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53–568 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–174] 

LESSONS FOR COUNTERING AL QA’IDA 

AND THE WAY AHEAD 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND 

CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 
(II) 

TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

SUBCOMMITTEE 

ADAM SMITH, Washington, Chairman 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia 

MARK E. UDALL, Colorado 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

THELMA DRAKE, Virginia 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

BILL NATTER, Professional Staff Member 

ALEX KUGAJEVSKY, Professional Staff Member 

ANDREW TABLER, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2008 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, September 18, 2008, Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida and the 

Way Ahead ............................................................................................................ 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, September 18, 2008 ............................................................................... 33 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 

LESSONS FOR COUNTERING AL QA’IDA AND THE WAY AHEAD 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Chairman, Terrorism, 

Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee ................................. 1 

Thornberry, Hon. Mac, a Representative from Texas, Ranking Member, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee .................... 2 

WITNESSES 

Arquilla, Dr. John, Professor, Department of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School, Author of ‘‘Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation 

of the American Military’’ .................................................................................... 9 

Jones, Dr. Seth G., Political Scientist, RAND Corporation, Author of ‘‘How 

Terrorist Groups End’’ and ‘‘Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan’’ ................... 3 

Scheuer, Dr. Michael F., Senior Fellow, Jamestown Foundation, Author of 

‘‘Through Our Enemies’ Eyes,’’ ‘‘Imperial Hubris’’ and ‘‘Marching Toward 

Hell’’ ...................................................................................................................... 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Arquilla, Dr. John ............................................................................................. 61 

Jones, Dr. Seth G. ............................................................................................ 38 

Scheuer, Dr. Michael F. ................................................................................... 56 

Smith, Hon. Adam ............................................................................................ 37 

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) 

LESSONS FOR COUNTERING AL QA’IDA 

AND THE WAY AHEAD 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES

SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Thursday, September 18, 2008. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Smith (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON, CHAIRMAN, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. SMITH. Good morning. We will call the subcommittee meeting to order. I thank Members and witnesses for being here today. 

I will start with an opening statement and turn it over to Mr. 

Thornberry for any opening remarks and then go directly to our 

witnesses. 

Thank you all for joining us this morning. I really look forward 

to the testimony this morning. We have a very distinguished and 

thoughtful panel on the issues around counterterrorism and how 

the struggle against al Qa’ida and violent extremists is going, the 

various component pieces of that struggle, certainly within the 

military, how we are doing, what is going on with the various 

pieces that the military is responsible for. And I think there are 

several issues that are going to be very interesting to hear about. 

We have really become very focused on a counterinsurgency 

counterterrorism strategy. Are we building a military to accommodate that strategy in terms of the training, in terms of the hardware, in terms of the very way the military is structured? How can 

we do a better job of that to respond to what is clearly going to be 

the fight we face now and for the foreseeable future? 

Those are some very significant issues that I think our witnesses 

can help us address. I do think there is a lot that we are doing 

right. I myself and many on the subcommittee have had the opportunity to go around the world and tour some of our special operators to see what Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has 

been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think on the direct action piece we have made a lot of correct decisions. The fusion cells 

that have been developed to bring together all the various elements, both of the military and of the intelligence community and 

elsewhere, to make sure that everybody has the best information 

possible to find, fix and finish on the targets that we are trying to 

find, the high-value targets, has been very successful. Certainly it 
2 

has been very successful in Iraq and other parts of the world as 

well. And I really applaud our special operators and the military 

for the job they are doing there. 

The areas where this subcommittee thinks we can do better and 

do more work on is on the indirect piece and also on strategic communications, the indirect piece being more classic counterinsurgency, stopping insurgencies before they take hold. Right now the 

best model for that, in terms of what we are doing here in the U.S., 

I believe, is in the southern Philippines where we have successfully 

worked with the Philippine Government, with the locals in the 

southern islands to build up their capabilities by, through and with 

working with them, not having the U.S. take the lead but in training the local folks to counter the insurgency and also providing the 

proper development in those communities to stop the insurgency 

before it takes hold, to basically make the local citizens happy with 

their environments so they are less willing to follow an insurgency. 

I think that model needs to be replicated and used across the 

broader spectrum of the theaters that we face insurgencies in. 

And lastly is on the strategic communications piece. Because at 

the end of the day, this is an ideological struggle as much, if not 

more, than it is a military struggle. We can do a very effective job 

of direct action of identifying the top violent extremists, the top 

leaders and al Qa’ida in the Taliban, in the insurgencies in Iraq, 

in capturing or killing them and thereby destabilizing their efforts. 

But if more continue to be created, if more terrorists, if more insurgents are generated, then we will simply be fighting on a treadmill 

that is going faster and faster and we won’t get there. 

We have to win the broader ideological war, to stop radicalization 

before it occurs, and I believe we need to do a better job of figuring 

out precisely what our message needs to be and who to work with 

our various partners in the world to make sure that that message 

gets out consistently and effectively. 

I know Mr. Thornberry has done a lot of work in this area, has 

been very focused on it, and I appreciate his efforts on that. 

Those are some of the issues. Certainly there are more. Our witnesses will touch on those. To give us an idea going forward, you 

know, as we look to a new Administration, to a new Congress, 

what is our best and wisest counterterrorism strategy and what do 

we need to do to get there. I am very much looking forward to the 

testimony of our witnesses. And with that, I will turn it over to Mr. 

Thornberry for any opening remarks he has. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. MAC THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM TEXAS, RANKING MEMBER, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And first I would 

like to say I appreciate the subject of this hearing. Too often in 

Congress we review and criticize what has been done in the past 

rather than try to learn lessons from the past to help light the way 

for what should be done in the future. And that is what this hearing, and I hope others, is all about. Because however you feel about 

how we got here, we are where we are. And the question is, now 
3 

what? And that, as you said, is for a new Administration and new 

Congress to help navigate. 

Now we have a very different situation in Iraq than we have had 

in some time. As somebody said on television recently, the strategy 

has been wildly successful beyond what anybody expected. And yet 

we have al Qa’ida regrouping in an area of the world that is not 

really governed by any sovereign nation. Yesterday we got reminders again that al Qa’ida or related groups are still intent on attacking U.S. interests and embassies throughout the world. So the situation is changing, and yet I do believe there are lessons to be 

learned that help light the way ahead. 

You have assembled a group of diverse and interesting witnesses. 

I have read their testimony, and I have read books from each of 

them in the past. I am not sure I fully agree with what any of them 

say completely, but that is what makes for an interesting hearing. 

I know they will have interesting and provocative things to say. So 

I look forward to the exchange and their testimony. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. I will introduce the panel 

first. Then we will go left to right, starting with Dr. Jones. First 

on the panel is Dr. Seth Jones, who has done a number of things 

but most recently with the RAND study on counterterrorism, how 

terrorist groups end, basically doing an exhaustive analysis of, I 

think, well over 600 terrorist groups that have been around since 

the late 1960’s and examining how you defeat them, how you ultimately win. Very much looking forward to the testimony. I have 

read the study. I think it raises some very, very interesting issues 

and look forward to hearing what you have to say on that. 

Then we have Dr. Michael Scheuer, who spent 22 years in the 

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and has also written extensively 

on radical Islam, how we are combating it and where we are not 

succeeding and some ideas for how to go about doing that. I look 

forward to his testimony. 

And then Dr. Arquilla, who has also written extensively on military transformation, and most recently in ‘‘Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of the American Military,’’ a book which I 

am actually reading right now and find fascinating. It is a great 

history, and I think lays out well some of the battles, whenever you 

are trying to make change within any military but specifically 

within the United States military to accommodate, to basically recognize emerging threats and change to meet them. 

I look forward to all your testimony, and we will start with Dr. 

Jones. 

STATEMENT OF DR. SETH G. JONES, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, 

RAND CORPORATION, AUTHOR OF ‘‘HOW TERRORIST 

GROUPS END’’ AND ‘‘COUNTERINSURGENCY IN AFGHANISTAN’’ 

Dr. JONES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 

very much, members of the subcommittee. I will keep my comments very brief and lay out in general the results of the study we 

looked at. 

What was particularly interesting for us in doing this work was 

seven years after the September 11 attacks we found it striking 

that neither in the policy community nor in the government com-
4 

munity there has been very little work on how groups historically 

have ended. We found that a little troubling in trying to design an 

effective counterterrorism strategy without having any sense of historically, for example, how groups have ended in the past. 

So what we did is then we compiled a list of about 648 groups 

since 1968. We looked at a range of factors that could have contributed to the end of those groups that ended. And what we found was 

there are two major reasons how terrorist groups have historically 

ended. 

One is what we call groups deciding to adopt nonviolent tactics 

and join the political process. There are a range of groups, the 

Farabundo Martı ́ Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, which 

have reached a negotiated settlement with the government. Second, 

we found slightly less from a percentage standpoint but quite significant what you might call clandestine operations, local police 

and intelligence agencies, in some cases Special Forces arresting or 

killing key members of the group. We found other instruments less 

useful as the primary instrument in the defeat of terrorist organizations, whether it was large numbers of military forces, economic 

instruments, in some cases the victory of terrorist groups. 

And again, in any counterterrorist strategy, what is clear is there 

are a number of instruments that will be used. What we looked at 

was which of these—in any counterterrorism campaign, one has to 

prioritize. What we found again is a couple of things. One is the 

maximization of what we call clandestine operations, use of intelligence assets and special operations assets, leveraging local actors; 

that is, minimizing large U.S. military footprint on the ground and 

maximizing local efforts. What we found when we looked at some 

of the data was, when we looked at some of the early successes 

against al Qa’ida in Pakistan, we found the most successful efforts 

tended to be clandestine operations with CIA, in some cases the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or U.S. military working 

with local Pakistani police and intelligence agencies in capturing or 

killing key members of the organization. Even when we looked 

pretty carefully at the Iraqi case most recently in places like 

Anbar, we found the most successful efforts not maximizing U.S. 

boots on the ground but, in the Anbar case, taking advantage of animosity against al Qa’ida in Iraq, supporting Sunnis, massing in 

the Ramadi police force, for example, and then providing support, 

placing tanks around the house of sheikhs, maximizing CIA assistance to some of the troops on the ground. And again the Anbar success, I think, was primarily one that you would call unconventional 

or surrogate warfare, not in maximizing U.S. forces on the ground. 

