don't think we can afford to take a hands-
off attitude and say, well, we are not going to help do
anything at all in Iraq to check the growth of ISIS as long as
Maliki is in power. That will make us feel good, but it is not
going to achieve our objectives. At least, I don't think it
will.
I certainly agree with my colleague, Steve Biddle, that we
should not offer unconditional aid to the Iraqi armed forces as
they currently stand. But I think what we need to do is we need
to support all of the moderate factions in Iraq.
Parts of the Iraqi security forces which still continue to
function well, like the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, we
need to buttress them with advisers, with intelligence
specialists, and also with combat air controllers who can call
in airstrikes as necessary to support their attempt to push
back ISIS.
But at the same time, we also need to remember that the
Iraqi security forces are not the only factor at play. There
are also the Sunni tribes, which have been mentioned very
eloquently by Chairman Hunter, and there is also the Kurdish
Peshmerga. Those are all three potentially moderate elements
that we can support to push back the extremists, not only of
ISIS, but also of the Shiite extremists who are being backed by
the Iranian Quds Force.
So I think we need to be very careful to apportion our aid
to all of these groups, to all of the moderates, to establish
direct ties with the Sunni tribes, to establish direct ties
with the Kurdish Peshmerga, as well as with certain select
elements of the Iraqi security forces that we judge to be less
infiltrated by the Iranian influence and the Shiite militias
and other parts of the Iraqi security forces.
And with all those more moderate security elements, what we
ought to be doing is we ought to be providing them with
advisers, who were so effective in buttressing the
professionalism of the Iraqi security forces prior to 2012.
We ought to be providing them with more intelligence
specialists, we ought to be providing them, again, as I
mentioned before, with combat air controllers so they can call
on American air power.
If we can do that and if we also put some of our special
operations forces back in, use the very effective man-hunting
capability of the Joint Special Operations Command to go after
terrorist networks in the way that they did in Iraq prior to
2012, those squadrons can be based in the Kurdish area, they
can be based in Baghdad, they can even be based in Jordan or in
parts of the Sunni Triangle.
If we combine all those, I think we can start to get a
comprehensive strategy which can push back ISIS along with the
political line of action.
Now, I don't--this is certainly not calling for, you know,
sending 150,000 troops and waging a major ground war, that is
clearly off the table, but I do think we do need to look at
numbers along the lines of perhaps 10,000 personnel who would
not be going to combat, who would be serving in an advise-and-
assist capacity aside from a very small number of Joint Special
Operations personnel, and along, of course, with all the
enablers, the logistics, and security elements they need to be
able to operate safely.
I mean, that is the sort of force that our commanders were
calling to keep in Iraq after 2011, and I think we have seen in
the year since the cost of not keeping those forces there.
I know this is going to be a tough sell. I know nobody is
eager to send any troops to Iraq beyond the 820 that we already
sent there. But I think we have to be realistic and understand
it. This is--we don't have any great options here. We have the
least bad options.
And to my mind, the worst option of all is simply leaving
this terrorist caliphate in control of a significant chunk of
the Middle East. I think the only way you can roll back is with
a slightly greater commitment of American resources to change
the equation on the ground in both Syria and Iraq without
putting American combat troops in harm's way.
Final point I would make is, if we do all this, I think we
do have a good chance to roll back ISIS, because they are
vulnerable. They are not that popular with the population that
they dominate.
We have seen in the past how easily the tide could turn
against them as it did in 2006, 2007. But I think American
commitment, American leadership is necessary.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boot can be found in the
Appendix on page 63.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Fishman.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN FISHMAN, COUNTERTERRORISM RESEARCH FELLOW,
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
Mr. Fishman. Thank you, Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member
Smith, members of the committee, for giving me the opportunity
to testify today.
The challenges to American interest in the Middle East
could hardly be more interrelated, but I am going to focus
sharply on the danger posed by the so-called Islamic State,
which as you said, Chairman, controls significant portions of
both Syria and Iraq.
I will get to policy suggestions, but I think there is a
lot of misunderstanding, basic misunderstanding about the
Islamic State. So I am going to give a little bit of history
and then comment on its strategic outlook today.
The Islamic State is the current incarnation of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, which was created when Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi swore
allegiance to Osama bin Laden in October 2004. The Islamic
State of Iraq [ISI] was declared in October 2006, 4 months
after a U.S. airstrike killed Zarqawi. This was not just a
naming convention.
According to its organizers, AQI, Al Qaeda in Iraq, ceased
to exist at that point, as the ISI was intended to be a
governing institution independent from Al Qaeda and a practical
step toward ultimately declaring a caliphate. The state has
existed for 8 years. That intent of the ISI was easily
overlooked because the group was weak. In 2007, the Sunni
Awakening and the Surge undermined it almost immediately.
The Surge and Awakening did not, however, defeat the ISI.
The group retreated to northern Iraq, near Mosul, where it
survived by capitalizing on tension between Arabs and Kurds,
utilizing the logistics networks that it had long cultivated to
move foreign fighters through Syria, and continued
dissatisfaction amongst Sunnis with sectarianism in the Maliki
government.
Despite the setbacks, the ISI remained a capable
organization even after the Surge and Awakening. Between 2008
and 2010, the National Counterterrorism Center tracked more
terrorist violence in Iraq than any other country in the world,
including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began in the
summer of 2011, the ISI did not have to build networks in
Syria. They were already there, and had been supporting its
smuggling and foreign fighter operations for years.
In January 2012, the ISI established an organization in
Syria called Jabhat al-Nusra, which many of you know. But Nusra
leader Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani looked to Al Qaeda central for
strategic guidance rather than the ISI Emir Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi, who asserted his own authority.
As a result of this disagreement, the ISI changed its name
to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] in April
2013, which reflected de facto severing of ties with Nusra and
a reaffirmation of its split with Al Qaeda.
In June 2014, after finally capturing its former safe
haven, Mosul, the group was clearly the strongest jihadi entity
in the world and declared a caliphate, with supposed authority
from North Africa to South Asia.
Despite the shared lineage in ideology, the Islamic State
and Al Qaeda are separate organizations. They have three basic
disagreements. First, whereas Al Qaeda prioritizes attacks
against the U.S. homeland and Western Europe, the Islamic State
does not. It prioritizes establishing political authority in
the Middle East.
Second, the Islamic State uses a much loosened
understanding of ``takfir'' than Al Qaeda, which means that it
is more willing to kill Muslims, a fact that is reflected in
its battles with other militants.
Lastly, the Islamic State believes Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is
caliph and the supreme authority for all Muslims. Al Qaeda has
not formally responded to this claim yet, but the designation
has been rejected by many senior jihadi ideologues, and I think
we can expect that Al Qaeda will be concerned about it as well.
Despite prioritizing power projection in the Middle East,
the Islamic State does pose a direct threat to Western Europe
and the U.S. homeland. The group is so large and multifaceted
that it would be surprising if some subgroups influenced by Al
Qaeda propaganda did not intend such strikes.
More than 11,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria
including up to 3,000 from Western Europe and North America.
The best academic studies suggest that one out of nine Muslim
foreign fighters pursue terrorism once they leave an arena like
this, which is a relatively low percentage, but still suggests
that a very high number may be influenced or may be interested
in militancy once they go home.
