U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,

http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,

U.S. Government Printing Office. Phone 202–512–1800, or 866–512–1800 (toll-free). E-mail, gpo@custhelp.com.

i 

67–395 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 112–47] 

TEN YEARS ON: THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

TERRORIST THREAT SINCE 9/11 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS 

AND CAPABILITIES 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JUNE 22, 2011 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

CHRIS GIBSON, New York 

BOBBY SCHILLING, Illinois 

ALLEN B. WEST, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

TIM RYAN, Ohio 

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

PETER VILLANO, Professional Staff Member 

MARK LEWIS, Professional Staff Member 

JEFF CULLEN, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2011 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011, Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist 

Threat Since 9/11 ................................................................................................. 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 ...................................................................................... 25 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2011 

TEN YEARS ON: THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERRORIST THREAT 

SINCE 9/11 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Johnson, Hon. Hank, a Representative from Georgia, Subcommittee on 

Emerging Threats and Capabilities .................................................................... 2 

Thornberry, Hon. Mac, a Representative from Texas, Chairman, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities ............................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Bergen, Peter, Director, National Security Studies Program, New America 

Foundation, Author of ‘‘The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between 

America and Al Qaeda’’ ....................................................................................... 4 

Gorka, Dr. Sebastian, Assistant Professor of Irregular Warfare, National Defense University ................................................................................................... 6 

Jenkins, Brian Michael, Senior Advisor, RAND Corporation .............................. 2 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Bergen, Peter .................................................................................................... 43 

Gorka, Dr. Sebastian ........................................................................................ 65 

Jenkins, Brian Michael .................................................................................... 30 

Langevin, Hon. James R. ................................................................................. 29 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

‘‘Who’s Winning the Battle for Narrative? Al-Qaida versus the United 

States and its Allies,’’ co-authored by Sebastian Gorka and David 

Kilcullen, in ‘‘Influence Warfare: How Terrorists and Governments 

Fight to Shape Perceptions in a War of Ideas,’’ edited by James J.F. 

Forest ............................................................................................................. 79 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Thornberry ................................................................................................. 93 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 95 

(1) 

TEN YEARS ON: THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERRORIST 

THREAT SINCE 9/11 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES, 

Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 22, 2011. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:04 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mac Thornberry (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MAC THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

Mr. THORNBERRY. The hearing will come to order. 

Tonight the President will announce a schedule for withdrawals 

of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, an engagement that started nearly 10 years ago. Ten years after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was assaulted and heroes in the skies above Pennsylvania 

prevented the Capitol from being struck, Americans are still battling terrorists around the world, here at home, and in cyberspace, 

and we are still debating what we need to do to prevent further 

attacks. 

With the approach of that 10-year mark and with the removal 

of Osama bin Laden, it seems to me to be appropriate to try to step 

back and look at the course of the last decade, analyze whether and 

how the threat to us and our interests have changed, and thereby 

try to gain some perspective on where we need to go from here. 

The subcommittee has assembled a first-rate panel to help guide 

our inquiry today. Unfortunately, it is also a day in which Members and witnesses are being pulled in a variety of directions. And 

I appreciate very much everybody’s flexibility to try to start a little 

earlier so that, hopefully, we can have as much opportunity as we 

can before votes. 

I do recommend that all of the Members and guests read the 

written testimony submitted by each of the witnesses. But in due 

course, I am going to ask them to summarize their statements so 

we can get into questions and discussions in the course of the time 

we have before us today. 

So, with that, let me yield to Mr. Johnson for the ranking member. 
2 

STATEMENT OF HON. HANK JOHNSON, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM GEORGIA, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS 

AND CAPABILITIES 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry, for hosting this 

very timely hearing. 

And thanks to our panel for joining us. I am looking forward to 

your testimony. 

And I will ask that we reserve the ability of Ranking Member 

Langevin to make comments when he arrives. And I would ask 

that his written statement be placed in the record, without objection. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Langevin can be found in the Appendix on page 29.] 

Mr. THORNBERRY. And I would also ask unanimous consent that 

other members of the committee be allowed to participate in today’s hearing after all subcommittee members have had an opportunity to ask questions. And, without objection, they will be recognized at the appropriate time. 

So, again, let me thank our witnesses for being here. 

We are privileged to have Mr. Brian Michael Jenkins, senior advisor at RAND Corporation; Mr. Peter Bergen, who is director of 

national security studies at New America Foundation and also author of ‘‘The Longest War’’; and Dr. Sebastian Gorka, assistant professor of irregular warfare, National Defense University. 

So, if I could, let me turn to you all in that order for the summary of your statement. 

STATEMENT OF BRIAN MICHAEL JENKINS, SENIOR ADVISOR, 

RAND CORPORATION 

Mr. JENKINS. Chairman Thornberry, Mr. Johnson, members of 

the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to 

you about this important topic. 

In my written testimony, I outline Al Qaeda’s terrorist campaign 

since its inception. Let me here just summarize, to note that in the 

past 10 years we have seen Al Qaeda move from large-scale, centrally directed terrorist attacks to increasing emphasis on individual jihad and do-it-yourself terrorism. 

Now, this is an indication that we have made considerable 

progress in the past 10 years. Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities 

have clearly been degraded. But we haven’t dented its determination one bit. Nor does the death of bin Laden end Al Qaeda’s global 

terrorist campaign. Indeed, the reported elevation of Ayman alZawahiri as his successor suggests that bin Laden’s focus on attacking the United States will continue after his death. But Al 

Qaeda today has less capability to mount another attack on the 

scale of 9/11, although caution is always in order. Small groups can 

still be lethal. 

The Arab Spring, in my view, demonstrates the irrelevance of Al 

Qaeda’s ideology. However, Al Qaeda benefits from the current 

chaos in these countries. And the latest news from Yemen is that 

there was just a major jailbreak in that country, which resulted in 

the escape of a number of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula 
3 

[AQAP] members. And if these revolutions are crushed or produce 

no change, then Al Qaeda certainly will find new recruiting space. 

As I mentioned, Al Qaeda has embraced individual jihadism and 

do-it-yourself terrorism. This is a change from its initial centralized 

strategy, and it reflects the organization’s current realities. The 

threat now is much more decentralized, much more diffused. But 

their objective remains to bankrupt America’s already weakened 

economy with continued at least low-level attacks. That is going to 

depend heavily on their ability to recruit homegrown terrorists, but 

thus far, fortunately, exhortations to join its violent jihad have 

yielded meager results among American Muslims. 

I agree that a 10-year time period is an appropriate time for a 

review. As Al Qaeda has evolved, so must American strategy. Here 

are some just basic principles. 

First, Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain the primary target of 

America’s counterterrorist campaign. Although weakened, the 

jihadist movement still poses a threat. Left unmolested, it will pursue its campaign. War weariness, economic restraints, the death of 

bin Laden must not be allowed to erode the unprecedented worldwide cooperation among intelligence services and law enforcement 

organizations that has reduced Al Qaeda’s capability to mount 

large-scale attacks. 

How things turn out in Afghanistan remains critical to the future 

trajectory of the conflict, but creating a national army and a national police force in Afghanistan able to effectively secure the 

country will take longer than the United States is willing to sustain current troop levels. 

But this is not just about numbers. We really should examine 

ways we can reconfigure our efforts. The challenge is how to deprive Al Qaeda and its allies of safe havens without the United 

States having to fix failed states. We may be chasing Al Qaeda for 

decades. Therefore, what we do at home and abroad must be sustainable. 

We can’t eliminate every vulnerability. Efforts should focus on 

developing less burdensome ways to maintain current security levels. We should also move toward risk-based security rather than 

pretending that we can prevent all attacks. And Americans, themselves, must be realistic about security and stop overreacting to 

even failed terrorist attempts. 

The threat of homegrown terrorism is real, but it shouldn’t be exaggerated. The tiny turnout of jihadist recruits suggests that America remains a country where immigrants successfully assimilate 

into the life of our communities. American Muslims are not America’s enemies. But domestic intelligence collection and community 

policing are essential, especially as Al Qaeda places more emphasis 

on inspiring local volunteers to take action. 

In sum, we have greatly reduced Al Qaeda’s capacity for largescale attacks, but at great expense. But the campaign led by Al 

Qaeda may go on for many years. It is time for a fundamental and 

thoughtful review of our effort. We have gone big; we need to go 

long. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jenkins can be found in the Appendix on page 30.] 
4 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. 

Mr. Bergen. 

STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, AUTHOR OF ‘‘THE LONGEST WAR: THE ENDURING CONFLICT 

BETWEEN AMERICA AND AL QAEDA’’ 

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry and Mr. Johnson 

and other members of the committee. 

We were asked to look at today’s threat and how the threat has 

changed and what to do about it. So, in the 5 minutes I have, I 

will try and summarize. 

I, you know, concur with pretty much everything that Mr. Jenkins just said. The threat is much reduced. Al Qaeda’s capability 

to do a 9/11-style attack on the United States is extremely constrained. 

