U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

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

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

87–515PDF 2014

IS AL-QAEDA WINNING? GRADING THE

ADMINISTRATION’S COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, 

NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 8, 2014

Serial No. 113–130

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE

TED POE, Texas, Chairman 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman (former United States Senator) .................... 6

The Honorable Jane Harman, director, president, and chief executive officer, 

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (former Member 

of Congress) .......................................................................................................... 13

Seth Jones, Ph.D., associate director, International Security and Defense 

Policy Center, RAND Corporation ...................................................................... 29

Frederick W. Kagan, Ph.D., Christopher DeMuth chair and director, Critical 

Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research ... 44

Mr. Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution ..................................................................................................................... 52

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman: Prepared statement ...................................... 9

The Honorable Jane Harman: Prepared statement .............................................. 16

Seth Jones, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................................. 32

Frederick W. Kagan, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................. 46

Mr. Benjamin Wittes: Prepared statement ........................................................... 55

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 70

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 71

(1)

IS AL-QAEDA WINNING? GRADING THE 

ADMINISTRATION’S COUNTERTERRORISM 

POLICY 

TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2014

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in room 

2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ted Poe (chairman of 

the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. POE. The committee will come to order. Without objection, all 

members may have 5 days to submit statements, questions and extraneous materials for the record subject to the length of limitation 

in the rules. 

Al-Qaeda is not on the verge of defeat. The administration called 

al-Qaeda’s affiliates a junior varsity squad of wannabes. If groups 

like ISIS and al-Nusra are junior varsity I would hate to see what 

the varsity team looks like. 

Al-Nusra, as you may recall, has taken credit for the Benghazi 

murders. Since the death of bin-Laden the administration has announced the near defeat of al-Qaeda, describing the core leadership 

as a shell of its former self. 

But some intelligence officials say that the organization in fact 

is changing and actually franchising. In recent testimony, Director 

of National Intelligence James Clapper and Defense Intelligence 

Director Lieutenant General Mike Flynn said that al-Qaeda was 

not on the run and not on the path to defeat. 

It has been 13 years since 9/11. The administration sometimes 

can’t even get on the same page about the nature of al-Qaeda’s 

threat to America and the rest to the world. When our soldiers 

raided bin-Laden’s home in Pakistan, they recovered a treasure 

trove of documents, computers and the like. 

These bin-Laden documents should be publicly released. This 

would not harm U.S. national security in any way. Actually, it is 

the opposite. If world renowned al-Qaeda experts could analyze 

these files they could tell us a lot we don’t know about al-Qaeda, 

how they operate, what their vulnerabilities are, et cetera. 

For some reason the administration seems to be pushing back. 

According to news reports, intelligence officials with knowledge of 

documents say that they show a far more complicated picture of alQaeda than the administration seems to be willing to admit. 

2

If these documents are not made public, they should at least be 

provided to the new independent commission that has been established by Congress to study how al-Qaeda has evolved since 9/11. 

Think of this as a new 9/11 commission. Al-Qaeda has not been 

reduced to a few old men hiding somewhere in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda 

and their affiliates have a strong global presence as we can see by 

the map that is on each side of the wall. The red areas mark the 

areas where al-Qaeda is today and the blue areas mark other terrorist groups. As we can see these are in Africa and the Middle 

East primarily. 

Al-Qaeda and their affiliates are devastating Iraq. We have seen 

more deaths in Iraq over the last year than the worst year when 

our troops were there. 

Al-Qaeda is all over Somalia. This branch crossed over into 

Kenya to launch a spectacular attack. It killed over 60 people who 

were just shopping at a mall. 

Al-Qaeda is resurgent in Libya. The government can’t go into the 

eastern half of its own country because it is controlled by terrorists. 

Al-Qaeda affiliates killed three Americans when they took over 

an Algerian gas plant last January. One of those victims was my 

constituent from Texas, Victor Lovelady. Much like Benghazi, the 

victims still don’t have justice. In Syria groups like ISIS and alNusra are the most capable of the fighters. 

As many as 11,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria to join 

the fight against the dictator Assad. Many of these potential terrorists are from Europe. Some are from even the United States. 

At some point they will return home radicalized and highly 

trained. This is not a pleasant thought. Today, al-Qaeda controls 

and operates in more territory than it has at any time since its creation. Al-Qaeda on the run? Hardly. 

Although the use of armed drones and precision kill or capture 

raids can kill bad guys here and there, this is not a universal strategy or long-range plan. There does not seem to be a whole government plan to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda. 

At some point, al-Qaeda could destabilize the entire Middle East 

and then work its will in North Africa. If it is allowed to go down 

that road the consequences for U.S. national security are unthinkable. Al-Qaeda is playing the long-term game. 

In the United States, it is questionable whether we are in the 

game. The core group of al-Qaeda and many of their affiliates actively seek ways to strike the United States at home and abroad. 

Many of these plots, luckily, have either been foiled or failed because of incompetence or luck. We need to call this like it is. AlQaeda is a robust global organization that is not on the path to defeat. They still have a global plan—a global long-range plan. Until 

we come to terms with this, we cannot hope to develop an effective 

approach to defeat them. 

And I will now yield 5 minutes to the ranking member for his 

opening statement, Mr. Sherman from California. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am impressed with 

the witnesses we have been able to start this panel off on and I 

am not sure that we should have a hearing grading the administration’s past. But if we are able to secure such fine witnesses with 

such a title then maybe it is worthwhile. 

3

I am much more interested in determining what our policy 

should be in the future than grading the past. But if you are going 

to grade this administration we ought to grade on the curve. And 

there are only two Presidents in this century focusing post-9/11. 

The number one terrorist organization is the Iranian Government, the number one state sponsor of terrorism. Now, where were 

they on September 12th, 2001? They faced a great ideological opponent in al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Their number one geostrategic threat was Saddam Hussein, who 

had killed close to 1 million Iranians. They faced a unified American population galvanized by the events of 9/11 and they were nowhere close to a nuclear weapon. 

What happened after that? We removed Iran’s enemies east and 

west. Baghdad, which had been their number one geopolitical 

threat, became their number one geopolitical ally. 

The unity of the American people was squandered by the absence 

of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a decision to invade 

Iraq even after Saddam at the last minute agreed to inspections of 

even his presidential sites. 

And as for Iran’s nuclear program, we went 8 years in which 

President Bush used all the power of the presidency to prevent this 

Congress from adopting any new sanctions of significance and refused, after hearing a hearing in this room, to enforce the laws we 

already had. And so when this President came to office, bin-Laden 

was alive and the Iranian nuclear program was alive and kicking. 

Since then we have gotten out of Iraq. We got out of Afghanistan. 

We have killed bin-Laden. So I would say if you are going to grade 

on the curve you got to give this administration an A. What are 

the standards that we should have? 

There are those who believe that if only this President had a different personality that all the Islamic extremists would endorse 

Jeffersonian democracy. It is not true. We as a people have agreed 

to only 9 percent of our GDP being collected in income taxes. 

That is 9 percent to cover our international and domestic government excluding Social Security, and for that we are told that somehow by force of personality the President should be able to assure 

the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Japanese sovereignty over 

every island in dispute and the complete abolition of al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism. 

That is a lot to expect. The fact is we have a limited budget, a 

limited willingness to commit our forces and given those limits this 

administration has achieved a lot. 

Now, al-Qaeda has metamorphasized but they haven’t been able 

to have the technological capacity to hit us again, as they did on 

9/11. That doesn’t mean that Islamic extremism is not alive and 

well and living on the map that the chairman just showed us. 

So I think given the limited taxes we are willing to collect, the 

limited money that is available for international operations including the Pentagon and the intelligence agency, given how close Iran 

was to a nuclear weapon on the day this President took power, I 

would say that if we grade it on a curve we will award an A. 

But I look forward to trying to craft a foreign policy that looks 

forward rather than grading any past President and with that—oh, 

4

finally, I do want to comment upon the chairman’s idea that the 

papers collected with bin-Laden should be make public. 

They should only go to the Intelligence Committee. They are as 

sensitive as all the other documents that only go to the Intelligence 

Committee and if we were to publish those papers it would be a 

last will and testament from a man with millions of supporters 

ready to die for him or millions of supporters and many willing to 

die for him. 

Those papers would provide guidance as to what he was thinking, guidance as to what targets he thinks should be hit, ideological 

inspiration to those who find their ideological inspiration in Islamic 

terrorism. 

So I don’t think that the last will and testament or final papers 

or anything else of Mr. bin-Laden’s should be revealed to anyone 

who we will not reveal the most sensitive secrets, and I yield back. 

Mr. POE. The chair recognizes Mr. Kinzinger from Illinois for a 

1-minute opening statement. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our witnesses thank you for being here. It is great to see you. I am 

unapologetic about American strength and American power around 

the globe. 

I think America is a great stabilizing force. We don’t seek to be 

an empire but we also can’t stand by and watch people oppressed. 

We can’t stand by and see threats to our homeland. 

And I would like to remind everybody that this discussion emanates because of 9/11 when thousands of our fellow brothers and 

sisters in this country were killed by a ruthless murderer and 

many of his offshoots still exist today. 

I believe that when America retreats from the world that chaos 

fills that vacuum or the leadership from a country that we are not 

necessarily good friends with. So I am looking forward to hearing 

from our witnesses about how the United States can play a stronger role. 

I agree with Mr. Sherman about the importance of having a discussion about military spending and diplomatic spending. But I 

think at the end of the day we must never tire, we must never 

waver and we must never forget the enemy that we are facing lest 

we face them again back here on the shores. 

And I thank you for our witnesses and, Mr. Chairman, I yield 

back. 

Mr. POE. The chair recognizes Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania for 

1 minute in his opening statement. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the 

witnesses as well. Great to see you again. This will be my opinion. 

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates control more territory now than 

ever—than they ever have and are using that space as previously 

done in Afghanistan to plan and prepare attacks against the U.S. 

and U.S. interests. 

President Obama and the administration repeatedly have conveyed that al-Qaeda is on the run and has been decimated. However, for months al-Qaeda and its affiliates have been increasing 

their presence and attacks in Iraq, neighboring Syria and elsewhere in the region. 

5

Having served in Iraq as a commander of a large task force, I 

personally witnessed the courage and sacrifice of our troops in Iraq, 

and to correct the record we found the very same WMDs currently 

found in Syria when I was in Iraq. 

As U.S. forces withdraw in 2011, however, President Obama’s administration failed to negotiate an agreement with Iraq that could 

have allowed a limited U.S. military presence to help the Iraqis 

keep al-Qaeda from filling the power vacuum created by the withdrawal. 

If this administration again fails to reach an agreement allowing 

a critical stabilizing force in Afghanistan it will create yet another 

power vacuum but this time in al-Qaeda’s traditional sanctuary 

where the Islamist militants and terrorists likely will thrive again. 

And I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POE. And without objection, the chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, for his opening statement. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, and I welcome my 

former colleagues and nice to see you again, Jane, and Senator, 

and I appreciate seeing you. Let me just note America—this is not 

a piling on our President because he happens to be a Democrat. 

Most of us are adult enough to and have seniority enough here 

to remember that the worst mistake made in my time in Congress 

was supporting George W. Bush’s order to go into Iraq, which 

turned out to be a catastrophe for our country, and we ended up 

ousting a secularist leader from that part of the world. 

But what we have today is a President of the United States who 

the American people don’t trust his word. The President of the 

United States has lied to us about Benghazi. It is clear that he has 

intentionally lied to us about an attack that left an American Ambassador dead. 

We know also that he was—we don’t understand the relationship 

that he had with President Morsi and whether that had something 

to do with this lie to the American people. 

And finally, we have a President who is being very cautious 

about helping General el-Sisi, who is the one bulwark against radical Islam in that part of the world. So we are not just making this 

partisan. We recognize George Bush’s mistakes. But we have to 

focus on where this President is leading us and it is right over the 

cliff. 

Mr. POE. Gentleman’s time has expired. I will now introduce the 

witnesses that we have. First, without objection, all the witnesses’ 

prepared statements will be made part of the record. I ask that 

each witness will keep their presentation to no more than 5 minutes and we will begin with our first panel of witnesses. 

We have two excellent witnesses here today and I appreciate—

we all appreciate the fact you took time, both of you, to be here. 

Senator Lieberman, as a former senator from Connecticut, congratulations on UCONN, by the way. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. We consider that to be an event of international 

importance. 

Mr. POE. In March 2013, he joined the American Enterprise Institute as the co-chair of the American Internationalism Project. 

The project aims to rebuild and reshape a bipartisan consensus 

6

around American global leadership and engagement. He is also 

senior counsel at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman. 

Representative Jane Harman is the director, president and CEO 

of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. During 

her nine terms as a representative in the 36th District of California, she served on all the major security committees in the 

House of Representatives. 

Senator Lieberman, we will start with you and you can present 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOSEPH LIEBERMAN 

(FORMER UNITED STATES SENATOR) 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Chairman Poe, Ranking 

Member Sherman, distinguished members of the committee. I am 

honored to appear before you today and particularly happy to be 

here with my dear friend, Jane Harman. 

You have two of the four of us of one Gang of Four, the other 

two being Pete Hoekstra and Susan Collins, who spent a lot of time 

working with all of you to pass the Terrorism Prevention Act of 

2004. 

Let me begin by thank you for holding this hearing. We all know 

that in the aftermath of 9/11 the overwhelming focus of our Government was on the threat of terrorism, in particular, al-Qaeda. 

Twelve years later that is no longer the case. This is in large 

part a consequence of our success but the fact is that the absence 

of an attack anything like 9/11 since then is not because of an absence of terrorist plots or plans against the United States. 

Rather, it is because of the vigilance, determination, courage and 

creativity by national security professionals and elected leaders 

across two administrations as well as the close cooperation in help 

of America’s allies and partners around the world. Pride in this 

achievement, however, has got to be tempered by an awareness of 

several realities. 

First, al-Qaeda and its affiliates remain a ruthless, determined 

and adaptive adversary. The underlying ideology that inspires and 

drives al-Qaeda to hate and attack us and our allies, which is the 

ideology of violent Islamist extremism, is obviously neither defeated nor exhausted. 

For that reason, our safety as a nation is ultimately inseparable 

from our ability first to recognize the continuing threat from violent Islamist extremism and to adapt and meet it, and I want to 

say that we will do that not only with a strong counter terrorism 

program but by making sure that we stay engaged more generally 

in the world beyond our borders. 

Unfortunately, we increasingly hear voices who say that the 

threat from terrorism is receding or that it was overblown in the 

first place and that the end of this conflict is near. 

I wish I could say I agree with that but those arguments are 

badly mistaken. There is no question that the U.S. beginning under 

President Bush and continuing under President Obama has inflicted severe damage to core al-Qaeda. 

But if I many borrow a phrase from David Petraeus, the progress 

we have achieved against core al-Qaeda, though real and significant, is also fragile and reversible. 

7

While space for core al-Qaeda in tribal Pakistan has been reduced thanks to U.S. pressure in recent years, territory where alQaeda affiliates can find sanctuary has grown dramatically during 

this same period, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa and 

sub-Saharan Africa. 

Al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups have repeatedly 

exploited Muslim majority countries weakened or fragmented by 

conflict and neglected by the international community. 

They take advantage of these places and people to recruit, 

radicalize and train the next generation of extremist foot soldiers. 

That is why al-Qaeda first went to Afghanistan in the ’90s, why 

they turned to Yemen and Somalia in the 2000s and why today 

they are fighting to build sanctuaries in Syria, Libya and Iraq. 

Several factors make the prospect of al-Qaeda sanctuaries in 

these three countries especially dangerous. The first is their respective locations. Syria and Iraq are the heart of the Arab Middle 

East, bordering key American allies including Israel, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. 

Libya and Syria are Mediterranean states comparatively easy to 

reach from the West, in contrast to remote Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Libya is also adjacent to vast Sahel with its weak and 

poorly-governed states. 

These are also places, I want to stress, where U.S. policy makers 

have signaled that involvement of the U.S. military is for all intents and purposes off the table or at least severely constrained. 

And that means that the U.S. is not able to effectively combat or 

even deter the rise of al-Qaeda in these countries. 

Of the three countries that I have mentioned, the situation in 

Syria is, I believe, by far the most alarming, the failure of American policy by far the most profound and its implications for our national security the most severe. 

According to analysts, there could be as many as 10,000 foreign 

fighters in Syria today. This means that there are more foreign 

fighters in Syria now than there were during the peak of the wars 

in either Iraq or Afghanistan. 

To me, that is a stunning number. The director of national intelligence recently described Syria as an apocalyptic disaster. Secretary of Homeland Security recently warned that Syria has become, and I quote, ‘‘a matter of homeland security.’’

In my opinion, Syria has become the most dangerous terrorist 

sanctuary in the world today and as far as I can tell the U.S. has 

no coherent or credible policy for dealing with that reality. There 

is much we could be doing that we are not and I will briefly describe what I hope we will do. 

In Afghanistan, we can choose not to squander the gains of the 

past decade and instead keep a sufficient follow-on military presence to sustain the increasingly capable Afghan national security 

forces in our shared fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. 

In Libya, we can put in place a large-scale well-resourced U.S.-

led effort to build up the new Libyan army and security forces. In 

Iraq, we can make clear, and I hope we will, we are willing to support Iraqis against al-Qaeda including with a selective use of U.S. 

air power, and if the Iraqis are prepared to talk to us again about 

a SOFA that grants immunity to our soldiers on the ground there 

8

I hope we will talk about a presence of a small force of American 

military, particularly embedded advisors. 

In Syria, we can much more aggressively provide militarily-relevant support to non-extremist rebel forces who are fighting our 

two most dangerous enemies in the world there at once—al-Qaeda 

and Iran. 

None of these actions represent simple or quick solutions. The 

fact is there is no simple or quick solution to the threat posed by 

al-Qaeda. 

But in my opinion, there are smart measured steps we can take 

that will put us in a stronger position to deal with these threats 

and make us safer as a country. It is also worth noting that in 

every one of these countries we have repeatedly seen that al-Qaeda 

and its extremist vision, violent vision, are rejected by the overwhelming majority of people living there. 