Moreover, the Islamic State is not just a terrorist
organization. It is a proto-state, think the Taliban pre-9/11,
and it can offer safe-haven to militants with more global
agendas.
The Islamic State's greatest weaknesses are its tenuous
alliances with other Sunni factions, as discussed by everyone
else on the panel. In both Iraq and Syria, these are based on
compulsion and opposition to existing regimes, rather than a
shared vision of government. These alliances can be broken. But
in Iraq, in particular, they will not be broken while the
Maliki government exists as it does and governs in a sectarian
way.
None of the U.S. policy options towards the Islamic State
are particularly attractive, but considering its strength and
weaknesses, U.S. strategy should aim to contain the Islamic
State while strengthening governance in the region such that
local actors can collaborate effectively to engage it
decisively. Those conditions don't exist today.
That means to do that, to get there, we should bolster
allies on the Islamic State's periphery such as Turkey and in
particular Jordan, which is the most likely new target of the
Islamic State. Destabilization there would have tremendously
damaging effects vis-a-vis both Israel and Saudi Arabia.
We should support vetted Syrian rebels with appropriate
military assistance, limited military assistance, so long as
that assistance will be sustained. Better not to provide
military assistance at all than drop weaponry into a shifting
battlefield and then withdraw. It is not a matter of just
supporting $500 million. This has to be a long-term strategy or
we will make things worse.
We need to provide conditional military assistance to Iraq.
Blunting the Islamic State's military success is likely to
encourage dissension among its coalition partners. We should
pursue a long-term strategy to improve governance in Iraq and
Syria. This is both the most important and the most difficult
of these suggestions.
The goal should be to reduce ungoverned territory however
possible, including by supporting regional actors like the KRG,
the Kurdish Regional Government, and even Sunni factions that
seek increased autonomy from Baghdad and Damascus. I don't
think that we should depend on the borders as we understand
them and the governments that reported--supposedly have control
over that territory. The facts on the ground simply suggest
they do not.
Contrary to much public discourse since the fall of Mosul,
the Islamic State's rise was not sudden. Even at its nadir it
was one of the most active terrorist organizations in the
world. We did not pay enough attention.
Lastly, the Islamic State is not a flash in the pan. It is
going to remain a significant threat to U.S. interest in the
Middle East for the foreseeable future. We can contain it as I
have described, but it can only be truly destroyed in
conjunction with credible local governments that do not
currently exist.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fishman can be found in the
Appendix on page 75.]
The Chairman. Thank you. In order to give more Members an
opportunity to question, I am going to forego my questions at
this time. We will have Mr. Scott. Dr. Wenstrup? No questions.
Ms. Walorski.
Ms. Walorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
panel. To your--and I appreciate your information. I think it
is one of the best hearings that we have had on this issue that
is of concern to all of us.
On the issue though of Baghdadi, the leader, and it seems
that there is not a whole lot of information flowing out and
around here about necessarily who he is. But is he--how
important is he to ISIS in general? I guess I am going to
direct this to Mr. Boot. Anybody else that wants to chime in
here.
Is he a--is he truly the head? If ISIS fractured, is he
really the one that calls the shots? And what is the
possibility of if he is removed the stability of ISIS as they
go forward?
Mr. Boot. I think that is a very good question and I
don't--I can't report to give you an inside scoop on the
functionings of ISIS. I mean, from what I have seen, I think he
is important, but we should not exaggerate the importance of
any one individual either.
I mean, we saw that with the ISIS predecessor organization,
Al Qaeda in Iraq, where in 2006, JSOC [Joint Special Operations
Command] managed to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and we thought
that was a great victory against AQI. And now here we are, all
these years later, and it is actually more powerful than ever
before.
I mean, I think the history of insurgencies generally
suggest that there are very few groups that are weak enough to
be eliminated by the elimination of their leaders. Generally,
they are--these large flung insurgencies like ISIS are strong
enough to survive the elimination not only of their leader, but
of an entire tier of mid- to high-level leaders.
We certainly should be aiming to eliminate those leaders,
but it has to be done as part of a more comprehensive strategy
with different lines of operation, which ultimately culminate
in somebody being able to control the ground on which these
terrorists seek to operate. It doesn't have to be our troops,
but it has to be the troops of some allied nation.
Otherwise, they will be able to simply regenerate
themselves and replace any leader lost in leadership targeting.
I think that is a pretty consistent historic lesson.
Ms. Walorski. Thank you. Chairman Hunter, did you have a
comment?
Mr. Hunter. Yes. I just--I think that Max pointed out well.
We introduced Zarqawi to a couple of thousand-pound bombs in
his safe haven up by Baqubah in 2006. It did not--but at that
time, at that point, we were crushing Al Qaeda in Anbar
province, but Al Qaeda was able to continue until they were
defeated on the battleground.
And what ISIS has is it--it has a lot of ongoing military
operations. Ongoing military operations breed leaders. So you
have got a lot of battalion leader--if you are going to
analogize it to a conventional force, battalion leaders,
division commanders, et cetera. You got people who will step
up, because they are obviously in many ways it is a disjointed
operation. So you have got people who take the leadership
initiative within that group and one of them will flow to the
fore, in my estimation.
Ms. Walorski. The other question I have to anybody sitting
here--and I appreciate your responses--is, I was in a briefing
a couple of weeks ago with a former ambassador that I thought
was just incredible information and kind of corroborating what
you were all saying, which is this imminent threat to the
United States.
And are we getting ourselves to a point or are we at the
point of no return when it comes to potentially limited
airstrikes, slowing down the momentum of ISIS, doing anything
to throw some kind of an obstacle in their way or have we
gotten to a point here with the inability and inaction of our
administration where we won't ratchet this back in?
Mr. Hunter. No. I think very simply if you--once again, the
1st Iraqi Division was extremely effective in the end in Iraq,
went down and took Basra despite the prognostications of the
Washington Post, they wiped out Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in
Basra, pivoted, went 400 miles north, cleared Baqubah and
worked that area.
And what made it so effective, one of the factors that made
it extremely effective was we had an ANGLICO [Air Naval Gunfire
Liaison Company] fire team embedded, headed by a Colonel Tim
Bleidistel embedded who could bring in bomber strikes, tactical
aircraft, and drones. And that gives enormous leverage to an
infantry operation.
If we need to find out if the 1st Iraqi Division, one of
the questions I would have is, is it intact, does it still have
the same leadership like General Tariq, who fought at the head
of his troops, did not give ground and fought professionally.
Or has the Maliki government replaced it with some political
hacks.
One thing we could do if we had a--I think we need to
engage the people who have the relationships. Petraeus knows
Maliki and knows his general and if they leaned on him to put
competent people, not politicians, in the key positions in the
1st Division, for example, maybe the 7th Division, the 5th
Division, and you then place an American fire team with the
ability to bring in airstrikes, you give enormous leverage to
that infantry operation with a minimum of American exposure and
without a lot of what we call boots on the ground or large
combat forces.