The Maxwell School at Syracuse University and New America 

Foundation looked at 183 jihadist terrorism cases since 9/11, as defined by individuals or groups motivated by anti-American beliefs 

who are in this country. Of those 186 cases, there was quite a lot 

of good news and some bad news. 

The good news is, not one of those cases involved a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear plot, which is pretty surprising, in 

a sense, if you think about how concerned we were about that 

eventuality after 9/11. 

Secondly, there was a real uptick in these cases in the 2009–2010 

time period; there were 76 cases. However, there has been a sharp 

dip in 2011, with only eight cases. So the question before all of us 

is, in a sense, was 2009–2010 sort of an outlier or part of a larger 

pattern? 

Mr. Jenkins referred to the relatively small threat of domestic 

jihadist terrorism, and I agree with that. But, clearly, there was 

something happening in 2009 and 2010 which was a little bit different. Part of the reason that you saw a big increase in plots was 

a large number of Somali Americans planning to go to Somalia, or 

actually going to Somalia, who were charged in cases relating to 

Al-Shabaab. 

Another piece of good news in all of this is that, of these 186 individuals, only 4 actually carried out any attack, the most famous 

being, of course, the Fort Hood, Texas, attack, which I am sure is 

very familiar to members of this committee, which killed 13 people. 

There were three other attacks, which killed four people. So, since 

9/11, only 17 Americans have been killed by jihadist terrorists in 

the past 10 years. Again, I think that would have been something 

that would not have been expected if we had had this conversation 

a couple of years after the 9/11 attacks. 

So, much that has happened, both, you know, what the U.S. Government has done and Al Qaeda’s own weaknesses, has made us 

relatively much safer. 

How does the death of bin Laden play out in all this, and what 

effect does it have? And I would say that the effect—if everybody 

in this room collectively came together and came up with a better 

plan to sabotage Al Qaeda, it would be hard to come up with the 

Arab Spring and bin Laden’s death happening within several 
5 

months of each other. Between these two events, Al Qaeda’s ideology has taken a pretty massive, you know, blow. And Al Qaeda, 

the organization, which was founded and led by bin Laden, has 

also taken a pretty massive blow. 

When you joined the Nazi party, you didn’t swear an oath of allegiance to Nazism; you swore a personal oath of allegiance to Adolf 

Hitler. Similarly, when you joined Al Qaeda, you swore a personal 

oath of allegiance to bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Mr. Jenkins 

has pointed out, has officially taken over. But this is very good 

news, I think, for the United States. Ayman al-Zawahiri will drive 

what remains of Al Qaeda into the ground. He is neither charismatic nor an effective leader, whose leadership of even the Egyptian jihadist militant groups of which he was once part is contested. And just as the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi dealt a 

pretty big blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the people who replaced Abu 

Musab al-Zarqawi were not as effective leaders. So the fact that 

Ayman al-Zawahiri has taken over is a good thing. 

But even before the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden, Al 

Qaeda was in very bad shape. It was losing the war of ideas in the 

Muslim world, not certainly because the United States was winning them, but because Al Qaeda was losing them, principally on 

the issue that Al Qaeda and its allies had killed so many Muslim 

civilians. For groups that position themselves as the defender of 

Islam, this was not impressive. And, you know, if you look at polling data in Indonesia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, 

pick your country, support for bin Laden and Al Qaeda suicide 

bombing has been dropping precipitously in the last several years. 

That said, how is the threat changing, which is the second question that we were asked to address. I think one of the most problematic parts of the threat that is changing is Al Qaeda’s ability 

to infect other groups that don’t call themselves ‘‘Al Qaeda’’ with 

its ideology, particularly in South Asia. 

To give you two obvious examples, the Pakistani Taliban, which 

was seen as a bunch of sort of provincial country bumpkins uninterested in anything other than Pakistan, sent suicide bombers to 

Barcelona in January of 2008, which should have been a canary in 

the mine, and then, of course, sent a suicide bomber to Times 

Square in May of 2010. So the Pakistani Taliban now are acting 

in a more Al Qaeda-like manner, a fairly large group of people. 

Similarly, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that focused on India, 

sought out American and Jewish targets in Mumbai in November 

of 2008. Again, a rather large group with quasi-governmental support from the Pakistani Government. And I think that their change 

is concerning. 

And then, of course, the regional affiliates: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with which you are all familiar; Al-Shabaab; Al 

Qaeda in Iraq; Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The fortunes of 

these groups wax and wane. 

But one final point I wanted to make before this committee, because it directly affects your interests, is, going back to that survey 

of the 183 cases, jihadist terrorism cases, we found that the target 

of a third of those individuals was U.S. military personnel serving 

overseas or U.S. military bases. So, clearly, for individuals motivated by this ideology, American soldiers and American servicemen 
6 

and servicewomen, involved in up to five wars in Muslim countries, 

are very tempting targets for these kinds of groups and individuals. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen can be found in the Appendix on page 43.] 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Doctor. 

STATEMENT OF DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF IRREGULAR WARFARE, NATIONAL DEFENSE 

UNIVERSITY 

Dr. GORKA. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member 

Johnson, and the members of the subcommittee, for providing me 

this honor to testify before you on the vital issue of the evolution 

of the terrorist threat to the United States. 

I must start with the standard disclaimer that this testimony reflects my views and not necessarily those of the National Defense 

University, the Department of Defense, or any other organization 

or agency I am affiliated with. 

As you have already noted, Mr. Chairman, we are approaching 

the 10th anniversary of the September the 11th attacks, which resulted in the longest military campaign the United States has been 

engaged in since 1776. Despite the mastermind of that attack having been killed by our forces, the war is not over. 

In my testimony today, I have two core messages. The first is 

that, a decade after the events of September the 11th, America 

does still not fully understand the nature of the enemy. Secondly, 

that tactical successes do not necessarily lead to strategic victory. 

If I may address the second point first, it is clear that the operation in Abbottabad that led to the death of Osama bin Laden will, 

in decades to come, represent the textbook example of such a covert 

action on foreign soil. Nevertheless, to quote the quintessential 

strategist Sun Tzu, tactics without strategy is simply the noise before defeat. This was a tactically supreme operation but does not 

necessarily mean that we have won a strategic victory. 

To illustrate this point further, as you are all aware, one of the 

most popular official documents in the last 10 years was the Field 

Manual 3–24 on Counterinsurgency, reformed and rewritten under 

the aegis of General Petraeus. The fact that today, with the success 

of that counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq and elsewhere, in Washington the phrase ‘‘counterinsurgency strategy’’ is used every day, 

reflects the paucity of understanding of what we are doing. In fact, 

a cursory Internet search with the phrase ‘‘counterinsurgency strategy’’ will give you 300,000 hits, despite the fact that counterinsurgency always has and always will be a doctrinal approach and 

never a strategic one. 

Going on to the question of understanding the nature of the 

enemy, if I may share a personal anecdote with the members of the 

subcommittee. Several years into this war, I was asked with a colleague to address a group of assembled Special Operations officers 

on the war in hand and how things were going. This was a 3-day 

event at a relatively high level of 06. 

On the third day, when I rose to give my remarks, I was forced 

to tear up my speaking points and inform the officers, who really 

were risking their lives in this fight against Al Qaeda, that for 21⁄2
7 

days I had witnessed them debate whether the enemy was an organization, a network, a network of networks, an ideology, or a movement. This lack of clarity amongst our operators, which I have seen 

amongst other agencies, not just the Special Forces, is akin to us 

debating in 1944 what Nazism actually represents and what the 

Third Reich is. We didn’t do it then; why are we doing it now? 

The plain matter of the fact, Mr. Chairman and Members, is that 

we have institutionally failed to meet our duty to become wellinformed on the threat doctrine of our enemy. Without a clear understanding of the enemy threat doctrine, victory is likely impossible. 

The reasons for this lack of understanding are many, but they 

are guided also by the belief that the religious character of the enemy’s ideology should not be discussed. This is one of the reasons 

why today in official circles we use the phrase ‘‘violent extremism.’’ 

The fact is, we are dealing with a hybrid totalitarianism that depends very much on religious ideology to justify its violence. 

Secondly, there is the question of our institutional capacity to 

deal with the threat that we currently face. I would like to remind 

the subcommittee that the 9/11 congressional commission described 

for us how very different the threat environment is. Today, we no 

longer live in a Westphalian threat environment, where the nationstate is the primary enemy. As Philip Bobbitt has noted, groups 

such as Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, or the Muslim Brotherhood do not 

fit neatly into the national security apparatus we built over the 

last hundred years. 

To paraphrase James Kiras of the Air University, we have denied Al Qaeda the capability to conduct complex, devastating attacks on the scale of September the 11th, but we now need to transition away from concentrating on dismantling and disrupting Al 

Qaeda’s network to undermining its core strategy of ideological 

attack. 

To conclude, in the last 10 years since September the 11th, we 

can summarize our actions as a vast collection of tactical and operational successes occurring in a vacuum of strategic understanding 

and strategic response. We have failed to understand the enemy at 

any more than an operational level and have instead, by default, 

addressed that enemy solely on that operational plane of engagement. 