In Iraq, Syria and Libya we have seen popular grassroots movements rise up against al-Qaeda and their extremist allies and in 

Afghanistan as recently as this past weekend we saw millions of 

people peacefully and enthusiastically participating in a democratic 

election, defying the threats of the Taliban as well, frankly, as the 

naysayers in the West who claim that the Afghans don’t want democracy. 

They obviously do want to control their own future and they do 

not want to go back to the Taliban past. The question is whether 

we will provide these anti-extremist majorities in the Muslim world 

with the help and support they need or whether we will abandon 

them to the tyranny of a violent majority. 

Let me say finally that ultimate success in this struggle depends 

not simply on the death of particular terrorist leaders or the destruction of particular terrorist groups, important though that is. 

It requires the discrediting of violent Islamist extremism as an 

ideology, and let me underscore here the enemy is violent Islamist 

extremism, a political ideology that seeks to justify totalitarian political systems by misusing a great world religion. 

Mr. Chairman, if I may say in closing and go back to a great 

world leader of the last century, when it comes to the fight against 

al-Qaeda and violent Islamist extremism, the harsh truth is, according to Churchill, now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lieberman follows:]

9


87515a-1.eps

Joseph I. Lieberman 

Former United States Senator 

House Committee on Foreign Affairs 

"Is al-Qaeda Winning? Grading the Administration's Counterterrorism Policy" 

April 8, 2014 

Thank you, Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, distinguished Members of this Committee. I am 

grateful to appear before you today. 

Let me begin by commending you for holding this hearing. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the 

overwhelming focus of our government was on the threat of terrorism and in particular al Qaeda. Today, 

that is no longer the case. This is in large part a consequence of the success we have achieved-namely, 

the fact that we have not had another catastrophic attack on our homeland on the scale of that terrible 

September morning. 

This success, however, is not because of an absence of terrorist plots against us. Rather, it has been 

achieved through the vigilance, determination, courage, and creativity of national security professionals 

and elected leaders across two Administrations, as well as the close cooperation and help of America's 

allies and partners around the world. 

Pride in this achievement, however, must be tempered by an awareness of several realities. First, al 

Qaeda and its affiliates remain a ruthless, determined, and above all adaptive adversary. Just as 

importantly, the underlying ideology that inspires and drives al Qaeda to attack us and our allies-the 

ideology of violent Islamist extremism-is neither defeated nor exhausted. 

For these reasons, our safety as a nation is inseparable from our own ability to adapt to meet an 

evolving threat. It also requires that we stay engaged in the world beyond our borders. 

Yet increasingly we hear voices-on both sides of the political spectrum-who say that the threat from 

terrorism is receding, or that it was overblown in the first place, and that the end of this conflict is near. 

With respect, I believe these arguments are badly mistaken. 

There is no question, the United States-beginning under President Bush and accelerating under 

President Obama-has inflicted severe damage to 'core' al Qaeda, the senior leadership that 

reconstituted itself in the mid-2000s in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, after being driven 

from neighboring Afghanistan. 

To borrow a phrase used by David Petraeus, the progress we have achieved against core al Qaeda is real 

and significant. But it is also fragile and reversible. 

What has degraded core al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan has been the persistent, targeted 

application of military force against these individuals and networks. The precondition for these 

operations, and the intelligence that enables them, has been our presence in Afghanistan. If the United 

States withdraws all of our military forces from Afghanistan at the end of this year-the so-called "zero 
10


87515a-2.eps

option," as some now advocate-you can be assured that al Qaeda will regenerate, eventually on both 

sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. 

If you doubt this, I urge you to look at what is happening in western Iraq, where just a few years ago, 

during the U.S.-led surge, al Qaeda was dealt an even more crippling blow than core al Qaeda has 

suffered in Pakistan today. Yet al Qaeda is surging back in Iraq, hoisting its black flag over cities like 

Fallujah, murdering hundreds of innocent Iraqis this year, pushing violence back to 2007 levels. 

This leads to my next point. While space for core al Qaeda in tribal Pakistan has been reduced thanks to 

persistent U.S. pressure in recent years, territory where al Qaeda affiliates can find sanctuary has grown 

elsewhere during this same period, including in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

AI Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups have long exploited Muslim-majority countries weakened 

or fragmented by conflict, and neglected by the international community. They take advantage of these 

places to recruit, radicalize, and train the next generation of extremist foot soldiers. They use them to 

plot and plan attacks. 

That is why al Qaeda and its affiliates first went to Afghanistan in the 1990s. That is why they later 

turned to Yemen and Somalia in the 2000s. And it is why they are fighting to build sanctuaries in Syria, 

Libya, and Iraq today. 

Several factors make the prospect of al Qaeda sanctuaries in these three countries especially dangerous. 

The first is their respective locations. Syria and Iraq are the heart ofthe Arab Middle East, bordering key 

American allies like Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Libya and Syria are Mediterranean statescomparatively easy to reach from the West, in contrast to remote Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Libya is 

also adjacent to the vast Sahel, with its weak and poorly governed states. 

Equally worrisome, these are all places where U.S. policymakers have signaled that involvement of the 

U.S. military is for all intents and purposes off the table, or at least severely constrained. This means that 

the United States is not able to combat the rise of al Qaeda in these countries effectively. 

Of the three countries, the situation in Syria is by far the most alarming; the failure of U.S. policy by far 

the most profound; and its implications for our national security by far the most severe. 

According to one estimate, there are today more foreign fighters in Syria than in Iraq and Afghanistan 

combined over the past ten years. 

The Director of National Intelligence recently described Syria as-and I quote-"an apocalyptic 

disaster." And the Secretary of Homeland Security recently warned that Syria has become-and again I 

quote-"a matter of homeland security," as extremists there "are actively trying to recruit Westerners, 

indoctrinate them, and see them return to their home countries with an extremist mission." 

Put very bluntly, Syria has become the most dangerous terrorist sanctuary in the world today-and the 

United States has no coherent or credible policy for dealing with it. Nor is there any apparent strategy in 

place to address al Qaeda's growth in Iraq or Libya. 

Let me be very clear. No one is advocating sending tens of thousands of troops to these countries. Nor is 

it within our power, or our responsibility, to solve every problem these countries face. 
11


87515a-3.eps

But there is much we could be doing that we are not. 

In Afghanistan, we can choose not to squander the gains of the past decade and instead keep a 

sufficient follow-on military presence to sustain the increasingly capable Afghan National Security Forces 

in our shared fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. 

In Libya, we can put in place a large-scale, well-resourced, U.S.-led effort to build up new Libyan army 

and security forces as quickly as possible-rather than the disorganized, poorly-resourced effort now in 

place. 

In Iraq, we can make clear we are willing to support Iraqis against al Qaeda with u.s. airpower, as well as 

a presence of a small number of embedded advisors on the ground, while using that increased 

assistance as leverage to encourage political reconciliation. 

And in Syria, we can much more aggressively, robustly, and creatively provide militarily-relevant support 

to non-extremist rebel forces, who are fighting our two most dangerous enemies in the world there-a I 

Qaeda and Iran. We should also, in my view, reopen the debate about the limited use of American 

airpower-to degrade Bashar al-Assad's ability to terrorize civilians through indiscriminate aerial 

bombardment, and to target the transnational jihadists that the moderate opposition is fighting. 

None ofthese actions represent simple or quick solutions. There are no easy solutions for al Qaeda. But 

there are smart, measured steps we can take that will put us in a stronger position to deal with the 

evolving threats we face and that will ultimately make us safer as a country. 

It is also worth noting that, in all of these countries, we have repeatedly seen that al Qaeda and its 

extremist vision are rejected by the overwhelming majority of people living there. In Iraq, Syria, and 

Libya, we have seen popular, grassroots movements rise up against al Qaeda and other extremist 

groups. The question is whether we provide these anti-extremist movements with the help and support 

they need, or abandon them. 

Before closing, let me make one final point. Ultimate success in this struggle depends not simply on the 

death of particular terrorist leaders or the destruction of terrorist groups, important though that is. 

Rather, it requires the discrediting of violent Islamist extremism as a worldview. 

And let me underscore here, the enemy is violent Islamist extremism-a political ideology that seeks to 

justify totalitarian political system by perverting a great world religion. The enemy, we can never stress 

enough, is not Islam itself. 

Nor, I would add, is it political Islam per se. In fact, there are Islamists who are neither violent nor 

extremist, and who recognize al Qaeda to be a mortal threat just as much if not more than we do. In 

Tunisia, for instance, we see an Islamist party that has proven thus far to be respectful of democracy and 

of political pluralism. 

For this reason, the U.S. does have a core national interest in the political development of the Middle 

East towards greater freedom. Human rights and democracy are not periphery considerations in the 

fight against al Qaeda; in the long run, they are vital to its defeat. 
12


87515a-4.eps

Mr. Chairman, the progress we have made against al Qaeda is real. But we should not delude ourselves 

into thinking that this fight is anywhere near over. Perhaps the best description of where we find 

ourselves can be found in the words of a great statesman of the last century, speaking of a very different 

struggle against a similarly totalitarian foe. 

Speaking in late 1942, after the first British victories in North Africa, Winston Churchill told the House of 

Commons: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of 

the beginning." 

So, too, perhaps it is for us now "the end of the beginning" in our struggle with al Qaeda. If so, that is 

reason to hope-but also to recognize that much danger and difficulty still lies ahead. 
13

Mr. POE. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. As you all have heard, 

it is those famous bells that are ringing but we will go as far as 

we can before we recess for votes. 

Representative Harman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JANE HARMAN, DIRECTOR, 

PRESIDENT, AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS 

(FORMER MEMBER OF CONGRESS) 

Ms. HARMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I don’t miss the bells but I do miss many friends and I express 

especially warm affection for the Californians on your panel and for 

my dear friend, Joe Lieberman, who I consider an honorary Californian. 

So it is nice to be before you today. I said to Ranking Member 

Sherman that many good people continue to serve in this House. 

The problem is the business model is broken and that is a frustration I know for all of you and I see heads nodding on a bipartisan 

basis. 

On the subject at hand, I flew in from Boston today, mindful that 

the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing is next week. At 

a time of horror, Boston was resilient and remained strong. 

The damage was contained, evidence that our country has 

changed and matured since 9/11. Last week, however, Ayman alZawahiri, who is, as we know, successor to Osama bin-Laden as the 

leader of al-Qaeda, released an audio message about the death of 

someone called Abu Khalid al-Suri, who was Zawahiri’s representative in Syria. 

Al-Suri was also a founding member and senior leader in Ahrar 

ash-Sham, a militant group in the Islamic front, a coalition of several rebel groups. Al-Suri was killed in February by two suicide 

bombers in Aleppo. 

In the audio tape Zawahiri recalled knowing al-Suri since the 

conflict against the Soviet Union forces in Afghanistan in the 

’80s—in the 1980s and he called for Islamist fighters to reject the 

infighting in Syria. Sounds a little bit like Congress. 

Zawahiri said, ‘‘Everyone who has fallen into these sins must remember that they accomplish for the enemies of Islam what they 

could not accomplish by their own abilities.’’

So why does this matter? Because now more than any other time 

since 9/11 it is extremely hard to differentiate terror groups from 

your average band of militants or to understand their various missions and strategies. 

No longer is it just good guys and bad guys. It is also terrorist 

on terrorist. It is bad guy versus bad guy, complicated further by 

misguided and dangerous transfers of weapons and money by some 

Gulf States to groups like ISIS, which even al-Qaeda has denounced. 

In a perverse twist, 13 years after the U.S. entered Afghanistan, 

a country with little governance that served, as we all know, as a 

safe haven for al-Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks, we may be seeing 

its sequel in Syria. 

And after years of small steps, our options to influence the situation are limited. Some predict that the only way America will enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:55 May 07, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\040814\87515 SHIRL
14

gage directly in the Syrian conflict is a CT mission following an attack on us or our interests. 

At a dinner I attended in London over this weekend, several 

prominent observers predicted just this. I sure hope it doesn’t turn 

out that way. 

The good news is that it is highly unlikely that the U.S. will suffer a catastrophic terror attack on the scale of 9/11 ever again 

based on the security improvements put in place since then. 

But the risk of lower tech and lone wolf attacks remains and perhaps grows. Crucial is an understanding of the field of play. As the 

threat continues to evolve, the U.S. must continue to reevaluate 

our strategy to counter terrorism and consider answers to the following four questions. 

One, how has the threat evolved over time? We all know that 

what once was a highly centralized structure, core al-Qaeda, has 

been decimated. I personally don’t think it will be able to recreate 

itself but we should watch it. 

Rather than disappear, however, al-Qaeda has morphed into a 

decentralized horizontal organization composed mainly of so-called 

affiliates. 

Question two—are we giving al-Qaeda too much credit? There 

are affiliates and connected groups but they are opportunistic and 

don’t always share the same goals and aren’t always welcomed by 

al-Qaeda. The latest Zawahiri audio tape is a case in point and let 

us remember that it helps the al-Qaeda narrative to call every terror group al-Qaeda. They are not. 

Question three—how will the long-term consequences of a wartorn and destabilized Syria impact our strategy? As Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said recently at the Wilson Center, 

Syria is now a homeland security problem. 

A major part of our effort must be to use a whole of government 

approach including aid and development efforts rather than just kinetic tools to deal with refugees, stagnant economies and challenged leaders. 

Forty-one percent of Syrians have been displaced, 150,000 are 

dead and millions are squatting outside the country in neighboring 

states like Jordan. 

Question number four, perhaps the most important, and I will 

conclude very quickly, Mr. Chairman—what is our narrative? As 

mentioned, next week marks the anniversary of the Boston bombing. 

The Tsarnaev brothers, at least Tamerlan, were radicalized in 

part on the Internet. We need to win the argument with the next 

kid who is trying to decide whether or not to plant a pressure cooker bomb or strap on a suicide vest. 

Many think out in the world that the U.S. stands for drones, 

Gitmo, gun violence and spying. What do we really stand for? The 

rule of law, tolerance, economic opportunity, generosity to our 

neighbors and those in foreign lands plagued by natural disasters. 

But we aren’t making the sale. The Middle East Research Institute found that since Inspire Magazine’s launch in 2010—that is 

the Islamist hate magazine published in the boonies of Yemen—

over 20 young people have been arrested on terrorism connected 

15

charges with copies of Inspire in their possession, and that is just 

in the United States. 

There may be many more we don’t know about. Ending the wars 

in Afghanistan and Iraq should help but we must also stop using 

the AUMF as the legal bedrock for a grab bag of CT operations 

around the world. 

Closing Guantanamo Bay Prison must happen and we still 

haven’t fully explained the legal framework for our surveillance efforts, efforts I support but under and within a strict legal framework. 

In conclusion, as one European colleague said recently, we have 

changed our culture from need to know to need to share. But the 

new paradigm, sadly, is need to blame. 

As I have often said, the terrorists won’t check our party registration before they blow us up. So on the anniversary of Boston, 

let us unite to tell the right story about America. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Harman follows:]

16


87515b-1.eps

The Honorable Jane Harman 

Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee 

on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade 

Apri1S,2014 

I flew in from Boston today-mindful that the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing is 

next week At a time of honor, Boston was resilient and remains strong-and the damage was 

contained. Our country has changed and matured since 9/11. 

Last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri-the leader of al Qaeda-released an audio message about the 

death of Abu Khalid al-Suri, who was Zawahiri's representative in Syria. 

AI-Suri was also a founding member and senior leader in Ahrar ai-Sham, a militant group in the 

Islamic Front, a coalition of several rebel groups. 

AI-Suri was killed in February by two suicide bombers in Aleppo. 

In the audio tape, Zawahiri recalled knowing al-Suri since the conflict against Soviet Union 

forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and he called for Islamist fighters to rej ect the infighting in 

Syria. 

Zawahiri said, "Everyone who has fallen into these sins must remember that they accomplish for 

the enemies ofIslam what they could not accomplish by their own abilities." 

Evolution of the Threat 

Why does this matter? Because now-more than any other time since 9/1 I-it is extremely hard 

to differentiate terror groups from your average band of militants, or to understand their varied 

missions and "strategies." 

No longer is it just good guys and bad guys. It's terrorist-on-terrorist. 

It's bad guy versus bad guy, complicated further by misguided and dangerous transfers of guns 

and money to groups like ISIS, which even AI Qaeda has denounced. 

In a perverse twist, thirteen years after the US entered Afghanistan-a country with little 

governance that served as a safehaven for al Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks-we may be seeing 

its sequel in Syria. 

And after years of tepid steps, our options to influence the situation are limited. 

Some predict that the only way America will engage directly in the Syria conflict is if there is a 

counterterrorism mission following an attack 
17


87515b-2.eps

The good news is that it's highly unlikely that the US will suffer a catastrophic terror attack on 

the scale of9/11 again, based on the security improvements put in place since then. But the risk 

of lower-tech and lone-wolf attacks remains. 

Under.~tanding the field o.fplay 

As the threat continues to evolve, the US must continue to reevaluate its strategy to counter 

terrorism and consider answers to the following questions. 

I. How has the threat el'oll'ed OI'er time? We all know that what once was a highly 

centralized structure--core al Qaeda leadership-has been decimated. But, rather than 

disappear, it has morphed into a decentralized horizontal organization-composed 

mainly of so-called "affiliates" 

2. Are we giving al Qaeda too much credit? There are affiliates and connected groups, but 

they are opportunistic and don't always share the same goals - and aren't always 

welcomed by al Qaeda. The latest Zawahiri audio tape is case in point. 

~. How will the long-term comequences o.f a war-torn and destabilized Syrhl inqmct our 

strategy? As Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said recently at the Wilson 

Center, Syria is now a "homeland security problem." A major part of our effort must be 

to use a whole of government approach-including aid and development efforts, rather 

than just kinetic tools, to deal with refugees, stagnant economies, and challenged 

leaders. Forty-one percent of Syrians have been displaced-I 50,000 dead-and 

millions are squatting outside the country in neighboring states like Jordan. 