So just to conclude, again in the cases that we looked at, what 

we found was both in the U.S. experience and in the experience of 

how terrorist groups have ended, we found two major reasons. First 

was a political settlement that we found that was most likely to be 

successful when a group has very minimal aims. With the current 

situation against al Qa’ida, they do not have minimal aims. They 

are searching to overthrow multiple regimes. Therefore, a political 

settlement in our view is simply not possible, especially with key 

members of the group. 

That pushes us then towards much more clandestine operations 

rather than the overt use of military force, and we argue that that 
5 

strategy has actually—when it has been used, has been more successful in places like Anbar or even in the Pakistani or Afghan case 

in 2001 and 2002. 

I would be pleased to take additional questions and answers on 

this. But I am going to conclude my remarks. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Jones can be found in the Appendix on page 38.] 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Scheuer. 

STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL F. SCHEUER, SENIOR FELLOW, 

JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION, AUTHOR OF ‘‘THROUGH OUR ENEMIES’ EYES,’’ ‘‘IMPERIAL HUBRIS’’ AND ‘‘MARCHING TOWARD HELL’’ 

Dr. SCHEUER. Good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Chairman, thank 

you for asking me today. I will just briefly read my statement. 

There is no better way to summarize the current position of al 

Qa’ida and its allies than to quote the words President Lincoln 

wrote in 1864. ‘‘Distrust the union’s growing strength even after 

three years of increasingly bloody war with the confederacy.’’ In his 

annual message to Congress of 6 December, 1864, Mr. Lincoln, in 

words that Osama bin Laden could use today, told the Congress 

that ‘‘The most important fact remains demonstrated, that we have 

more men now than we had when the war began, that we are not 

exhausted, nor in the process of exhaustion, that we are gaining 

strength and may, if need be, maintain this contest indefinitely.’’ 

As America enters the eighth autumn of the war, the reality of 

a vital and undefeated Islamist enemy is apparent, and the reason 

for this fact likewise lies in plain sight. The government of the 

United States continues to fight an Islamist terrorist enemy in al 

Qa’ida and its allies that does not exist in the form Washington 

portrays, is not motivated by the factors Washington ascribes to it, 

and it will not be defeated by the military forces and political tools 

Washington has deployed against it. 

Neither al Qa’ida nor its main allies, for example, are terrorist 

groups. They are insurgent organizations modeled on the Islamist 

groups that defeated the Red Army in Afghanistan in 1989. In comparison to their forbearers, al Qa’ida and its allies are larger, more 

sophisticated, better led and funded, more geographically dispersed, and more technologically proficient. All of these attributes 

make them radically different from any violent group that the 

United States Government has previously crammed into its definition of terrorist organizations. 

Perhaps the clearest but largely ignored sign that America is not 

confronting a terrorist group like the Japanese Red Army or geriatric Palestinian group like the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP–GC), lies in the area of 

leadership succession. Since 2001, Americans have been able to flip 

on the radio almost any morning and learn that another al Qa’ida 

number two, number three or number four leader has been killed 

or captured in Afghanistan, Iraq or some other place. In addition, 

the CIA’s tremendously successful rendition program has removed 

a sizable number of al Qa’ida leaders from the battlefield. And yet 

despite these successes, Admiral McConnell and General Hayden 
6 

have accurately said that al Qa’ida is as lethal and cohesive as ever 

and pose as a clear and present danger to the continental United 

States. 

How can this be so? Well, there are several reasons. But a major 

one is that al Qa’ida is an insurgent group that because it always 

faces a far more powerful enemy puts enormous time and resources 

into succession planning. When a senior al Qa’ida leader is captured or killed, a trained understudy takes his place and the organization proceeds. The new leader may not be as good as his predecessor but neither is he green and he soon gets fully up to mark 

with on-the-job experience. 

No terrorist organization could have absorbed the punishment 

the United States has inflicted on al Qa’ida since 1996 and survived. Indeed, this amount of punishment would have destroyed 

any organization the U.S. Government has accurately defined as a 

terrorist group. 

It is best to think of al Qa’ida as we often think of Lebanese 

Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers. It and they are powerful insurgent 

groups which are able to absorb enormous punishment from nation-state militaries and continue to thrive and attack. And al 

Qa’ida is more powerful and dangerous than either. Because unlike 

Hezbollah and the Tamils, bin Laden’s organization has no return 

address against which the United States can deliver a devastating 

blow. And if I may say parenthetically, recent statements from the 

State Department, the White House, and some congressional offices 

claiming that Hezbollah is more of a threat to America than al 

Qa’ida are inaccurate. Perhaps deliberately so. Such remarks are 

made by those who want to have a war with Iran, those who slavishly make Israel’s agenda their own or those who have both attributes. 

Hezbollah is not an imminent threat to the United States unless 

Washington and/or Israel launch an attack on Iran. Then, however, 

it would pose a substantial domestic threat because our open borders have made it impossible for law enforcement agencies at any 

level of government to know the number and location of Hezbollah 

operatives in this country at any given time. 

To go on, long before 9/11 and certainly since, the U.S. Government under both parties has refused to accept that the main motivation of al Qa’ida and its allies and the main source of their appeal among Muslims is their perception that U.S. foreign policy is 

a deliberate attack on their faith and on its followers. From our enemies’ perspective, therefore, this is preeminently a religious war, 

notwithstanding the blather to the contrary by Western politicians, 

academics, policymakers and pundits. And sadly for Americans, the 

Islamist leaders, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the 

others have left U.S. officials with no excuse for failing to understand the Mujahideen’s motivation. Not since General Giap and Ho 

Chi Minh has America had an enemy that has so fully, frankly and 

consistently explained his motivation for waging war against the 

United States. And yet the U.S. Government has been and is led 

by men and women from both parties who ignore the Islamists’ 

words and in essence tell Americans to ignore what they say and 

listen only to us. It might well be suggested that for a group of 

powerful individuals who have been reliably unable to differentiate 
7 

between Shias and Sunnis that this is a lot to ask Americans to 

accept on trust. 

What factors then are not among the main motivations of our 

Islamist enemies? First, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and the 

lack of positive future prospects are not major drivers of Islamist 

violence against the United States and its allies. The resurrection 

of Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes to conduct a contemporary and 

endlessly expensive new deal in the Islamic world would at best 

produced Mujahideen with better teeth and excellent postwar employment prospects. 

Hatred for America’s liberties, freedoms, elections, women in the 

workplace and after work pitchers of Budweiser do not motivate 

our Islamist enemies. They would have none of these things in 

their country, but they likewise would be unable to attract fighters 

ready to die in a campaign to destroy Anheuser-Busch or to terminate the practice of early presidential primaries in Iowa. 

A universal desire to establish a worldwide caliphate governed by 

what many Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as the 

many U.S. citizens more interested in Israel’s survival than America’s, like to call Islamofascism also is not a main motivator of our 

Islamist enemies. The caliphate is indeed a goal of bin Laden and 

most Islamist leaders because God has said the world will eventually be entirely Muslim. But they know that its attainment will not 

occur in their or their great-great-grandson’s lifetime, just as Christians know that a world in which all would love thy neighbor and 

turn the other cheek is light-years over the horizon. 

This said, it is correct to say that the world is rife with 

Islamofascists, but they are almost all the allies of the United 

States and ruling such countries as Egypt, Kuwait, the United 

Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and as we soon shall see in Iraq. 

To return to where we began, the main motivation of our 

Islamist enemies is U.S. foreign policy and its impact in the Muslim world. And the strongest such motivators are the following: 

U.S. and Western exploitation of Muslim energy resources, the U.S. 

and Western military and civilian presence on the Arabian Peninsula, unqualified U.S. support for Israel, U.S. support for other 

powers that oppress Muslims, especially China, India and Russia, 

the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim 

countries, and U.S. support for the police states that govern much 

of the Arab and Islamic world. 

Because Washington applies an inappropriate definition to America’s Islamist enemies, terrorists versus insurgents, and deliberately misrepresents their motivation, freedom-haters vice policyhaters, it is not surprising that the military and political tools with 

which Washington is waging war are failing. 

In the starkest terms, U.S. policymakers mistakenly believe that 

the war they are fighting is something of a super law enforcement 

struggle in which, as we have heard from all Presidents over two 

decades, America will prevail by bringing our enemies to justice 

one man at a time. This is both lunacy and self-defeating. There 

are far too many of the enemy, and their numbers are growing, to 

capture or kill one at a time. 

As effective as U.S. Special Forces operations and the CIA’s rendition program have been and will be, neither is a war winner. 
8 

Both entities are being worn out by overuse, both are being weakened to steady losses to higher paying and less dangerous jobs in 

private sector companies and neither can kill the enemy at anything approaching adequate numbers. 

Which leads us to what probably is the U.S. Government’s number one military problem: A steady stubborn refusal to accept that 

war has not changed since Alexander and Caesar and that it will 

not change; that the surest route to victory lies in quickly and efficiently killing enough enemy fighters and their supporters and destroying enough of the infrastructure of both to make them see that 

the wages of attacking America approach annihilation; and that 

U.S. Armed Forces are enlisted, trained and armed to kill America’s enemies and to secure our country, not to bring democracy to 

foreigners who do not want it, secularism to people who believe it 

is the road to hell, and protection to both sides in an Arab-Israeli 

religious war where the United States has no genuine interest at 

stake. 

To define at this time the way ahead for the structure and composition of U.S. forces in our current war against al Qa’ida and its 

allies, therefore, is a very hard, if not nearly impossible, task. But 

because Washington is fighting an enemy whose motivation it willfully ignores, whose numbers it grossly underestimates and whose 

ability to defeat or evade the tools of war it has chosen to halfheartedly use, we should not be too quick to decide that the current 

mix of U.S. forces is inappropriate. We clearly are going to need 

conventional, nuclear and Special Forces for this foreseeable future. 

China, Russia and other nation states still potentially threaten the 

United States in scenarios that would require large U.S. conventional and nuclear capabilities for purposes of deterrence or actual 

warfare. 