The 10th anniversary of the attacks here in Washington, in New 

York, and in Pennsylvania afford those of us in the U.S. Government who have sworn to uphold and defend the national interests 

of this greatest of nations a clear opportunity to recognize what we 

have accomplished and what needs to be reassessed. 

My wish would be that this hearing marked the beginning of 

that process, whereby we draw a line under our past efforts and 

begin anew to recommit ourselves to attacking the deadliest of enemies at the level which it deserves to be, and that must be, of 

course, the strategic. 

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his ideology of global supremacy through religious war is more vibrant and sympathetic to 

audiences around the world than it was on September the 10th, 

2011. 

Thank you. 
8 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gorka can be found in the Appendix on page 65.] 

Mr. THORNBERRY. A little sobering, but thank you. 

But let me pick up with that and ask Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Bergen to respond to the idea that tactical success does not—successes—does not necessarily translate into overall victory or strategic success. 

And, you know, you think back, not only the Osama bin Laden 

operation, but the fact that we have not had, other than Fort Hood, 

a particularly successful attack here in the homeland for 10 years; 

a lot of success in various other places and efforts around the 

world. I think you mentioned that Al Qaeda is not necessarily well 

thought of, according to pollsters. Maybe that is a tactical success. 

But so does all of that add up to strategic victory, or are we still 

fooling ourselves in some way? 

Mr. Jenkins. 

Mr. JENKINS. Let me try to address that. 

There are two views about this. One is that if we can continue 

to disrupt Al Qaeda operations, if we can continue to protect the 

American homeland, that ultimately Al Qaeda will self-destruct. It 

will self-destruct in ways that Peter was outlining. That is, first of 

all, the biggest long-term threat to Al Qaeda is irrelevance. And as 

the world moves on, Al Qaeda, locked in its own little universe of 

extremist ideology, will become less and less relevant. 

And that is what makes the Arab Spring so important, because 

those people demonstrating in Tunisia and Egypt and elsewhere 

were not demonstrating on behalf of unending warfare against 

infidels or the re-establishment of an 8th-century caliphate; they 

were demonstrating for greater democracy, they were demonstrating for less corruption, for more opportunity. And that Al 

Qaeda, with its sole methodology of violence, that simply it will 

fade, and we should try to contain them as long as possible. 

Will that suffice in the long run to give us victory? First of all, 

the problem is, we have to put victory in quotes here, because what 

is victory here? This could go on for many, many, many years, and 

we are not going to have something that we can call a clearcut victory. But, nonetheless, it would be a success. 

Others believe—and there is a shortcoming here—that while we 

have, as Dr. Gorka has pointed out, we have pounded on their 

operational capabilities with some measure of success, we haven’t 

adequately addressed the front end of this—that is, what is the appeal of this ideology? How do they manage to continue to inspire 

angry young men around the world to join with this? 

And one of the long-term dangers that we do face here is that 

the Al Qaeda ideology really transcends to simply becoming a conveyor for individual discontents. That is, anyone who is searching 

for meaning, unhappy with their condition, whatever, can find 

legitimization and direction within this ideology. Now, we could 

end up dealing with that kind of a diffused threat for many, many 

years. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Bergen. 

Mr. BERGEN. You know, there are still Marxist-Leninists on campuses somewhere in the United States; there just aren’t very many 

of them. And so, you know, Marxism-Leninism as an idea has 
9 

never fully died; there are just less takers. And that is where we 

are going to be with Al Qaeda. 

Mr. Jenkins mentioned the word ‘‘irrelevance.’’ I think that is a 

good word. The polling data is easily accessible. Gallup, Zogby, Pew 

have done, you know, massive polls around the Muslim world, and 

the numbers speak for themselves. 

You know, the caveat here, of course, is the Baader-Meinhof 

Group in Germany had zero public support in the 1970s in Germany, and a very small group of people continued to inflict a lot 

of damage on the German state. 

But, you know, I think that they, overall—the chairman mentioned no attacks in the United States. I think another point is, no 

successful attacks in the West since July 7th, 2005, in London by 

Al Qaeda proper. You know, attempts in places like Ramstein Air 

Force Base in 2007; you know, we had the Mumbai-style—possibility of Mumbai-style attacks in Europe in the fall of last year, 

which produced a Europe-wide terror alert by the State Department. But they haven’t got one through. They may eventually. By 

the law of averages, they will. But not only is their ideology in decline, they are operationally not very successful. 

And one final point, which I think, just to kind of underline 

about the Arab Spring, it is really striking to me that not a single 

picture of bin Laden has been waved by any of the protesters in 

Cairo, Benghazi, or anywhere else; not a single American flag 

burning; not a single Israeli flag burning. Al Qaeda’s ideas, foot soldiers, and leaders are just simply not part of this conversation. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. I want to come back to some of 

that, but let me yield to Mr. Johnson for some questions. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Bergen, what would happen if the U.S. allows the Taliban to 

take over Afghanistan? 

Mr. BERGEN. We have already run a kind of controlled experiment on that question in Pakistan, and very recently. In 2009, the 

Taliban took over Swat, which was a premier tourist destination in 

Pakistan in the north. They beheaded a policeman, they burned 

down the girls’ schools, and they inflicted a reign of terror on the 

population. They did exactly the same thing in Waziristan in 2005 

and 2006 in the tribal regions of Pakistan. 

So if the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, either partially or 

fully—they can’t take over fully—but even partially, you know, 

they have had a long time to reject Al Qaeda and all its works, and 

they have never done that. And with the death of bin Laden—we 

are now 7 weeks after the death of bin Laden. This was a perfect 

opportunity for the Taliban to say, ‘‘Hey, you know, our deal was 

with bin Laden, not Al Qaeda. We reject Al Qaeda.’’ They haven’t 

done it. In fact, quite the reverse; they have said they are going 

to take revenge for bin Laden’s death. 

So I am quite skeptical of the notion that the Taliban is a bunch 

of Henry Kissingers in waiting who are just going to suddenly become rational actors and, you know—they have never said what 

kind of society they envisage for Afghanistan, their view on democracy, elections, or women working or girls in school. I think we 

know what their real views are, but they have been very silent on 

what they plan to do. 
10 

And it is very striking to me, in this country, liberals, who were 

very much up in arms about the kind of behavior of the Taliban 

before 9/11, have been strikingly silent on the issue of what the 

Taliban coming back to power in some shape or form in Afghanistan would mean for the women of Afghanistan and the girls. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Is it likely that the Taliban would take over if the 

U.S. withdraws too quickly from Afghanistan? 

Mr. BERGEN. I don’t think they can take over, sir, but, certainly, 

if our withdrawal was too precipitous, they could take over large 

chunks of the south and the east, not because they are so strong, 

but because the Afghan Government and the Afghan National 

Army, which Mr. Jenkins referred to, are still relatively weak. And 

I—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, if they did take over those sections, would 

those sections become a safe haven or a place where jihadists and 

other terrorists could find sanctuary? 

Mr. BERGEN. In my view, yes, because, again, we have run a controlled experiment on this question. When Al Qaeda and other 

groups allied to it were fleeing Afghanistan, you know, where did 

they end up? In Taliban-controlled Pakistan. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. 

Do either one of you gentlemen want to add anything to what Dr. 

Bergen has said? 

Mr. JENKINS. Let me just add that I do agree that a precipitous 

withdrawal or too rapid a withdrawal from Afghanistan could, in 

fact, lead not to a direct Taliban takeover, because they would still 

be vulnerable there, but it could give space to Al Qaeda, space to 

the jihadists. 

Moreover, it would be—that combined with the very turbulent 

situation we already see in the adjacent areas of Pakistan, that 

would become an area of a source of trouble again for the rest of 

the world. 

Dr. GORKA. If I may, on the point of the ideology behind Al 

Qaeda and whether or not bin Laden’s death will effect the spread 

of it further, the fact is, what we see in the evolution of Al Qaeda 

is a paradoxical evolution. We really have made it impossible for 

it to execute large-scale, mass-casualty attacks on the soil of the 

United States. That is correct. 

But while we have been successful in shrinking its capacity operationally, its influence ideologically has increased. This is something that is recognized across the intelligence community and 

elsewhere. The fact is, whether bin Laden is dead or not, whether 

or not Ayman al-Zawahiri is a charismatic individual, the brand of 

Salafi jihadism that they represented or propagated is still very 

popular. There is no alternative that is taking on this ideology. 

Yes, the Arab Spring is to be welcomed, but we must remember 

one very, very daunting fact. Everybody that the Arab Spring targeted, whether it was Mubarak, whether it is Saleh, whether it is 

even the King of Jordan, who is being pressurized, all these individuals are inimical to Al Qaeda, are enemies to Salafi jihadists. 

So just because we have people who look to be interested in establishing democracies doesn’t mean that the Salafi jihadists are actually very happy to see what they saw as secular dictators removed 

or puppets of the West removed. 
11 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have a great panel. 

I am sorry I just missed it. We are all doing about double and triple duty here today. 