So first, let's find out if any of these heretofore solid
military units are intact, fill up the inadequacies that they
have, and if we attached American fire control teams to them as
we did in the past, they would be able to utilize American
firepower coming from the air. And that would make them
extremely effective. And they could isolate the cities that Al
Qaeda has taken--that ISIS has taken and be brutal fighting as
was the battle of Fallujah, but they could in fact prevail.
So we need to--we may need to move in the people who have
had these long relationships like Petraeus and like Odierno.
And incidentally, you know that, if I could expand beyond that
to the Maliki question. One thing Americans don't do is look
for who is the man behind the door when we all talk about so-
and-so must go.
I never forget the lesson we got with the Shah of Iran when
the--when we got rid of the Shah in Iran, and lo and behold
there was a Khomeini to take his place. The question would be
who is going to step into the place of al-Maliki who isn't
massively controlled by Iran. You move that dynamic.
And historically, Maliki moved to the pressure exerted by
Petraeus, by the Bush government through Petraeus. He did
things, he took initiatives like going down to Basra and wiping
out the Mahdi army down there.
And so, the idea that that is a problem, we got to get rid
of Maliki and somehow we are going to have another leader come
in in the middle of this maelstrom of military activity and he
is going to sew the country together or he is going to do the
right thing.
I think that Maliki would move to American pressure. I
think he has learned to some degree the lesson of divesting
himself of the Sunni element, which he did. And now, the
inability to have a Sunni buffer, if you will, in Anbar to hold
off these extremist elements, that is probably fairly clear to
Maliki.
Ms. Walorski. I appreciate it. I hear the chairman banging
the gavel.
Mr. Hunter. Thanks for letting me monologue. That was a
good opportunity.
Ms. Walorski. That was the chairman. I want to say it is an
honor to meet you, sir, and how I never thought I would be in a
room with two Duncan Hunters. So, appreciate you being here
today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Hunter. That is a dubious honor.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Here we are discussing
the aftermath of America's longest war. There is very little
Member or audience interest. Perhaps more people are watching
on C-SPAN [Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network], but I doubt
it.
I always thought the first rule of war was to understand
the nature of the enemy. And I am afraid after all these years,
we are still doing a very poor job of understanding it.
I have questions about who is funding ISIS or ISIL or the
Islamic State, whatever name you choose to call it. They seem
to be more corporate with their annual reports, with their
metrics of achievements, including horrible assassinations and
other maximally destructive activities.
But isn't it largely true that some of our so-called
allies, whether the state or individuals like the Saudis, the
Qataris, the Kuwaitis, are supplying the revenues for these
people?
To whom are the annual reports being distributed? Why do
they have such a corporate fundraising empire going on?
Dr. Biddle. Well, public reporting to date suggests that
ISIL is unusually self-funded relative to other organizations
of its kind, that they have been better than their predecessors
and others at extracting revenue from the economy in which they
are operating.
And in part, this is because of the degree of
institutionalization that you are referring to. We often tend
to think of non-state actors as more or less random bands of
isolated guerillas. They can be quite bureaucratic, quite
institutionalized, quite formal in their organization.
And in fact, that kind of institutionalization tends to
conduce to actual military power in many ways in a much more
profound ways in the nature of the arms and equipment that they
have.
Now, ISIL is an element within what is in some danger of
becoming a region-wide Sunni-Shia proxy war. They are not the
preferred proxy of Saudi Arabia or other Sunni states in the
region, because their ability to control them is lower and the
degree to which they are worried about ISIL turning on them is
larger.
But the fact that there is a larger Sunni-Shia conflict
going on is something we need to be seriously concerned about.
And our strategy for dealing with this situation, it seems to
me, needs to be oriented towards preventing the larger
sectarian war from occurring.
All that having been said, again, I think cutting funding
ties from outside ISIL into ISIL is probably not the central
factor in whether this organization will survive or not given
their unusual degree of internal funding.
Mr. Cooper. Or what you gently described is internal
funding could include rape and pillage like when they go into a
town and knock over a bank and take all the deposits for
themselves.
Dr. Biddle. Absolutely.
Mr. Cooper. You know, so they are more effective in their
business model. And this presumably appeals to some of their
Sunni patrons, because they have been looking for decades at
someone to stand up to the perceived Shia peril and they blame
America for having sided with Maliki and the Iraq war in fact
having strengthened Iran, not weakened Iran.
So, you are right, I think they worry about controllability
of al-Baghdadi and folks like that, but this is in many ways a
better business model, something they have been looking for for
some time. And of course, they want deniability. They don't
want obvious contacts because that would stain their
reputation.
But I run into very few people who want Americans inserted
between the 1,400-year struggle between Shia and Sunni. And it
escapes me what vital American interests are involved in that
insertion.
It is not as if we were super effective in our prior years
and years of American service and sacrifice. You know, we honor
our troops, but there is an article in the paper today
predicting that collapse in Afghanistan would happen even
faster than it has happened in Iraq.
Dr. Biddle. Well, I think that----
Mr. Boot. Mr. Cooper, if I could just jump in and just to
underline a point that Steve made, which I think is a very
important one, which is you are seeing this regional civil war
brewing.
And I think when you put it the way you put it, nobody is
going to say let's put Americans in the middle of this civil
war. But I think that there are very important stakes for our
country and for our allies in the region, because what happens
in a civil war if it rages unabated, it strengthens the
extremists on both sides. And that is what you are seeing right
now.
I mean, if you are worried about Saudi Arabia or Qatar,
other states backing ISIS, that danger is going to grow the
more that ISIS becomes the only viable and effective champion
of Sunni power. If you are worried about backing for Lebanese
Hezbollah and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq and other Shiite militias in
Iraq and Syria, that funding, that support will grow among the
Shiite community as long as they are seen as the only effective
champion of the Shiites against Sunni oppression.
I think our stake is to support the moderates to prevent
the entire region, this major center of world oil production,
from being divided between Shiite and Sunni radicals. If that
happens I think that is a disaster for American interests, but
I don't think that is what most people in the region want. And
I think there are moderate forces, whether in the Iraqi
security forces and the Sunni tribes, the Kurdish Peshmerga, or
the Free Syrian Army, who are ready to put their lives on the
line to oppose the extremists of both sides, if we would only
provide them with a relatively modest degree of support.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to follow up on a lot of discussion that has already
taken place, first starting with Maliki.
Some of you and a lot of people say Maliki needs to go. And
then I have heard also that we need to push back and influence
Maliki to do the right thing.
And then I hear some concerns from you, Mr. Chairman, that
I wonder about also, as far as if he goes, who is going to
replace him?
And look at what happened in Libya and Gaddafi and the
other conflicts that we have had and that sort of thing.
So I guess, first I want to start off with whether you
think Maliki should go and if he does who should replace him,
or how should the U.S. prepare for that transition in power.
And then if it is a matter of influence, what are some specific
steps that we can do to encourage him to expand his government
to include Sunnis in it.
And then also if we have time, to share a little bit about
what the role of Iran is in the conflict now, and then what
lessons we could learn with Afghanistan. So a lot to work with
there.
So who wants to start?
Mr. Hunter. Let me jump in and give it a try. First, what I
would do and what I would recommend that the President do is to
take the people that had the longest standing relationship with
Maliki, the most successful relationship--that is Mr. Crocker
and General Petraeus--and send them over to look this thing
over and engage with Maliki and bring them back in and ask them
what do you think?