In addition, our dependence on foreign oil suppliers means that 

there are places in the world, such as Saudi Arabia’s eastern province or the Gulf of Guinea-Niger Delta region, where interventions 

requiring the use of large conventional forces could quickly and unexpectedly arise. At this point in our history, it would be most unwise not to maintain the bulk of the U.S. military in conventional 

form. 

We should also learn from the military experiences of the Clinton 

and Bush Administrations. These have proven that Special Forces 

operations and CIA covert action programs cannot win wars, conventional or irregular. Those entities remain today what they historically have been, powerful and indispensable adjuncts to overall 

U.S. war-making capabilities. 

As noted, the Clinton and Bush Administrations have ignored 

history and are wearing out both the Special Forces and the CIA 

in wars in which America is barely holding its own. In Afghanistan 

and, as General Petraeus and General Odierno reminded us this 

week in Iraq, a move to expand the size and use of Special Forces 

and the CIA special covert action forces will simply give us more 

excellently trained, extraordinarily capable and wonderfully lethal 

units that still will be unable to win wars for America. 

The wars in America’s future will require conventional forces, 

Special Forces, and a strong and covert action-capable CIA. The appropriate precise and affordable mix of those forces is beyond my 
9 

skill and knowledge base to determine. There does, however, seem 

to be an increasing danger that too many resources will be put into 

building forces designed to fight irregular wars which are conflicts 

where even successful Special Forces and CIA operations have already proven insufficient to deliver a definitive victory, which of 

course must be the sole goal America pursues when it goes to war. 

This is in no way meant to denigrate the men and women who 

lead and staff those forces. It is simply to say that despite their 

courageous and frequently successful efforts, al Qa’ida is fully 

meeting the constituent goals of its strategy for driving the United 

States as far as possible out of the Muslim world. Those are to help 

lead the United States to bankruptcy, to force the spread of U.S. 

military and intelligence forces to the point where they lack flexibility and reserves, and to cause a deterioration in domestic political cohesion, as did the North Vietnamese. 

And no matter what the mix of U.S. military and intelligence 

forces is ultimately decided upon, their ability to bring victory will 

depend on U.S. politicians mustering the moral courage to tell 

Americans that their Armed Forces are built for the annihilating 

America’s enemies. The very fact that we are meeting here today 

on the eve of the eighth autumn of this war is largely the result 

of the lack of political will in both parties to unleash the historically unprecedented military power American taxpayers have sacrificed to pay for over many decades. 

Finally, it is worth considering whether it might be smarter, 

cheaper and less bloody to change the failed foreign policies that 

have brought war with al Qa’ida and its Islamist enemies. Rather 

than maintaining those war-motivating policies as divine writ and 

building an ever-larger military to fight the ever-expanding wars 

that writ produces, energy self-sufficiency, a fixed and even obdurate determination to stay out of other people’s religious wars and 

a much more narrowly defined set of genuine U.S. national interests would require far less frequent resort to war and would be 

much more consonant with the timelessly wise foreign policy goals 

of our country’s Founding Fathers. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Scheuer can be found in the Appendix on page 56.] 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN ARQUILLA, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS, NAVAL POSTGRADUATE 

SCHOOL, AUTHOR OF ‘‘WORST ENEMY: THE RELUCTANT 

TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY’’ 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members. I 

am grateful for your invitation to be with you today, and I am honored to serve on this panel with these two remarkable scholars 

whose work proves once again that writing is fundamentally an act 

of courage. 

I am going to try to convince you in a few moments here to take 

networks seriously. I think that is one of the words we have used 

a lot since 9/11, and I don’t think we have acted enough on our understanding of the rise of networks. In fact, I would put it this way: 

The war we are in now is the first great armed conflict between 
10 

nations and networks. And the fundamental dynamic of our time, 

unlike the Cold War where it was an arms race, the fundamental 

dynamic is now an organizational race to build networks. 

We haven’t defeated our enemy because they have continued to 

build their networks. They have made them looser, more distributed, more cleverly designed. We, in turn, have at the organizational level been creating great new institutions. The Department 

of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would be two examples of organizational change on our 

part. I would say we are behind in the organizational race. There 

are some important points that I will get to in a few moments that 

we have shown an interest in organizational redesign, but not very 

often. I think Mr. Smith has already pointed out some of the Special Operations and intelligence assets that are bringing together 

people. 

The classic network concept is small pieces loosely joined. Lots 

and lots of little units of action, not a lot of central control, and a 

great deal of coordination. That is why we are having such a hard 

time against the terrorists. It is their form of organization. I am 

here to suggest that we get in that organizational race. 

If there were any other reason to consider this seriously, I think 

all of them would pale next to the simple fact that our war on terror has become terror’s war on us over the past seven years. How 

many acts of significant terror were there in 2007, in 2006? According to our own State Department statistics, in excess of 10,000. 

How many were there in 2001, even counting the events of September until the end of the year? A few hundred. And any way you 

slice this, there has been a staggering increase. And the curious 

irony of course is that most of the acts of terror in the world are 

in the places where we have deployed most of our Armed Forces, 

which suggests also that maybe we need to be thinking about getting into the organizational race as a military as well. Maybe we 

could be using these forces differently. 

And so my few remarks here, I am going to suggest to you that 

the networks have proven their ability to stay on their feet, to absorb our heavy and traditional blows. And I think the problem here 

is actually something Mr. Smith raised earlier. We are actually 

taking an indirect approach in this war, not in terms of the tactics. 

Tactics can be indirect, working with Green Berets or direct with 

columns or tanks. But they can be strategically indirect. We have 

tried to go after networks by attacking other nations. That means 

the networks get to slip our punches. We can invade in Iraq or another member of an axis of evil, and that won’t even muss the hair 

of the networks. 

So in that respect I would suggest we need to move back to more 

direct means; that is, go straight after the network. How would you 

do this? How would you do this with an American military whose 

fundamental problem is one of scaling? We are a military of a few 

large units. We have a few divisions. A handful of brigades. And 

even with the changes made today to the brigade combat team or 

the brigade unit of action, we are talking about going in the last 

7 years from about 33 of these 7 years ago to around 50 today to 

maybe 100 in the next few years. 
11 

What is the real power of a network? It is the small pieces loosely joined. Look what 19 attackers did on 9/11. And later that same 

autumn, that first autumn of war that Mike speaks of, just 11 Special Forces, A-teams drove the Taliban and al Qa’ida out of power. 

Two thousand and one was a remarkable year for networks. Our 

enemy has taken lessons from that. I think we run the risk of forgetting even our recent history, much less our earlier history. 

And so I am going to suggest that there is a pressing need for 

us to take networks seriously, particularly in the areas of organization and doctrine. How would you move the military we have away 

from the few and the large to the many and the small? The simple 

way would be to take the brigade word out. Just combat teams, 

units of action. Don’t put ‘‘brigade’’ in front of it. We are fundamentally brigadist in future, and that guarantees that we are always 

going to have small numbers of units of action. 

What are we doing in Iraq, where I do think it has been recognized things are indeed much better than they were? That is fundamentally a network story. We created lots of small pieces loosely 

joined in these more than 100 outposts in the country. And how 

many are there? Is it a brigade? No. It is usually a platoon, about 

40 to 50 soldiers. And they make the Iraqis they are with fight a 

lot better, and they make the people living nearby more willing to 

provide intelligence. This is the way ahead. The outpost. 

And also the other part of networking is social, the outreach. All 

23 tribes in Anbar Province signed up to work with us when this 

offered was made. And what this says of course is that war is not 

just a numbers game. We didn’t need five additional brigades to do 

that. Even today with all these outposts and all this outreach going 

on, only five percent of the troops in country are in those outposts. 

We always had plenty enough to do this. 

And this is true in Afghanistan as well, by the way, where I 

think things went off the rails when we became more centralized. 

Why, for example is, is there a Burger King in Bagram? I want to 

know that. I just had a nephew come back from there. He is a Marine colonel at Central Command (CENTCOM), a strategic planner 

for Afghanistan. He said, there is a lot of kit in Bagram. I said, 

well, how about the Seventh Special Forces group with which I 

work? And he said, where are they? Do you mean the Seventh Marines? I said no. See, that is the organizational problem, small 

pieces loosely joined. We have an organizational problem in Afghanistan where the conventional forces don’t even talk with the 

Special Forces, much less the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

(NATO) forces, overlapping, interlocking, all the words you associate with traditional bureaucratic gridlock. It is out in the field. 

Okay. So my story is, if you take networks seriously, you are 

going to reorganize. You are going to use tactics that are more 

similar to the opponent’s. That is, you are going to strike here, 

there, everywhere from every direction by surprise, yes. We can 

still engage in surprise attacks if we operate in this fashion. And 

the hunter networks that I began to lobby for—I guess ‘‘lobby’’ is 

not the right word to use here—that I began to advocate four years 

ago. I guess Bob Woodward has said publicly—— 
12 

Mr. SMITH. I think, Dr. Arquilla, I think actually ‘‘lobby’’ and 

‘‘advocate’’ kind of mean the same thing. It is just that ‘‘lobby’’ has 

a bad connotation, but ‘‘lobby’’ is okay. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Thank you, sir. I feel better. 

Four years ago I said we need to build these small teams and 

set them loose. And actually I am meeting with some of those team 

members a little later today and I am so proud of what they have 

done. They show we can wage network warfare. We can have these 

small pieces loosely joined. And they can win. 

And I think the lesson for this time, this Information Age is the 

opposite one of the lesson for military affairs from the Industrial 

Age. In the age of mass production, you wanted big, big units. You 

wanted lots of numbers, you were going to have a lot of attrition. 

So you needed to have things replaced and keep a steady flow. You 

wanted the liberty ship to come off the flow, off the waves every 

36 hours. In the Information Age, it is all about connectivity. That 

is where the power comes from. 

So I would move our military to a much more networked structure, have this doctrine of the hunter networks that are out there 

doing so much good. And what is the big objection to it that I face 

when I take the Metro a few stops the other way? The big objection 

is, well, wait a minute, there might be another World War II come 

along. Maybe it will be World War III. And this fear of the return 

of conventional war I think is the central obstruction to the way 

ahead here. 