But I wanted to, I think, try and focus a little bit more on—we 

have this discussion, anti-insurgency, anti-terrorism—I don’t think 

you addressed this already. In the light of terrorist threats, I mean, 

I have always thought that the two essentially worked hand-inhand, you know, that it is difficult to separate them. Certainly, exactly, you can’t separate them, but even as we talk about them and 

the need to get information and be able to do targeting. 

Could you address that and how it is perceived, do you think, by 

Al Qaeda and where these efforts fit in? Does a threat of more 

drone attacks, for example, does that do anything different than 

the fact that you are actually working in villages and using persuasion, and more grassroots, if you will, work is a greater threat? 

Where do you see this? 

Mr. JENKINS. I think we get wrapped around some of these doctrinal issues a bit too much and try to make these precise distinctions. I mean, if we were talking about, as Mr. Bergen mentioned, 

you know, the Red Army Faction in Germany, there, we are talking 

about a pure counterterrorist strategy, we are talking about law 

enforcement and things like that. If we were talking about, say, 

something in Central America or Latin America in the 1960s, we 

would be talking about a pure counterinsurgency strategy. 

In the situation we face today, they are obviously mixed together. 

And, therefore, the means that we employ in dealing with this 

worldwide have to be tailored to the specific situations. In Afghanistan, we are dealing with an insurgency situation, but we are also 

going after the terrorists directly with the drone strikes. In other 

parts of the world, we are relying on intelligence and law enforcement and diplomacy to arrest and bring to justice individual members. Now, that is not counterinsurgency; that would be more 

counterterrorist. 

So, depending on the situation and the terrain, we have mixtures 

of both, and we have to orchestrate all of those instruments—law 

enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, counterinsurgency tactics, 

counterterrorist measures, military force, everything—as it is appropriate to the specific situation. And that is going to be different 

in Yemen from what it is in Somalia, from what it is in Algeria, 

from what it is in Afghanistan. 

Dr. GORKA. Mr. Jenkins is absolutely right; both of these can 

have applicability. Counterterrorism [CT] is primarily a tool that is 

used to attack a network or an organization. Counterinsurgency 

[COIN] is a far deeper tool which actually ultimately has to address the conditions and the environment in which an insurgency 

grows and challenges the state. 

The problem with today’s approach is that both of these have applicability but neither of them answer the strategic question. These 

remain doctrinal tools. It is the hammer, it is the screwdriver, but 
12 

it isn’t the manual of repair that tells us why we have to use these. 

So the problem remains the strategic question. 

And the debate is a superficial one. The debate of CT, counterterrorism, versus COIN is I think in part a product of what we have 

seen in the last 10 years as classic mission creep. We went into Afghanistan to do what? To destroy the organization that had executed the attacks against citizens here in the United States. Well, 

yes, but 10 years later, what are we doing? Much more than attacking Al Qaeda, because Al Qaeda has left Afghanistan to a large 

extent. We are trying to make sure Afghan girls can go to school. 

So mission creep has created this largely artificial debate. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Can I just follow up for a second with Mr. Bergen? Because I 

wanted to say I appreciate the fact that you raise that issue of the 

women and the extent to which we, I think, send some very strong 

messages about the fact that they should be essentially at the 

table, that they should have some meaningful participation as we 

work toward reintegration, and, I think, think about a time that 

they actually would be playing a role that is acknowledged in development of a civil society. 

Now, a lot of people have discounted that, obviously, because 

they think that, again, that is part of mission creep, if you will, it 

is part of a greater effort that is generational, it is too difficult, it 

is too hard. 

Could you comment, though, on whether or not you think that 

that is an important message and whether or not it—how do you 

think it should be articulated? 

Mr. BERGEN. I would answer it this way, Representative Davis. 

Two things. 

First of all, if you look at guide books to Afghanistan in the late 

1960s or the early 1970s, you see pictures of women unveiled working in offices. And, you know, the idea that the Taliban represents 

the Afghan view of how women should be treated is nonsensical. 

It is a very minority view. And the idea that—in fact, you know, 

whether it is mission creep or not we can sort of debate, but something that I think is not well-processed sometimes in this country 

is the huge strides that have been made for girls in the last 10 

years in Afghanistan. When the Taliban were in power, there were 

a million kids in school. About, you know, 0.1 percent of them were 

girls. Now there are 8 million kids in school; 37 percent of them 

are girls. 

So, as we go forward with the Taliban and think about the kind 

of society they want, I think this has to be part of the discussion. 

Afghans want their kids to be educated, whether they are girls or 

boys. And the Taliban, who are going to be part of some discussion 

of the future of Afghanistan—I think that is a sort of nonnegotiable. 

One of our demands is they accept the Afghan Constitution. 

Well, the Afghan Constitution mandates, for instance, that 25 percent of the people in the Afghan Parliament should be women, 

which I think is probably higher than it is in this body in this 

country. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. 
13 

Ms. Sanchez. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am very conflicted about some of the statements that I have 

heard. And I am sorry I wasn’t in here earlier. But, you know, you 

just mentioned that Afghan parents want their kids educated. 

Well, so do Americans. And one of the biggest problems we have 

is that money is being siphoned off halfway around the world for 

the wars that we are in. 

And it is very difficult because we have no measurement of how 

we are doing, and, meanwhile, our own economy is collapsing. People can’t go—in California, for example, our university system, our 

Cal State system, our community college system is all completely 

impacted. So we, as policymakers and as people who are entrusted 

with the fiscal soundness of the United States, have a big problem 

with what is going on. 

You know, and I am worried about mission creep because I think 

we are in complete mission creep. I have been for getting out of Afghanistan for a while now. Nobody, not a general, even when they 

are before our committee, can tell me really why we are still in Afghanistan. 

And I just relate it back to the fact that we are still in Iraq. And 

I know, for example—I voted against Iraq. And I have sat on this 

committee for 15 years, on the military committee. So it is not like 

I am afraid of the military, I am afraid of the power we have. We 

have incredible power. But, you know, we have the best-equipped, 

best-trained, best-educated military that the world has ever seen, 

but it is still a limited resource. 

And, you know, with Iraq, first it was about WMD [weapons of 

mass destruction] and nuke terror. Then it was about the democratic transformation of the Middle East. Then it was about the 

freedom of the Iraqi people. Then it was about fighting Al Qaeda 

over there instead of over here. Then it was about preventing a regional war. Then it was about preventing a genocidal civil war. 

Then it was about the price of gas in the United States. It kept 

changing on us, and we are still there. 

So I am looking at Afghanistan and I am wondering, why are we 

still there? And for someone to say this is about fighting Al Qaeda 

there—and this gentleman just said, you know, couldn’t possibly 

be, because there are so few there, and there are other ways to 

take care of those people, other than having a conventional-size 

Army sitting there. 

I still disagree, and I disagreed from the beginning, with our 

President about sending this surge over there, mostly because of 

the types of things I heard out of the parliamentarians and Karzai 

when I go and visit. 

So my question to you guys is, with respect to Al Qaeda, why are 

we still in Afghanistan, in your opinion? 

Dr. GORKA. I think exactly for the reasons you just mentioned. 

I think the fact is, if we wish to create a functioning federal country in Afghanistan, where everybody has civil rights comparable to 

a developed western nation and which has a market economy that 

functions well, we will not do it with 100,000 troops. NYPD [New 

York Police Department] has 40,000 officers—NYPD. And we think 
14 

we are going to turn Afghanistan into a close ally that functions 

as a federal state with human rights and civil rights for all? 

The problem is, we haven’t asked the difficult question you just 

raised. Why are we there if Al Qaeda’s center of gravity is elsewhere and if we don’t have the financial wherewithal to turn Afghanistan into Switzerland? 

It will not happen. There probably will be a military presence 

there, but it will be of a very different tactical nature. And the bottom line is, the British and the Soviets failed. We will not be able 

to succeed where they failed because they used tactics that we are 

not allowed to use, and I am very glad we are not allowed to use 

them. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you. 

Mr. BERGEN. I have been visiting Afghanistan since the civil war 

in the 1990s. I was there under the Taliban. But this is not really 

my opinion. Sixty-eight percent of Afghans have a favorable view 

of international forces. This is the BBC–ABC poll taken several 

months ago. That is an astonishing number. Can you think of a 

Muslim country that has a 68 percent favorable view of the U.S. 

military that is occupying their country over the past 10 years? 

Why is that? Well, because they know that their lives are getting 

better. Now, the question, are we spending too much money there, 

$118 billion? Sure. But going to Representative Davis’ question, 

you can’t do an effective counterterrorism campaign without an effective counterinsurgency presence. 

And the reason that we can say with some certainty what alternative scenarios look like is we have already tried them. In 1989, 

the United States closed its embassy to Afghanistan, and into the 

vacuum came the Taliban, then allied with Al Qaeda. In 2002, because of its ideological opposition to nation-building, the George W. 

Bush administration did an operation on the light in Afghanistan. 

We got what we paid for. The Taliban came back, again allied with 

Al Qaeda and with Al Qaeda-like ideas. 

In 2003, there were 6,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan. 

That is the size of the police department in Houston in a country 

the size of Texas with 10 times the population. And so I think the 

President has been making the right set of decisions about 

resourcing this properly. 