4. What's our narrative? As mentioned, next week marks the anniversary of the Boston 

bombing. The Tsarnaev brothers-at least Tamerlan-were radicalized in part on the 

internet. We need to win the argument with the next kid who is trying to decide whether 

or not to plant a pressure-cooker bomb or strap on a suicide vest. 

Many think the US stands for drones, Gitmo, gun violence, and spying. What do we really stand 

for~ The rule oflaw, tolerance, economic opportunity-generosity to our neighbors and to those 

in foreign lands plagued by natural disasters. But we aren't making the sale. 

The Middle East Research Institute found that since Inspire magazine's launch in 2010, "over 20 

young people have been arrested on terrorism-connected charges with copies ofInspire in their 

possession." There may be many more we don't know about. 

Ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should help, but we must also stop using the 

Authoization for the Use of Military Force as the legal bedrock for a grab-bag ofCT operations 

around the world. Closing Gitmo must happen and we still haven't fully explained the legal 

framework for our surveillance efforts. 

2 
18


87515b-3.eps

Conclusion 

Sadly, as one European colleage said recently, we have changed the culture of "need-to- know" 

to "need-to-share." But the new paradigm is "need-to-blame." As I have often said, the 

terrorists won't check our party registration before they blow us up On the anniversary of 

Boston, let's unite to tell the right story about America. 

3 
19

Mr. POE. I want to thank both of our witnesses for their testimony. We are going to be in recess until the votes are over. Ten 

minutes after the last vote we will reassemble and then we have 

a few questions for you all. 

Thank you very much for your patience. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. POE. The meeting will come to order. Thank you both for returning. I hope you had a good conversation while we were voting 

to save the country. 

Several questions—you both are experts. I want to make the 

questions general so you both can weigh in on them. Tell me a little more in detail about al-Qaeda. How many of them are there? 

Senator, can you tell us? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes. Of course, when I was a senator I could say 

I would like to tell you but I can’t—it is classified. But the truth 

is at this moment I don’t know the exact answer. 

I am struck by the number, which has gained some currency, 

that there are—if not al-Qaeda there are 10,000 foreign fighters in 

Syria now so they are members of al-Qaeda or associated groups 

or groups that could fit the general description of violent Islamist 

extremists. 

I mean, the truth is in some of the countries we worry about the 

numbers of al-Qaeda or associates are probably in the hundreds 

and yet if you are, you know, prepared to blow yourself up to kill 

people you can still have a terribly painful effect on a society. 

Mr. POE. If you talk about the 10,000 foreign fighters in Syria, 

are you just talking about those that are fighting against the government or are you including Hezbollah on the side of the government? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. No, I am not including Hezbollah. These are primarily, excuse me, Sunni and, of course, I am not including the 

Free Syrian Army or the other opposition groups that started this 

with a peaceful protest. 

These are violent Islamist extremists who have come in from 

around the world, not just the region. That is a big number and 

that is why I said in my testimony that I think that Syria today 

is rapidly becoming the most threatening terrorist sanctuary in the 

world. 

Mr. POE. Representative Harman. 

Ms. HARMAN. Well, I said in my testimony that some are predicting now that the way we will finally intervene adequately in 

Syria is when there is, unfortunately, a terrorist attack against us 

or our interests by those there. 

I agree with Senator Lieberman that Syria could easily become 

the sequel to Afghanistan in training large numbers of terrorists. 

But on your question of how many in al-Qaeda, I think there is 

no answer to that question. I mean, think amoebas. I mean, it is 

a—there is a loose affiliation of terror groups that form and reform 

around projects. Some of them are al-Qaeda. Some of them are not. 

Al-Qaeda is now fighting with groups like ISIS, which it considers too radical. I find that quite amazing to get your head 

around. But also there are Sunni and Shi’a terror groups inside of 

Syria, for example. 

20

Hezbollah is a Shi’a terror group and yet a lot of these other 

groups, al-Qaeda being one, are Sunni groups and they are fighting 

each other. So it is just two conclusions. Number one, it is I think 

impossible to measure but, number two, let us not overstate the 

number of al-Qaeda. That is their narrative. We don’t want to 

make them look good. Some of these groups are not al-Qaeda. 

Mr. POE. All right. Senator, you mentioned during the—your testimony three areas of concern—Syria, Libya, Somalia—and my 

opinion is the United States, the public, is ‘‘war weary’’ of military 

intervention in some other country. 

So what would be, is or should be our foreign policy, our plan, 

our national defense plan in specifically those areas and more generally al-Qaeda worldwide? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Well, the public obviously is war weary. I mean, 

we are going through a period now not unlike others we have in 

our history that usually follow either unpopular wars or wars ending, and often coincide with tough economic times and people want 

to pull back from the world. 

Almost every time that happens we get drawn in late to conflict 

at a much greater price in life and national assets—national treasure. So like so much else this comes down to leadership. 

I mean, you are holding this hearing, I believe, to remind at 

least, if I may say so respectfully, to remind your colleagues and 

Congress and hopefully the public that al-Qaeda is not defeated—

that the violent Islamic extremists are out there and they despise 

us. 

They want to kill us, and give them an opportunity and they will, 

and it is a slogan but it has a lot of substance to it. I would rather 

fight them over there than here, and we see now the evidence of 

them massing in these places we have talked about—Syria, Libya, 

increasingly Iraq and Afghanistan if we totally pull out. 

And so I think it requires leadership that has the fortitude to 

stand up and say if we—and I am not talking about a big ground 

war anywhere in the world but if we stay involved sometimes economically in Libya, assisting the development of their army, sometimes being willing to assist with the limited use of our air power 

we are going to save ourselves a lot of lives and a lot of trouble 

later on. 

Ms. HARMAN. Well, I agree but I would add another dimension. 

As I said in my testimony, I think just using kinetics is not going 

to defeat this problem and most of our major military leaders say 

the same thing. 

I do think we have to win the argument with some kid in the 

boonies of Yemen deciding whether to strap on a suicide vest and 

the way we win our argument—we win that argument is to convince him of a narrative about the United States, very different 

from the one he believes—the propaganda he has been brainwashed to believe and that will require more than the use of kinetic force. 

I would keep it on the table but I also would do other things—

diplomatic efforts, economic efforts, doing things that we are now 

doing in North Africa to keep states from failing. We are inserting—it is a very interesting thing that we are doing—some of our 

special command forces to keep governments from failing. That 

21

helps. So I think it is a complicated problem but Whac-A-Mole is 

not an adequate solution. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I can really briefly, I want to 

say that I would actually agree with Congresswoman Harman and 

in my opinion it is not an either/or. There are circumstances where 

we have to use our muscle or we have to help train local forces in 

our own self-security interests. 

But in the end, as I mentioned briefly in my remarks, this is an 

ideological conflict, as ideological as the Cold War was, with a radical minority within the Muslim world rejected every time there is 

a vote by the majority of Muslims in the countries that we have 

got to stop ideologically. 

Mr. POE. Thank you. I yield to the ranking member for his questions. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Yes. First, an observation—I couldn’t agree with 

the two witnesses more that not only do we need kinetic force but 

we have to win the argument, and part of that is broadcasting and 

webcasting and getting our message out. But another part is recognizing that there is a whole area of discourse that is foreign to us. 

We make our arguments based on this news development that is 

reported on Fox or that insight on MSNBC. To my knowledge, our 

broadcasting board of governors hasn’t employed a single Islamic 

scholar and yet if we are going to make this argument it can’t just 

be based on econometrics. 

It can’t just be based on the things that are relevant to our political discourse. We have got to meet them Koran verse to Koran 

verse and Hadith to Hadith. But that is an observation. Now I am 

going to move on to an incredibly long question. 

The big buzz word in foreign policy is pivot to Asia, and I wish 

we were talking about trade missions to Tokyo and teaching Mandarin in our schools. But that is not what it means. 

Pivot to Asia means focus our national security assets to confront 

China, and the Senkaku Islands give us a good pretext and rallying 

cry to do that. It means that all the decisions being made at the 

Pentagon today about which—what kind of research to do, what 

weapons to procure, what kind of training, deployment, budgeting 

is all focused at least until Crimea on the seas around China. 

And my theory, and it is an unfortunate one perhaps, is that we 

often in this country don’t make decisions based on what is in the 

national interest but rather based on what is in the interests of the 

institutions making the decision. 

Now, the Pentagon and the rest of our national security establishment have a history. Since 1898, we have had a glorious victory 

every time we have confronted a conventional military foe, and perhaps our most glorious victory was against the Soviet Union where 

we won a tremendous victory without a major kinetic action. 

And since the Philippine insurrection briefly after the Spanish 

war, every time we have confronted a non-uniformed asymmetrical 

enemy we have had a frustrating situation that didn’t meet the 

needs of and actually undermined the national security establishment. 

Now, the idea is we are going to pivot toward Asia. That allows 

us to confront a conventional foe and to prevail because our airplanes can shoot down their airplanes. But pivot toward Asia asVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:55 May 07, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\040814\87515 SHIRL
22

sumes that we can pivot away from the Middle East and Islamic 

extremist terrorism. 

I would ask our witnesses have we, like, solved this whole Islamic extremism problem and is it time to pivot away from the 

Middle East and North Africa and wash our hands of it? Ms. Harman. 

Ms. HARMAN. Absolutely not. I have been saying lately no more 

pivots. I think U.S. leadership and focus is needed everywhere in 

the world and it is a very dangerous world and our leadership is 

enormously important. 

Obviously, everything is not equal and in every part of the world 

we have to prioritize. But the Middle East—the problems in the 

Middle East are not going away and our leadership is indispensable. 

As we have now learned from Crimea, the problems in Central 

Europe and Europe are not going away and our leadership is indispensable, ditto Africa, Latin America, et cetera, including Asia. 

The word pivot is also a—I think a wrong description of what we 

intended in Asia. It was corrected to be rebalanced but even with 

that I would take issue. I think it is important to have a focus on 

Asia. I think that focus should not be on confronting China. 

I think that focus should be on supporting our allies in the region 

and hoping that China’s rise is a peaceful rise and that we are—

we build a stronger relationship that is not adversarial. 

I don’t mean it will be easy but we build a stronger relationship 

that is not adversarial and in that regard I finally would say that 

I hope this Congress will find a version of trade promotion authority it can support and then will help conclude trade negotiations 

with Europe and Asia and pass trade agreements in both regions. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I will just jump in and point out that the middle 

class of the United States has suffered a lot from the trade policy 

we have had so far and also what is not illustrated is if you double 

trade you double the opportunity to recognize income in the Cayman Islands. 

And our ability to support our military is dependent upon those 

income tax collections that are very hard to collect from multinational business. But Senator Lieberman, should we be focusing 

on the Senkaku Islands or on Islamic extremism or raising taxes 

so we can do both? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. So it is not easy but the truth is we have got 

to—we can’t pivot away from any one region in the world because 

they all matter to our security and our prosperity. 

Probably today we are more threatened by what is happening—

our own security here at home in the Middle East. So we can’t 

leave it. That Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, that 

is where the threat of Islamic extremism is coming from. 

On the other hand, we do have—I am sure there was a way in 

which people who were fashioning our policy in the administration 

saw the pivot or the rebalance, which is a better term, to Asia as 

part of the end of the era of Iraq and Afghanistan, and moving on 

to this dynamic region of the Asia Pacific, which was also extraordinarily active economically and increasingly important to us in the 

U.S. economically. 

23

But, you know, the fact is both of those arguments are right and 

therefore you can’t turn away from either one, and the irony here 

is—you probably all have found this—if you talk to people who are 

in the government of our allies in Asia they are unsettled as they 

watch the Middle East and they think that we are pulling out because they are seeing themselves and they are saying whoa, if—

you know, if we get in trouble—if we have a problem with China 

will the United States come to our aid. 

There was an Ambassador from one Asian country. I asked about 

the pivot to the Asia Pacific and he said to me, I am sure the 

Americans are on the way—they just haven’t arrived yet, because 

they don’t see that pivot and it is very important to them. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I believe my time has expired but I will note that 

Japan, which is willing to have us spend hundreds of billions of 

dollars to have the naval forces to protect the—they call them islands, the barren rocks in question, continues to refuse to spend 

even 1 percent of its GDP on its own defense. I yield back. 

Mr. POE. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Kinzinger. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for holding this very important hearing and one that I think, unfortunately, has lost a lot of the attention of the American people. Senator, Representative, I thank you guys for being here. Thanks for 

your service to your country. 

You know, we—the chairman mentioned and, you know, you 

hear it all the time in the media this idea of war weariness, and 

while I think there is something to it I am actually in the process 

right now of reading a book about a company commander in World 

War II and, you know, you see about a guy that literally started 

out with a couple hundred people under his command and ended 

up with one at the end of various battles. 

And you think about the intensity of which America confronted 

her enemies back in World War II, and while today 1 percent of 

Americans actually serve in the military and so I understand an 

idea of war weariness but I don’t think we have carried near the 

burden as what the generation of World War II carried. 

And my concern is in 10 years and in 20 years when history 

books are written about this moment, which I think is a very important moment in American world history, what is it going to say 

about the United States? 

Is this the moment at which we doubled down and said we are 

committed to a free world, we are committed to a strong America, 

we are committed to allowing the people that live behind the new 

soft iron curtain and the iron curtain of tyranny to look at the 

United States as an example of what they want to be and what 

they want to aspire to? 

Or is it the moment we decided to withdraw within ourselves in 

an increasingly global world and we will find that that bites us in 

the backside? And one of the areas I have been concerned with, to 

both of you, is Iraq. I am a veteran of Iraq. 

I flew airplanes in Iraq and I feel every day almost a sense of 

mourning when I see the flag of al-Qaeda flying over where the 

Marines fought the hardest that they have fought since Vietnam—

that bothers me—in Fallujah. 

24

I think of my colleague out here, Duncan Hunter, who is a veteran of Fallujah and think of now what that leadership is on and 

I think of the message that we sent to our enemy that the moment 

we said, you know, we fought hard, we spent a lot of lives and 

treasure and we can argue about whether we should have gone in 

or shouldn’t. 

But then at the end of the day because in my mind to keep a 

political promise we pulled all the troops out of Iraq and didn’t 

leave a residual force, and I look at now what is going on in Afghanistan with concern. The elections went well and I hope that 

the bilateral security agreement is signed. 

But I think it is important for us to show a strong presence post2014 lest we repeat the mistakes that we repeated in Iraq. I spent 

a long time opening that up but, Senator, I wanted to ask you specifically about Syria. 

I hear people talking, and I was a big supporter of saying we 

needed to enforce the red line in Syria. I believe that was a turning 

point in American foreign policy when we failed to do that. But I 

am hearing people, sadly, say that Assad is the only protector of 

Christian minorities in Syria. 

I hear people say that Assad is maybe not a good man but he 

is better than the opposition. Senator, can I ask you—can you talk 

about the opposition and dispel this notion about the fact that the 

opposition is all al-Qaeda and we either have to support a brutal 

dictator or we are supporting al-Qaeda? 

I heard somebody famously say in my own party that had we enforced the red line we would act as al-Qaeda’s air force, something 

that is very offensive to me as an Air Force pilot. So go ahead, sir. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Congressman. I totally agree with you. 

Assad is not a good man. He is a bad man. He is a brutal dictator. 

I mean, this all started with peaceful protests against his government and then he turned his weapons on his own people. 

I went over there pretty early in the conflict and met with some 

colleagues from the Senate with the opposition to Assad and my 

judgement was and my colleagues’ was very strongly that these 

were not al-Qaeda or violent Islamist extremists. 

These were Syrian nationalists. They were patriots. They were 

sick and tired of being abused by the Assad administration, and I 

will tell you that their motivations were as much economic as they 

were political. 

They felt quite rightly, just as the protestors in Egypt and Libya 

and Tunisia did, that the ruling clique, which is Assad and his 

group, were essentially stealing the wealth of the country and 

these people, a lot of them educated, had no chance to live better 

for their families. 

We didn’t support them when we should have and it allowed 

Assad to kill a lot of people and it opened up a vacuum in which 

these thousands of foreign extremist fighters have come in. But we 

still know who the moderate anti-Assad people are. 

We can’t yield to Assad. This man has blood on his hands in the 

most awful way and I think we have got to go in. We got to find 

people who we agree with, we know who they are, people who want 

us to come in who are pro-American and support them as best we 

can. 

25

And, you know, I am one who would still go back to that decision 

the President made about the red line and use American air power 

to inflict some punishment on the Assad government, which is our 

only hope now of bringing him to any kind of discussion of ending 

this conflict because right now Assad thinks he is winning, and you 

know what? He is. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I think a multi prong strategy of both enforcing 

the red line and also holding true what we have for a decade, that 

there will be no safe haven for al-Qaeda anywhere in the world and 

that includes parts of Syria. 

So with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you and thank you to the 

guests. I yield back. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. POE. The gentleman yields back. Chair recognizes the other 

gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, to the witnesses, 

thank you for being here today. Thank you for your service to our 

country. Representative Harman, I want to go back to what you 

talked about—winning the argument—and the argument, if you 

will, on one hand is about narratives. 

It is about where do we see or how do we help people see a different future, set their goals and aspirations to something that will 

pull them away from al-Qaeda. But for al-Qaeda I fear that the argument is an ideology and it is much harder to change or win an 

ideological argument. How do we balance those two things or how 

do we make sure that we can win that ideological argument? 

Ms. HARMAN. Well, there are some in al-Qaeda who can’t be rehabilitated and I am not against the use of force. I am not against 

the use of drones. I am not against the use of Special Forces in 

some cases under strict explainable legal limits to act against those 

folks. 

I was not unhappy when Osama bin-Laden was taken out. I certainly was not unhappy when a dual national, al-Awlaki, a U.S.-

Yemeni dual national, was taken out in Yemen. I didn’t think there 

was another alternative and I didn’t think that guy was 

rehabilitatable and he posed an imminent threat to us and he 

couldn’t have been captured. So I get that part. 

But I am talking about the fresh recruits to al-Qaeda, the kids 

who are a huge part of the force that is willing to die who could 

go either way. I mean, think about our inner city gang problems. 

It is similar. 