Do you think that Maliki, the relationship with Maliki is
retrievable in a way that we can move him to reconcile with the
Sunni community to the degree that you will have some pushback
in Anbar Province among the moderate tribes against ISIS.
Or is that gone? Has he irretrievably, by the things that
he has done, with respect to the Sunnis and his own government
and the region; is that--has that train departed?
But that is the simple answer is to take the people that
have the relationship, send them over, have them engage with
Maliki, have them look at this thing. People that you relied
on, and you talked to every day, or the administration and our
security apparatus talked to every day, and ask them.
My sense is Maliki is a typical leader in that
neighborhood. He is a guy that wants to get through the night.
He had moved to American pressure; when we pressured him to
send money to Anbar Province to share the wealth, he did it,
late in the war. When we pressured him to allow competent
generals and to have a fairly large Sunni presence in the Iraqi
Army, the 1st Iraqi Division had 30 percent Sunnis, 60 percent
Shiites, the balance, Kurds. He did that.
So he moved to American pressure and American leadership.
And I think the President should ask that assessment to be made
by the people that worked with him for the longest period of
time and had the most success with him.
That is--rather than simply saying--and the other point is,
this is not a Sunni--ISIS does not represent a Sunni community.
The Sunni community is not a united community in Anbar
Province, any more than the tribes who initially accommodated
Al Qaeda, as they flowed down the rat line of the Euphrates,
and moved into Fallujah and Ramadi into those conflicts.
The Sunni community got beat up by Al Qaeda. That is one
reason they split off from them, turned and came over on our
side and helped us crush Al Qaeda. I mean, the 20th
Revolutionary Brigade, which was the ally at one time of Al
Qaeda in the region known as the Zaidon, turned on them and
killed every one of them that didn't get out of Dodge; with the
Americans behind them, not leading them, but behind them.
So the point is that this is not a--I don't think there is
anything that the leader in Baghdad, a Shiite leader can do
that will mollify the terrorists who are coming across known as
ISIS. I think what he could do is accommodate, retrieve that
relationship that they had developed at one point with the
Sunni tribes, which was a decent relationship.
After the 1st Iraqi Division took on Muqtada Al-Sadr in
Basra and wiped out his forces there, Muqtada Al-Sadr got 5
percent in the next election. His party did. The Iraqi people
did not like a Shiite who was aligned with Iran.
And the Sunnis came back into the government. They said the
Maliki government is not just beating up on Sunnis, they are
taking on Shiite forces too.
So there is nothing we can do to reconcile with ISIS. And
ISIS's positions, and their strategy and their goals are not at
all consistent with the Sunni tribes in Anbar. The Sunni tribes
are accommodating them right now because they are intimidated
by them. And I suspect that if we see the intelligence reports
and there are any intelligence reports--as Jim Cooper said, one
problem we have had is decent intelligence. We will probably
see the leaders in those tribes who pushed back have been
assassinated.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Shea-Porter.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you.
It is nice to see you again, Mr. Hunter. And I keep
reflecting back to 2007, and where we were and what some of the
predictions were, and sadly, you know, those who predicted
trouble in the future in Iraq have proven to be accurate.
But one of the great problems that we have, as you know, is
the sequester. So for those who support a more active role--and
particularly you, Mr. Hunter, because you were in Congress. You
understand the sequester. I know you know what is happening,
some of the changes.
And while we were in the Iraq war we also had tax cuts. And
we wound up with a great deal of debt which is now very
threatening and concerning to--not just Congress but to the
American people.
So what is the price tag? Never mind whether we should or
we shouldn't do the things that you suggested and Mr. Boot is
looking at. What is the price tag and what would you say to
Congress about how to pay for it? Would you suggest that we
continue to borrow the money? Would you say that maybe we need
to have war bonds?
If we were to do the action steps that you are calling for,
how would we pay for it?
Mr. Hunter. Well, first, big picture, John Kennedy spent 9
percent of GNP [gross national product] on defense. Ronald
Reagan spent 6 percent of GNP on defense. We are down to about
4 [percent], even with Iraq and Afghanistan.
So in terms of the proportion of American money that we
spend on defense, we have declined. And we have now made
massive cuts with per sequestration and budget cuts in the
defense apparatus, far below what I think is what I would call
is the safety line.
So I think we are spending less in terms of the national
economy than we have ever spent in our history. And we are
going to have a much smaller force.
And secondly, the Iraq things that I have--or Iraq
initiatives, for example, having fire support teams as we did
in the 2007, 2008, in Iraq with some of the Iraqi divisions.
That to leverage, give leverage to them of American air power,
very small cost for the embedded teams. I mean, that is nothing
like the divisions that we had over there as foot soldiers----
Ms. Shea-Porter. Right, but let me interrupt here if you
don't mind.
Mr. Hunter. Okay.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Because I am against the sequester. I
mean, I agree that this has been damaging. But the reality is
that, you know, our Congress is not willing to find a way and
actually has supported the sequester.
So the reality remains that whether I agree or disagree
with what you have suggested we have that practical issue of
how do we pay for it? Do we borrow the money, or do you see a
change in Congress? And how would we actually do this?
Mr. Hunter. Okay. My recommendation would be and I think my
voting record reflected that, would be to cut the--I think we
are moving in the dynamic of most of the Western nations,
especially the socialized nations, and that social spending is
pressing down on defense spending and that is why you got some
of our allies that are in Europe now spending 1 percent of GNP
or less on defense.
I think we should freeze, for example, domestic
discretionary. We should make cuts in the social spending and
push that spending back to the point where it will accommodate
a 5 or 6 percent of GNP being spent on national security.
I think it is a tragedy that with the rise of China
stepping into the superpower shoes left by the Soviet Union,
with the problems in the Ukraine, the new Russian adventurism,
all the problems in the world, we are cutting defense, we are
not increasing defense.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay, but--and again, the issue is and I
am just trying to get us to----
Mr. Hunter. So I would cut social spending.
Ms. Shea-Porter [continuing]. Think about that, because I
think, you know, we need those social programs, but I think we
need a strong defense as well.
And so, what we are talking about--I think we are asking
people to choose from two essentials, to rob Peter to pay Paul
essentially. And that is concerning. I think whatever policy--
--
Mr. Hunter. Except for one thing----
Ms. Shea-Porter [continuing]. Has reflected reality----
Mr. Hunter. Except for one thing, Paul is down to 4
percent, if Paul is defense. Paul is down to 4 percent of GNP
being spent on defense.
The social spending has increased steadily as defense has
diminished, so----
Ms. Shea-Porter. I see where you are, I just wondered if
you----
Mr. Hunter. It is not hard to see----
Ms. Shea-Porter [continuing]. Had a view about how to do
this.
Mr. Boot. Congresswoman, if I could just.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Dr. Biddle, can--excuse me--Dr. Biddle,
can you suggest a way or do you see a way through this knowing
the economic pressures that we have, does your plan fit--your
acceptable plan or least disagreeable plan, does that fit in
with the reality of this Congress?