I completely understand what Representative Sanchez said 

about, you know, we have to make choices. But the fact is that we 

were attacked from Afghanistan on 9/11. We have a very strong interest in preventing it from being a safe haven, not only for Al 

Qaeda, but every jihadist terrorist and insurgent group in the 

world was headquartered or based in Afghanistan before 9/11. 

Groups that have attacked us, as well—Pakistan Taliban is now attacking us. The Islamic Jihad Union tried to attack us at Ramstein 

Air Force Base in 2007. So it is not just about Al Qaeda. It is about 

a lot of other jihadist groups which are now on the Pakistan side 

of the Afghan border. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Well, I would just say to that, there are a lot of 

other places that they can go and train, and there are a lot of ways 

to eliminate them from training that doesn’t require us to have 

140,000 people on the ground. 
15 

I don’t know if the other gentleman had a comment to that question. And I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, if I am taking a little bit too 

long, but I think it is an important question to ask. 

Mr. JENKINS. First, I tend to be ferociously focused on Al Qaeda 

and, therefore, will not argue against the fact that the invasion of 

Iraq and the subsequent insurgency there was a costly distraction 

and certainly won’t defend that. 

But the fact is, we went into Afghanistan for a purpose, we are 

there for a continued purpose: to prevent the return of Al Qaeda 

to that area, which I believe they would benefit from. 

However, having said that, I don’t think it is a matter of needing 

140,000 troops. If we choose to do it that way, yes, we need 140,000 

troops. I do think we have to lower our expectations of what we can 

achieve. We do want to keep a presence in the area. I think we can 

do more with local forces and Special Forces, which could significantly reduce the footprint of the Americans and the cost. 

I hesitate—I mean, I am a veteran of Vietnam, and one is always 

hesitant about bringing up an historical example from Vietnam as 

anything positive. But in Vietnam, with 2,000 Special Forces, we 

fielded an army, not the South Vietnamese Army but something 

called the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, of 50,000 tribesmen— 

2,000 soldiers. Those tribesmen were extremely effective because 

they were local soldiers and knew the territory. 

I think we have to move in the direction of greater reliance on 

local forces, tribal forces, Special Forces, and Special Operations, 

which will reduce the need for the presence of 100,000 American 

soldiers. 

We are also going to have to lower our expectations somewhat. 

We are not going to win a war or, as Dr. Gorka says, turn Afghanistan into Switzerland. What we are talking about is managing a 

very turbulent situation to ensure it does not permit an Al Qaeda 

comeback. That doesn’t take 100,000 American troops. That is 

doing something different. 

So we shouldn’t get wrapped around the number. We should 

think about how we configure our forces to achieve our long-term 

goals, doing something that is sustainable. What we have now is 

not sustainable. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. 

And thank you for the indulgence, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. I appreciate the gentlelady’s questions. 

Let me turn back to a couple of issues that have come up that 

I want to ask you all a little more about. 

One is the Arab Spring. You have all spoken favorably of it. 

Other people write that—building on the idea that it has displaced 

people who were helping us fight Al Qaeda, and also, though, expressing the concern that it has built up expectations among the 

populations which cannot be achieved, and so, in that discontent, 

there will be an even bigger breeding ground for Al Qaeda and that 

sort of ideology. I think one of you said a while ago, you know, this 

sort of ideology becomes kind of like flypaper on whatever people’s 

disappointments may be stuck on. 

So my question is, is the Arab Spring and the changes that are 

going on there a uniformly good thing, or does it really present 
16 

some downsides when looking at it from a fight-against-terrorism 

perspective? 

Mr. JENKINS. There are both upsides and downsides. 

On the one hand, this is a positive development, certainly with 

regard to—I think all of us agree—with regard to the relevancy of 

Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, as I mentioned before, can benefit from the 

short-term turmoil. 

In the longer term, there are a number of things that can happen 

that are going to be potentially negative. One is that the expectations of the people are not going to be fulfilled. It is going to lead 

to frustration. And that could provide some opportunities for Al 

Qaeda. 

It is also likely that, whatever new governments emerge in these 

countries, counterterrorism is not going to be at the top of their 

agenda. And, therefore, it can’t be the single currency with which 

we interact. So our diplomacy in these places is going to have to 

be very adept at addressing the needs of these new governments— 

and, hopefully, more democratic governments, less autocratic than 

they have been—and, at the same time, not simply gauging them 

solely on their performance of where they put counterterrorism on 

their agenda. They are going to have other political and economic 

issues to address, and we ought to be able to help them address 

those. 

Mr. BERGEN. You know, Czar Nicholas II in Russia in 1916, you 

know, certainly didn’t know that, in 2 years, not only he would be 

dead but Lenin would be ruling in his place. So, I mean, revolutions—the whole point about revolutions is they are not predictable. So we don’t know what is going to happen. 

That said, going to the chairman’s direct question, Al Qaeda was 

really incubated by these authoritarian regimes. I mean, it is not 

an accident that so many of them are Saudis, Yemenis, and Egyptians. It was these particular circumstances of authoritarian regimes in these countries that produced this ideology. Sayyid Qutb, 

their Lenin, came out of the Egyptian prison system. Ayman alZawahiri himself, bin Laden himself came out of Saudi Arabia. And 

so, the fact that there is a real ideological counternarrative to the 

authoritarian regimes in which Al Qaeda isn’t playing a role is not 

to be discounted. No one is calling for a Taliban-style theocracy in 

any of these countries, which is what Al Qaeda really wants. 

That said, there are opportunities. The most obvious one is in 

southern Yemen, which, if you were to think about a country which 

looks most like pre-9/11 Afghanistan, southern Yemen would be 

that place. And already Al Qaeda has taken control of a town. So 

they will obviously try to take control of places they can. But in the 

long term, this is very, very poor, bad for them. 

And one final point on this. It was only posthumously that bin 

Laden ever commented on the Arab Spring, in a tape that we have 

now recovered. He commented on the most minor news developments in the Muslim world. We have, like, 35 statements from him 

since 9/11. And he didn’t comment because it was very hard for 

him to know what to say about this thing which was happening 

without him, his foot soldiers, or his ideas as being part of the 

whole kind of event. 
17 

Dr. GORKA. Mr. Bergen is absolutely correct that revolutions can 

go either way. We can have the revolution in 1917 create the greatest threat to Western civilization for the next 70 years, or we can 

have the revolution of 1776 create the greatest tribute to liberty 

and democracy that there ever has been. So the evidence is out 

right now. 

But the question is, what does the direction of a revolution depend upon? Two things. It depends upon the conditions and the 

building blocks in the country where the revolution occurs and, secondly, the ideology of that elite, which drives events after the violence has occurred. 

Now, in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East, what 

we have is we have conditions which are not favorable to the establishment of well-functioning democracies because we don’t have 

civil society there. It has to be built. I spent 15 years of my life 

in a post-dictatorial country, and I have seen that, no matter how 

nice the constitution, how many political parties there are, how 

many private media franchises exist, if the political culture of democracy isn’t there, these are all window-dressing. 

Secondly is the question of ideology. The problem with the events 

of the Arab Spring is that there may be a temporary, vast swell 

of rejection of dictatorial regimes or quasi-authoritarian regimes. 

But what is the alternative? Democracy is not a shake-and-bake effort. And, unfortunately, in countries such as Egypt, there is only 

one organized alternative to the dictatorship, and that is an organization that, since 1928, has a game plan, that has a playbook, and 

that is the Muslim Brotherhood. 

And the Muslim Brotherhood has a very famous saying, ‘‘One 

man, one vote, once.’’ If that is the only tangible, well-thought-out 

ideology in this country, then we may have problems in the future. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you all. 

I would yield to Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank our panel for being here today and apologize 

that I wasn’t here at the beginning of the hearing. I was with Director Panetta at his farewell meeting before the Intelligence Committee. So I appreciate your being here today, and if some of my 

questions have already been asked, again, I apologize in advance. 

But if we could, just turning to the wave of revolution that is 

sweeping across the Middle East, considering the current and future transnational terrorist threats, is there a particular region 

that is more problematic than others? Indonesia, South America, 

the Middle East, Africa? What, basically, also, the effect of the 

Arab Spring had in our counterterrorism efforts? 

Those two areas, those two questions. 

Mr. JENKINS. If I understand the question correctly, Mr. Langevin, the areas that are of greatest concern, most problematic, is 

the focus. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Right. And then what effect has the Arab Spring 

had on our counterterrorism efforts, would be the—— 

Mr. JENKINS. I mean, clearly, I think there would be consensus 

that Yemen is the most chaotic situation and it is also the country 

where Al Qaeda is very well-situated. It is absolutely unclear how 

things will unfold in that particular country. That certainly could 
18 

be a center of future Al Qaeda activity. And we have already seen 

that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been very effective in 

its communications and its determination to attack U.S. targets. 

So, outside of Afghanistan/Pakistan area, which we already have 

addressed, I would put Yemen very high on the list. 

I don’t want to ignore Afghanistan or Pakistan. Pakistan—put 

aside Afghanistan for a moment—Pakistan is undergoing a slow 

radicalization process. Aside from the insurgent threat, aside from 

the terrorist threat, within Pakistan society, within the Pakistan 

military, there is evidence of growing radicalization. So that would 

be high on the list. 