If there is some impressionable kid who hears only from hardened gang members that kid will probably go that way. On the 

other hand, if that kid has other messages and other opportunities 

he/she may not. 

So winning the argument is both being tough with those we can’t 

persuade but also finding ways through their own governments to 

reach folks who could be persuaded—decent education, better living 

standards, respect, fair treatment of women and girls. I mean, a 

whole list of things we understand. 

If I could just add one thing. Mr. Sherman said it and Mr. 

Kinzinger said it too though. We have to understand better what 

tribal societies look like. That is one of our problems in Syria. 

26

We didn’t really know—some in our Government really didn’t 

know the best way to intervene with the opposition because they 

worried that helping X would hurt Y and so on and so forth. 

We need more sophistication and I do agree with Mr. Sherman 

that having some Islamist scholars guide us is a good idea. The foreign minister of the E.U., Catherine Ashton, was at the Wilson 

Center recently and she said our understanding of tribal societies 

is very poor—the West’s understanding. I agree, and if we are 

going to win the argument we have to have a better understanding. 

And finally, I would say that a model—it is not perfect but a 

model for what could happen in Syria is what did happen in 

Yemen. Not perfect, but remember the real bad guy voluntarily left 

the government. Someone else, in fact his deputy but there was 

support by many tribes, was elected and there is still—there is still 

huge problems with parts of Yemen. But it is a much more peaceful 

society than it was before this happened. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Well, I think as you touched on using the analogy of gangs is understanding that all of this takes place within a 

certain context and in Syria the context is within clans and tribes 

and the different regions and how that is playing out. 

My understanding is there are many—as many foreign fighters 

on both sides of the battle in Syria. There is al-Qaeda, al-Nusra 

and the Sunni fighters but you have Hezbollah and Iranian Guard 

and fighting on behalf of Assad and that is the fight that is taking 

place within the context. 

And Senator, I guess I will turn this to you with the last minute 

that I have. The idea of U.S. leadership, the idea of having our narrative and the vision of giving people the opportunity to achieve 

their dreams, women and children, all of that being something that 

allows people to see a different story, a different future for their 

communities and their countries, what more can we or should we 

be doing to make sure that we do win this war with al-Qaeda? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Well, that has to start with the President and, 

really, this President is capable of excelling at communication but 

I think forces have drawn him inward post-Iraq and Afghanistan 

and we suffer from it. 

By our Declaration of Independence we were given a mandate, 

a responsibility, a kind of destiny to carry that message which was 

universal human rights and there is no people in the world that 

don’t respond to that. We are just not making the case. 

We are not out there making the case enough and, obviously, 

Congressman Sherman talked about the lack of an Islamic scholar 

on the board of governors—broadcast board of governors. That 

ought to be. We ought to be—because the—part of the essence of 

our enemy here is a terrible exploitation and abuse of Islam. 

We have to—and it represents really a minority of the Muslim 

world. We have to fight that and come back at it on the ground of 

Islam. Incidentally, we also have to say, which I think we believe—

I certainly do—that not every form of political Islam is wrong. 

There are moderate political Islamists. You know, religion plays 

a large part in the public life of America. We have—some of our 

allies in Europe are run by people who lead parties called Christian 

Democratic Parties. There is nothing inherently wrong with linking 

religion and politics. But once you take it as al-Qaeda does to vioVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:55 May 07, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\040814\87515 SHIRL
27

lence and extremism then it has got to stop and I think we have 

got to make that case. 

Congress can do more, broadcasting can do more but honestly it 

has to start with the number one American, who is the President. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you. I am out of time. With that, I yield 

back. 

Mr. POE. Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. 

Perry. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and great to see you both 

again. Thanks for your testimony and your candor. And I think 

about the discourse and I would agree with my colleague that I 

think much of America has kind of lost track of this discussion over 

lost airplanes and Ukraine and or economy or jobs, et cetera. But, 

you know, this briefing I have describes al-Qaeda as either in the 

minimalist view or the expansive view. 

And I don’t know if you are familiar but, you know, the 

minimalist view views and understands al-Qaeda as group senior 

leadership and recognized affiliates, and also sees it more of a 

brand—more of a brand than a hierarchal organization and it is 

not really al-Qaeda if it is not planning attack against the United 

States or United States interests. 

You know, is it partisan to say—is it—would it be your view that 

the administration has kind of taken on that minimalist view of alQaeda based on that description? 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. That is really interesting. So I would say that 

the administration has been committed to this fight against alQaeda. I mean, I have had arguments with them because they 

won’t broaden the vocabulary to say the fight is against not just 

al-Qaeda but violent Islamist extremism. That is really what it is. 

But I do think that the administration’s pulling back from global 

leadership more generally has contributed significantly to that 

view, that essentially the battle against al-Qaeda has been won—

we can move on to Asia—the Asia Pacific. 

And it is not so. I want to just finish my response and go back 

in a way to what Congressman Schneider asked me. I think that 

though everybody is prepared to say the American people are war 

weary and on polls they seem to suggest that they are not for a 

lot of the things that—more involvement in Syria, et cetera, they 

have seemed to be awakened by what has happened in the Crimea. 

But I want to just point out something else. I think ultimately 

that public opinion is much more nuanced and complicated than we 

are rushed to make it and maybe this is a transition to the next 

panel you have Fred Kagan on. I hope he forgives me if I cite his 

brother, Bob. 

Bob Kagan just wrote a fascinating piece in which he said look 

at all these public attitudes in America about involvement in crises 

around the world. The American people say they don’t want us to 

get involved. 

The President doesn’t get involved and yet you ask the American 

people do you approve or disapprove of the President’s foreign policy. The numbers are lower than if you ask the President—if you 

ask do you approve of the President’s policy on the economy or, 

dare I add, health care reform. 

28

In other words, a lower opinion of his policy on foreign policy. So, 

you know, this goes back to American ideals. American people ultimately they don’t want us to go recklessly picking fights everywhere around the world. 

Mr. PERRY. But this is real. This al-Qaeda threat is real. It is 

real. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. And people get it. I mean, the people still remember——

Mr. PERRY. And it is not partisan to say it is real——

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Not at all. 

Mr. PERRY [continuing]. And this approach of pulling back and 

kind of watching what is over there and as long as they are not 

launching planes into buildings here we don’t have to worry about 

it. That is not partisan. That is just reality. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Right. And your point, I think, is—it is one 

thing to say we are launching drones against terrorists in Pakistan 

or Yemen or wherever. I support that. 

But then if at the same time you just stand back from Syria and 

Iraq you are inviting the same sanctuaries for terrorists that happened in Afghanistan before 9/11 and from that, as Jane said earlier, they will attack us once again. 

Mr. PERRY. And I can tell Ms. Harman is bristling. 

Ms. HARMAN. Yes. If I could just add. I am not sure I agree with 

the way you have phrased the question. I agree with a lot of what 

you believe but not phrased that way. 

First of all, I always said that the so-called war on terror was 

a misnomer. Terror is a tactic. It was and it should be a war on 

al-Qaeda and its affiliates and we still are at war with al-Qaeda, 

and I think the actions of this administration on that specific point 

have been pretty robust. 

Remember, al-Qaeda is not a top-down vertically integrated 

structure anymore. It might become that again but it isn’t now. It 

is a set of horizontally affiliated—loosely affiliated opportunistic 

groups. They are not all al-Qaeda. They come together sometimes 

to do missions together. They also fight with each other, something 

I was pointing out. 

We have to be vigilant against those folks and I think the actions 

of this administration, using drones and using Special Forces in 

particular, have taken out more al-Qaeda than the actions of the 

prior administration. 

I don’t think this is a score card but it is a fact that that has 

happened. So what does all that mean? I don’t think it is fair to 

say has this administration abandoned the fight against al-Qaeda. 

I think the answer to that is no. Should America offer robust 

leadership all over the world? The answer to that needs to be yes 

and there I would say some of our leadership needs to be a lot 

stronger. 

And so I just see the question differently and I do admit and I 

said it in my testimony and I know we agree on this that there is 

a real al-Qaeda threat, different from the threat on 9/11 but a real 

al-Qaeda threat in lower tech attacks and homegrown terror and 

things of that kind, not just in the United States but it is in the 

United States. 

Mr. PERRY. I yield, Mr. Chairman. 

29

Mr. POE. Gentleman yields back. I want to thank both of you for 

being here today and the time you spent. The testimony has been 

excellent, superb and you are both free to go if you wish or you can 

come up here and ask some questions, whichever you prefer. 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks again to you 

and Congressman Sherman for convening this hearing and trying 

to focus us back on this real threat to our security. 

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I might add that we shouldn’t 

just talk about things being bipartisan. With Joe Lieberman here 

they are tripartisan. 

Mr. POE. That is correct. Thank you very much. We will move 

on to our next panel. 

Thank you, gentlemen, both for waiting and I am sure you took 

in the testimony of our two other witnesses. I will introduce our 

three members of this panel and then we will have your testimony 

and proceed from there. 

Dr. Seth Jones is associate director of the International Security 

and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation as well as an 

adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced 

International Studies. 

He served as a representative for the commander of U.S. Special 

Operations Command to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Before that he served as a plans officer and advisor 

to the commanding general of U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan. 

Dr. Fred Kagan is the Christopher deMuth chair and director of 

the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. 

In 2009, he served in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of the General 

Stanley McChrystal Strategic Assessment Team and returned 

years later to conduct research for Generals Petraeus and Allen. In 

July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike 

Mullen awarded him the Distinguished Public Service award, the 

highest civilian honor. 

And Mr. Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in the governance 

studies at the Brookings Institution. He is a co-founder and is the 

editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog which covers hard national security choices and is a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force 

on national security and law. 

He is the author of many books and is currently writing a book 

on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. 

Dr. Jones, you may proceed with your opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF SETH JONES, PH.D., ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, 

RAND CORPORATION 

Mr. JONES. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman and other 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting us to testify 

at this hearing. 

I have divided my comments into three sections. The first provides an overview of the evolving terrorism threat. The second examines the role of special operations, which is what I was asked 

to comment on, and the third offers a brief conclusion. 

30

Let me just talk briefly about the threat. I know we have heard 

from other members and then the witnesses in the first panel but 

let me just say that at least based on my estimates the United 

States will likely face a persistent threat from groups operating 

particularly in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. 

Of particular concern is the threat from al-Qaeda and other 

Salafi jihadist groups. A couple of concerning trends I just wanted 

to highlight. One is when you look at the data, collect the data on 

groups and fighters, the number of jihadist groups and fighters 

have both significantly increased since 2010 in countries like Syria, 

Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Algeria, Tunisia. 

There has also been a notable increase in the number of attacks, 

particularly by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and I am happy to talk 

about the data later. 

Second, though, it is worth noting that the broader movement 

has become more decentralized among a range of tiers from the 

core in Pakistan to formal affiliates, a panoply of other jihadist 

groups who haven’t sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda but whose goal is 

still establishing an extremist Islamic emirate in areas they control 

and then the inspired individuals that we saw 1 year ago in Boston. 

Let me say, though, that using the core al-Qaeda and its 

strength or weakness as a gauge of the movement, in my view, is 

increasingly anachronistic because of what we are seeing more 

broadly. 

And then finally, I think it is worth noting that the threat posed 

by this diverse set of groups varies widely and we can certainly 

talk about that later. Again, in my view, the most significant 

threat remains the group operating in Yemen. 

Somewhat recently the core appears to have become more involved in plotting including in Europe and potentially against the 

U.S. homeland so I would not count the core out in Pakistan. 

Let me turn briefly to one of the issues I was asked to talk about, 

which is the role of special operations. Based on this persistent 

threat, it is probably worth noting that a range of military, intelligence, financial, law enforcement, diplomatic and other tools from 

across the U.S. Government are important in conducting counter 

terrorism. 

Nonetheless, special operations forces—and I was in special operations command and then worked in and for the assistant secretary 

for special operations in the Pentagon—special operations can play 

important roles in several areas. One of them is building partner 

capacity and supporting foreign internal defense overseas. 

People often think of special operations forces as conducting direct action, targeted killing or capture. But I think without a doubt 

the vast majority of special operations activity and some of its most 

useful is training local forces and government entities. Special operations forces are trained to understand local culture, society, language, economy, history and politics. So quite useful. 

On the direct action side, they can also get involved in precision 

targeting of terrorist groups and that is useful, although I would 

also say they have been very useful in seizing supplies, undermining finances of groups, overseeing psychological and information operations, conducting and collecting intelligence, engaging 

31

with state and substrate entities. But there are a range of ways 

that they can be useful. 

I wanted to highlight the role of the drones. This is a controversial subject. In my view, there are risks with some of these activities. There are limitations to using armed drones to strike terrorists. 

There is mixed evidence, at least as far as I have looked at this 

issue, that drone strikes and then broader decapitation strategies 

alone are effective. Groups can survive a strike when they establish 

more decentralized leadership, possess an ideology that still has 

followers or are able to appoint competent leaders in their places. 

So I would—I would warn against focusing too much on the 

drone strikes. Let me just conclude by noting that Congress has 

played and should continue to play a critical role in helping support the conduct of special operations forces in counterterrorism 

missions. 

But again, and they can do this in a whole range of ways including Section 1208 and 1206 authorities, but let me just say this is 

a lot more than just strike operations. The training overseas, especially of weak governments that need assistance, is a critical part. 

Thank you, Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman and other 

members of the committee. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones follows:]

32


87515c-1.eps

Testimony 

Counterterrorism and the Role of Special 

Operations Forces 

Seth G. Jones 

RAND Office of External Affairs 

CT-408 

April 2014 

Testimony presented before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade on 

April 8, 2014 

This product is part of the RAND Corporation testimony series RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates 

to federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight 

bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address 

the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 

its research clients and sponsors. RAND® is a registered trademark. 
33


87515c-2.eps

Published 2014 by the RAND Corporation 

1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 

1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 

4570 Fifth Avenue, Suite 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2665 

RAND URL: http://www.rand.org/ 

To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact 

Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; 

Email: order@rand.org 
34


87515c-3.eps

Seth G, Jones 1 

The RAND Corporation 

Counterterrorism and the Role of Special Operations Forces' 

Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade 

United States House of Representatives 

April 8, 2014 

Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me 

to testify at this hearing, "Is al-Oaeda Winning? Grading the Administration's Counterterrorism Policy," I 

have been asked to focus my written remarks on the nature of the terrorism threat and the role of U,S, 

special operations forces, Consequently, I have divided my comments into threat sections, The first 

provides an overview of the evolving terrorism threat. The second section examines the role of special 

operations forces, And the third offers brief conclusions, 

A Persistent Threat 

Based on current trends, the United States will likely face a persistent threat from terrorist groups 

operating in such regions as North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, Of particular concern is the 

threat from al Oa'ida and other Salafi-jihadist groups" Groups that are Salafi-jihadist generally meet two 

criteria, First, the group emphasizes the importance of returning to a "pure" Islam, that of the Salaf, the 

pious ancestors, Second, the group believes that violent jihad is fard 'ayn (a personal religious duty)' 

Fard 'ayn includes tasks every Muslim is required to perform, such as zaka! (almsgiving), hajj (the 

pilgrimage to Mecca), sa/a! (daily prayers), sawm (fasting during Ramada), and the shahada (accepting 

Muhammad as God's messenger),5 Jihad is not one of these five pillars, It is, instead, a collective duty 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the author's alone and should not be interpreted as 

representing those of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research This product is part of the RAND Corporation 

testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates to federal, state, or local 

legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight bodies. 

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that 

address the challenges Facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not 

necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. 

2 This testimony is available for free download at http://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonles/CT40S.html 

3 While non-Salafl-Jlhadlst groups like Hezbollah are a threat, the focus of this hearing IS on al Qa'ida and ItS allies. 

4 See, for example, bin Laden's fatwa published in the London newspaper AI-Quds al-'Arabi in February 1995, which 

noted that "to kill Americans is a personal duty for all Muslims." The text can be found at: 

http·ffwww pbs orgfnewshourfupdatesfmilitaryfjan-june9Sffatwa_199S html 

5 On SaYYld Qutb's interpretation of armed jihad as a duty, see Sayyid Qutb, Ma'alim fi al-Tariq [Milestones], Reprint 

Edition (New Delhi: Islamic Book Service, 2007), 
35


87515c-4.eps

(fard kifaya) under certain circumstances. Most Salafi-jihadists consider violent jihad an individual duty, or 

fard 'ayn. 6 Ayman al-Zawahiri, among others, has emphasized both Salafism and armed jihad.' 

There are a number of concerning trends regarding Salafi-jihadist groups. First, the number of Salafijihadist groups and fighters has increased after 201 O. Examples include groups operating in Tunisia, 

Algeria, Mali, Libya, Egypt (including the Sinai Peninsula), Lebanon, and Syria. There has also been an 

increase in the number of attacks perpetrated by al Qa'ida and its affiliates. These trends suggest that the 

United States - including special operations forces - need to remain focused on countering al Qa'ida and 

other Salafi-jihadist groups, which have started to resurge in some parts of North Africa and the Middle 

East. 

Second, the broaderSalafi-jihadist movement has become more decentralized among fourtiers: (1) core 

al Qa'ida in Pakistan, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri; (2) formal affiliates that have sworn allegiance to core al 

Qa'ida, located in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa; (3) a panoply of Salafi-jihadist groups that 

have not sworn allegiance to al Qa'ida but are committed to establishing an extremist Islamic emirate; 

and (4) inspired individuals and networks. Using the state of the core in Pakistan as a gauge of al 

Qa'ida's strengths (or weaknesses) is increasingly anachronistic for such a heterogeneous movement. In 

addition, while there are some similarities among Salafi jihadists, there are also substantial differences. 

Salafi-jihadist leaders and groups often disagree about how much, if at all, to target Western countries 

and their citizens; the size and global nature of their desired emirate; and their willingness to attack Shi'a. 

This decentralized structure creates substantial vulnerabilities for al Qa'ida and other Salafi-jihadist 

groups. 