And all I will say is I think there are two ways of dealing with 

this problem that make sense. There is one that doesn’t, which is 

just to grow the Special Forces. I think that is a bad idea because 

it will have quality assurance problems for the Special Forces, and 

it will drain off good troops from the rest of the military. You need 

to think about the military elite as a laboratory for the whole 

Armed Forces. That is, they are doing something that is very cutting edge. We don’t want everybody to be Special Forces, but we 

want people increasingly to be able to do special things. And that 

is what is going on in Iraq. It is what can go on in Afghanistan. 

It can be done without putting more masses, more numbers in 

play. 

So how do you deal with the World War II threat? Two sensible 

ways. One is rebalancing, if I can—is that a word? If it is not, I 

will make it up. How would you rebalance this force? Right now 

most of the active force is full of people who do conventional things, 

tanks, artillery, et cetera. The reserves on the other hand are full 

of lots of people who have the irregular sorts of skills needed in 

counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, including a lot of special 

operations, psychological operations specialists, civil affairs folks. 

At one time in Iraq, about half our troops were reservists. Let’s 

move the people with their specialties into a smaller active force 

and move the traditional fighters into a reserve where, by the way, 

we are going to save all sorts of money doing that, and we will 

make ourselves more able to fight the wars that are actually out 

there. 

There are over two dozen wars going on in the world today. How 

many of them are conventional wars? None. Except when we do 
13 

conventional things. So we would be prepared with rebalancing if 

World War II ever came back. 

The second solution is this: Bet that the network will make 

mincemeat of a traditional massed force. The million man North 

Korean Army. I would much rather have 100 small units of action 

backed by American air power taking them down, channelizing 

their movements in the mountain passes and destroying them rather than having a repeat of the Korean War fought 57, 58 years ago, 

which is a bloody stalemate. I don’t think you need to respond to 

a conventional threat in a conventional way; that is, if you take 

networks seriously. 

I want to beg your indulgence for just one little moment here to 

read from something about our forces 250 years ago just to prove 

that we can do military transformation. We began that great struggle against the French empire in North America, losing a lot of conventional battles. By the end of the war, the British hierarchy was 

convinced, you know, these bush fighters have something going for 

them. We need to do irregular things. And so they marched to 

Montreal in the last campaigns, the year after the fall of Quebec. 

Fred Anderson writes in the Crucible of War: ‘‘This was no conventional army. Its tactics had undergone a transformation in 

America. For three years the redcoats had been firing at marks and 

were now accustomed to aiming rather than merely leveling their 

muskets at the enemy. Forces included fewer grenadiers, many 

more light infantry, whole battalions of little wiry men able to 

move quickly through the woods and ranger companies to make the 

raids and reconnaissance patrols.’’ 

Now we need the little wiry men and women who will traverse 

the world and tear apart these terror networks node by node, cell 

by cell. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Arquilla can be found in the Appendix on page 61.] 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that testimony. Very interesting. Not all in agreement, which makes for an 

interesting discussion. We are going to stick to the five-minute rule 

on questions. I will start. And even as I announce that rule, it is 

going to be difficult to get the question out and much less the answer. 

But Dr. Scheuer, I was interested in your comments. At first 

blush, I didn’t agree with a fair number of them. But I know you 

know far more about this than I do. So I wanted to explore some 

of those aspects of it. 

First, as far as the conventional aspect of the warfare, you seem 

to be arguing that the enemy is out there. We know what they 

want. They basically think that we are waging war on Islam and 

they are fighting back. So we need basically to go out, find them 

and kill them. And it is going to take a conventional structure to 

do that. I guess a couple things that I am puzzled about in that 

analysis is, number one, al Qa’ida and the various groups who were 

affiliated with them don’t mass in a conventional way. Where do 

we go in the world to have a conventional war with al Qa’ida? They 

seem to fit a model more closely to my mind with what Dr. Arquilla 

is saying. So I don’t see where we send a couple of brigades to go 
14 

up against them. It doesn’t seem to work that way. It does seem 

like much more of an irregular battle. 

And as far as our foreign policy is concerned, as you mentioned, 

they have both political and religious goals. I think, you know, it 

is not just that they think we are waging a war on Islam. They 

want to establish a specific type of government and society. And 

they think we are getting in the way of them establishing that. 

And the specific type of state society that they are establishing I 

think is a profound threat to us in and of itself. The Taliban-style 

government. I don’t think we can simply pull back and say, as long 

as they are not messing with us and simply forming these states 

it is okay. It is not. 

And I guess the last question is, on ideology, as you mentioned, 

you know, we killed the two, three, and four. And I totally agree 

with what you said on them not being a terrorist network, that 

they are an insurgent group. But it seems to me that we do have 

to focus a little bit on what makes people follow this ideology. Certainly there are the hard core, the hard core. They are there. They 

have developed it, but why are they finding suicide bombers? Why 

are they able to just go through northwest Pakistan? And I read 

an article, basically they got people who have got no prospects, no 

hopes and say hey, strap this on. We will take care of your family. 

You will go to heaven. 

It seems to me that defeating the ideology does require some of 

this more, if you will, muddle-headed thinking about poverty and 

ideology and why do they follow them. That is three areas. I took 

half the time. We will hopefully come back to it. I want to make 

sure I give you time to touch on those three questions. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Conventional forces certainly can’t be used in 

every occasion. But we unnecessarily were not prepared for 9/11, 

were unable to move any amount of forces that would make any 

difference to Afghanistan in time to keep the enemy from going to 

Iran, going to Pakistan, going further into the Gulf. You have to 

use the military forces you have when you have them. The absurdity of sending a few hundred Special Forces and a few hundred CIA 

officers to conquer and hold someplace that is bigger than Texas 

is a piece of madness. 

Mr. SMITH. But that wasn’t because we didn’t have the conventional forces. It was because we couldn’t move them fast enough. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Sir? 

Mr. SMITH. It wasn’t because we didn’t have the conventional 

forces. It was because we couldn’t move them fast enough. 

Dr. SCHEUER. It was because the Pentagon had failed immeasurably in not preparing for a war that had been declared on us in 

1996 and repeated again in 1998. But that does not in itself prove 

that conventional force won’t be of tremendous use. We seem tremendously border challenged. The only way to control Afghanistan 

and build the democracy that people think can be built there is to 

close the border with Pakistan. It is the only way to do it. And you 

are not going to do that with Special Forces and CIA people. 

What we are talking about here is this return to law enforcement, Special Forces and CIA, which is exactly what we did under 

the Clinton Administration. And by 1997 it was very clear that 
15 

that combination of forces could not cope with what al Qa’ida was 

producing. 

On the point of ideology, sir, the way to gut the ideology of the 

enemy is to disengage from the Middle East as far as we can and 

let them kill each other, because that is where the problem is, 

within Islamic civilization and not against us. It sort of hurts our 

ego to realize that we are not the main enemy here. We are the 

people that are in the way of letting the enemy get at his main 

enemy, the Saudis, the Mubaraks, the Israelis. 

Mr. SMITH. I don’t think that is an ego issue. I think that is a 

legitimate concern about, you know, how do we interact—forget the 

oil for the moment. If you have a Taliban-style state, as you do to 

some degree in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Jordan, in Iraq, if basically the Middle East is taken over by that, then I think the concern is, number one, they won’t be satisfied with that. And I think 

there is every reason to believe that is the case. If you read what 

they write. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Well, that basically, sir, is a racist kind of an approach to things. Because to assume that they are going to become 

a caliphate of 1.4 billion Muslim automatons is to just simply ignore the fact that Islamic culture is as fractured, as diverse as we 

are. 

Mr. SMITH. But I don’t think al Qa’ida represents Islamic culture. 

But I am talking about if they actually controlled those governments. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Well, first of all, sir, Afghanistan was much more 

stable under the Taliban. And the second point I would make is 

who cares what happens in Afghanistan once we take care of the 

terrorist problem? And you say, move the question away from oil. 

And the fact is, we can’t. We have no possibility to change or have 

options in the Middle East as long as we are dependent on oil. We 

are going to be continuing to support the Saudi tyranny. 

Mr. SMITH. On that point, I agree with you completely and certainly the policy needs to change. 

Dr. SCHEUER. And regarding Iran, sir, Iran of course is more 

democratic and more participatory in any sense than any of our allies are in the Middle East. So the common wisdom is sometimes 

not quite cogent. 

Mr. SMITH. I see the ideology that Iran houses, or Iran has, is 

more of a threat broadly than that, just personally. But I will yield 

to Mr. Thornberry, and I will try to come back when we are done. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Jones, I was interested in a lot of things in your study. One of the factors—one 

of the things that you found which I don’t recall being in your written testimony was that after studying 648 groups, there are 244 of 

them still going and another 136 that splintered and are still conducting terrorism. So if you take the whole universe of the terrorist 

groups you studied, 59 percent are still terrorists. And so then 

what you narrow down to is the roughly 40 percent that have gone 

away. Why did they go away? And that is where you get the policing and intelligence and other factors. Have I got that about right? 

Dr. JONES. That is correct, yes. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. So maybe I might read that and think, well, 

the terrorist groups that went away maybe were the easiest to get 
16 

rid of. The tougher ones are in the 60 percent that are still conducting terrorist operations. 

Dr. JONES. Well, that would I think be incorrect in one sense because we did actually look separately at all the groups together. 

And actually we found in most cases when groups continued to 

exist it was the wrong strategy that was used. So with some of the 

smaller groups we found that have continued to exist, they have 

often been targeted by large military forces. We found in general 

groups that continue to exist, in looking at why they continue to 

exist, there are a range of factors. One of the biggest actually is 

wrong strategy. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. You said—I acknowledged I think in your testimony—that a political settlement with al Qa’ida is not happening. 

Policing troubles me when I think about al Qa’ida Central in the 

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is essentially 

ungoverned by any country, including Pakistan. Would you agree 

that the policing and intelligence is something you know that takes 

some time, particularly when you are in a tribal setting? It is a 

particularly difficult area with which to use these factors that you 

identified as the most successful. 

Dr. JONES. I would say after—I have spent three different periods in 2008 on the border, on the Afghan-Pakistani border with 

U.S. forces. I would say the biggest problem is not the capacity of 

local police and intelligence forces on the ground on the Pakistani 

side because there have been efforts to build up the—through coalition support funds, for example, Frontier Corps, which is the paramilitary force on the ground. The biggest challenge of this strategy 

in general is the will of these agencies because they view al Qa’ida 

and many of the militant groups—their objectives are very different from ours. 