Among the countries of North Africa and the Middle East, Libya, 

again, chaotic situation there; hard to see what the outcome would 

be. The fighting there could persist for a long period of time. And 

it is not clear, in that case, whether or not Al Qaeda could find 

some type of foothold there. 

The final one I would probably add to the mix would be Syria, 

where the government has thus far resorted to brutal repression. 

But there is a society where, if we again saw it descend into a civil 

war situation or sectarian conflict, where Al Qaeda could find, 

again, some ability to purchase space at the edge of that situation. 

So there are a number of spots that relate to that which I think 

are very problematic. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Let me go back to Pakistan for a second and talk 

about the radicalization that you have seen there. 

Some would suggest, obviously, that, initially, Al Qaeda enjoyed 

a great deal of support in Pakistan. And, over the years, for a variety of reasons, including the trouble that Al Qaeda, in a sense, has 

brought to Pakistan, that that support had dwindled. And now you 

seem to be saying that maybe radicalization, maybe support for Al 

Qaeda is increasing? Is that the case? And does that threaten the 

current—to what degree does it threaten the current government 

in Pakistan? 

Mr. JENKINS. The radicalization is not specifically—it is more 

complex than Al Qaeda. So it is not that the population is moving 

toward a pro-Al Qaeda position, but simply that the society itself 

is becoming, or at least portions of it, are becoming more radical 

in their views, more hostile toward the United States, facing some 

very, very serious problems in terms of economic problems, demographic problems. 

And what we have seen which I think is a cause for concern is, 

in some of these recent attacks that have occurred—for example, 

the most recent major attack at the Pakistan major naval base— 

and some of these others, is that it appears that there was some 

degree of inside assistance to those attacks. 

And so it is not simply, where is Pakistan on the scale of proor anti-Al Qaeda, but, rather, for other more complex reasons, a 

radicalization that is taking place that could lead to some very serious problems in the country. So, even taking Al Qaeda out of the 

equation, Pakistan is problematic. 

Mr. BERGEN. I just wanted to inject some good news into all this. 

I mean, the most populous Muslim country, of course, is Indonesia. 

And amongst a lot of bad news that we have heard, you know, the 

Al Qaeda affiliate there is basically on life support. Because it has 
19 

killed a lot of Indonesian civilians, the Indonesian Government has 

taken a very aggressive stance against it. 

And just to pick up on the Pakistan issue, you know, the recent 

Pew poll shows the United States is at 12 percent favorable. Usually, we get about 15, 20 percent. Anti-Americanism in Pakistan, 

which I think is part of this radicalization picture—not just about 

Al Qaeda, I agree with Mr. Jenkins—is really a problem that we 

need to kind of confront and think about very seriously. 

Obviously, there is no appetite in Congress for additional aid to 

Pakistan, and, in fact, there is no appetite in Pakistan for aid from 

the United States. Very little of it actually gets disbursed because 

of all the caveats and reporting requirements. 

But I think a discussion in Congress about some kind of greater 

trade agreement with Pakistan—they really want access to our 

markets, not handouts. Sixty percent of Pakistani manufacturing is 

textiles. We have quite punitive tariffs on Pakistani textiles compared to other countries like France. And this is, of course, something that has been long discussed. 

But if we are thinking about trying to have more of a strategic, 

real partnership with Pakistan, with Pakistan’s people, not with its 

government or military, a more trade-based arrangement is the 

way to go, similar to things that we have discussed about Colombia, that we might have in place for Egypt in the future, and other 

countries. 

Dr. GORKA. I would agree with Mr. Jenkins, that, despite whatever is happening in the Arab Spring events, that Pakistan remains of primary concern, for the reasons he noted. 

But if we looked solely to the Middle East, then it is Egypt, I 

think, that perhaps is the most potentially deleterious to U.S. national interests. If the actions of the military council could still 

make moves for the Muslim Brotherhood easier, such an early election, such as amendments to the constitution, with the history that 

Egypt has for being, as Mr. Berger mentioned, the hotbed of Al 

Qaeda ideology in recent years, then that would be the country I 

would look at the most closely. 

On a technical issue, when it comes to polling data, one has to 

be incredibly cautious with any polling data executed in Muslim or 

Arab nations. These are not as reliable as polling data in other 

countries. A lot depends upon who is asking the question, what nationality they are, what language they speak. So even Pew polls 

can be potentially misleading with regards to attitudes to America 

or the West. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

My time has expired. But if you could get back to us for the 

record on the second half of my question, what effect has the Arab 

Spring had on our counterterrorism efforts, I would appreciate 

that. 

[The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

Mr. THORNBERRY. And we had some other discussion on that, too, 

so I appreciate—altogether, I think it is an important question. 

Mr. Johnson, do you have other questions? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, I would. 
20 

Quickly, if I could get into this issue of Pakistan. How important 

is Pakistan to our decision-making when it comes to withdrawal 

from Afghanistan, and why? 

Mr. BERGEN. Do the thought experiment where Iranian nuclear 

scientists have met with bin Laden to discuss nuclear weapons and 

Al Qaeda was headquartered in Iran and the Taliban was 

headquartered in Iran, we would have gone to war with Iran after 

9/11. Of course, it was Pakistan where his nuclear scientists were 

meeting with bin Laden, Pakistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban 

are headquartered. 

So Pakistan is just absolutely essential to this whole discussion. 

We can’t invade Pakistan. They have nuclear weapons and 500,000 

soldiers. But what they decide in their strategic calculus is key to 

our national security. 

And I think it is important to just put yourselves in their shoes 

for a minute. They have lost 3,000 soldiers in the fight against the 

Taliban, which is more than the United States and NATO [North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization] combined have done in Afghanistan. 

And so they feel that they have done quite a lot. And, certainly, 

they have done serious military operations in southern Waziristan 

and Swat. The question is, you know, what more are they going to 

do? They are quite tired of being told by us, ‘‘You need to do more.’’ 

And that is why I think, you know, this issue of anti-Americanism and strategic partnership with them, a real strategic partnership is important, because, you know, whether accepting Dr. 

Gorka’s caveat about polling, the fact is that Pakistan is probably 

one of the most anti-American countries in the world. And that 

does not help us. 

And if we can get Pakistan to be part of the post-2014 Afghanistan settlement in a way that acknowledges that they have real 

concerns about what the post-2014 settlement looks like and their 

role in it, and if we can make them more of a strategic partner 

through trade with us, I think that that will go a long way to kind 

of getting rid of some of the underlying issues that create the problems that we are trying to discuss today. 

Dr. GORKA. Pakistan remains absolutely central to this, for all 

the reasons that have already been noted. But I think the most important one is that, at the moment, it is a country that simply has 

one functioning government element, and that is the military—a 

military which now is either seen to be incompetent or complicit 

with Al Qaeda. So the fact that Al Qaeda’s center of gravity has 

shifted there also makes it a vital theater of operations. 

But one thing we have to remember is—and this came out in an 

inference in an earlier discussion—it is not just Al Qaeda. Pakistan 

is now the breeding ground for general Salafi jihadist movements, 

be they ones connected to the government, such as Lashkar-eTaiba, or other organizations. So, as we look at ahead, Pakistan 

may indeed be much more important than Afghanistan in the fight 

against religiously fueled Islamic extremism. 

Mr. JENKINS. If I can just add a note by way of a paradox here. 

While Pakistanis may be increasingly anti-American and while, 

certainly, the Pakistani Government is increasingly opposed to U.S. 

counterterrorist activity in Pakistan, at the same time the Pakistani leadership is concerned that we will walk away from Afghani-
21 

stan, as we did before, leaving them with a huge mess on their 

frontier. And they are hedging their bets. 

So, on the one hand, while they dislike our activities, on the 

other hand they worry about what will happen if we precipitously 

depart and leave them to deal with a chaotic situation in Afghanistan which certainly has already spilled over onto their borders. 

And that is the problem we have with Pakistan, that we have a 

country that is driven by a number of existential fears. I mean, 

they fear the Indians. They fear our friendship with India. They 

worry that the United States is a threat to their national security. 

They worry that there will be a chaos in Afghanistan which will 

affect them. They worry about the internal dynamics that we have 

been discussing. They worry about insurgencies in Baluchistan. 

This is a country that has been driven since its creation and increasingly in the last decade by overwhelming existential fears 

about their survival as a nation. And that makes them extremely 

difficult to deal with. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. 

I think we are down to a minute or two on the clock on the floor. 

But, Ms. Davis, if you would like to ask other questions? I may 

hang for a little longer, but I wanted to alert you on what the situation is. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Maybe I will just make this easy. 

Is there one lesson that you see that we have had great difficulty 

learning from these conflicts? 

Mr. JENKINS. I will be very brief. 

Americans typically undertake very ambitious efforts. And even 

efforts that we start out sometimes as being very precisely targeted 

have a way of becoming ambitious efforts. We believe that if we 

pour resources into a problem, we can get it done with, breathe a 

sigh of relief, go back to status quo antebellum. 