Third, the threat posed by this diverse set of groups varies widely. As I just mentioned, some are locally 

focused and have shown little interest in attacking Western targets. Others, like al Qa'ida in the Arabian 

Peninsula, present an immediate threat to the U.S. homeland, along with inspired individuals like the 

Tsarnaev brothers - the perpetrators of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. In addition, several 

Salafi-jihadist groups pose a medium-level threat because oftheir desire and ability to target U.S. citizens 

and facilities overseas, including U.S. embassies. Examples include Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, al Shabaab, 

the Muhammad Jamal Network, al Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb, and the various Ansar al-Sharia groups 

in Libya. 

6 Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh, translated by John Rothschild (Berkeley, 

CA University of California Press, 1993); Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 41. 

7 On the term Salafl-jihadists see, for example, Assaf Moghadam, "Motives for Martyrdom. AI-Qaida, Salafi Jihad, and 

the Spread of SUicide Attacks," International Security, Vol. 33, No.3, Winter 2008/2009, pp. 46-78; Moghadam, 'The 

Salafi-Jihad as a Religious Ideology," eTC Sentinel, Vol 1, No 3, February 2008, pp 14-16 Also see Alain 

Grignard, "La litterature politique du GIA, des origines a Djamal Zitoun - Esquisse d'une analyse," in F. Oassetto, ed., 

Facettes de /'Islam beige, Louvain-Ia-Neuve: Academla-Bruylant, 2001. 

2 
36


87515c-5.eps

As Table 1 illustrates, al Qa'ida and other Salafi-jihadist groups can be divided into three categories: 

those that pose a high threat because they are involved in active plotting against the U,S, homeland; 

those that pose a medium threat because they are involved in plotting attacks against U,S, structures 

(such as embassies) and U,S, citizens overseas; and those that pose a low threat because they are 

focused on targeting local regimes or other countries. 

F.xamples 

Table 1: Examples of Salafi-Jihadist Groups and Threats to the U,S_ 

• Al Qa-ida in the Arabian 

Peninsula 

• Core aI Qa'ida 

• Some inspired indiyiduals 

and Ilcnvorks 

• Al Shabaab 

• Ansar al-Sharia Libya 

• Muhammad Jamal Network 

• Al Qa'ida in the Islamic 

Maghreb 

• East Turkestan Islamic 

MOYCmcllt 

• Suqor ai-Sham 

The highest threat likely comes from al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, which retains a capability and 

desire to target the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests overseas. Several Yemen-based operatives - such 

as leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi, senior military commander Qasim al-Rimi, and senior official Ibrahim alBanna - continue to support attacks against the United States. Core al Qa'ida also presents a threat 

because of its interest in targeting the U.S. homeland, led by individuals such as external operations chief 

Abdullah al-Shami. But core al Qa'ida leaders have had difficulty recruiting - or even inspiring -

competent operatives in the West.s In an effort to reach out to Western jihadis, the first edition in 2014 of 

core al Qa'ida's magazine, Resurgence, was dedicated to radicalizing Westerners and encouraging 

independent attacks in the West. A small number of inspired individuals, like the Tsarnaev brothers, who 

perpetrated the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, also pose a threat. The growth in social media 

and the terrorist use of chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites has facilitated 

radicalization inside the United States. 

Several Salafi-jihadist groups pose a medium-level threat because of their interest in and capability to 

target U.S. citizens and installations overseas. Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, for instance, has planned attacks 

against U.S. diplomats and infrastructure in Tunis, including the U.S. embassy. Several groups with a 

presence in Libya - such as Ansar al-Sharia Libya, the Muhammad Jamal Network, and al Qa'ida in the 

8 Brian Michael Jenkins, Stray Dogs and Virlual Armies: Radicalization and Recruitment to Jihadist Terrodsm in the 

United States Since 9/11 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011). 

3 
37


87515c-6.eps

Islamic Maghreb - also pose a threat. AI Shabaab's objectives are largely parochial, and it has conducted 

attacks in Somalia and the region. But al Shabaab possesses a competent external operations capability 

to strike targets outside of Somalia. The Westgate Mall attack was well-planned and well-executed, and 

involved sophisticated intelligence collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance of the target. 9 These skills 

could be used for other types of attacks directly targeting the United States facilities and citizens 

overseas. In addition, some Americans have traveled to Somalia over the past several years to fight for al 

Shabaab, though these numbers have apparently dropped in recent years." Several al Shabaab leaders, 

including deputy leader Ma hat Karate and Jehad Serwan Mostafa (a U.S. citizen), have allegedly been 

interested in targeting Western and U.S. interests in the region." 

The Islamic State of Iraq and ai-Sham. along with Jahbat al-Nusrah. are primarily interested in 

establishing Islamic emirates in Iraq. Syria, and the broader region. But the network of Salafi-jihadist 

groups in Syria could pose a growing threat in the future. Jabhat al-Nusrah's access to foreign fighters, 

external network in Europe and other areas, and bomb-making expertise suggest that it may already have 

the capability to plan, support, and conduct attacks against the West. There appears to be a growing 

contingent of foreign fighters - over ten thousand - traveling to Syria to fight in the war. A significant 

number - perhaps 10 to 15 percent (roughly 1 ,000 to 1,500 fighters) - appear to be coming from Europe, 

especially from Belgium, France, and Sweden. Security agencies from such European countries as 

France, Belgium, Gerrnany, Netherlands, United Kingdom. and the Balkans have arrested fighters 

departing to, or returning from, Syria. It is currently unclear whether most of these fighters will remain in 

Syria and other battlefields over the long run, move to other war zones such as North Africa, or return to 

the West. And even if some return, it is uncertain whether they will become involved in terrorist plots, 

focus on recruiting and fundraising, or become disillusioned with terrorism. Still, foreign fighters have 

historically been agents of instability.12 

Finally, some Salafi-jihadist groups present a low-level threat to the United States. They do not possess 

the capability or intent to target the United States at home or overseas. They include such groups as the 

East Turi<estan Islamic Movement, which is primarily interested in Chinese targets. Despite this 

categorization, there is some fluidity between levels. And more broadly, the terrorist threat to the United 

States will likely persist. 

9 On Westgate see United States Army, Case Study: Terrorist Attack on Westgate Mall, Nairobi, Kenya: 21-24 

September 2013 (Washington. DC: United States Army. 2014); Kevin Yorke. Analysis of AI-Shabaab's Attack at the 

Westgate Mall in Nairobi. Kenya (New York: New York City Police Department, 20131. 

10 Committee on Homeland Security, AI Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim Amedcan 

Community and the Threat to the Homeland, Majority Investigative Report (Washington, D.C .. U.S. House of 

Representatives, July 27, 2011), p. 2. 

11 See, for example, Jehad Servvad Mostafa, Rewards for Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Available at 

http"/Iwwwrewardsforjustlce net/index cfm?page=mostafa&language=english Accessed on January 22,2014 

12 Thomas Hegghammer, "The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad," International 

Security. Vol. 35. No.3. 2011. pp. 53-94. 

4 
38


87515c-7.eps

The Role of Special Operations Forces 

Based on this persistent threat, an effective U.S. counterterrorism strategy needs to involve a range of 

military, intelligence, financial, law enforcement, diplomatic, and other tools from across the U.S. 

government. The U.S. State Department, intelligence community, Department of Justice, Department of 

Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and other U.S. federal, state, and 

local agencies are pivotal. Nonetheless, special operations forces can play an important role in several 

areas. 

Partner Capacity and Foreign Internal Defense: One is building partner capacity and supporting 

foreign internal defense, which includes a variety of activities like security force assistance and 

developing professional, capable, and sustainable foreign security forces." Special operations forces are 

trained to work "by, with, and through" partner forces, which generally makes them the provider of choice 

for building partner capacity. They are also trained to understand local culture, society, language, 

economy, history, and politics. For counterterrorism purposes, building partner capacity can involve 

deploying U.S. Army Special Forces and other units to train, advise, and assist local security forces and 

build the capacity of local governments to provide services, secure their populations, and deal with the 

causes of terrorism in their GOuntries. A number of countries threatened by Salafi-jihadist groups in North 

Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia could benefit from U.S. or other outside training and assistance. 

This is particularly true in cases where the weakness of the local government makes it desirable to 

prevent the terrorist threat from worsening. One example is Somalia, where al Shabaab has not plotted 

attacks against the U.S. homeland, though it has conducted attacks in neighboring countries and includes 

operatives like Abdikadir Mohammad (or "Ikrima") that have plotted attacks against U.S. targets overseas. 

Somalia has one of the weakest governments in the world, ranking as the worst-performing government 

in five of six categories in the World Bank's governance indicators. 14 In addition, foreign militaries 

participating in the African Union Mission in Somalia could use assistance from the special operations 

forces, such as additional equipment and financial support, to conduct offensive operations in al 

Shabaab's strongholds in southern Somalia. 

Figure 2 provides a rough illustration of the strategic challenge. The y-axis measures the capacity of local 

governments to establish the rule of law in their countries, using data from the World Bank. The x-axis 

measures the terrorist threat to the United States, using author estimates. 15 The bottom right-hand 

13 On foreign internal defense see U.S Department of Defense, Foreign Internal Defense, Joint Publication 3-22 

\Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, July 12, 2010). 

4 The data are for 2012 World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators Data Set, accessed January 8, 2014 

15 Countries were coded according to the following qualitative criteria for groups operating there. Score of 3.0: Group 

engaged in active plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland and U.S. target overseas (such as embassies); Score of 

5 
39


87515c-8.eps

quadrant indicates the countries where there is a high terrorist threat and low governrnent capacity. The 

data suggest that the most concerning countries forthe United States include Afghanistan, Pakistan, and 

Yemen, where there is a high potential threat to the United States and limited local rule of law. There are 

another set of troubling countries in the lower right-hand quadrant - such as Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Libyawith a medium Salafi-jihadist threat to the United States (including to U.S. interests overseas) and weak 

local governance. 

Figure 2: Countries of Concern for the United States 

70 

High Capacity Malaysia .. 

" 60 S'lUdi Arabi" • 

fi!' 

1:: 

" 

Q. 

~ 50 .Tuni~iC! 

Morocco 

i 

'y ra '" c.", ~ 

"'0 40 u-" 

3: " ~'" '" '" 

G~Ull / West Bank+ 

-", 

0-;: 30 ..!! 0 ":: "'- ~ 

1: 

" 20 

~ ~ 

> 0 

'" 10 

Kvrgvzstan. Tajikista. 

Low 

o Low Threat 

Level of Terrorist Threat to the United States 

3 

High Threat 

But there are risks with building partner capacity and foreign internal defense. First, local 

governments can be fickle and uncooperative. A govemment that is willing to target Salafi-jihadist groups 

at one point can change its assessment. Pakistan, for example, was more willing to target al Qa'ida 

operatives on its soil in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 than it is today. Governments can also collapse. 

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime effectively countered terrorist groups, was overthrown 

2.5. Group engaged In limited plotting against the U.S. homeland, but active plotting against U S. targets overseas, 

Score of 2.0: Group not engaged in plotting against the U.S. homeland, but active plotting against U.S. targets 

overseas; Score of 1 S" Group not engaged in plotting against the U S homeland, but limited plotting against U S 

targets overseas; Score of 1.0: No groups involved in serious plots against the U.S. homeland or U.S targets 

overseas. 

6 
40


87515c-9.eps

in 2011 during the Arab uprisings. Second. U.S. participation risks emboldening the Salafi-jihadist 

narrative. Third. combating terrorist and insurgent groups is difficult. especially in countries with weak 

governments. There is no guarantee that building the capacity of local partners will weaken or defeat 

terrorist groups. 

Despite these risks, special operations forces can bolster the capacity of local governments in cases 

where there is a terrorism threat to the United States and limited local capacity. 

Direct Action and Unconventional Warfare: Special operations forces can also be critical in precision 

targeting of terrorist groups and their financial, logistical, and political support networks. They can 

orchestrate covert raids to capture or otherwise target terrorists, seize their supplies, and undermine their 

finances; conduct air strikes from drones, fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters; oversee psychological 

operations to undermine terrorist support; collect and analyze intelligence about terrorist groups (their 

networks, locations, capabilities, and intentions); and engage with tribal and other local actors. 16 In 

countries that are hostile to the United States but have groups that pose a threat - such as Iran (where 

there are some al Qa'ida operatives) and Syria (where there are a range of Salafi-jihadist groups) - U.S. 

engagement may be limited to such options as unconventional warfare or covert action by intelligence 

operatives or special operations forces acting under Title 50 authority.17 Unconventional warfare includes 

activities to enable a resistance to coerce, disrupt, or undermine a government or occupying power by 

operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. 

Special operations forces are critical since the U.S. deployment of conventional forces to fight terrorists 

overseas has generally been counterproductive. '8 In Iraq, for instance, the large U.S. presence 

contributed to radicalization. In general, large numbers of U.S. forces tend to facilitate Salafi-jihadist 

recruitment and propaganda efforts. Perhaps more importantly, most successful overseas operations 

against al Qa'ida operatives in the past decade - such as against Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in Pakistan 

in 2003, Abu Mus'ab al Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006, Osama bin Laden in Pakistan 2011, and Anwar al-Awlaki 

in Yemen in 2011 - were perpetrated by clandestine U.S. intelligence units and special operations forces. 

And most of the terrorists involved in serious homeland plots after September 11,2001 - from Jose 

16 Depending on a Salafi-jihadist group's organizational structure, capabilities, support base, and other factors, aan 

engagement strategy might involve decapitation (catching or killing the group's leadership), negotiations, or other 

options On how terrorist groups end see, for example, Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the 

Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Seth G. Jones and 

Martin C. Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering 81 Qa'ida (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008). 

17 As outlined in the National Security Act of 1947, covert action refers to "an activity or activities of the United States 

Government to Influence political, economiC, or military conditions abroad, where It IS Intended that the role of the 

United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." See National Security Act of 1947, Section 

503e. In addition, Title 50 of the U.S. Code allows the U.S. military to conduct covert action under a CIA-run 

oferation See United States Code, Title 50 War and National Defense, Section 413 

1 Barry R. Posen, "Pull Back The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No.1, January I 

February 2013, pp. 116-128. 

7 
41


87515c-10.eps

Padilla's plan to blow up apartment buildings in the United States and Hasan's mass shooting at Fort 

Hood to Najibullah Zazi and Faisal Shahzad's respective plots to conduct terrorist attacks in New York 

City - were motivated, in part, by the deployment of large numbers of U.S. combat troops in Muslim 

countries and by a conviction, however erroneous, that Muslims were its helpless victims.'9 

Still, there are risks with direct action and unconventional warfare. First, they can embolden the narrative 

of Salafi-jihadist groups, who will invariably attempt to portray the confiict as one between Islam and 

infidel countries. Direct U.S. participation will likely become public, despite efforts to keep it clandestine. 

Some in the United States may also balk at direct engagement in a foreign war. Second, there is a 

potential for blowback. In cases where Salafi-jihadist groups are not interested in targeting the U.S. 

homeland or its embassies, U.S. strikes against the group could cause a change in their behavior. After 

the 2009 U.S. killing ofTehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Baitullah Mehsud, for example, the TTP 

became increasingly interested in targeting the United States. In May 201 0, Faisal Shahzad attempted to 

detonate a car bomb in Times Square, New York City, after being trained by TTP leaders in Pakistan. 

In addition, the United States has utilized drone strikes against some terrorist groups. But there are 

limitations to using armed drones for direct action missions. There is mixed evidence, at best, that drone 

strikes and broader decapitation strategies alone are effective. 20 Groups can survive a strike when they 

establish - or shift to - a more decentralized leadership structure, possess an ideology that still has 

followers, or are able to appoint competent replacements for leaders that have been killed. In addition, 

successful counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns generally require the local government to 

control territory using its security forces. 

But the benefits of direct action and unconventional warfare outweigh the risks in most cases where 

Salafi-jihadist groups are already plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland and its interests overseas 

(such as U.S. embassies), especially where the local government has minimal capabilities or little political 

will to counter the groups. One example is Yemen, where al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula has been 

involved in multiple plots against the U.S. homeland and U.S. embassies, but whose government is 

relatively weak and embroiled in several domestic insurgencies and political unrest. Beginning in the 

summer of 2012, Yemeni President Abd Rabuh Mansur Hadi became increasingly cautious about 

conducting operations against al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula to minimize government casualties. He 

avoided large-scale ground offensives in favor of airstrikes against al Qa'ida safe havens, including its 

19 Seth G. Jones, Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of AI Qa'ida Since 9111 (New York w.w. Norton, 2012) 

20 Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Declme and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns 

(Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press, 2009), Jenna Jordan, "When Heads Roll. Assessing the Effectiveness of 

Leadership Decapitation," Security Studies, Vol. 18, No.4, December 2009, pp. 719-755; Stephen T Hosmer, 

Operations against Enemy Leaders (Santa Monica, CA RAND, 2001) On the effectiveness of drones see Patrick B 

Johnston, "Does Decapitation Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Targeting in Counterinsurgency 

Campaigns," Intemational Security, Vol. 36, No.4, Spring 2012, pp. 47-49. 

8 
42


87515c-11.eps

stronghold in Mahfad District, Abyan governorate. In addition, the Yemeni military was fraught with 

problems. Many rank-and-file Yemeni soldiers did not receive their full pay because of endemic corruption 

in the military, undermining the military's effectiveness in countering al Qa'ida. 

In these cases, a U.S. failure to directly engage special operations forces or intelligence units could 

severely jeopardize U.S. national security if a group were to strike the U.S. homeland or a U.S. embassy. 

The risks of not being engaged could be serious. Still, the possibility that direct U.S. engagement could 

inflame the local population suggests that U.S. policymakers should carefully weigh the type of 

engagement. 

Conclusions 

Congress has played - and should continue to play - a critical role in helping to support the conduct of 

counterterrorism efforts by special operations forces to protect U.S. national security. Tools like Section 

1208 and 1206 authorities have been helpful to maintain pressure on al Qa'ida and other Salafi-jihadist 

groups. In addition, special operations forces will need to employ versatile platforms, including manned 

and unmanned fixed wing assets with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. 

Examples range from the man-portable RQ-20A Puma to the medium altitude MQ-9 Reaper. 