Dr. Biddle. I don't think the primary downside of
conditional military assistance is its cost, even the program
that Max is suggesting, which would probably be larger than I
would recommend.
The usual rule of thumb is to support an American soldier
overseas for a year is about a million dollars. So even a
10,000 or 15,000 soldier American presence in Iraq if, one, we
are going to do that, and I am not sure that I would support
that personally. And certainly I would not support it without a
major political change as the price of providing whatever we
have.
The downside peril to that is not so much its upfront
dollar cost, it is the risk that the policy fails and we get
entrapped and we get caught in a larger commitment in which
mission creep gradually draws us further into a problem that we
have been unable to solve.
So I think paying for it is in many ways the least of the
downside difficulties associated with this. Getting the policy
to actually change Iraqi behavior on the ground is a much
bigger risk.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Because what we did see was that mission
creep. And we saw promises that didn't materialize.
I remember somebody here one time saying that we would be
seeing Iraqi products on the shelf within a certain number of
months. And that didn't happen.
So, we have to consider all of this as we try to formulate
a policy going forward. Our security, our national security is
critical along with our social programs. So thank you for your
candid answers.
And I yield back.
Mr. Franks [presiding]. It is an honor here for me to say
just a quick word of greeting to Chairman Hunter, I didn't get
to be here at the beginning. There was no way I could have
helped that but it is just a precious honor to see you again.
All of us recognize your legacy and it is in that spirit
that I now recognize Mr. Hunter to----
Mr. Hunter of California. Thank the Chairman. This could be
fun, especially if I was to take advantage of this situation
to----
Mr. Hunter. I have been dreading this----
Mr. Hunter of California [continuing]. To bludgeon the
witness due to real or imagined trauma from the past. But I
guess this is kind of easy because I think I have heard
everything that Mr. Hunter has to say on this subject.
So I am going to ask a broader question, maybe some of the
other panelists could answer. I guess the first question is, no
one has talked about a political end-state, or what we would
have to describe in our policy is that here is what we want to
see in the next 10 years, and here is why we are doing all of
this.
When does that come into play and wouldn't the President
have to be the one to set that, and tied in with that is, what
can Congress do with a Commander in Chief that doesn't want to
engage?
And if the other witnesses could maybe start and move left
this time.
Mr. Fishman.
Mr. Fishman. Sure.
Mr. Hunter. You know, this is about the meanest thing you
can do.
Mr. Fishman. I get the hard one. The political end-state
here, the only reasonable political end-state scenario in
which, as long as there is civil war in Syria and Iraq, the
Islamic State will persist, period. It will not go away under
those conditions.
And yet there is obviously no clear end-state to the civil
war in Syria. I think the chances that Bashar al-Assad will
fall are dropping daily.
And so, and I think and I am deeply skeptical, frankly,
that even if Prime Minister Maliki steps aside, that a
government is going to step into Baghdad and govern on behalf
of all Iraqis. Call that cynicism, I don't know. But it is very
unlikely, I think, that some of the Sunni tribes who--I agree
with Chairman Hunter's assessment, that were good allies, that
potentially can be allies in the future.
But I am skeptical that they are going to accept a policy
framework that would be acceptable to any Shia government in
Baghdad without guarantees, you know, extraordinary guarantees
of safety and support from the United States, such as existed
in 2006 and 2007 when we had 150,000 troops on the ground.
Without those conditions I don't know if they are going to take
the risks to turn on the Islamic State as they did turn on Al
Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq.
And so, unfortunately, we come to suboptimal suggestions,
which is, that I think we need to start looking, frankly,
beyond the existing state entities of Syria and Iraq. And I
think this is a de facto reality. The border between these two
states is essentially meaningless, it is a map maker's whim at
this point.
And I think the policy outcome or the, you know, we need to
start looking to bolster stability wherever it exists. And that
means, the most obvious of those in that region is the Kurdish
regions. As they pursue autonomy, I think that is something
that we shouldn't necessarily--we shouldn't publicly endorse
the declaration of a state, but I do think we should support
their ability to govern autonomously as much as possible and I
think we should find ways for them to generate oil revenue on
their own, independent of Baghdad, as controversial as that is,
and as problematic as that will be.
And I think we should identify the narrow vetted Syrian
organizations that can govern whether they are remnants of the
Free Syrian Army that can build out and carve out entities of
governance. We have to limit the area of instability as much as
possible and I don't think we can run that through Damascus and
Baghdad.
Mr. Hunter of California. Okay.
Mr. Boot.
Mr. Boot. I pretty much agree with all of that. I think it
is, I mean, it does, the situation does look pretty bleak
today, but I am reminded of the words of General Petraeus in
2007 when he took over in Iraq and he said, it is hard but hard
is not hopeless.
And I agree with that. I think that there are pockets of
moderation that we can build on in both Iraq and Syria. And,
you know, as Brian suggested, I would be agnostic over how many
states will emerge out of the rubble of Iraq and Syria. I don't
think we should necessarily be committed to supporting the
existing state structures but we shouldn't dictate and say here
is how you divide it up either because we don't have the
knowledge or the ability to do that.
And it is not an easy solution anyway because, you know,
you can easily imagine a scenario in which--and in fact which
is already happening today with Iraq being split up into three
states, but two of them are controlled by Islamist extremists,
one Shia, the other Sunni, that is not good news from our
perspective.
Our policy should be to back, however many states
ultimately emerge, even if it is two, maybe it is more,
whatever the number is, our strategy should be to back the
moderates in all those states. And I firmly believe that the
vast majority of people are in fact moderates but under
conditions of anarchy and chaos they tend to gravitate for
protection to extremist militias.
And so, we need to bolster more moderate forces, as I
suggested before, elements of the Iraqi security forces, the
Sunni tribes, the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Free Syrian Army,
that is where we need to be building.
And at the moment you can easily say, well, there is not a
heck of a lot to build on, but I think there is a lot of
popular unease and resentment with the rule, whether of
Lebanese Hezbollah or the rule of ISIS or other extremist
groups. They are not gaining power via the ballot box. They are
not winning popularity contests. They are shooting their way
into power and they are causing a lot of resentment along the
way.
They are running roughshod over existing power structures,
over existing social structures. And I think there is the
popular discontent there, as there was in 2006, which can be
mobilized. The difference being now we are not going to do it
with 150,000 troops. So we have got to pursue a more
unconventional warfare model as we did, for example, in
Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 when we backed the Northern
Alliance with American air power and American special forces to
bring down a very unpopular Taliban. I think that is a model
that we should be applying in Iraq and Syria today.
Mr. Hunter of California. I think I am out of time. I yield
back.
Mr. Hunter. Mr. Chairman, don't I get to answer the
gentleman's question?
Mr. Franks. Yes.
Mr. Hunter. I would--I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would say that what we could achieve is something of what
we had at the end of the American victory in Iraq in 2008. And
that was what I would call grudging admiration.
You may recall Maliki actually traveled to Anbar Province
and sat down with Sunni leaders at the prodding of American--of
General Petraeus, I am sure, and other Americans. And dispersed
some of the wealth, some of the public wealth, did a series of
public works project in Anbar Province.