We don’t get that here. And, therefore, coming back to probably 

the essential point I would make is, what Americans have to learn 

how to do is to really learn how to last for the long haul. Because 

the long haul, in this particular situation, is a given. And we are 

going to have to adjust our resources and our objectives to something that we can sustain. 

Mr. BERGEN. You know, I think there is a lot of good news in the 

last 10 years. The United States is a learning organization, sort of 

country. And the people in it, they learn from their mistakes. So 

we kind of made a set of mistakes in Iraq, which we then kind of— 

you know, a lot of good decisions were then made. Similarly in Afghanistan, we are kind of making the right set of decisions. You 

know, Winston Churchill’s famous line, ‘‘The Americans will always 

do the right thing after they have exhausted every other possibility.’’ And I think that is the case. 

And the point is, the enemy is actually not like that, so Al Qaeda 

doesn’t learn from its mistakes. You know, it made a huge strategic 

error of attacking us on 9/11, which didn’t get its strategic aim of 

regime change in the Middle East to Taliban-style theocracies. It 

also destroyed Al Qaeda, the organization, more or less. ‘‘The 

Base,’’ in Arabic, lost its base in Afghanistan. And they continue 

to regard us as the main enemy. And a rational actor would say, 

‘‘Hey, attacking the United States is really, actually, a very bad 
22 

idea. Let’s just go back to do things more doable,’’ sort of trying to 

create a Taliban-style theocracy in Egypt or something like that. 

But they are not going to do that. 

So the good news is that we have learned from our mistakes over 

time and the Al Qaeda hasn’t. And that means that, inevitably, 

they are going to, you know, just—they are small men on the 

wrong side of history, as President Obama referred to them. And 

history has just really sped up for them, with the death of bin 

Laden and the Arab Spring. 

Dr. GORKA. Thank you for your very pointed question. 

As a foreigner working for the U.S. Government, I realized something very quickly as a problem in the last 10 years, and that is 

the focus on the kinetic. The United States national security establishment, for obvious reasons, focuses on the violent aspects of this 

war. Whether it is two towers of flame crashing to the ground, 

whether it is IEDs [improvised explosive devices] or snipers, it focuses on the obvious. 

We need to understand the nonkinetic aspects of this war. We 

need to understand how a serving major in the United States Army 

can decide that his loyalty is with jihadi ideology and killing his 

fellow servicemen and their families as opposed to the constitution 

he swore to uphold. That is what I mean by the ideological, nonkinetic part of this war. And we are just beginning, after a decade, 

to understand or begin to address this question. So I think it is the 

focus on the kinetic we need to move away from. 

But thank you for the question. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. I thank the gentlelady. 

And, again, time has expired, but I want to miss a vote, if necessary, because I want to follow up on actually that point. 

I have been in several meetings the past couple weeks with 

Members where this idea of the ideological war, the extent to 

which what we call, some call, ‘‘strategic communications’’ makes 

a difference. And so I would like to get from each of you your 

thoughts on that aspect of this struggle against terrorism. 

And not to go through it, but some people argue this has to be 

fought out within the Islamic faith, that we have no role in it. 

Other people say that, you know, we have a much greater role and 

we have diffuse messages coming out and nobody knows really— 

you know, so we are not doing anything very well. 

But not just doing talking about broadcasts, the ideological part 

of this struggle I would appreciate your comments on. 

Mr. BERGEN. Go ahead. 

Mr. JENKINS. There are going to be two views on this. And this 

is really a bit of a difference of views on this. 

One is the view that, look, terrorists themselves do have tactical 

successes. 9/11 was a tactical success. These other terrorists attacks were tactical successes, operational successes. But, as I think 

we all agree, that the attack of 9/11 backfired for Al Qaeda and created consequences that it didn’t expect, and that Al Qaeda’s wanton slaughter of fellow Muslims has backfired on it, and that, 

therefore, what terrorists cannot do is translate their tactical successes into strategic successes. And this is the inherent limitations 

of terrorism as a strategy. 
23 

And, therefore, the consequence for us is that, if we maintain our 

capability to blunt them operationally and, in the process, hold on 

to our values, that, ultimately, our institutions and our values will 

triumph over this. So it is not that we have to intervene directly 

to counter their message. Now, that doesn’t negate tactical psychological operations and doing other things to create difficulties. 

What it does require, however, is a continued adherence to and 

projection of American values. Now, we did this during the cold 

war, and we devoted a lot more resources to it than we do today. 

The issue there was—I mean, we had libraries where people could 

in quiet read about Thomas Jefferson and things of this sort, and 

it had a great impact. It was useful stuff. 

The other view is that we have to intervene more actively to directly take on the jihadist ideology. I am not so certain about that. 

First of all, the problem we have is that, with the massive 

amount of communications going on in the world and the United 

States being a media-drenched society and, indeed, a source of a 

huge export of various things in communications, good and bad, 

that to try to craft a specific counter-jihadist message in this is, 

first of all, going to be lost in the noise and, second of all, is intervening in an area where we don’t really have the credentials to do 

so. And, therefore, we might instead take a very cautious approach 

and say, we are Americans, this is what we believe, we will stop 

terrorist attacks, and within the Muslim community they have to 

deal with Al Qaeda themselves. 

Now, I realize limitations of polling, but I think Peter Bergen’s 

polls will also show that, within the Muslim community worldwide 

and in the United States, even those who may be deeply resentful 

of certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy at the same time think Al 

Qaeda and its leaders are a bunch of crackpots. 

So there isn’t that kind of widespread support. They are not getting traction. And they place a great deal of emphasis on this Internet campaign to recruit a lot more retail outlets in the form of Web 

sites, American-born salesmen like Gadahn and Awlaki and 

Hammami, but they are not selling a lot of cars. And that is important. 

Mr. BERGEN. And following up on what Mr. Jenkins said, yeah, 

the ideology is sort of imploding around the Muslim world. And for 

the United States to engage in the debate, there are two problems, 

really. One is the lack-of-knowledge problem. We are not Islamic 

scholars. Two, the kiss-of-death problem, which is, anything associated particularly with the United States Government is problematic. 

Which is not to say that you can’t say certain things. And I think 

there is one area where we can just hammer away in the kind of 

ideological struggle, which is on the issue of killing Muslim civilians. It is a tough one sometimes, because we are killing Muslim 

civilians in Afghanistan, although that number is going down pretty substantially. But this is really their Achilles’ heel. 

And I remember the first time the U.S. Government, as one, really reacted. It was during the Bush administration where, you may 

recall, two women, one with mental problems, went into the central 

market in Baghdad, killed a hundred people in a suicide attack. 
24 

Everybody in the U.S. Government, from Condoleezza Rice down, 

immediately said, you know, this is against Islam, a bad thing. 

And so, if you can kind of hammer away on this issue of them 

killing a lot of Muslim civilians, that is pretty effective. To get into 

an arcane debate about Islamic theology won’t work. 

Dr. GORKA. The attacks of September 11th may have backfired 

for Al Qaeda but not for Al Qaeda’s ideology. On the contrary, the 

events of September the 11th branded this ideology as something 

powerful because it could take violence to the heart of the United 

States. 

With regard to the question of, are we allowed to be part of this 

discourse inside Islam, after September the 11th of course we do. 

We have a dog in this fight, and we have every right to be part 

of that discourse. 

I think we have to remember that the cold war, for all its thousands of nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and battle tanks 

across the German plain, was won in the ideational plane. It was 

won primarily on the grounds of ideology. And we need to do the 

same kinds of things we did then today. 

I agree that we have to start with who we are, as Mr. Jenkins 

said. We have to be clear about what it is that these individuals 

threaten in this Nation, why it is constitutional values that are undermined by anybody who believes in this ideology. And that Congress also has some work to do on this, because not only do we 

have confusion in the executive, but we have very out-of-date acts, 

such as the Smith-Mundt Act, which makes informational campaigns in this Internet age almost impossible for members of the 

national security domain. 

Lastly, on the issue of our current label for this part of the war, 

which is countering violent extremism, this is deleterious to the national security of the United States. We did not say when we were 

fighting the Ku Klux Klan that we are fighting violent extremism. 

We said that these were white supremacists and racists. You have 

to be clear about the ideology and what they say about themselves. 

This is an ideology of global jihad, not a grab bag of violent extremism. 

So let’s begin to be specific, and let’s start to take the fight to 

the enemy on the ideological plane as well as the kinetic. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, thank you all. I think this is a good start 

for our inquiry as to 10 years after 9/11. I appreciate all your insights and your, again, flexibility on timing. 

And we will have future hearings to explore these ideas further, 

but, again, thank you all. 

With that, the hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:27 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

JUNE 22, 2011 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JUNE 22, 2011 

(29) 
30 
31 
32 
33 
34 
35 
36 
37 
38 
39 
40 
41 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 
47 
48 
49 
50 
51 
52 
53 
54 
55 
56 
57 
58 
59 
60 
61 
62 
63 
64 
65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
70 
71 
72 
73 
74 
75 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JUNE 22, 2011 

(79) 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

JUNE 22, 2011 

(93) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. THORNBERRY 

Mr. THORNBERRY. To mitigate the threat we are facing—what would an effective 

U.S. information operations and strategic communication strategy look like? 