Overthe foreseeable future, the United States should prioritize its U.S. counterterrorism resources - such 

as military, intelligence, diplomatic, financial, and law enforcement assistance - more systematically than 

it has done in the past. The United States will likely continue to need special operations forces for direct 

action, unconventional warfare, and partner capacity missions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and 

possibly Syria, where there are significant threats to the U.S. homeland. Over the long run, the United 

States needs to devote sufficient special operations resources - from signals collection capabilities to 

human intelligence collectors - to understand and counter Salafi-jihadist threats in these areas. 

In addition, the United States needs to utilize special operations forces to help build partner capacity and 

conduct foreign internal defense with a limited set of countries in Africa (such as Nigeria, Algeria, 

Somalia, and Egypt) and the Middle East (such as Lebanon and Iraq). In these countries, terrorist groups 

may not be plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland, but they may be involved in attacks against U.S. 

structures (such as embassies), citizens, and other interests overseas. In addition, several regional 

countries - such as Jordan, Turkey, and Israel- are important allies in countering these terrorist groups. 

Finally, there are several countries - such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Mali - where the United States 

should encourage allies (including NATO countries) to work with local governments, though there may be 

a limited role for special operations forces and other U.S. government agencies. In these countries, there 

is a low threat to the United States or sufficient local government capacity or an ally (like a NATO country) 

9 
43


87515c-12.eps

willing to counter Salafi-jihadist groups. In Mali, for example, French and Malian forces retook most 

territory controlled by Salafi-jihadist groups in 2013 during Operation Serval. These steps should not be 

static, and the United States would need to reassess its options when there are changes in the threat 

environment or the counterterrorism capacity and willingness of local governments. 

Overthe long run, the persistent nature of the terrorism threat to the United States suggests that special 

operations forces should remain a key part of the struggle against al Qa'ida and other Salafi-jihadist 

groups. Thank you Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, and members of the Subcommittee. I look 

forward to your questions. 

10 
44

Mr. POE. Thank you, Dr. Jones. 

Dr. Kagan, you have 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK W. KAGAN, PH.D., CHRISTOPHER 

DEMUTH CHAIR AND DIRECTOR, CRITICAL THREATS 

PROJECT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC 

POLICY RESEARCH 

Mr. KAGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Sherman. I will start by agreeing with everything that Seth said, which 

has become more and more common for us so I won’t reiterate that 

ground. 

I want to make a few points that are—some of which are in my 

written testimony and some of which are extrapolations from it. 

First of all, I think it is very important to step back in this conversation and stop compartmentalizing problems to the degree that 

we have been. 

There is a lot going on. We get a very staccato news cycle. We 

get now it is this week it is Ukraine, you know, next—now it is the 

Iranian negotiations, now it is this, now it is that. 

And al-Qaeda—the al-Qaeda problem gets put in a pigeon hole, 

historically a rather large one, now an ever shrinking one, I would 

say, and within that there are a number of individual pigeonholes 

that we put al-Qaeda groups into and that especially this administration has been eager to parse the groups, I think, too finely and 

talk about al-Qaeda core as being the real problem and get into arguments about whether this group or that group is actually part 

of al-Qaeda or is actually covered by the authorization to use military force, which Ben will talk about. 

And the legalisms are very important and getting the legislation 

right is important. But it should not be allowed to shape the way 

that we understand the group because the group is a holistic entity 

and it does not make sense to look at an al-Qaeda franchise in 

Yemen or al-Shabaab or al-Qaeda in Iraq, now ISIS, and argue 

about whether these are parts of al-Qaeda. 

They are parts of al-Qaeda and they do share the global ideology 

of al-Qaeda and this is one of the things that I think has also gotten lost in the discussion about local groups versus global groups, 

that the administration talks about a lot on the premise that we 

shouldn’t really concern ourselves too much with local groups—locally focused groups—and we should really focus on those that are 

trying to attack the United States. 

And the problem is that as you look at what happened in Syria 

when we got into—when they got into the argument about whether 

the Islamic state of Iraq and ash-Sham was or was not operating 

in Syria and Zawahiri came in, it forced the actual Syrian al-Qaeda 

franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, to decide whether or not to declare 

itself publically as an al-Qaeda franchise. 

And the issue was put very starkly then to Jabhat al-Nusra as 

we have seen it in a couple of other places, namely what is meant 

by that, what is the distinction between Jabhat al-Nusra focused 

on Syria and being Jabhat al-Nusra as a member of al-Qaeda. 

And the distinction is signing up to the global jihad, signing up 

to the global ideology and signing up to the support of attacking 

45

the West, and I think this has gotten lost in the conversation. This 

is a live discussion amongst radical Islamist groups. 

Do you or do you not support the global jihad? Do you or do you 

not believe that we should take the fight to the West? Wwould you 

or would you not support that whether or not you would do it yourself? 

And what is interesting is that groups like Jabhat al-Nusra who 

have been confronted with that and pay a price locally in Syria for 

being affiliated with al-Qaeda nevertheless adhere when pushed 

and say yes, we are an al-Qaeda franchise and in fact we are the 

only al-Qaeda franchise. 

That should give us a lot of pause because that is a conscious decision that that group has made to stake a claim to an ideology 

that is explicitly distinguished from the alternatives by the fact 

that it is part of the global movement and sees the United States 

in part as a major enemy. 

About the AUMF, we had been having a very good conversation 

previously and I will leave it to the expert on the AUMF to talk 

about the language there. My sense is that the administration has 

tended to take—this administration has tended to take an overly 

narrow view of the AUMF by deciding in many cases that it is only 

applicable to people who were actually members of al-Qaeda on 

September 11, 2001 which I don’t think is what it says and which, 

of course, is an absolutely failed strategy regardless of what—

whether or not the AUMF covers that. 

But the more important point to me is that we have come to mistake the AUMF for the strategy against al-Qaeda and this is a 

huge mistake because the AUMF authorizes force by which we 

mean targeted strikes and so forth, and Seth made the point better 

than I could that that is not an—that is not a strategy and it will 

not be effective against this organization. 

We need to understand that special operations forces do fit. We 

need to understand that there have to be other comopnents of a 

strategy than simply attacking the leadership under an AUMF. 

And so as we talk about the AUMF, as we think about under what 

authorities people do anything, it is very important not to allow 

us—not to allow that discussion to shape our entire discussion of 

a strategy that is going to have to be a lot more holistic than that 

and for which, frankly, the military and the administration already 

have a lot of authorities and don’t need authorities to do it in a lot 

of places, don’t need special authorities to do various other things. 

But we have gotten too focused on targeted killing and we are 

not going to be able to kill our way out of this problem. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kagan follows:]

46


87515d-1.eps

Researcff 

Statement before the House Conunittee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade on "Is al Qaeda 

WilUling? Grading the Administration's Counterterrorism Policy" 

Missing the Target: 

Why the U.S. Has Not Defeated al Qaeda 

Frederick W. Kagan 

Christopher DeMuth Chair and Director, Critical Threats Project 

American Enterprise Institute 

April 8,2014 

'l'he Vie11'S expressed in this lestimon.-v are those oJthe author a/one and do not necess(fr;~v represenllhose oj/he 

American F.nterprise Institute 
47


87515d-2.eps

Frederick W. Kagan 

April 8,2014 

All conditions are set for a series of significant terrorist attacks against the US and its allies over 

the next few years. But that's not the worst news. Conditions are also set for state collapse in 

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and possibly Jordan. Saudi Arabia, facing a complex succession 

soon, is likely to acquire nuclear weapons shortly, ifit has not already done so. Turkey and 

Egypt confront major crises. Almost all of Northern and Equatorial Africa is violent, unstable, 

and facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And Vladimir Putin's assault on Ukraine is likely to 

empower al Qaeda-aligned jihadists in Crimea and in Russia itself. That eventuality is, of course, 

less worrisome than the prospect of conventional and partisan war on the European continent, 

likely threatening NATO allies. The international order and global stability are collapsing in a 

way we have not seen since the 1930s. There is little prospect of this trend reversing of its own 

accord, and managing it will require massi ve efJorts by the US and its allies over a generation or 

more. 

This distressing context is essential for considering the al Qaeda threat today. On the one hand, it 

makes that threat look small. The long-term effects of global chaos and conflict among hundreds 

of millions of people across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East on US security, interests, and 

way oflife are surely greater than any damage al Qaeda is likely to do to us in the immediate 

future. Yet the two threats feed each other powerfully. Disorder and conflict in the Muslim world 

breed support for al Qaeda, which is starting to look like the strong horse in Iraq and even in 

Syria. Al Qaeda groups and their allies, on the other hand, powerfully contribute to the collapse 

of state structures and the emergence of horrific violence and Hobbesian chaos wherever they 

operate. They are benefiting greatly from the regional sectarian war they intentionally triggered 

(the destruction of the Samarra Mosque in 2006 was only the most spectacular of a long series of 

etJorts by al Qaeda in Iraq to goad Iraq's Shi'a into sectarian conflict, for which some Shi'a 

militants, to be sure, were already preparing)--and have been continuing to tuel. Al Qaeda is 

like a virulent pathogen that opportunistically attacks bodies weakened by internal strife and 

poor governance, but that turther weakens those bodies and infects others that would not 

otherwise have been susceptible to the disease. The problem of al Qaeda cannot be separated 

from the other crises of our age, nor can it be quarantined or rendered hannless through targeted 

therapies that ignore the larger problems. 

Yet that is precisely how the Obama administration has been trying to deal with al Qaeda 

Neither the White House nor the intelligence community has offered anything approaching a 

clear definition of al Qaeda, as a forthcoming paper by Mary Habeck from AE1's Critical Threats 

Project (CTP) shows in detail. But such statements as the Administration has made-and its 

actions and inactions, which speak louder than its words-make the scope of its definition pretty 

clear. This White House, like its predecessor, focuses on al Qaeda as a terrorist group aiming to 

attack the US homeland. It appears to have narrowed the scope of what it considers to be al 

Qaeda even more than did the Bush Administration, by observing an extremely limited and 

legalistic reading of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution that 

requires individuals and groups to have been al Qaeda members on 911112001. There are several 

1 
48


87515d-3.eps

Frederick W. Kagan 

April 8,2014 

problems with this approach that ensure that it will be inetlective against al Qaeda in the long 

run. 

To begin with, this administration is compounding an important mistake made by the Bush 

White House by seeing al Qaeda as a terrorist group. It certainly is that, of course, but that is not 

its main focus. As my fellow panelists and many other colleagues have shown, al Qaeda never 

conceived of itself as a terrorist group and has long devoted the lion's share of its global 

resources to what it regards as its main effort-seizing and governing terrain and populations in 

the Muslim world. Al Qaeda has always seen itself as a global insurgency that uses terrorism, 

and its ability to field small irregular armies in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere demonstrates the 

seriousness with which it takes that self-conception. 

Mis-defining al Qaeda as a US-focused terrorist group has important ramifications for US policy. 

It encourages the belief that the "real" threat from the "real" al Qaeda-that is the portion of the 

group actively planning and preparing for further attacks on the US-is very small and 

susceptible to attrition and disruption by targeted strikes. The corollary is that the much larger, 

more organizationally-sophisticated, better-equipped, and wealthier "franchises" such as al 

Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQlM) or the erstwhile al Qaeda in Iraq are either not "real" al 

Qaeda groups or are part of the network in a way that means that the US can largely disregard 

them as threats apart from isolated individuals within them, who can be removed as needed. 

Since al Qaeda does not define itself in this way, it should be no surprise that it has not behaved 

as expected in the face of the massive attrition of its "core group" largely in Pakistan. The killing 

of as am a bin Laden certainly warranted a victory lap, although not one as grandiose and tull of 

leaks of highly-sensitive details as this White House took. But the sequel highlights the falsity of 

the narrow conception of the threat. If al Qaeda really were a small group of extremists hiding 

out in the mountains-or villas-of Pakistan and dreaming oftlying planes into more American 

buildings, then the death of bin Laden and the deaths of most of the leaders who were active in 

2001 should have demoralized the group and its supporters. Al Qaeda's failure, despite repeated 

etlorts, to carry off any other mass-casualty attacks in the US should also have been devastating 

to group cohesion, support, morale, and activity. Above all, it should have damaged the al Qaeda 

brand severely. Al Qaeda supporters are fanatics, and in some cases, willing to die (although not 

the leaders, interestingly, who take great pains to avoid the martyrdom toward which they 

encourage their followers), but they don't like losing any more than nonnal people do. On the 

contrary, Islam has a very strong tradition of seeing divine blessing or curse manifested in thisworldly success or failure. 

Yet the brand is spreading like wildfire, the groups affiliating themselves with it control more 

fighters, land, and wealth than they ever have, and they are opening up new fronts The Syrian 

civil war-and the refusal of this White House and the West generally to support the moderate 

Sunni opposition materially and meaningfully early on, has allowed and encouraged the 

emergence of a new al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra (IN), alongside al Qaeda in Iraq, which 

2 
49


87515d-4.eps

Frederick W. Kagan 

April 8,2014 

precociously and mutinously now calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS; al 

Sham refers to the land that is now both Syria and Lebanon). African Union forces drove atliliate 

al Shabaab from many of its strongholds in Somalia, although it is fighting to defend those it still 

has and to regain some of the ground it has lost. But al Shabaab has also metastasized throughout 

the region, activating and expanding cells in Kenya (such as the one that conducted the Westgate 

Mall attack), in Burundi, and in Uganda. 

AQIM has seen the most dramatic expansion of its capabilities and operating area of any al 

Qaeda franchise in recent years. Not long ago, AQIM was little more than a small terrorist cell 

sitting atop a large kidnap-for-ransom and smuggling apparatus. Now it is a fighting force 

organized into "battalions" and "brigades" that operate in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, and Libya. 

AQIM has excelled at putting sub-components through branding bankruptcy periodically, 

presenting a bewildering array of group names. But as a recent product by CTP's Andreas Hagen 

shows, the human networks have remained the same despite multiple rebrandings. 1 

AQIM, ISIS, IN, AQAP (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), al Shabaab, the Islamic Emirate of 

the Caucasus, and the rest of the al Qaeda alphabet soup, are primarily engaged in regional 

conflicts to which they devote the overwhelming proportion of their resources. The Obama 

administration has consistently indicated that it does not see those "locally-focused" groups as 

major threats to the US or even, depending on the briefer, part of the "real" al Qaeda Katherine 

Zimmennan, Senior Analyst and al Qaeda Team Lead at the Critical Threats Project, has shown 

the degree to which such a parsing of the networks is simply wrong. 2 The very fact that all of 

these groups retain their formal al Qaeda atliliations and branding speaks volumes. 

Jihadist leaders are evil and, by our standards, insane. That does not mean they are stupid. They 

are well aware that any individual or group claiming to be part of al Qaeda is considerably more 

likely to be targeted by the US and many other states. They have even discussed such thingsbin Laden opposed formall y recognizing al Shabaab as an affiliate for fear of attracting attention 

to it. But the group continued to clamor for al Qaeda recognition, which bin Laden's successor, 

Ayman al Zawahiri, granted shortly after taking power. Jabhat al Nusra in Syria tried for some 

time to obfuscate its relationship with al Qaeda in order to portray itself as a Syrian nationalist 

group. Its leadership (and Zawahiri) was incensed when ISIS declared itself the single al Qaeda 

franchise in both Iraq and Syria, forcing IN to publicly accept or repudiate its al Qaeda atll1iate 

status. IN not only affinned its status, but also appealed to Zawahiri rather publicly to mediate 

the dispute with ISIS-which he did, ineffectively, ultimately "expelling" ISIS from al Qaeda, 

although the effects of that "expulsion" remain unclear. 

The Syria case put sharply the issue of al Qaeda membership. IN recognized that al Qaeda is 

regarded throughout the Muslim world not simply as a radical Sunni fighting force, but also as 

an ideology with regional and global aspirations. All al Qaeda atliliates know that membership 

in the group antagonizes other local fighting groups and some local populations (there have been 

anti-ISIS popular uprisings in Syria, in fact), as well as exposing them to Western attack. Yet 

3 
50


87515d-5.eps

Frederick W. Kagan 

April 8,2014 

they fight-literally in the case of Syria-to retain the affiliation and reaffirm it when publicly 

challenged. Why? 

None of the possible answers support the current Administration assessments of al Qaeda or the 

current strategy. Affiliates are certainly not fighting to join and stay with a group and brand they 

believe is "on its last legs" or losing or about to lose. Neither are they driven by any local 

imperatives, since those imperatives drive the other way. They surely are not taking risks and 

paying a price to be part of a group whose networks, leadership, shared resources, and 

cooperation are as tenuous and limited as some analysts have suggested. We should be 

comfortable with the idea that their motivations seem crazy to us, but not with the idea that they 

are just plain dumb. 

There are two maj or reasons that make sense for groups to show this degree of loyalty to al 

Qaeda, and they are not mutually-exclusive: the affiliates get something from membership and/or 

they really believe in the ideology. The something they get is likely money in the form of 

donations from wealthy Gulfis who believe in and value the brand and the human networks that 

control it. Flows of "foreign fighters" from around the Muslim world are directed in part by the 

al Qaeda networks in ways that can favor or disadvantage particular local groups. Those fighters 

bring zeal, expertise, money, and, frequently, either the desire for martyrdom or the 

psychological weaknesses upon which skilled handlers can play to produce suicide bombers. 

But the affiliates seem also to seek some fonn of group governance that leads groups like IN to 

imagine that Zawahiri can and will mediate on theirbehalfwith other affiliates. All these 

benefits suggest a network and leadership that is real enough to be worth risking life and group 

success to be part of. 