So the Sunni-Shia cleavage is not going to be healed by the
United States or anybody else. But we had--we could achieve--
retrieve what I would call that grudging accommodation. It
would be fueled with money, that means they would have to be
sharing revenues, which is something that the old sheikhs of
the tribes in western Iraq very much understand and appreciate.
So, sharing of money, a grudging accommodation, the present
structure of government would work with their representative
government if they didn't--if they weren't killing each other
with AKs [AK-47 assault rifles]. So you got to have a dose of
conciliation. The only people that have been able to persuade
leadership in Iraq to be conciliatory--in any situation that I
know of is the Americans. And that is what we did in 2007 and
2008. I think we could do that again.
Mr. Franks. I thank the gentleman.
And now, Ms. Gabbard.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen,
for being here.
Mr. Boot and Mr. Fishman, it has been refreshing to hear,
and particularly from both of you your direction in addressing
this issue, directly taking on the fact that we have to address
both Syria and Iraq in the same conversation. And that the
objective needs to be on how we deal with the threat of ISIS
and the impact that they are having there.
First and foremost, and understanding that the governance
question really needs to be self-determined by the people who
are living there.
So in this strategy to address ISIS, both of you have
spoken of supporting vetted Syrian rebels. Last week we heard
from some leaders in the Pentagon who also were making the
pitch for the $500 million appropriation. But when asked the
question about what is the objective of this support and what
do we hope to accomplish, is it to overthrow Assad or is it to
deal with the threat of ISIS, the basic answer I got back was
both, and that is contradictory at this point because by
helping overthrow Assad you are helping to create the vacuum
that ISIS is seeking to take advantage of. If we are helping
the Syrian rebels fight against ISIS that goes to the
subjective of the problem that we are seeing in the region.
So, my question for both is, in your advocating for this
support from the U.S., how do you determine that these weapons
won't go into the hands of Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, others, and to
what objective?
Mr. Fishman. So, thank you very much for the question.
I agree very much that there is a tension between our
policy interests in Syria. And that has often gone
unacknowledged in our policy conversations about this. We would
like to think we can have it all in Syria. We cannot.
Five hundred million dollars is not going to solve either
of these problems in Syria. And I think we should be very clear
about this. And I think that this sort of funding--what worries
me about $500 million is that it is not enough to, you know,
have any major strategic impact. But it is enough that it sort
of is tempting to sort of go beyond very, very narrow vetted
organizations.
My preferred strategy actually would be to support a very
narrow set of organizations in Syria that can pester ISIS, and
give us a foothold on the ground. I don't think we are going to
solve that problem within that sort of budget range. I think
that solving that problem is a multi-year solution that would
cost tens--if not, tens--if not, hundreds of billions of
dollars. I just don't think this goes away.
But I also--I slightly disagree with your framing on the
Assad regime versus ISIS. I think that what benefits ISIS the
most is the continuation of conflict, not necessarily the fall
of the Assad regime. It is the continuation of conflict and the
fear within the Sunni communities that they try to resolve,
that gives them access and allows them to win over those folks
that Chairman Hunter was referring to.
The last just quick point, is that, is that there is risk
with us becoming directly engaged here at all. The Islamic
State is not focused on external attacks right now. It
prioritizes, it very clearly prioritizes establishing
governance in the Middle East. To the extent that we get more
and more involved and especially if we use direct military
force we raise the risk that the Islamic State will allocate
more resources towards attacking the West.
And while I think there are circumstances in which we
should suffer that cost, I think we should be very clear-eyed
that that is a reality.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you. Mr. Boot.
Mr. Boot. I will just say, while that is a real risk. I
think the greatest risk of all is doing nothing and letting the
Islamic State consolidate its authority over large portions of
Iraq and Syria, which is what is happening now.
And I think you raise a very good question about how to
safeguard that aid and I think there is certainly a cautionary
lesson from Afghanistan in the 1980s, but we have to recognize
why there was so much blowback in Afghanistan. And part of the
reason for that is that we were operating through proxies, in
particularly through the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services
Intelligence] and Saudi intelligence who were funneling our aid
to some of the most Islamist and radical Mujahideen fighters
like Hekmatyar and Haqqani, as opposed to the more moderate
like Ahmad Shah Massoud.
In the case of Syria I would strongly caution that we not
repeat that mistake. We should not operate through Saudi,
Qatari, or other intelligence services who may have a different
agenda than we have. I think our intelligence folks need to get
much more directly involved in vetting the people we are
supporting and providing aid to them directly, so we know
exactly who we are backing.
And in terms of what that can achieve, you know, at the
moment overthrowing Assad seems like a long way off but
certainly in the short term, at least, I think that with more
support the Free Syrian Army can do real damage to both the
forces of the Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah on one side and
the other side ISIS and the Nusra Front. And, you know,
whatever damage we can do to them I think will be very much in
our interest and will tie them down in Syria and prevent them
from consolidating control and make it harder for them to even
think about external plots.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franks. Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Mr. Chairman, and Chairman Hunter, it is great
to see you again. And I am glad that you are engaged and
sharing your experience and your wisdom with us. And so, I
appreciate that.
I would like to ask about the Kurds. I have been distressed
that the administration hasn't done more and I could give you
many examples of allying with people who are naturally friendly
and supportive of the United States, and trying to work--as
opposed to working more with opponents or enemies who--we get
very little back in return.
So with the Kurds, should we be doing more to establish
relationships with them in Iraq or even in nearby countries.
And I know we have strong ties with Turkey that we don't want
to see go away, and with Iraq for that matter. But can we and
should we be doing more with the Kurds?
Any one of you?
Mr. Hunter. Well, I would say we need--we need a force
right now to stand up to this invasion and this occupation. If
the Kurds end up being the only hard point, absolutely, that
accrues to the detriment of the ISIS and to the benefit of what
we want which is an Iraq which is devoid of ISIS.
So they may be the only stand-up force if we don't do some
of the things that we talked about here, like shaping up the
Iraqi forces, bringing about some conciliation and also
reengaging with our old Sunni allies. The Kurds may be the last
strong point against this force, and absolutely we should work
with them and help them.
Mr. Lamborn. And any of you others?
Dr. Biddle. Our primary interest in this conflict is to
stop the fighting and prevent it from spreading. There may some
ways in which U.S. policy towards Kurdistan can contribute to
that larger outcome. And my written statement describes some of
them.
But there is also a serious danger if we focus on Kurdistan
per se, we could end up making things worse rather than better
for the larger conflict. This is a highly mobilized, ethno-
sectarian identity war in which the Kurds have mostly been able
to stand on the sidelines but are not unimplicated in this
larger conflict.
If the United States simply aligns itself with one side and
loses leverage over the other two there is some risk that what
we end up doing is encouraging the spread of conflict. I think
the central challenge for the United States right now is if we
are going to engage to the point where we are going to try and
have some influence over the outcome rather than standing aloof
and trying to limit our downside losses.
The only way we are going to actually end the conflict is
if we get some kind of mediated power-sharing deal among the
parties in which they all believe that they are protected
against worst-case, downside outcomes.
Bitterness, fear, and jealously between Kurds and Arabs is
part of this problem. And a simple American alignment with the
Kurds that is not part of a larger diplomatic strategy for
reassuring Sunni and Shia that their interests will also be
respected is not necessarily a way to stop the war before it
engulfs the region.
