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i 

89–516 2015

[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 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California, Chairman 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada 

JON RUNYAN, New Jersey 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois 

PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

ALEX GALLO, Professional Staff Member 

MIKE CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

AARON FALK, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

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.] 

(1) 

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. 
2 

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 alAssad, 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.] 
3 

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 chair-
4 

man 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 
5 

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. 
6 

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. 
7 

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. 
8 

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 regionwide 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. 
9 

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 longgame 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. 
10 

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 
11 

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 
12 

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 
13 

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 
14 

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 safehaven 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. 
15 

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 visa-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 longterm 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 
16 

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 highlevel 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 
17 

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 
18 

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 
19 

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 alBaghdadi 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 mod-
20 

erate 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. 
21 

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 threat-
22 

ening 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—— 
23 

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. 
24 

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 
25 

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 Amer-
26 

ican 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. 
27 

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. 
28 

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 
29 

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 nexttier, 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. 
30 

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? 
31 

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 postMaliki 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. 
32 

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. 
33 

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 alMaliki 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. 
34 

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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