We should also seriously consider the possibility that they really believe in the ideology, and, 

specifically in the part that is most dangerous to us. The global (and anti-US) objectives that lead 

to efforts to attack the US and Europe are precisely the things that distinguish the al Qaeda brand 

of Sunni violent extremism from all others. If you're just a tak/iri who wants to make all women 

wear burqas, stop people from smoking, and implement a distorted and draconian interpretation 

of something you call Shari' a law, you do not need to join al Qaeda. Plenty of extremist groups 

have those goals, and some, like the Afghan Taliban, explicitly reject al Qaeda's global aims 

(without, however, repudiating its ties to al Qaeda in the Taliban's case). The ideological reason 

for joining al Qaeda is precisely because you believe in global jihad at some point, even if you 

are currently caught up in local struggles. Sound threat assessment therefore requires assuming 

that affiliates that have consciously chosen to adhere to this global objective do, in fact, intend to 

attack the US and its allies at some point or at least to support such attacks. From which it 

follows that the capabilities those groups are developing may be used in the future to facilitate 

such attacks. 

And that is the most worrying thing of all, since multiple affiliates have shown the ability to plan 

and execute year-long campaigns at the operational level of war integrating improvised explosive 

4 
51


87515d-6.eps

Frederick W. Kagan 

April 8,2014 

devices (IEDs), car bombs, suicide attacks, light infantry operations, crew-served weapons, and 

even, on limited occasions, armored vehicles. Nothing would please the US military more, of 

course, than the fielding of an al Qaeda annored division, which we could easily destroy even 

after the foolish decision to retire the A-IO without replacement. Nor will al Qaeda find it easy to 

set up vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) cells or infantry training centers in 

the US. The skills they have shown in planning, logistics, communications, direction and control 

of operations, training, and adaptability, however, are all transferable. The transfer has, in fact, 

already begun as fighters from Syria, Iraq, and the Maghreb have started to return to their homes 

in Europe, Ukraine, and Russia-and the U.S. The U.S. intelligence community has put the 

number offoreign fighters in Syria at around 7,000. What will happen when a lot of them start 

going home? The good news is that the al Qaeda of 200 I is gone; the bad news is that Son of al 

Qaeda is a lot more lethal. 

No discussion of the al Qaeda threat these days can be complete without considering the nature 

of our defenses. Here conditions are parlous and getting worse. I will not get into the merits of 

the debate over civil liberties, what the NSA is or is not doing, how complete or accurate is the 

Senate report on CIA interrogations, or what should be done about any of these important issues. 

Torture is bad and should be forbidden, and we can have a sensible conversation about where to 

draw the line. Civil liberties are vital to the American way oflife and must be protected, even at 

the cost of greater risk to life and limb. Again, we can and must have a sensible discussion about 

how to draw the balance. 

But NSA operations are already being curtailed by White House fiat even before we have 

completed that national discussion, and the CTA bids fair to become the "Central Self-Defense 

Agency" in the face of this Senate report. So the guardians on whom we rely to see and 

understand the minute changes in intent that alone distinguish potential from actual threats posed 

byal Qaeda groups with expanding capabilities will be distracted by internal debates, attacks, 

and requirements just as the danger grows most acute. And they will be further distracted by 

dramatic budget reductions that also constrain their abilities to keep up with the evolving threats. 

That is why I began this statement by saying that all conditions are set for future attacks. The 

threat is growing in size and capability while we are dismantling our defenses. Surely we should 

consider other approaches, and soon. 

I Andreas Hagen. "AI Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Leaders and their Networks," AEJ's Critical Threats Project 

March 27, 20 14, ll1!p-"'imnv.cri.ti.'1ll1hrea~al·q3edalhaeen·aillm·leaders·a[]d-networks-march-2 7·70 l·f. 

2 Katherine Zinunennan, '-The al Qaeda Net\vork: A Ne\" Fmme,\york for Defining the Enemy:- AEfs Critical 

September 10, 2013, 

5 
52

Mr. POE. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Wittes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. BENJAMIN WITTES, SENIOR FELLOW, 

GOVERNANCE STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Mr. WITTES. Thank you, Chairman Poe and Ranking Member 

Sherman for inviting me to present my views. You have asked me 

to address both the AUMF and intelligence collection under Section 

702 of the FISA Amendments Act, so I am not sure these issues 

directly concern, you know, whether al-Qaeda is winning much less 

do I mean to sit here and try to grade the administration’s performance to date. 

But they definitely do involve sort of the structural question of 

whether the administration, this one and the next one and the one 

after that, will have the tools to make sure al-Qaeda doesn’t win 

and that our counterterrorism policy gets to receive good grades in 

the future. 

So as a preliminary matter, the two topics that you have asked 

me to address are actually kind of, sort of only oddly related to one 

another. They involve different legal authorities passed at different 

times with fundamentally different purposes. 

But there is a very important common thread between them that 

I want to draw out here. These are two of the most important legal 

instruments in the struggle this committee is endeavouring to assess. One is the key legal authority for virtually every military action the United States undertakes in its battle against al-Qaeda, 

its offshoots and its affiliates. 

And the other is the single most important legal authority the intelligence community has for collecting intelligence against the alQaeda target as well as against a sort of wide variety of other national security priorities. And, importantly, both laws are today for 

very different reasons under considerable stress. 

So, you know, to put it bluntly, major pillars of the legal architecture of our conflict with al-Qaeda are now on the legislative 

table and Congress, over the next few years, is not going to be able 

to avoid the question of how much it wants to alter the fundamental architecture of that conflict. 

So let us start with the AUMF and why, exactly, that is under 

stress today. So President Obama has announced that he wants to 

end the AUMF conflict. He has spoken passionately about this and 

I think, you know, entirely sincerely, and I am sympathetic to the 

objective, frankly. 

I am not—you know, the idea of endless war is not attractive and 

most analysts, whether they favor repeal of the AUMF or reauthorization and refinement of it in some form of agree that the current 

AUMF is badly out of date. 

So it is tied textually to the September 11th attacks and for some 

of the reasons that my colleagues have said here it does not really 

describe well the conflict the United States is currently pursuing. 

This actually creates operational problems. Specifically, there are 

groups that oppose ongoing and growing threats that the application of the AUMF to which is something of a puzzle and in some 

cases hard to make a good legal argument for and the administration has struggled with that a lot. 

53

So as you can probably tell, the answer to these problems, in my 

view, is not the repeal of the AUMF or the declaration of the end 

of the conflict. The first and most obvious reason for that, and I go 

into some others in my written statement, is that Congress may 

wish to continue to authorize military force against foreign terrorist groups that actively threaten the United States, and unless 

one believes that the result of ending the AUMF conflict will be the 

near exclusive reliance on law enforcement authorities and that 

this is a desirable outcome, the realistic alternative to a new 

AUMF is not—is likely to be excessive reliance on the President’s 

inherent Article 2 powers, and I confess I can’t see that as an attractive option. 

I think the better option is a statutory option, which is to modernize the AUMF. In my view, Congress ought to authorize the executive branch to use force against groups the executive formally 

designates as posing an imminent threat to the United States, and 

it should pass a series of accountability mechanisms so that Congress is kept informed of the executive’s view of the scope of the 

authorization’s coverage. 

The idea here is to create both a more nimble instrument—as the 

enemy continues to shift it stays current and more adaptable—but 

also to create a more accountable instrument that ensures appropriate interbranch cooperation in defining the contours of the conflict. 

So if I may, I would like to tie this very briefly to the question 

of intelligence collection under Section 702. Good intelligence is key 

to any armed conflict and good technical intelligence is a huge U.S. 

advantage in the fight against al-Qaeda. 

But technical intelligence, ironically, becomes more important 

the more one attempts to narrow the conflict. So the fewer boots 

on the ground we have in Afghanistan, the more we rely on drone 

strikes in areas where we lack large human networks, the more, 

not less, we will rely on technical intelligence collection. 

And if you imagine staying on offense against a metastasizing alQaeda after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, you have to imagine 

a huge burden on technical collection. And this is why it is such 

a problem that even as we have narrowed the AUMF conflict and 

contemplate its formal end, serial leaks have generated such incredible anxiety about Section 702 collection and collection under 

Executive Order 12333, and all these calls in the press and the 

general public, among our allies and in Congress for reform and 

substantial changes to these practices. 

Section 702 actually sunsets in 2017. If we don’t maintain the political will to have these authorities they actually go away. The 

legal regime here is one that Congress knowingly and deliberatively created and in my view, really requires no apology. 

It really needs an active defense, and there are certainly areas 

where the regime could benefit from reform. The big risk here is 

that overreaction and panic in the face of exposure will lead to a 

burdening of our core signals intelligence capacity with legal processes designed to protect domestic civil liberties. 

To the extent that members of this committee and this body continue to believe, as I do, in the essential integrity and value of the 

legal authorities for intelligence collection and oversight, the essenVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:55 May 07, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\040814\87515 SHIRL
54

tial legislative task in this environment is to defend that architecture publicly and energetically to ensure it remains available. 

Thank you. I would be happy to take any questions you may 

have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittes follows:]

55


87515e-1.eps

Governance Studies 

at BROOKINGS 

Prepared Statement of 

Benjamin Wittes 

Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution 

before the 

House Subcommittee on Terrorism, 

Nonproliferation, and Trade 

Committee on Foreign Affairs 

"Is AI Qaeda Winning: Grading the 

Administration's Counterterrorism Policy" 

April 8, 2014 
56


87515e-2.eps

OPENING REMARKS 

Thank you, Chairman Royce, Ranking Member Engel, and members of the 

subcommittee for inviting me to present myviews on the future of the 

, Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF)l and intelligp.ncf! 

collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Acts (FAA].! I am 

a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies atthe Brookings Institution. 1 cofounded and am Editor in Chief of Law/are, a website devoted to sober and 

serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," 1 am the author or 

editor of sEveral books on subjects related to law and. national security: 

Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Gllantdnamo (2011), Law and 

the Long War: The Future afJustice in the Age of Terror (2008), and Legislating 

fellSlw in Govern3'lCe the vVar on Terror: An Agenda for Reform (2009). r have written extensively 

hath on the AU.Y1F and on NSA collection under various provisions of the 

fl'ld IS the edllO'-lIl-ch!efof Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FlSA).3 The views I am f'xpl'f'ssing here 

!&jJ'a:(~. are my own, 

The topics of the vitality and adequacy of the AU;\1F for the conflict the United 

States is currently fighting and the NSA surveillance programs that have, of 

late, dominated news headlines may seem largely unconnected. The AUMF and 

the FAA, after all, are profoundly different legal authorities, passed at different 

times, and with different fundamental purposes-one to authorize the conflict 

with At Qacda and the Taliban in response to the September 11 attacks, the 

other to gather foreign inteiligence both inside and outside of the context of 

that armed conflict. 

Yet in considering the question of the state of the U.S. confrontation with Al 

Qaeda, there is something to be sald for considering these questions in 

conjunction with one another. These are, after all, two of the most important 

legal instruments in the struggle this committee is endeavoring to assess. One 

is the key legal authority for virtually every military action the United States 

undertakes in its military battle against Al Qaeda, Its offshoots, and its 

affiliates. The other is the single most important legal authority the intelligence 

community has for collecting intelligence against the Al Qaeda target-not to 

mention other foreign targets of great national security significance. This 

intelligence is key to arrests and the thwarti11g of terrorist plots against the 

United States and its allies. It is also key to accuratp. and precise targeting 

judgments in lethal force operations. 

1 Pub. 1. 107-40, 11S Stat. 224. 

~ FISA Amendments Act of2008, Pub. L. 110-~61. 112 Stat. 2436 [codified as amended at 50 

1783 [codified as amended at 50 usc. § 1801 et seq. (2012)) 

PrcpareG Slate-nent 01 Befljamir. Wittes 
57


87515e-3.eps

13 

What's more, both laws, for very different reasons, are under considerable 

stress right now. President Obama has announced that he wants to end the 

AUMF conflict, raising profound questions both about the plausibility ;md 

timE-frame of that objective and about what legal instrument-if any--will 

replace the AUMF. Meanwhile', serial leaks have generated enormous political 

anxiety about NSA programs and persistent calls for reform in the press, in the 

general pnblic, among all ips, and in this body. Section 702 will sunset in 2017 

absent action by Congress to renew this important collection authority.'l So 

major pillars of the legal architecture of America's connict with Al Qaeda have 

been placed-in different ways and for very different reasons-on the table. 

This body thus cannot avoid the qUE'stion of how much, if at all, it wants to alter 

the most fundamental architecture of the conflict. 

In my view, as I will lay out, the critical task facing the Congress is different 

with respect to thes(' two laws. With respect to the AUMF, thE" Congress should 

legislate to clearly authorize, and establish proper oversight of, the conflict the 

United States is likely to continue fighting after its withdrawal from 

Afghanistan. V\lith respect to Section 702, the task is simpler: to maintain the 

intelligence community's capacity to support both the broad national security 

objectives of the United States and the conflict's prosecution under \'\'hatever 

legal authorities may succeed the AUMF, 

'I'he Adequacy 

On May 23. 2013, President Obama. speaking at the National Defense 

University, said: 

The AUMf is now nearly 12 years old. The Afghan war is coming to an 

end. Core Al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must 

be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs 

that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a rredible threat to the 

United States. Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our 

actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight, or 

continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for 

traditional armed conflicts between nation states. 

So I look forward to 

p-fforts to refine, 

Congress and the American people in 

the AUMF's mandate. And I will 

t See Edward C. Lill, Congressional Research Service, Reauthori:t;ation of the FISA Amendments 

Act 1 (2013), 

Propar?d S1atemer;1 of Benjamin WittS's 
58


87515e-4.eps

not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further, OUf systematic 

effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this 

war, like all wars, must end. Th<:l.t's what history advises. That's what 

our democracy demands (emphasis addcd).5 

1 am sympathetic to the objective the President articulated, and who would 

not be? The idea of endless war is repugnant. And the current conflict's pnd 

is tantalizing and in some respects within grasp. The modalities of the 

conflict \vilh Al Qaeda are shifting in important ways-away from U.S. 

combat operations ann towards support for allied governments in their own 

confrontations with local extremist movements. And the president always 

retains the power to use force on his own authority when necessary to 

protect the nation against imminent attack. President Obama has already 

limited drone strikes to situations of imminent threat and in which capture 

of the target is not a feasible option. situations that would generally satisfy 

both the international law and domestic constltutionallaw requirements for 

the use afforce during peacetime. Su the AUMF arguably plays less of a role 

today than it dill even in the relatively recent past.6 That will grow more true 

once u.s. combat forcE'S are no longer in AfghJ.nistan. 

Mafic-over. most analysts-whether they favor repeal of the AUMF or some 

form of reauthorization or refinement of it-agree that the current AUMF is 

badly out of date. Tied to the September 11 att.acks, it no longer describes 

well the conflict the United States is currently pursuing, a conflict that 

includes groups that had nothing to do with 9/111n parts of the world quite 

remote from those places where the core of tlw AUMF conflict has taken 

place. While I believe the administration's reading of the law, which has 

allowed it to reach such targets where they lurk, is a reasonable one, it is not 

obvious when one reads the text of a law authorizing force against groups 

responsible for 9/11 how it authorizes force against groups in Yemen that 

did not exist in 2001. vVhat's more, the administration's reading of the law 

has stopped short of reaching some potentially important targets against 

which a reasonable Congress might wish it to wield a freer hand-targets, 

for eXJ.mple, in Somalia and Mali. In short, the AUMF Llescribes rather badly 

the conflict that thE'! United States is currently flghting, and that problem is 

likely to get far worse in the coming years. 

5 See PresidE'nt Bardck Obama, Remarks by the President Clt the NCltional Defense University 
59


87515e-5.eps

There are at least three rpasons to believe that the answer to the AUMF's 

problems is not either it'> repeal or to declare the end of hostilities under it. 

The tirst and most obvious is that Congress may wish to continue to 

authorize military force against foreign terrorist groups which actively 

Lhreaten the United States. The world remains a dangerous place and Al 

Qaeda has metastasized. If one belipves, as I do, that military force should 

still playa role in the American confrontation with Al Qaeda's many 

successor groups, it makes sense for this body to define the authorized 

parameters ofthat military force. Unless one believes thatthe result of 

ending the AUMF conflict will be the near-exclusive reliance on law 

enforcement authorities and that this is desirable, the realistic alternative to 

a new AUMF is the excessive reliance on the inherent Article II poJwers of the 

president as Commander in Chief to use force to defend the nation. I confess 

that r rannot see how this is an attractive alternative. American 

counterterrorism is <1t its strongest when the Congress and lhe 

administration are on the same page as to the 3uthoritiL's the country means 

to deploy againstthe pnem)" This is no time, in my view, to return to thE' 

days of counterterrorism based on unilateral exertions of executive 

authority. [fear this is what would happen if the AUMF were allowed to 

lapse. 

Second, in the absence of the AUMF, what is now policy with respect to only 

conducting drone strikes in circumst;mces of imminent threat where capture 

is not feasible would become law. This would, I worry, put enormous 

pressure on thE' concepts of imminence rtnd feasibility of crtpturp., as 

operators faced circumstances in which they could not conclude in good 

faith that the threats posed by significant targets rose to the threshold of 

imminence or in which they concluded that capture was, indeed, feasible but 

only by risking the lives of US troops. The administration has already faced 

criticism for stretching the meaning of terms like imminence and feasibility. 

How much more elastic would they prove to be if they became not merely 

policy but actual trtrgeting law? 

Finally, the repeal of the AUMF would require the release of a group of 

detainees the administration has been unable to bring to trial yet regards as 

too dangerous to set free. Some of these individuals are major terrorist 

leaders, The AUMF provides the only current legal basis for their detentions. 

It is impossiblp to contemplate a repeal of the AUMF without a dear plan for 

the disposition of these cases. No such plan has ever materialized, at ieast 

not in pubUc. 

foor all of these reasons, the better approach is to take the President up on 

his suggestion of working with Congress "to refine" and to modernize the 

Prepared Statement of Benjamin I;l'ittes 
60


87515e-6.eps

AUMF, to rewrite itto describe the conflict the United States is actually 

fighting today and \ivilllikely be fighting for some time to come, rather than 

the conllictwe imagined in the days following 9/11 we would be fighting. A 

number of suggestions for refinements to the AUMF have emerged over the 

past year, proposals which take very different approaches to the problem, 

One that T coauthored sought to authorize the executive branch to use force 

against groups it designated as posing an imminent threat to the United 

States and proposed a series of accountability mechanisms so that Congress 

is kept informed of the executive's view of the scope of the authorization's 

cow·rage. It also proposed the sun setting both of designations under the law 

and the law itself at statutorily designated intervals to prevent the 

authorization from morphlng into an authorization for endless war'? The 

idea is not only to create a more nimble instrument that stays current as an 

adaptable, ever-changing enemy continues to shift but also to create a more 

accountable instrument that ensures appropriate interbranch cooperation in 

defining the contours ofthC' conmct. 