Mr. Lamborn. Mr. Boot.
Mr. Boot. I mean, I would certainly agree with that, we
don't want to be seen solely as the champions of the Kurds, but
I think we certainly should take advantage of the pro-Western
orientation of the Kurds and the relative safe environment that
they would offer and the professional, relatively professional
military forces that they would offer to operate alongside
American forces.
I mean, we can easily, for example, base JSOC squadrons in
the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] where they could
operate pretty effectively into Mosul and the other parts of
northern Iraq. I think we ought to be doing that at the same
time as we are also operating with the Sunni tribes, as well as
with elements of the Iraqi security forces, to make clear that
we are not choosing sectarian sides in this conflict going on
in Iraq. But I think it would be foolish not to take advantage
of the open invitation the Kurds have given us to station
forces in their territory. I think we should do that.
Mr. Fishman. I agree with Professor Biddle's concerns about
this. The tension between the Arabs and the Kurds in Mosul is
one of the factors that allowed the Islamic State in Iraq to
survive there after the defeat it suffered in Anbar, after the
Awakening and the Surge.
The challenge here though is that I don't see a negotiated
solution. I don't--I think that the accommodation that we came
to in 2007 and 2008 was a function of the leverage provided by
our ground forces on the ground. Those don't exist and I don't
hear a lot of interest in pursuing that kind of commitment
again.
And so, to be quite blunt, I don't think we have the
leverage to produce that sort of accommodation. And I think we
are not having--from my perspective having a conversation about
those next-tier, suboptimal outcomes.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you all for being here.
Mr. Franks. Thank you, Mr. Lamborn.
I thank all of you for being here. I would express, again,
a special greeting to Chairman Hunter. Your legacy obviously
lives on in this committee. And we are all so very grateful
that you are here.
You know, it occurs to me, Chairman Hunter, that the--one
of the original objectives of the jihadist mindset after 9/11
was to try to gain some sort of base of operations with which
to launch terrorist attacks and jihad as it were across the
world. And it appears that they haven't given up that objective
at all. And sometimes our administration seems to willing to
stand back and not engage to the extent that the central
question here, the central strategic engagement here is one of
why jihadists feel transcendentally justified to do this.
And until we call it for what it is, it is a difficult
thing to bring the tactics to bear. But now it seems like the
administration is almost unwilling to even consider tactics to
bear.
So ISIS, as we know, is rampaging across Iraq. And after
dismissing ISIS as a threat, the administration has finally
conceded that they are ``worse than Al Qaeda.''
And, you know, now that they are moving on the city of
Nineveh, a city that has withstood 8,000 years of even biblical
challenge, this administration has managed to put Nineveh at
risk after 6 years.
So, my question to you, Mr. Hunter, given the incredible
danger that ISIS represents, and the Christian community is
almost extinct now in Iraq, how did we get here, where did we--
there was a time when things were on track. Where did we fail
and what is this situation now, what can we do now?
If you had been President, which some of us wished that
would have occurred--if you had been President how would you
have prevented where we have come to find ourselves and what
would you do now in the untenable position that we find
ourselves in now?
Mr. Hunter. Mr. Chairman, first, thanks for letting me come
in and share the dais here with these gentlemen who have a lot
of expertise in this area. And it has been great coming back to
the committee.
And I think I mentioned during my remarks at one point when
I was chairman my son Mr. Hunter, the gentleman from California
called me, he was a captain in the Marine Corps in the Battle
of Fallujah, called me on the satellite cellphone and said what
are you--and he had some fairly uncomplimentary words for all
political leadership--what have you done, we have just been
ordered to stop attacking. We are halfway through the Battle of
Fallujah, we have got them reeling and we have been given an
order to stop.
And in fact that had happened. Mr. Bremer had gotten cold
feet. He had been pressured by the Sunnis. And so, he
essentially ordered, even though he wasn't in the chain of
command. He was followed by the combat leadership in Iraq. We
stopped the attack at midpoint. We stopped our operation.
The bad guys rallied and they inflicted some pretty severe
casualties on the Marines who were now in static positions.
To some degree that is a reflection of this conflict. I
think that one thing that we see now, that Americans appreciate
is that this conflict has legs. It is an enduring conflict. And
it is also a conflict that doesn't come wrapped in neat
packages. There have been great questions about well we are
going to help these people or we are going to help these
people. And implicit in those questions, well, where is the
white hat? Where are the good people? Where are the moderates?
Where is the moderate leader?
Because you can have great people in a region, but if you
have got a leader that is a throat cutter, the persona of the
people is not relevant.
So this is a very difficult area of the world which shifts
like the sands of Anbar. And what we have to do, I think, are
practical things. And the practical thing we could do right now
is to try to blunt that attack. We don't know if we are going
to see a post-Maliki leader in Iraq who is not worse than Mr.
Maliki. For all of the problems that have been manifested in
his time in office he has also moved under American leadership
to do some things that we wanted him to do.
This is an enduring struggle. There is no--there is going
to be no surrender on the battleship Missouri, so it is going
to be one that is going to be with our children, with young
people that are now 5 and 6 years old. They are going to be in
the armed services of the United States deploying to parts of
the world 15 years from now to engage in parts of this
struggle.
What we have to do is have people of judgment in leadership
positions, and we have to take action quickly and it is tough
in this democracy to bring people to take action quickly. And I
think one thing we would all agree on is we do need to take
action and it needs to be taken quickly because time is
fleeting, time is of the essence. The more the ISIS forces
embed in Iraq the more difficult it is going to be to dislodge
them.
They were really most vulnerable when they were flowing in
in high numbers and were in transit and could have been taken
out at that point with American air power. They could have been
taken out with some Iraqi air power, in fact, if logistically
supplied by the Americans. But there is no easy answer here.
And there are people who read their Quran in such a way
that they believe that this is their--as those people on the
airliner on 9/11 who had a copy of the Quran. There are people
who read that and will continue to read it as being their
mission is to destroy Americans, also in many cases to destroy
fellow Muslims as we have seen in these conflicts.
It is very--the most difficult factor we have here is the
ability to identify moderate, effective leaders who are--who
will be good leaders, good people, who will not engage in
brutality, and will not polarize under pressure to the
extremes. That is a tough one to do and it is a tough one to
find and we are seeing that same problem in Afghanistan, the
post-Karzai government we think--we are hopeful it will be a
much better one.
But that is the problem. And that is one that we have to
live with. So what we have to do is be strong, militarily
robust. We are sliding down the--we are losing a great deal of
our military strength, if you have seen all the force
projection numbers.
We have to maintain strong special operations capability,
but we also have to have, in the executive department, in the
President, the ability to call shots quickly and move quickly.
And right now we don't have that. And I think time is against
us in the Iraq, with respect to the Iraq situation.
Mr. Franks. Well, again, thank you for your service to
humanity and the cause of human freedom, Chairman Hunter.
And I am going to give everyone a chance just to say a
brief closing thought here before we adjourn the committee.
And we will start with you over here, Mr. Fishman.
Mr. Fishman. Mr. Chairman, thank you, again, for having me
here today and to the entire committee.