Dr. GORKA. In the war of ideas we need to fundamentally readjust our priorities. 

Our focus should be on making the enemy ‘‘look bad’’ as opposed to making the 

world ‘‘love America.’’ 

Those that hate America and wish to hurt us will not be affected by any information or communications campaign aimed directly at them. Likewise, those that already have an affinity for ‘things American,’ be it our music or durable goods, need 

not be targeted by USG information efforts. Instead, as is always the case, we must 

concentrate on the middle ground, those who do not lean decisively either way but 

who could provide a passive yet permissive environment for AQAM to operate within. 

As a result our strategic communications and information operations should target the putative authenticity and credibility of AQAM and its leaders, such as 

Zawahiri and Awlaki. 

We must not shy away from the religious nature of their ideology. We must take 

active measures to question: 

• Their authority to represent Muslims • Their credentials to speak on theological and religious matters • Why the majority of all AQAM’s victims are in fact Muslims. 

For example, we should sponsor billboards across AFG and IRQ, (but also in the 

US) that simply portray the headshots of Muslim victims of al Qaeda with the name 

and date of death under each face. 

To be even more effective, we should rediscover and deploy those information operations techniques that were so well utilized by the US during the Cold War. We 

should discretely invest in scholars, activists and organizations within the Muslim 

and Arab world that are already fighting the war of ideas against the Global 

Jihadists but whom we have not embraced due to our reluctance to engage in the 

religious debate. This reluctance is thanks to a political correctness that denies our 

right to engage in the religious debate despite that fact that those that murdered 

thousands of Americans on September 11th 2001 (and at Fort Hood) said they did 

so in the name of Allah. 

One of the first such groups we should support are the Khoranists, such as Ibn 

Warraq and Christopher Luxembourg, who are risking their lives by working to 

spread the message that the violent sections of the Khoran, so powerfully used by 

the Global Jihadists, must be reinterpreted and understood as inadmissible in a 

modern world that respects human rights and freedom of conscience. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. In your written testimony, you say that we have forgotten certain ‘‘cardinal rules of effective information and psychological operations.’’ Please expand. How do we improve upon our ability to win the ‘‘battle of the narrative’’ and 

limit our enemies’ ability to recruit? 

Dr. GORKA. One cannot communicate strategically unless one has a strategy to 

communicate. This sounds obvious, but one of the reasons AQAM still dominates the 

information agenda is that they have a clear strategy: the establishment of a Global 

Caliphate under Sharia law, whilst we do not. 

Take for example our actions in Central Asia and the Middle East in the last ten 

years. We first deployed to destroy al Qaeda. Then we stated that Afghanistan must 

be a democracy. Then we said Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam 

Hussein must be deposed and Iraq made a democracy. Now we say that we must 

leave despite neither of those nations being stable democracies (and Afghanistan unlikely to ever be one). 

Then in response to the Arab Spring we demonstrated greater confusion. First the 

administration was conspicuous by its absence, despite being nominally committed 

to democracy’s spread in the region. Then we finally insist that Mubarak must step 

down despite America being his staunch ally for three decades. After he does so, 

the administration incredibly decides to open talks with the Muslim Brotherhood 

and thus formally recognize an organization that in its official charter is committed 

to the spread of Sharia law and the use of jihad. At the same time nothing is being 
94 

done to stop the massacre of Syrians by their own president. This confusion speaks 

to strategic confusion. When an administration, Republican or Democrat, is confused 

about what its strategic goals are, effective strategic communications and information operations will be impossible. 

Therefore America must decide: 

• Why do we care about the Middle East? • Is democracy important to the region? • If so, what are we prepared to do about organizations—and governments—committed to the establishment of repressive religious regimes? 

These questions however cannot be answered if we do not first obtain clarity on 

the following questions: 

I. Who exactly is the current enemy? 

What are it characteristics? 

What is its strategy? 

II. What do we as a nation represent, what are our core values? 

Which are the norms we deem universal and non-negotiable and that we demand our allies adhere to? 

III. What is our strategy to defeat the enemy? 

What is our definition of victory? 

In the tenth year of the war on terror these questions should be—must be—answerable. 

If these strategic level questions are answered and US policy is consistent with 

the answers so given, our information campaigns and psychological operations will 

have a solid foundation which will guide our specific actions. Additionally we must 

identify the particular weaknesses of the Global Jihadist movement and exploit 

them, just as we identified the weaknesses of the international Communist movement and exploited them to win the last ideological war, the Cold War. 

(However, much of this is a moot point if Congress does not repeal or amend the 

Smith Mundt Act of 1948, specifically its prohibition on information designed for foreign audiences reaching US audiences, a restriction that in the age of the internet 

is completely unrealistic.) 

For further details on how to proceed, please refer to the chapter I co-authored 

with David Kilcullen, entitled ‘‘Who’s Winning the Battle for Narrative? Al Qaida 

versus the United States and its Allies,’’ in the book Influence Warfare, edited by 

James J.F. Forest, (Westport: CT, Praeger Security International, 2009, 229–24) 

that I have attached, and the wonderful paper by Robert R. Reilly Ideas Matter: Restoring the Content of Public Diplomacy, Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 

24, July 27th 2009, available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/07/ 

Ideas-Matter-Restoring-the-Content-of-Public-Diplomacy and the chapter by Dr. 

John Lenczowski, formerly of the NSC, in the forthcoming book: Fighting the Ideological War: Strategies For Defeating Al Qaeda, from the Westminster Institute in 

McLean, VA. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 79.] 

Mr. THORNBERRY. You work with and consult our Special Operations Forces. In 

your conversations with them, what are some of their larger concerns? Outside the 

major theaters of battle that are Iraq and Afghanistan, do they have the authorities 

they need to effectively counter terrorist threats? How can we improve? 

Dr. GORKA. The major concern I hear repeatedly from the Special Operations 

Forces I have the privilege to meet and train is two-fold. It concerns the lack of strategic clarity and guidance provided to operators and the related issue of inadequate 

honesty and detailed information on the broader aspects and characteristics of the 

enemy. 

Our military, SOF included, are without peer today. However, even the best fighting forces in the world can be squandered and misused. Less than a month ago I 

was briefing a large contingent of SOF operators prior to their deployment. During 

the Q and A session after my brief, one of them actually said in front of his colleagues that he still did not know why he was fighting this war, that no one had 

told him. This is inexcusable. 

At the same time I have been routinely informed that the kinds of briefings I am 

asked to provide—understanding the enemy, penetrating his strategic culture and 

mind-set—are very few and far between. 

Although the number of specialists able to summarize and discuss the religiouslydriven ideology that is Global Jihad are few in number, they could be used more 

effectively, especially to ‘train the trainers’ and so provide deeper understanding of 

Salafi Jihadism to larger numbers of SOF (and General Purpose Forces). 

The one message I try to leave with these brave men whenever I meet them is 

that today no-one has the luxury of being ‘‘just a shooter,’’ or ‘‘just an analyst’’ or 
95 

strategist. The enemy is made up of multitasking operator/thinkers. We must be the 

same. However excellent our SOF are on the range and in tactical operations in theater, they must also be able to understand the enemy and how he thinks. This dual 

capacity is crucial to victory against any irregular enemy threat group. 

As to Title Ten versus Title Fifty authorities, I am less concerned by the question 

of legal mandates than of doctrinal approaches. The United States will in the future 

be faced more often by irregular threats than conventional ones. The data of the 

last decades makes this incontrovertible. Nevertheless, we cannot become involved 

in CT/COIN operations all across the globe, at least not in the way we have executed them in IRQ and AFG. 

An objective study of Irregular Warfare campaigns of the last century demonstrates that the odds are against large-scale foreign interventions. We have seen 

much greater success in theatres where we use a ‘‘small-footprint’’ approach to the 

employment of Special Operations Forces. El Salvador is the quintessential example. Despite, or rather because of, the congressionally mandated cap of 50 US advisers at any one time being deployed to that country, we truly stuck to the Special 

Operations mantra of ‘‘by, with and through,’’ a guiding principle we have all too 

often ignored in the last 10 years (especially in Afghanistan). 

Therefore, authorities are less of an issue than is our doctrinal (and strategic) approach. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

Mr. WITTMAN. Former detainees are actively speaking out about their experiences 

at Guantanamo, airing grievances and allegations of mistreatment in an effort to 

promote the jihadist cause. Uthman al-Ghamdi’s memoir in Inspire magazine is an 

example of al-Qai’da’s latest propaganda strategy. Is this messaging campaign having a measurable impact, either on new recruits, or encouraging other former detainees to return to the fight? 

Mr. BERGEN. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. As we consider the question, ‘‘What does today’s threat look like,’’ 

I am interested in better understanding how GTMO detainees factor into this equation. For example, it is well known that two former detainees currently hold leadership positions in AQAP in Yemen. Can you address this issue and discuss how such 

detainees impact the threat we currently face from a global perspective? 

Mr. BERGEN. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Æ