As I said at the outset of this statement, the question of intelligence 

collection under Section 702 of the FAA may seem connected to the AUMF's 

future in only the most distant fashion, In fact, the connection between 

intelligence collection authorities and the underlying regime authorizing the 

conflict itself is a critical one. Good intelligence is key to any armed conflict 

and good technical intelligence is a huge U.S. strength in the fight against Al 

Qaeda, Yet ironically, the more one attempts to narrow thE'! conflict, the more 

important technical intelligence becomes. The fewer boots on the ground we 

have in Afghanistan, for example, the greater our reliance will become on 

technical collection. The more we rely on drone strikes, rather than large 

troop movements, in areas where we lack large human networks, the more 

we n:ly on technical inteiligencc. Particularly if onr. imagines staying on 

offense against a metastasizing Al Qaeda in the context of a withdrawal from 

Afghanjstan and a narrowing-or a formal end ---of the AU MF conflict, the 

burden on technical intelligence collection to keep us in the game will be 

huge even ignoring the many other foreign intelligence and national security 

interests Section 702 surveillance supports. 

Prepared Statem10nt of Renjumin Wlttes 
61


87515e-7.eps

13 

Section 702 is a complicated statute, and it is only one part of a far more 

complicated. larger statutory arrangement. But broadly speaking, it permits 

the NSA to acquire without an individualized warrant the communications of 

non-US persons reasonably believed to be overseas when those 

communications are transiting the United States or stored in the United 

States. Under these circumstances, the NSA can order production of such 

communications from telecommunications carriers and internet companies 

under broad programmatic orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence 

Surveillance Court (FISC), \Ivhich reviews both targeting and minimization 

procedures under which the collection then takes place. Oversight is thick, 

both within the executive branch, and in fE'porting requirements to the 

congressional intelhgence committees. 

Make no mistake: Section 70215 a very big deal in America's 

counterterrorism arsenal. It is far more important than the much debated 

bulk metadata program, which involves a few hundred queries a year. 

Section 702 collection, by contrast, is vast, a hugely significant component 

not only of contemporary counterterrorism but of foreign intelljgE'ncp 

collection more generally. In 2012, the Senate Select CommitteI'! on 

Intelligence \'\'rote that "[TJhe authorities provided funder section 7021 have 

greatly increased the government's ability to collect information and act 

quickly against important foreign intelligence targets." .. [The] failure to 

reauthorizp [section 702J would 'result in loss of significant inl-elligence 

and impede the ability of the Intelligence Commllnit~y to respond quickly to 

new threats and intelligence opportunities. "'S The President's Review Group 

on rntelligence and Communications Technologies, after quoting this 

language, wrote that "Our own review is not inconsistent \'Vith this 

assessment .... rWle are persuaded that section 702 does in fact play an 

important role in the nation's effort to prevent terrorist attacks across the 

globe."'l The H!ashington Post has reported that 702 was in 2012 the single 

most prolific contributor to the President's Daily Briepo 

Yet we have seen enormous anxiety rtbout Section 702 collection, along with 

its close cousin, collection overseas against non-US person targets under 

PreDared SlatGmel1t of Bet:;Slmin W!rt8S 
62


87515e-8.eps

13 

Executive Order 12333. Sometimes, these anxieties have been rooted in the 

supposed effl'cts ofthi5 collection on U,S. persons.:!.l Sometimes, however, 

the complaints have stemmed from broader concerns about infringement of 

privacy worldwide. Europeans have expressed shock, for example, that a U.S. 

spy agency would preSUlne to collect against an allied foreign leader like 

German Chancellor Angela MerkeP~-survei1lance that now seems forwardthinking and reasonable given later reports that Merkel has been on the 

phone frequently during the Crimea crisis with Vladimir Putin.i3 Major news 

organizations have considered it front-page news that NSA has pursued 

intelligencE' targets on online gaming platforms and. smartphone apps,:4 that 

NSA has collected. contact lists in large numbers around. the world,~ 5 even 

that foreign countries spy on one another, collect attorney-client 

communications involving U.S. lawyers along the way, and may share that 

material with NSA subject to IT,S. law and minimization requirements. 16 

Whether one considers these stories important journalism or reckless 

blowing of valuable surveillance activities, they both reneet and further 

stoke a deep concern about the scope of U.S. surveillance practices, And that 

concern is creating inexorable pressures for reforms we may regret in the 

counterterrorism space. 

The legal regime here is one that this body knowingly and deliberatively 

created in an iterative set of interactions with the intelligence community 
63


87515e-9.eps

and the courts, It requires no apology. Rather, it requires an active defense. 

And while there are certainly areas in which the regime could benefit from 

reform. thE' big risk hen' is that overreaction and panic in thE' face of 

exposure will lead to a burdening of the core signals intelligence capacity of 

the United States with legal processes designed to protect civil liberties 

domestically. This could bappen either because reform efforts go too far or 

because Congress fails to reauthorize 702 and thus applif!s the terms of core 

FISA-which require an individualized warrant based on probable causeto a wide swath of overseas collection. 

Broadly then, the legislative task with respect to Section 702 is something of 

the opposite of the task with respect to the AUMF. To the extent that 

members of this committee continue to believe, as I do, in the essential 

integrity and value of the existing legal authorities for intelligence collection 

and oversight, the task in the current political environment is to defend that 

architecture-publicly and energetically-rather than to race to correct 

imagined deficiencies, or even real structu ral deficiencies that. however real 

they may be, bertr little relation to the outcomes that disquiet us. 

To tie these threads together, then, circumstances are forcing us to revisit two 

of the most basic statutory engines of modern American counterterrorism. In 

the case of one of those engines, the AUMF, our political system is insufficiently 

willing to take on the project. In the case of the other, our basic intelligence 

authorities, we risk diving in ""'ith excessive ZPrtl and insufficient care. In both 

cases, the decisions we will make over the next few months and years will 

fatefully shape the future of this country's confrontation with Al Qaeda and its 

successor organizations. In neither arc we obviously proceeding in the right 

direction. 

Prepared S1at8ment of BpJ1jamin Wttles 
64


87515e-10.eps

T,~e Views ek:pressed In this piece are ttlOse of the authcrs Bno stlOuJd not be attncuted to the StAff, officers or :rustees 

oftne Brool<ings instituiion. 

Preparcd Statement of Bcnjc>min Wmes 
65

Mr. POE. Thank you. 

Each of you have been furnished a map that I mentioned at the 

opening statement earlier. Generally, I would like to get your 

input. Do you think that is a fairly accurate summary of al-Qaeda 

worldwide? Dr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. I would quibble with the—some of the shaded areas 

in a few cases and then I would add some areas in a few others. 

I see no—I see no highlighting of the Sinai in Egypt or the Muhammad Jamal network operating in Egypt. So I think it does reflect 

a number of countries where al-Qaeda or other groups are operating. I would add a few things, take a way a few things but——

Mr. POE. All right. Let me ask you this, all of you, and weigh 

in on the money. Where does al-Qaeda generally—the core and 

these little bitty groups, affiliates—where do they get their money? 

Finances. 

Mr. JONES. I can start. 

Mr. POE. Go ahead. 

Mr. JONES. It depends on the affiliate and the specific group. 

There is money that the core has received and some other groups 

have received from the Gulf. We know that from wealthy Gulf donors. 

In some areas in Somalia, for example, al-Shabaab has been involved in both illicit and licit trafficking in a whole range of activities including charcoal. Kidnappings have been extremely profitable among al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliates. 

So I would say there is a fair amount of redundancy in the financing from wealthy donors including from the Gulf but also now 

from the Levant with the Syrian groups from the kidnapping and 

from other licit and illicit activities. 

Mr. POE. Do you want to add anything to that, Dr. Kagan? 

Mr. KAGAN. I would say it is important to keep in mind how robust and diversified are the sources of income that these various 

groups harness. 

The threat finance problem here is an absolute nightmare and it 

is not something that I think we are likely to be very successful 

with although we could be doing a lot more I think than we have 

been in come cases. 

But one of the things that Seth did mention that I think is very 

important to keep in mind is where they control territory they tax 

the population and this is not a terror——

Mr. POE. They set up their own tax structure? 

Mr. KAGAN. They do. 

Mr. POE. When they control an area they tax the people like they 

were the legitimate government? 

Mr. KAGAN. They do, and it is very important to keep that——

Mr. POE. And they are doing that in Syria, aren’t they? 

Mr. KAGAN. They are doing it in areas of Syria. They are doing 

it in Iraq. They are doing it a little bit more carefully in Yemen. 

They had been doing it a lot in Somalia. They are doing it in North 

Africa. 

They are also—you know, they were trying to do it in the Caucuses until the Russians had at them and that is one of the areas 

on the map that needs to be added back in because the Islamic 

emirate of the Caucuses which had been moribund is no longer and 

66

is a group that is going to matter. But they do have the trappings 

of a state. 

They do set up the trappings of a formal state. In fact, al-Qaeda 

in Iraq, or ISIS, is setting up governorates all around Afghanistan 

and it is really important, again, that we keep that in mind because too often the discussion is had in terms of al-Qaeda as a terrorist group that intends to attack us. 

It is a terrorist group. It does intend to attack us but that is not 

how it defines itself. It defines itself as an insurgency moving into 

a governing power wherever it can. 

Mr. POE. They go in and take, try to take over an area of some 

country——

Mr. KAGAN. Right. 

Mr. POE [continuing]. And just set up a state within a state of 

some type? 

Mr. KAGAN. Well, they set up an independent emirate and then 

they talk about the relationship of that emirate to other emirates 

that they are trying to set up. 

Mr. POE. All right. And let me ask this of you. What is—what 

is our overall plan? We have talked about al-Qaeda here for several 

hours. What is the United States’ overall policy and plan and 

where do we need to improve it? 

I am not looking for criticism of any administration. I just want 

to know what is our plan, what do we do if we want to eliminate, 

go after, diminish this al-Qaeda threat? Dr. Jones, you are first 

again. 

Mr. JONES. I don’t know what the plan is. We have put out a—

the administration has put out a counter terrorism strategy but I 

see different plans from different government agencies that are 

sometimes coordinated and sometimes not very well coordinated. I 

cannot give you a concise answer about what our plan is. 

Mr. POE. So we don’t have a plan that you know of. What should 

it be? Dr. Kagan, do you want to weigh in on that in the remaining 

minute? 

Mr. KAGAN. In 30 seconds what should the plan for defeating alQaeda be? 

Mr. POE. Yes. Thirty seconds. 

Mr. KAGAN. I don’t know. The problem is that not only do we not 

have a plan but we don’t have an agreed upon definition and this 

is something that is very distressing at this point. But when you 

look through administration statements, and we will have a paper 

coming out soon from AEI from Mary Habeck, going through this 

in a lot of detail it is actually very hard to figure out exactly what 

the administration thinks al-Qaeda is. And so before we have a 

plan——

Mr. POE. So we can’t define the enemy, so to speak? 

Mr. KAGAN. Well, I think one could define the enemy but I think 

that this administration has not defined the enemy in any clear 

way and there is no prospect for having a plan to deal with something that you haven’t defined properly. 

Mr. POE. Right. I yield to the ranking member, Mr. Sherman, 

from California. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I would point out that al-Qaeda and its ideology 

will inspire people to die and to kill until such time as it becomes 

67

apparent that dying and killing will not bring any portion of the 

victory that they are seeking, that it will not recreate a single Islamic caliphate. 

It will not conquer additional territories for Islam beyond where 

there are Islamic majorities today and that it won’t take every Islamic society back to the seventh century. We are going to have to 

spend a decade or two longer managing the problem until it becomes apparent to those with a very long time horizon that their 

tactics aren’t working. 

The question is can a society that brought—that defined instant 

gratification carry on a conflict that may outlast both you and I, 

Mr. Chairman, because they are not going away anytime soon and 

as long as their ideology has appeal and the prospect of victory has 

not been defeated, we are going to be facing them. 

Speaking of terrorist financing, Mr. bin-Laden personally was a 

pretty wealthy man. What happened to his fortune? Does anybody 

know? I have got two witnesses shaking their heads and one not 

responding at all so I assume we don’t know. 

Mr. Wittes, you talk about legal authority and the authorization 

to use military force. We have a War Powers Act that was designed 

in response to the Vietnam War where the focus of war powers was 

troops on the ground for a certain amount of time. 

Arguably, an unlimited number of drone attacks is authorized by 

the War Powers Act that says as long as you get in and out in 60 

days I am not sure you even have to file a report. 

But if you have to file a report that is all you have to do. You 

are here visiting the world’s most prominent dysfunctional Parliament. Do you really think we are going—beyond relying on the 

War Powers Act and the authorization to use military force, do you 

really think we can pass anything else? I would think that perhaps 

we could pass something that is designed to trim and reduce the 

authorization to use military force and sell it not as passing something new but restricting something old. 

But what would you propose—what should be the legal structure 

to guide us for the next 10 years? 

Mr. WITTES. Well, so, I mean, so the question of what is politically doable is, frankly, beyond my competence. My job is to sort 

of figure out what I think the right answer is and so I think there 

is basically two problems with the existing AUMF. 

One is that in one sense it is hopelessly over broad, right. It 

doesn’t have an end date. It authorizes sort of endless war against 

anybody the President decides is responsible for 9/11 or who harbored that person or who is affiliated with that person, right, and 

it doesn’t have a lot of accountability mechanisms associated with 

it. 

And you are quite right that the War Powers resolution asks 

for—you know, has this sort of very intermittent interaction with 

deployments of force involving the AUMF. So it does authorize a 

sort of whole lot of unaccountable, you know, long-term violence. 

On the other hand, it is also hopelessly too narrow, right, and 

some of the issues that Dr. Kagan raised——

Mr. SHERMAN. Are you saying it is too narrow because it doesn’t 

focus on every terrorist group that might wish us harm but only 

on those that have some connection with the original al-Qaeda? 

68

Mr. WITTES. Well, but take, for example, the group that formulates in the post-9/11 era, joins the fight to various extents and is 

a rising emergent power that we have every reason to be worried 

about and that military force may reasonably play a role in counteracting but that hasn’t crossed that threshold of—the administration has a complicated and not altogether public legal test about 

who counts as al-Qaeda but that hasn’t yet crossed that threshold 

or maybe as in the case of al-Shabaab parts of it have and parts 

of it haven’t. 

And so you don’t really know what the scope of the AUMF is visa`-vis those groups that you might want to use force against. So 

what I would think is when you have—when you have an authorization that is in some ways substantively too narrow and in some 

ways, you know, too broad a grant of unaccountable power, the 

right strategy and we actually, a group of us——

Mr. SHERMAN. Perhaps you could furnish for the record the 

AUMF reform act. 

Mr. WITTES. As a matter of fact, sir, I can. About a year ago, my 

colleagues Jack Goldsmith, Bobby Chesney and Matt Waxman and 

I tried to—tried to figure out sort of what would it take to rewrite 

the AUMF and we laid out in a sort of series of options what we 

would do. 

And, you know, I was a little but surprised when a few months 

later the President’s reaction not to the paper in particular, obviously, but to the issue in general was that he would not sign and 

would not contemplate any sort of new AUMF. 

He was looking for its repeal. I do think that is the wrong direction to go. But I also think relying indefinitely on the current 

AUMF is a big mistake and it is asking for trouble. It is asking 

for trouble across a lot of different——

Mr. SHERMAN. It certainly poses some real risks to civil liberties. 

Mr. WITTES. But I would be delighted to give you a copy of this 

if you want the details of my thoughts on it. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Without objection we will make it—excuse me. I 

would ask unanimous consent that it be made part of the record. 

Mr. POE. Without objection it is part of the record. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Had to get that role right. I used to sit over there. 

I yield back. 

Mr. POE. I want to thank you all for being here and your testimony—written testimony too is excellent and helps to broaden the 

scope of our knowledge of what has taken place in the world. 

Thank you, all three of you, and the committee—the subcommittee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:34 p.m. the committee was adjourned.] 

(69)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

70

f


87515n.eps

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

WASHINGTON. DC 20515-6128 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade 

Ted Poe (R-IX), Chairman 

TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

You are respectfully requested to attend an OPEN hearing of the Subcommittee 011 Terrorism. Nonproliferation. and Trade, to 

be held in Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building (and available live on the Committee ,\cbsitc at 

\v\v\v. forci gnaffairs. house. gOY) : 

DATE: 

TIME: 

SUBJECT: 

WITNESSES: 

Tuesday. April 8, 201-1-

2:00 p.m 

Ts (]1-Qaeda Winning? Grading the Administration's Counterterrorism Policy 

Panel 1 

The Honomblc Joseph Lieberman 

(Former L'nited .'/rares ,)'enator) 

The Honorable Jane Hannan 

Director. President. imd ChicfExccutivc Officer 

The Woodrow Wilson Tnternational Center for Scholars 

(Former JJernber ofCollgri!Ss) 

PanellI 

Seth Jones, Ph.D 

Associate Director 

TntematiOllal Security mid Defense Polic~ Center 

RAND Corporation 

Frederick W. Kagan, Ph.D. 

Christopher DeMuth Chair and Director 

Critical Threats Project 

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Resemch 

I\.1r. BCl~amin Wittcs 

Senior Fellow 

Gmemance Studies 

The Brookings Institution 

By Direction of the Chairman 
71

Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution, entitled ‘‘A Statutory Framework 

for Next-Generation Terrorist Threats,’’ is not reprinted here but is available

[NOTE: The essay submitted for the record by Mr. Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow, 

f in committee records. This essay may also be accessed via the Internet at:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/monographs/141271]

Æ


87515m.eps