So I think the problem we find is not that there are insufficient 

groups on the ground, intelligence and police forces, like the Frontier Corps and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The 

problem ends up being they may not want in some cases to target 

many of the groups we do, including the Taliban. I think that is 

actually the bigger challenge. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Sure. The groups on the ground are sympathetic to them, yeah, which is why they are there. 

Dr. Arquilla, let me—number one, thanks to you, I have taken 

networks seriously for some time, and I appreciate your work in 

that area. But one statement that you make troubles me a little 

bit. You talk about the problematic notion of waging a war of ideas. 

Dr. Jones talks about counterterrorism as much about hearts and 

minds as it is about policing and intelligence. It seems to me you 

are saying that this war of ideas stuff doesn’t really matter. He has 

a different view. Can you explain your opinion and then maybe he 

will have a chance to briefly answer? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Thanks. That is a good question. I think the context of my use of this is that instead of a war of ideas about Islam, 

we need to have a war of ideas about the idea of war. And I have 

got at least one of you to take networks seriously, that war is underway. 

My concern is this about the so-called war of ideas. War is a very 

bad metaphor in the ideological area. You want to convince people, 
17 

you want to persuade. War conjures up notions of coercion or the 

hard sell. We had someone at public diplomacy who was trying to 

sell democracy the same way that you would sell dog food, which 

I guess is what she did at some point in her career. And I think 

the war of ideas is problematic in terms of trying to deal with zealots and at least as I see statistics, about five percent of the Muslim 

world takes the al Qa’ida message pretty seriously. Those folks you 

are not going to get at with a hearts and minds campaign. You are 

going to get at them with a hunter network. 

But I think there is another problem with our war of ideas. We 

want to support democracy and yet as Dr. Scheuer has noted, we 

support all kinds of authoritarianism very comfortably in the Muslim world. So consistency is a very, very big problem for us. 

Another problem with strategic communications is the whole idea 

that your actions communicate, not just what you say, and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and again the support for authoritarian regimes, those are actions that the enemy reads very closely and the 

general public reads very closely. 

Finally, on this point, taking it away from the war metaphor to 

something more communicative in nature, listening is a huge part 

of communications, and I fear that we have done far too little of 

this, and I know that you have had a long interest in David 

Ronfeldt’s and my work in this area of information strategy. And 

so respectfully I suggest that the war metaphor—I do believe that 

the war against al Qa’ida is a real war. They believe it. We had 

better believe it. I am also worried that the notion of a long war 

is—that is the wrong war. If we let them stand on their feet long 

enough, they will get weapons of mass destruction. So let’s build 

networks, hunt them down. 

Many of the things Dr. Jones suggests can work, probably would 

with some elements. That is the other thing. People say, well, you 

can’t negotiate with networks. Sure you can. They have all kinds 

of small pieces loosely joined. You can use salami tactics against 

them. But please, in this ideological area let’s stop talking about 

a war against these folks. Let’s have a discussion, a debate. Let’s 

be consistent. Let’s conform our actions to our beliefs and our declaratory statements. And above all, let’s listen because sometimes 

there is a guide to good policy change in what others are saying. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Mr. Ellsworth. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, gentlemen, for being here. It is a fascinating hearing. You have probably—I assume you have all watched this body over the last couple 

of years, the votes we have taken fund goals to get out of Iraq, Afghanistan. I would be curious. If you switched chairs with us, 

where would you go from here? What would you—as briefly as you 

can sum it up, all three of you, your recommendations to the Congress on how—if you were the decider, and I hate to use that term, 

how would you forge forward with our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan? Dr. Arquilla, if you want to start, we will go the other way. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. I would be happy to. There is a third way in Iraq, 

if one can still use terms like a third way. Don’t just leave. Don’t 

do what we have just done, which is basically stay the course. 

Right, 8,000 troops out is not the answer. 
18 

If I am on your side of the table, what I say is, is you can make 

dramatic reductions. As I said, only a tiny proportion of the forces 

in country are actually in those outposts. That is what made things 

work overnight. Another colleague of mine, a Marine major in the 

audience here, was telling me about his two tours in Iraq. First 

time in 2006, helicopter pilot evacuating the wounded. People with 

their legs blown off every day. Second time through after the 

Awakening started, the outpost and outreach, he was bringing in 

German businessmen with briefcases to meet with sheikhs. So an 

overnight change. That is not the result of five more brigades. It 

is a result of the Awakening. You don’t need war as a numbers 

game. 

It is true in Iraq and it is true in Afghanistan. Build more outposts, do more outreach. Play offense, too. Not just the defensive 

laydown of the outposts and working with the local forces who are 

a lot better with even small groups of our forces. Build more of 

these hunter networks that are out there. They are making a huge, 

huge difference in Iraq, around the world. And despite all the news 

you hear from Afghanistan, I am a little closer to this. We are 

doing some very remarkable things, particularly in the western 

part of Afghanistan. 

So that is my idea. Draw down, but I wouldn’t—you know there 

is a red and blue story here. To get the red side of the house to 

buy into this, I think what you have to acknowledge is that you 

don’t simply announce a date when you leave. The enemy will declare victory. If there is one terrorist left, he will hold up his AK– 

47 and say, we won. That is strategic communications. So keep 

some forces there for an indefinite period with no timeline. That is 

the political compromise. 

I don’t know why you all don’t see it as a perfect storm. We all 

want troops out as much as we all can possibly have them out. But 

we don’t want chaos in the wake of our departure. So let’s not 

leave. Let’s not take everybody out. Let’s keep some force, and I 

think the network gives us that possibility. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Dr. Scheuer, would you like to—— 

Dr. SCHEUER. I am kind of a bear of simple brain or bear of small 

brain. I think the truth is the place to start if you wanted to do 

anything. And the truth is that, with respect, our political leaders 

have been less than frank with the American people for 20 or more 

years. If this war was about our freedoms and our democracies and 

women in the workplace and all those things, this would be a 

minor nuisance. Lethal nuisance but a minor one. This is about exactly what we do in the Muslim world. And none of that said 

means that what we do is wrong. It is simply standing back and 

saying, what is motivating, what is going on? Even someone who 

is I think as misleading as John Esposito on the nature and threat 

from jihad has published, I think, a very useful book that shows 

in the Muslim community around the world maybe 5 percent would 

pick up guns in support of al Qa’ida, but 80 percent of the Muslim 

world, Arab and the rest, believe that our foreign policy is an attack on Islam. And with that kind of support base, we are not in 

for a long war. We are in for an eternal war. 

And so I think that what I would try to do is just simply lay out 

for the American people, you know, here is the cause. If we want 
19 

to maintain those policies, that is fine, that is our prerogative. But 

at least if there was a discussion, sir, we would be on the same 

page. Right now we have stuffed a very busy, very worried electorate with nonsense. They say, oh, they hate the fact my daughter 

goes to university. She is going to go. We are going to fight. That 

is not the way to proceed in this war. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you very much. Do we have time, Mr. 

Chairman, for—— 

Mr. SMITH. Sorry. Dr. Jones has 15 seconds. But I will give him 

a little more. Go ahead. 

Dr. JONES. I will try to be really brief. One needs to ask the 

question, what has been effective so far? There have been pockets 

of effectiveness. I think the answer, going back to my testimony, 

is what has been most effective I think is the leveraging of local 

forces on the ground. This discussion sometimes—we have done it 

already in this testimony—of small numbers of U.S. forces or large 

numbers of U.S. forces, there is a second part of the equation which 

is a local element on the ground which is fundamental. I would say 

we learned successfully in the 2001 period which force took Kabul 

on the ground with local Northern Alliance forces, which forces on 

the ground took Anbar? It was local Sunni forces. I think the steps 

forward are to increasingly ask questions like, with the brigade and 

battalion going into Afghanistan, are they going to be doing direct 

operations or embedding and partnering with local forces on the 

ground? This is a fundamental question. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Mr. Saxton. 

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have a question for Dr. Jones and Dr. Arquilla. And, actually, 

Dr. Jones’s last answer is a great segue into this question. 

As we have heard today, to change the military is a tough job. 

There have been some changes made on the fringe. Dr. Arquilla 

may be able to remind me of the fellow’s name who wrote the book, 

‘‘Transition Under Fire.’’ I can’t remember his name. It was a retired colonel. And he was basically talking about the brigade combat team change, which has been effected to a large degree, but 

that was like pulling teeth to get that done. And we haven’t, obviously, gone far enough. 

So based on what you have seen, Dr. Jones and Dr. Arquilla, of 

the changes that we have made to date and what you think the future looks like in terms of changes that we need to make, how 

would we go forward on a step-by-step basis to create a more effective counterinsurgency organization? 

Dr. JONES. I think, quite simply, probably the best illustration is 

to look at the Marine operations in Fallujah in 2004 and Marine 

operations in Anbar province in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The issue 

is some of the training—which, in my view, was not sufficient 

enough—training that went into incoming Marine forces into Iraq 

to think and work with local actors was fundamental in the shift 

in approach from direct combat operations in Fallujah against an 

enemy, to embedding and working with local forces in Anbar in the 

2006, 2007, and 2008 period. 

So I would say what becomes fundamental is during the training 

process, the education process, including in places like Carlisle, 
20 

how much of the training and education is going into understanding working with local actors on the ground. There is a 

mindset that is fundamentally different. The mindset of a counterinsurgency operation is different from combat. 

So when units prepare to deploy to places like Afghanistan, when 

Marine units or Army units, 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, how 

much are they being trained to go into an unconventional environment and to work and embed with locals? I think we have gone in 

some direction, in this sense, but clearly not enough. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. The U.S. military has a long relationship with irregular warfare. I mentioned the French and Indian War. We won 

the Revolution because of an ability to engage in insurgent operations that exhausted the British. We fought Native Americans for 

most of the 19th century, a lot of irregular warfare, a lot of lessons 

there. The best soldiers in the Civil War were irregulars. 

Then we became a great industrial power, and all this irregular 

capacity began to fall into the background. We had a little harder 

time in the Philippines. We had a hard time, scratching our heads 

as to what to do in a number of Central American interventions, 

in Haiti as well. And by the time Vietnam came along, we decided 

to try to solve the problem with, quote, ‘‘big units’’ rather than the 

small special approach that we used that had been working. 