As everyone has discussed, our options in facing the
Islamic State are suboptimal. And I think--that considering
that the best course of action is to contain this organization,
to attempt to strengthen local governance, and to wait while
this group makes mistakes, which it will.
Jihadi organizations from Algeria in the 1980s to
Afghanistan, to Iraq 8 years ago are prone to make mistakes,
they are prone to alienate the people that they live with and
their constituency. And I think we can put ourselves in a
position to capitalize on that when the time comes. But I am
skeptical that we will be able to destroy this organization any
time soon. It is going to be a persistent threat.
Mr. Franks. Yes, Mr. Boot.
Mr. Boot. I think that it is true that over time extreme
Islamist groups do alienate the people they rule, but I don't
think we can afford to wait for some inevitable backlash to
occur, because I think the longer that ISIS has to consolidate
its authority the greater the threat to us will be, the more
the chances are that foreign jihadists will be on its territory
training for conflicts in other places including, quite
possibly, the United States and Western Europe.
So I think we need to act. We are not going to act with
overwhelming American military force on the ground. That is
clearly not on the cards, but we do have potential allies that
we can support and push forward into the fight with American
advice, with American intelligence, with American weapons, and
in some cases with American air power called in by American
eyes on the ground. This is a very limited commitment but I
think it is one that is well warranted by the alarming
situation we face today in Iraq and Syria.
And I think we ought at least to be giving serious
consideration to sending a force on the order of perhaps 10,000
personnel, mostly in an advisory and assistance capacity, as I
suggested earlier, to Iraq to work with the various elements,
not only of the Iraqi security forces but the Kurdish Peshmerga
and the Sunni tribes. That is a force, by the way, roughly
similar to the size that we are leaving in Afghanistan. And I
think it is vitally important to have that kind of continuing
American presence in Afghanistan because if that doesn't happen
then Afghanistan could fall apart as easily as Iraq has done.
And I think we should learn--you know, we should, now that
Iraq has fallen apart the situation becomes much more
difficult, but it is still not impossible. And I think with a
relatively modest American commitment, I think we are not going
to necessarily eradicate ISIS, but we can certainly dislodge it
from controlling as much territory as it has and put it more on
the defensive and more on the run. I think that should be our
immediate short-term objective, leading ultimately to trying to
crush the group as we in fact did successfully in 2007 and 2008
with the support of the Sunni tribes of Anbar Province.
Mr. Franks. Dr. Biddle.
Dr. Biddle. As I hear the panel we disagree at least at the
margin on how serious the threat is here and what the scale of
U.S. interests engaged are. We all think there are important
interests engaged. But the scale of them, I think, there is
some degree of disagreement.
The panel also agrees that conditional assistance is the
appropriate way forward for trying to realize the stakes we
have involved. I want to emphasize though that although we
agree that some degree of conditional military assistance is an
appropriate way forward, the scale of leverage we can develop
through assistance of the kind that any of us are interested in
providing, even my friend and colleague Max is not talking
about sending 160,000 American troops back to Iraq.
Given the scale of the assistance we are willing to offer,
the scale of the leverage it is going to provide is going to be
correspondingly small. And the danger of slipping from a policy
of conditionality to generate leverage into commitment and
unconditional aid because our conditions weren't met and we
decided now that we are committed we have to act, or because
our conditions were met initially and then there was
backsliding later and Maliki's successor reneges on initial
commitments.
These are very serious risks. And if we are going to take
seriously the idea that conditional aid is going to be used as
a lever to produce political accommodation in Baghdad that will
enable a split in the Sunni coalition and an earlier settlement
to the war, we are talking about a difficult, complex
political-military tug of war with not just Maliki while he is
in office, but any successor who might come after him and we
should not underestimate how challenging that would be for the
U.S. Government to pull off.
I think there are existence proofs that at various times
and at various places the U.S. has been able to accomplish
this. I think I agree with Chairman Hunter that General
Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were particularly astute at
using sticks and carrots and conditional leverage to change the
interest calculus of Nuri al-Maliki in particular and the
Government of Iraq in general while they were in leadership
positions in Iraq.
But we have not been consistently outstanding in our
achievement of this goal in the past. And if we are not serious
about persisting in a long-term political-military strategy,
that if it goes wrong could produce terrible consequences, I
don't want us to fail to take seriously the alternative of in
fact not making things worse by staying out.
Mr. Franks. Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. First, my recommendation to support the tribes
is not a conditional one, not based on anything that Maliki
could do.
Any of this--I think we should send our--the President and
the Secretary of Defense could pull this team together, they
would respond immediately and a number of them are still in
service to this nation in other locations, and other positions,
and re-engage the tribes. And any tribes that will--that are
willing to oppose ISIS, we help them. Without any political
conditions established outside of that--that they will oppose
ISIS.
I think any conditional aid with respect to the government
of Baghdad, obviously--I think what I would do without
extracting political conciliation or political concessions from
Maliki is to inventory the main divisions of the Iraqi Army,
and if they have inadequacies, to meet those inadequacies if
they will turn that army, if they will utilize it aggressively
against ISIS.
And, you know, once again the 1st Iraqi Division was a good
division, was effective at the end. They stood and fought. They
held. They took ground. They worked professionally.
One thing that I haven't seen is an analysis of what has
happened to that--to the 1st Division, the 7th Division, and
several other divisions were fairly good, well, not as good as
those but fairly good. And it is difficult to believe that they
have deteriorated to the point where they can't take on guys
who are coming in with 50 cals [calibers] on Toyota pick-up
trucks, especially with the armor element that they possess
right now and with a very limited air element.
So I think you are not going to achieve--any concessions
that you can achieve politically from this government can, as
we know, be changed very quickly by another government. And
there will always be this Sunni-Shia split. And there will
always be that dynamic playing in that government.
If we can nurture along what I called a grudging
accommodation, which is what the Shiite government in Baghdad
had for Anbar in the late years of the war, that is a victory
and we could--but that is dependent on votes. You know, this is
like Turkey, we urged them to take a vote, we taught them
democracy when we wanted to send the 4th Division through
Turkey. They took a vote and it was against us. And because of
that we couldn't move the 4th Division through.
So we don't know which way this government is going to go.
We know there will always be a bias. There will always be the
pressure from Iran. There will always be the Shiite majority
and that fissure between Shiites and Sunnis will always be
ready to widen into a grand canyon. That is just the tendency
that will be there.
I think we have to live with that, but I would
unconditionally support the tribes that will push back against
ISIS. And unconditionally support the equipping and utilizing
American air leverage for the Iraqi army pushing back against
ISIS. And once again that would have to be a very well-
monitored operation because it would be against ISIS, not
against the tribal elements in Anbar Province.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, gentlemen, it has certainly
occurred to me that when you consider ISIS and how quickly they
have risen, that it is reminiscent of a bunch of idiots,
lunatics riding across France on bicycles wearing brown shirts
and the Nazis finally began to find resonance. It was certainly
dangerous to the world and it is important that we prevent that
from occurring here.
And I hope that the vacillation and uncertainty doesn't
begin to precipitate that very paradigm.
And with that I want to thank all of you for coming today
and I am glad you are on our side. This meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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July 29, 2014
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