This is a long debate in the U.S. military. It is an important debate. Militaries are—my book has ‘‘reluctant transformation’’ in 

there because they are reluctant to change. They have to be. They 

fight for the highest stakes: their own lives, their country’s honor, 

and maybe it is survival and the quality of the life in the world 

system. So I respect this reluctance. 

But I do think we need to have this war of ideas about the idea 

of war. We live in a time in which all the wars are irregular. If 

you look back 60 years, you will find that conventional wars are 

less than one in 20 of all the wars that are fought. We have to have 

a capacity for this. 

I would suggest we reach back to our own traditions, light interesting units, the wiry little men traversing the wildernesses of the 

world. That is something we have done before, we can do again. 

The bonus here is I think creating this new, this nimble, this 

networked force is also going to allow us to wage the rare conventional war in an entirely new manner that takes, truly, the military profession into an information age. That is where we are on 

the cusp. 

So I think the beginning is what we are seeing with these small 

units, these outposts, these task forces, these hunter networks. It 

is starting. And I think if we had a hearing on this a few years 

from now, we would see that the progress is even farther down the 

road. So I, sir, am something of an optimistic on this subject. 

Mr. SAXTON. Dr. Arquilla, you said I think in your testimony, 

and I may not have these words exactly right, you said in your testimony that we don’t need to grow the Special Forces, but we need 

more special—— 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Everyone has to do more special things. 

And the Special Forces are a laboratory. They have shown that 

there are things you can do. Most of the hunter networks come out 

of the Special Forces. But the best guy I know who was in Samara 
21 

in Iraq, who worked with the locals, had a small unit, a company 

under his command and pacified an entire area, reached out—I 

don’t think I can say this without being detained—but he reached 

out to some of the insurgent elements, got them working with him. 

This is a tank officer with a degree in animal husbandry from 

Texas A&M. 

I work with these officers every day and have for a couple decades now. They have the capacity to do this. 

So I repeat, sir: I am an optimist. I want to see the whole force 

able to do special things, not just try to wall irregular warfare off 

into something that represents only three or four percent of the 

total force. 

Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding 

this hearing. 

And thanks for each of the witnesses for your remarkable expertise. I find discussions like this very helpful. I wish it could be in 

a little more informal setting, perhaps around a seminar table instead of this hierarchical approach. 

Each of you has very interesting advice, but each of you has now 

formally left government structure. So my main question, I know 

Mr. Scheuer has had, particularly, difficulties with his prior agencies. I loved it when ‘‘Imperial Hubris’’ came out and you were 

anonymous. But I am interested in the ability of a government bureaucracy to accommodate free-thinkers. 

It seems to me that the number-one rule of war is to understand 

the nature of the enemy, and yet that has been a remarkably difficult and controversial role for some of our previous government 

workers, without handicapping your career, in some cases forcing 

you to leave government. 

So if you would care to comment on that, I would appreciate it. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Yes, sir. In my experience, at least at CIA, it was 

a tremendously lively, intellectual place. And being able to express 

your views was always one of the things that I enjoyed about being 

there. I think the real problem is getting the views above, say, the 

level of what would be a lieutenant colonel or a colonel in the military. 

I don’t think there is a lack of brain power in the agency. It is 

more or less an unwillingness to carry bad news to the policymaker. And of course it just so happens that in the Middle East 

there are so many sacrosanct things in the United States Government that even facts are unacceptable, in some ways. In my experience under both Administrations, Democrat and Republican, the 

White House does not want to hear anything negative about the 

Saudis or the Israelis. And so two major players are off the board 

at any kind of an analysis you try to do. 

So, you know, I don’t know exactly what the answer is. My experience is limited to CIA. I found it a very challenging place to work. 

I resigned not because of CIA, but because I thought the 9/11 Commission had been a disaster for America by not finding anyone responsible for anything. I regret every day—or, at least I miss every 

day working there. 
22 

But I really think that the problem is that kind of mid-level, 

upper-mid-level, and upper-level people who actually carry the 

message to the President or to the Cabinet. You have to have a 

very tough, thick skin, and you have to not want to be the friend. 

You have to carry the bad news and say, ‘‘Whatever you think, Mr. 

President, and ultimately it is up to you. But whatever you think, 

your support for, say, Mr. Mubarak’s government is one of the 

main causes that rally people to whatever negative anti-American 

force there is.’’ And until you get that through, the senior level of 

the government is not even going to entertain that idea. 

Mr. COOPER. Would either of you two gentlemen care to comment? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. I would just remind Mr. Cooper that I work for 

the Navy. I am—— 

Mr. COOPER. Yeah, but you are in the Postgraduate School. If 

there is a free-thinking part, presumably that would be it. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Well, look, I enjoy the protections of civil service 

and tenure, but I have never felt the need to invoke any of them. 

It is a very lively environment. As I said, I spent a lot of time with 

a lot of our units in many places, and I have to tell you, there is 

a great deal of ferment. What boils down, when they come out at 

the end of the day and say, okay, we can only pull 8,000 out, there 

is a lively debate behind that. There is a big debate. 

I used to work a little bit with General Wayne Downing, who 

was a senior adviser to the President on counterterrorism. Before 

the invasion of Iraq, there were huge debates about whether to do 

it at all. If so, could we do it small and special, Afghanistan-plus 

instead of Desert Storm-minus. These are huge debates, and you 

never get to hear about them. 

And I think it is an organizational problem. What does the hierarchy do? It boils everything down to, here is this little output at 

the end of the day: 8,000 troops. A network approach—and I think 

this would be something that Congress and both parties should 

support and the American people should demand—is a sort of open 

airing of the ideas. In a network, all the ideas are out there. 

And I think, if there is one thing a National Security Advisor 

could do, it would be, instead of boiling away all the other options, 

to present them. There are a lot of fine thinkers in the military; 

we call them today the iron majors, the people in mid-career who, 

10 years from now, are going to have stars. One of the iron majors 

is in the audience here listening this morning. Ten years from now, 

just where they are going, there aren’t any roads. This is going to 

get very, very interesting. 

And so I would just suggest that even in the official world there 

is a lot of interesting debate. It is our organizational structures 

that prevent that from bubbling up to the top. 

Mr. COOPER. Dr. Arquilla, would you have a similar freedom of 

speech if you were a line officer? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. There are rules that are slightly more restrictive 

but not entirely so. And I have had serving officers working with 

me who have written articles. In fact, one of them, he did a seminar with me last summer, wrote a paper for it that was extremely 

challenging of the existing structure of things. And that paper he 
23 

submitted to one of the leading strategic journals, Comparative 

Strategy, and it appeared in the latest issue. 

There is a lot of reluctance to do this, but there are officers who 

stand up increasingly. The iron majors are intimidated by nobody. 

Mr. COOPER. Dr. Jones, do you have a comment? 

Dr. JONES. I will just be very brief. 

I still believe that in a war, in a counterterrorism effort that is 

being fought, in most cases, in areas outside of the United States 

there continues to be a fundamental ignorance of the other cultures, including at top levels of the United States Government. And 

that certainly is reflected in two ways: Its efforts to counter this 

war of ideas by putting people on places like Al-Jazeera that don’t 

even speak Arabic for the U.S. Government. I mean, what message 

are you sending to the locals who are listening? It has to be translated because you can’t find a U.S. Government representative that 

can go on Al-Jazeera that can speak Arabic. It also sometimes gets 

reflected in trying to do everything ourselves rather than, in some 

cases, working locally. 

So I think there is a fundamental, and continues to be a fundamental, ignorance of many of the countries that we operate in 

among our government, whether it is speaking the languages, understanding tribal networks, that in some cases has hampered our 

response. 

Mr. COOPER. Would RAND lose business if you pointed out how 

backward and counterproductive many senior U.S. officials’ efforts 

are? 

Dr. JONES. We have done this on institutions and generals. So 

I think the answer is no. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. I think that actually concludes the first 

round of questioning. 

I want to ask Dr. Arquilla and probably Dr. Scheuer, as well, you 

talked about the structure of the military. What I am curious 

about, in terms of our budgetary choices, is the systems that we 

have to pay for. And you seem to have a slightly different take 

than Dr. Scheuer, who seems to see a greater need for a conventional force. But a big-ticket part of where we are spending a lot 

of our money and how we sort of choose where to put our resources 

has to do with those systems. 

And could both of you comment a little bit on, as you see the 

structure of the military, what we need to buy, you know, airplanes, ships, submarines, tanks, Strykers, you know, where you 

think we should be putting our money; and, perhaps more importantly, where we shouldn’t be putting our money? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Well, I think we are a military of the few and the 

large, right? We are planning on having 11 aircraft carriers in perpetuity—Ford’s, no less. Let’s make sure we associate it with the 

President and not the vehicle. 

In any event, it seems to me that we are at a point now where 

we, when including war spending, are going at it at about $2 billion a day on defense. And from my own cursory review of this, 

about 90 cents on every dollar goes for industrial-age systems that 

just don’t protect us anymore. So we are spending more and more 

to get less and less security. And my concern is that, as we look 
24 

out upon the world, the investments others are making are very intriguing and very troubling. 

If I can stay with the naval example for a moment. We are continuing to build super carriers, a handful of them. And, by the way, 

their throughput, their capacity for flying planes is about the same 

as it was 60 years ago. What is our possible opponent in the future, 

a Chinese navy, doing? I guess they call it the People’s Liberation 

Army Navy, which is a curious thing in its own right. They are not 

building carriers. They say they are going to build one one day, but 

there is no sign they are doing it. What are they building instead? 

Supersonic antiship missiles, smart mines that can position themselves right below the keel of a big ship and break its back. And 

something called a supercavitation torpedo that creates a bubble of 

air in front of it so that it can travel at hundreds of knot. What 

is our defense against that? Nothing. We hope it has poor guidance. 

So we have a fundamental problem here where other smart militaries that don’t have the resources to burn that we do are investing extremely skillfully in advanced technology. So we keep investing in big conventional ticket items, which keeps us in the conventional warfare world in a time of irregular war. But the kicker to 

all this is that, if this big war comes along, we are going to face 

others who have invested more wisely in advanced technology. 

So I think we need—and, again, if I am on your side of the table, 

I would call for a moratorium on these legacy systems. 

Mr. SMITH. And I am very much with you on that general focus. 

The one counterargument that I have heard is, if we go up in a big 

conventional war with China or Russia—which, by the way, I think 

we should studiously work to avoid in terms of our foreign policy. 

That, I think, the diplomacy there, make partners, not enemies, out 

of the large powers, is absolutely critical. If we do that, yes, the 

ships are not going to be helpful for the reasons you just stated. 

But the counterargument is, in the small world we live in, when 

we need to get a force to Afghanistan, when we need to get a force 

to Iraq, the carrier groups, you bring the carrier over there, you 

bring the battleships over there, they can launch cruise missiles, 

they can launch albeit a small numbers of planes. How do you 

counter that argument? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Well, certainly you don’t need aircraft carriers to 

send Special Forces over. I know they did that in Operation Enduring Freedom, which was like the biggest public relations (PR) story 

ever. You don’t need to send 11 A-teams by an aircraft carrier. 

That is the world’s most expensive taxi service. 

In terms of firing cruise missiles, any platform can do that. It 

doesn’t have to be an aircraft carrier. In terms of aircraft, you have 

all kinds of other vessels that can launch short takeoff or vertical 

takeoff and landing. You don’t need a super carrier to do that. 

But also, the Air Force knows how to find these places. In Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the Combined Air Operations Center, they dropped three-fourths of all the ordnance on 

the enemy. That is the right statistic. 

So we don’t have trouble doing aerial bombardment, missile bombardment, or moving forces for the little side of things. So I don’t 

think the argument about the carriers needed in irregular warfare 
25 

is persuasive. And nor is it persuasive, really, in the next big war 

against whomever it may be. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Dr. Scheuer, if you could take a stab at it. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Sir, thank you. 

It is not really—I think probably Dr. Arquilla is exactly right in 

the way we need to go, but the problem is there is a great gap in 

the time from where we are to where we need to be. And one of 

the legacy systems we have, in a sense, is a Cold War mentality, 

that somehow the enemy is going to sit there and wait for us to 

get there to kill them. And we will get our act together after eight 

or nine years, and they will be there waiting for us to do them in. 

And that is not the case. 

So, to me, the big problem in what we buy and what we do is 

not only that we buy systems that perhaps aren’t useful—I can’t 

imagine, for example, buying the Raptor instead of a ground support aircraft to help those people that are fighting our wars elsewhere—but the whole idea that the enemy isn’t adaptable, doesn’t 

have a timetable of his own, sir. 

Whatever we are going to do to change, do it. Stop talking about 

it, and do it. Because this is an enemy that is not like—there is 

no stand-off between us and the Soviets anymore. The bad guys are 

out there conniving and finding ways to get at us. And so, to me, 

whatever we are going to do for structure, get your best brains together and then move, because we can’t wait. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Thornberry. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Fascinating discussion which would be worthy 

of us pursuing. I want to go back to terrorism for just a second. 

Dr. Scheuer, you make a big deal that this is not terrorism, this 

is insurgency. But Dr. Jones, in his study, says that terrorism is 

the use of politically motivated violence against noncombatants to 

cause intimidation or fear among a target audience. 

I am not sure I—I mean, it seems to me that applies. But, secondly, I am not sure I understand why it matters, the difference. 

Please explain why you think that distinction is so important for 

us. 

Dr. SCHEUER. I think it matters because we have underestimated 

the strength, durability and the resiliency of the enemy. We still 

have Presidents or potential Presidents telling us we are going to 

bring these people to justice one at a time. Clearly, to my own particular instance, we leveled more destruction on al Qa’ida between 

1995 and 2001 than almost any other group that I can think of, 

and yet 9/11 happened. 

‘‘Terrorism’’ is a term that blinkers our ability to perceive the 

enemy, because terrorists are by definition evil, small in number, 

on the lunatic fringe, maybe the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe, 

and somehow they are not a credible threat; they are something 

that is like a bug, you need to stamp it out. We have certainly 

failed to do that, because they are not terrorists. You know, your 

definition you just read of political violence could very well be applied to the bombing of Tokyo, to which I have no objections; we 

won the war. 
26 

But terrorism is just something that, to me anyway, was 

dreamed up by U.S. policy and Western policymakers who didn’t 

want to respond to an act of war with our military but rather 

wanted to goof around. You know, blowing up the United airliner 

over Scotland wasn’t a terrorist activity, it was an act of war, and 

it should have been handled in that manner. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. It seemed to me terrorism is a tactic rather—— 

Dr. SCHEUER. Sir, what I would say is one of the detrimental 

things for the United States is the very smallest number percentage of al Qa’ida are what we would call ‘‘terrorists.’’ They would 

call them their special forces. The next biggest group are either 

their insurgents or their insurgent trainers. 

The biggest part of al Qa’ida is the logistics, finance, safe haven 

part, and media part these days. So what we are doing by focusing 

on the terrorist side of it is we are attacking maybe one-twelfth of 

the organization, sir. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Dr. Arquilla, you gave specific recommendations for how the military needs to be restructured in small groups. 

One of the things that we have talked about a lot over the last two 

years in this subcommittee is the need to not just bring the military to this struggle but the whole government. 

Talk to me a little bit, if you can, about a government-wide network, not just a military network, on these problems. 

Dr. ARQUILLA. It is a brilliant idea. I think a government 

networked approach to dealing with terrorism, irregular warfare, 

the security questions of our time, would be one in which the collective intelligence of all our soldiers and civil servants and interested folks out in the country and commerce, education, civil society, the best ideas would come forward. One of the biggest insights 

about networks is when you bring a collective intelligence together—that is, everyone is allowed to weigh in their opinion— 

great ideas come forward. 

If I can give you a little example, I don’t know if any of you play 

chess. I will be very brief about this. Go to chessgames.com, and 

what you will find is a great player, usually a former world champion, challenges the world, and about 8,000 people sign up. They 

are a little network; they have their own little page where they discuss and debate what to do next. And the collective intelligence so 

far has beaten every former world champion it has played. 

And there are other experiments. In Japan, they had a virtual 

manager for a minor league team for a while. Anybody in the 

stands or watching or listening to the game could vote on: send the 

runner to steal second, bunt here, do this or that. The year they 

did that—it was a tech company that owned the minor league 

team. The year they did that, they won their division. 

Now, I am not saying we do all of that, but my guess is this: If 

we took a problem like Afghanistan, and instead of the planning 

cell that my nephew commands, we took 100 officers and we put 

them into 25 small teams and we paired them up with State Department, intelligence, law enforcement, and maybe even had a liaison officer from another country on it, just say, okay, come up 

with some good ideas for how to deal with this, my experience has 
27 

always been that collective intelligence will drive you to the best 

answer and it will do so most quickly. 

I had a doctoral student at my school who just graduated, another iron major, Major Todd Lewelling, who is now teaching at the 

Air Force Academy, studied terrorist problems of detecting a terrorist attack. We ran a controlled experiment with dozens of teams; 

half were organized as hierarchies, half as networks. The hierarchies had a commander, information flowed up channels; the networks, everyone shared all the information. Not only did the networks get to the right answer about 30 percent more of the time, 

but they got to the right answer more than 50 percent faster. 

So I think there are structures. It is not a commission, it is not 

a task force, there is no czars. At best, it is a network administer. 

But, please, let’s start doing this. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Cooper, did you have anything else you wanted 

to add? 

Mr. COOPER. There are many types of unconventional warfare— 

electronic, take your pick. Would financial warfare also be part of 

someone’s arsenal? 

For example, you take something like a sovereign wealth fund of 

another nation or a more shadowy form of capital, even short 

stocks, bet against America, alone or in groups, to take down significant financial institutions by having such massive—— 

Mr. SMITH. I think we are capable of doing that all on our own, 

apparently, so I think they probably don’t want to get in our way. 

Mr. COOPER. But the traditional financial model is people live in 

this country and they don’t want to bet against it too much. If they 

don’t live here and in fact have deep hatred for everything we 

stand for and they have got plenty of petrodollars or other dollars, 

what keeps them, especially with anonymous trading, from taking 

what would be ordinarily an irrationally negative position but one 

that could be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you have enough tens of 

billions of dollars backing up that attack? 

And one challenge we face in such an open society is everything 

is transparent here. And sometimes we don’t realize the terrific leverage that, for example, a digital camera had at Abu Ghraib. 

So, you know, if we are going to be smarter and faster than the 

enemy, don’t we need to anticipate and at least be able to react in 

a timely fashion to things that could well make sense? 

And it is double destruction, because not only are they able to 

do irreparable harm here, but they profit at the same time. 

So, I know you all are defense specialists, you are not financial 

specialists. And the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 

yesterday put back in the rule against naked short-selling. But 

still, that is just a requirement that, within three days, you show 

that you had at least temporary possession of the stock or the 

bond. But that is about like telling a murderer, ‘‘Oh, yeah, show 

up with the bloody shirt or the underwear.’’ You know, this is three 

days later. This is, for nonfinance people, this is a different area. 

But we are such an open, vulnerable society in so many ways. We 

didn’t expect that airplanes could be gasoline bombs. 

So, where is our red team to really outthink the enemy, whether 

it is supercavitation or whether it is other things? What group in 
28 

the Pentagon or related to the Pentagon or in our country is really 

giving hard, urgent thought to these questions? 

Dr. SCHEUER. Mr. Cooper, I am certainly not capable, in terms 

of answering the financial question. But I think the one thing that 

we very often do is to ignore the expertise within our own government. It is not a question of not having the smart people. We have 

an extraordinary array of talented people in the United States Government across the board. And not only that, but in my experience 

now, since having resigned, you asked earlier about freedom of 

speech and ideas that are acceptable or unacceptable, I would say 

that within the U.S. Government and military, the discussion is 

much more independent and pointed than anything that goes on in 

the Academy. I have taught now at university, and it is a much 

more restricted degree of acceptability at the university than it was 

at the CIA. 

So, again, I think you have, in terms of brain power, you have 

an enormous, wonderful mass of that within the United States 

Government. It is just a matter of getting the solution to the place 

and having it acceptable. Because some aspects of a solution will 

not be maintaining the status quo. 

Mr. COOPER. But, Dr. Scheuer, as you pointed out, there are a 

couple problems. One, you have a bureaucratic master who is reluctant to deliver bad news. Number two, some folks don’t want to 

deal with reality. They prefer a different view of the world. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COOPER. Facts are not popular things with some political 

leaders. We, sadly, have an informal rule on this committee; we 

don’t hear testimony from folks below the rank of general, unless 

it is a Marine colonel. You know, the iron majors are seldom, if 

ever, called to testify. That is crazy. We need to correct that. 

So how do we tap in—and I know networking is a great way to 

do it, and I am all for that. But—— 

Dr. SCHEUER. Sir, within my own personal experience, there is 

nothing that the Agency worries more about than you guys asking 

for someone to come up who has not got nine stars on his shoulder. 

And, ultimately, the power of the Congress to get whatever information it wants from whatever level, at least within the CIA, was 

certainly within your purview, sir. If you wanted to hear a General 

Schedule (GS–9) talk about what was going on in Nigeria, you 

would get him. But you have to ask for him. 

Mr. COOPER. We haven’t been able to be briefed on Sy Hersh’s 

article five weeks ago in The New Yorker on ground troops in Iran. 

And that is already in The New Yorker magazine. 

Dr. SCHEUER. I don’t know what the answer is then, sir. But I 

know, you know, the brain power is there. How you get it—I am 

afraid what is going to be needed to be done, frankly, on all these 

things, whether it is a decision of the structure about the military 

about getting the brains of the U.S. Government up to talk to the 

leaders of the U.S. Government, is going to be a disastrous attack 

within the United States. Thousands and thousands of dead Americans will generate, at last, some kind of frank debate about what 

we are doing and why we are doing it. 

Mr. SMITH. I want to get to Mr. Saxton, but I think you seek 

those people out, I mean, also. I guess I don’t agree that all of our 
29 

leaders are blissfully and completely ignorant of any thought, other 

than the generals. I just don’t buy into that. I personally go out, 

if I want to talk to lieutenants, corporals, whatever, I go out to Fort 

Lewis and I talk to them, I go to Iraq and I talk to them. We seek 

them out; we sit down in our office in a variety of different ways. 

I guess we are not all quite as dumb as it might be portrayed. We 

do get out and seek out a diverse set of opinions. 

Hearings are different, because there is a bunch of control that 

comes down from the military and different places. But I, for one, 

don’t—as brilliant as I think the three of you are, I don’t rely solely 

on what you are talking to us about in this hour and a half to form 

my opinions, and I don’t think most Members of Congress do either. 

Mr. Saxton, do you have anything to add? 

Mr. SAXTON. I would just like to ask Dr. Arquilla one final question. 

I don’t know how I have missed your book, Dr. Arquilla. It is a 

fascinating title, ‘‘Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of 

the American Military.’’ I will read it. But it prompts me, the title 

prompts me to ask you a question about the U.S. military. 

You must have spent a fair amount of time thinking about and 

having discussions about what makes it so hard to change the military. I would just like to ask you, are there some characteristics 

in the structure of the military and in the practices of the military 

that make it difficult to change? 

Dr. ARQUILLA. Yes, sir. And thanks for reading the book. 

The title comes from a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave on September 10, 2001, in the Pentagon in which he said that our worst 

enemy is ourselves, and not the people but the processes, I think 

was the phrasing he used. And I guess his memoir will come out 

in one of these years. He very much is a network guy, and he tried 

to break down a lot of the hierarchies to enforce some kind of 

change. 

And, you know, here is a steely Secretary of Defense who had the 

full support for six years of a very bold Commander in Chief, and 

yet, between the two of them, they couldn’t move that rock very 

far. And my experience over the past couple decades suggests they 

tried to do it from the top down, and the only way to make this 

kind of change happen is from within. 

And I would say, so there is the institutional problem; that is, 

I don’t think a lot of people have taken networking seriously. That 

is the real organizational insight of the time we live in. And some 

folks are starting to get there. I know a lot of mid-level officers, I 

know everybody who was in Anbar during the Awakening is a believer in networks now, and the Special Forces in the 7th group in 

Afghanistan believe that now. And so that is going to spread. 

But there is a larger cultural point about militaries that—and I 

respect this very much, even though I am suggesting that this is 

the time for change. And that is, think of the stakes in what they 

do. How many professions are as physically demanding, intellectually demanding, ethically and morally demanding? And the consequences of wrong action are so great. So I understand the riskaversive point of view. 
30 

My only point and the reason I entered this debate is to suggest 

that sometimes it is the failure to change that can engender even 

greater risks. Think about the militaries of 1914, the first years of 

World War I. They were afraid to make changes that might lose 

a war. Well, what they did is they sent millions of soldiers off, 

shoulder to shoulder, marching against artillery and machine guns, 

and millions died needlessly. The risk of not changing was greater 

than the risk of change, which they ultimately got to by 1917, 

1918. 

Well, that is where we are in this terror war that we find ourselves in, this first struggle between nations and networks. We are 

slowly ramping up. But I understand this reluctance. It grows out 

of our institutions. But it also grows out of the culture of a profession that is a very dangerous and demanding one and for whom the 

stakes could not be possibly higher. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

I have one final question, getting back to the policy issues that 

Dr. Scheuer raised and some others mentioned that I think are 

perfectly legitimate when you look at what we are fighting against 

in terms of violent extremists in the Muslim world. I think the 5 

percent, 80 percent figures probably are right on. It is about 5 percent that sign up for al Qa’ida and all they are talking about, but 

there is at least 80 percent that are sympathetic to the notion that 

the West is hostile to Islam and that our policies move that forward, and that is why they find sympathy. 

Just sort of imagining what the policy would be if we were trying 

to address that, and my thinking about it is a touch more complicated. Certainly Israel, Kashmir, our support for oppressive regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are factors. But when we put 

sanctions on Saddam Hussein, when we didn’t support that oppressive regime, that, too, had a major backlash against us. 

In Afghanistan, where I know you were very involved, the rap 

after the Soviets were driven out was that we left, was that we 

didn’t stay. And I imagine if we had stayed, the rap would have 

been we stayed and we are trying to manipulate. It seems like we 

sort of get it both ways. 

And I do think, at least most of the policymakers that I talk to, 

are aware of the fact that that drives a good portion of al Qa’ida’s 

support and of the violent extremist support. I guess what we 

struggle with is, what is the right policy? 

You mentioned the Taliban, and how Afghanistan was more stable under them. Very true. You know, we left it alone, and al 

Qa’ida found a safe haven and launched 9/11 against us. So just 

sort of staying away, in that instance, didn’t seem to work out too 

well. 

So I guess the question isn’t a lack of recognition that our policies does drive some of this. The question is, at this point, given 

100 years of very questionable history, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran back in the 1950’s, the post 

World War I, all of that, how do we begin to repair that relationship with that portion of the Muslim world that isn’t buying into 

al Qa’ida but is looking for some reason to believe that we don’t 

mean harm to them? 
31 

Dr. SCHEUER. You know, sir, I think the organizing concept of 

the United States Government should be to protect the United 

States and decide where we need to be at any particular time. 

The idea that we abandoned Afghanistan is very popular urban 

legend, but the exact opposite is the truth. We assembled basically 

the same team, Mr. Khalilzad and the Brits and the U.N., and 

tried to go in there in 1992 and put in the exactly the same kind 

of government that is in there today. Mr. Karzai’s father was part 

of it. 

Had we left the Afghans alone, more than likely they would have 

found their own water. But we didn’t. As soon as the Soviets were 

gone and the communist regime was defeated, we wanted—as Mr. 

Rumsfeld said in Iraq, any kind of government is okay as long as 

it is not Islamic. So what we tried to do is to put in a government 

that didn’t include anyone who carried a rifle. 

So the idea that we abandoned Afghanistan, Lord wishes it was 

true, but it wasn’t. We tried to do what we are trying to do there 

now. And it failed then; it will fail now. 

I think there are places in the world where the United States 

simply does not need to care what goes on if we arrange our policy 

preferences. 

Mr. SMITH. Do you think Iraq and Afghanistan are two of those 

places right now? 

Dr. SCHEUER. I think we don’t have a single—— 

Mr. SMITH. I don’t mean that challenging. I am sincerely interested. 

Dr. SCHEUER. In Afghanistan, if we had gone there and destroyed what we could have of the Taliban and al Qa’ida and let 

them escape, absolutely, we would have no more interest there. We 

have as much chance of building a democracy there as we have of 

building national socialism in Texas. It is never going to happen. 

It is just foolishness, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. What should our role be, then, in those two countries? 

Dr. SCHEUER. Certainly in Iraq, we should pray for somebody to 

come back that is much like Saddam Hussein. Saddam was our 

single most important ally in the war against al Qa’ida and its networks. As long as he was in Kabul, that bottle was corked—or in 

Baghdad, that bottle was corked. Those boys were staying in southwest Asia. 

Mr. SMITH. But I thought our support for brutal dictators in the 

Arab world was a big part of our problem. 

Dr. SCHEUER. Oh, it is a problem, sir. But this is not win or lose. 

We have a bunch of lose-lose situations. But the enemy who could 

attack us in the United States happened to be al Qa’ida, not Saddam. And Saddam was hell on wheels when it came to Islamists, 

except for the Palestinians, who weren’t attacking us. 

Mr. SMITH. I guess a simple question is, should we support dictatorships in that part of the world or shouldn’t we? 

Dr. SCHEUER. If we have that choice, sir, we have to decide what 

is in America’s interest. But right now we don’t have that choice. 

Because we have done nothing about oil in 35 years, we have to 

support the tyrannies that run the Arab peninsula. Because we 
32 

have to have somebody who pretends they don’t hate the Israelis, 

we have to continue to bribe Mubarak and keep him in power. 

It is not an option of whether we are or not. That is where we 

want to go; we want to have the option. But the problem we have 

is we have no option, and we refuse to recognize that our support 

for those governments drives much of what al Qa’ida is about. 

Mr. SMITH. I have nothing further. 

Mac, do you have anything? 

Thank you very much. It was a fascinating, fascinating discussion. I certainly want to stay in touch with all of you, myself and 

on this committee. Thank you for spending time with us this morning. 

[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 

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