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38–758 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–78]

A THIRD WAY: ALTERNATIVES FOR

IRAQ’S FUTURE (PART 3 OF 4)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

JULY 25, 2007

(II)

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas Chairman

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JEFF MILLER, Florida

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

GREG MARCHAND, Professional Staff Member

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member

ROGER ZAKHEIM, Professional Staff Member

SASHA ROGERS, Research Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2007

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, July 25, 2007, A Third Way: Alternatives for Iraq’s Future (Part

3 of 4) .................................................................................................................... 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 ....................................................................................... 47

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2007

A THIRD WAY: ALTERNATIVES FOR IRAQ’S FUTURE (PART 3 OF 4)

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 2

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1

WITNESSES

Biddle, Dr. Stephen, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy, Council on Foreign

Relations ............................................................................................................... 4

Eaton, Maj. Gen. Paul D., (Ret.), Former Commander, Coalition Military

Assistance Training Team, Iraq, U.S. Army ...................................................... 8

Hughes, Col. Paul, (Ret.), Senior Program Officer, Center for Post-Conflict

Peace and Stability Operations, United States Institute of Peace, U.S.

Army ...................................................................................................................... 6

West, Hon. Francis J. ‘‘Bing’’, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for

International Security Affairs ............................................................................. 10

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 53

Biddle, Dr. Stephen .......................................................................................... 71

Eaton, Maj. Gen. Paul D., (Ret.) ..................................................................... 59

Hughes, Col. Paul (Ret.) ................................................................................... 64

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 51

West, Hon. Francis J. ....................................................................................... 56

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Questions submitted.]

(1)

A THIRD WAY: ALTERNATIVES FOR IRAQ’S FUTURE

(PART 3 OF 4)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 25, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Dr. SNYDER. The hearing will come to order.

Good morning, and welcome to the third in a series of four hearings we are holding during the month of July, that the Subcommittee on Oversight Investigations is holding, on alternative strategies

for Iraq.

We are holding these hearings because Mr. Akin and I and others have been frustrated by the tone of the debate and discussions

about Iraq we have heard for the rest of the past few months of

this year and the polarization that has occurred in this Congress

and in this country.

We wanted to have a series of hearings in which we invited

smart, experienced people—granted, with different backgrounds—

to help us identify and develop what should be the appropriate approaches for Iraq, looking toward: Are there approaches other than

the ones that we have been hearing in the debate on the House and

Senate floor?

Our intent is less to critique current or past policies, but more

to focus on the future. And we hope through these hearings to enhance the public debate and inform the full committee deliberations.

I think we are off to an excellent start. I think the other committee members do, too.

Over the past two weeks, we have heard from retired senior military officers, defense policy experts, and academics who specialize

on the Middle East, including General Wesley Clark, Max Boot of

the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Muqtedar Khan of the University of Delaware and Brookings, and Dr. Daniel Byman of

Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

At the same time, the full committee has held hearings on trends

and recent security developments in Iraq, and this afternoon, will

hold a joint session with the Permanent Select Committee on IntelVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
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ligence to receive testimony regarding implications of the recent

NIE with respect to al Qaeda.

We have asked our witnesses to look forward rather than backward. We are not intent on a rehashing how we got to where we

are. They have been asked to address alternative strategies, and

have been given guidance that should allow the subcommittee and

the public to draw comparisons in key areas.

Each witness today has provided us with a written statement,

and I think it is clear from these statements that we have a variety

of backgrounds, perspectives and ideas. And I hope that today will

bring a vigorous discussion not only between the subcommittee

members and the witnesses, but between the witnesses themselves.

Anyone who was here two weeks ago for our first hearing will tell

you that is the kind of productive exchange that we had and are

looking for.

Today’s hearing will begin with a statement from the Honorable

Bing West, an award-winning author, correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, former Marine Combat Commander, and Assistant

Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the

Reagan Administration.

Mr. West will be followed by Major General Paul Eaton, who retired from the Army in 2006 after 33 years of military service, including command of the initial effort to develop a new Iraqi army

in 2003 and 2004.

Our third witness is Colonel Paul Hughes, whose resume includes a distinguished military career and also, since retiring from

the Army, work on the Iraq Study Group’s military and security expert working group.

Finally, we have with us Dr. Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for

defense policy and the top analyst on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations.

We welcome you all.

And Mr. Akin is recognized for any opening comments he would

like to make.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 51.]

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning to the witnesses, and thank you for joining us here

today.

The hearing is the third in the series aimed at breaking out of

the false construct about Iraq, and that is to look at it either while

we have a choice of a precipitous withdrawal or stay the course. We

think there are going to be some better alternatives.

While these hearings have been constructive, I would like to emphasize and reiterate the purpose of the exercise: that we are here

to discuss alternatives that truly offer a different plan to the current strategy. Just critiquing the current approach is not the point

of this hearing, and it is helpful only as it suggests other possibilities.

3

So I look forward to hearing the witnesses discuss and define alternatives plans, if you think that one is appropriate.

After reviewing our witnesses’ testimonials, it is clear that some

advocate departing from the current strategy. General Eaton, Colonel Hughes do not endorse pursuing a plan that emphasizes U.S.

combat forces going door-to-door, performing a counter-insurgency

mission aimed at securing and holding Iraqi neighborhoods. Dr.

Biddle’s testimony acknowledges that the current plan has a

chance of success but believes the likeliest outcome of the surge is

eventual failure. Only Mr. West would seem to argue in favor of

the current strategy.

I have a couple of questions I would like our witnesses to address

over the course of the hearing.

Those who advocate departing from the current strategy emphasize the need for improving the readiness of the Army and Marine

Corps. While I think all members agree that this is an important

issue and a vital priority, I am curious how your alternative will

allow U.S. troops to carry out the following military roles and missions: one, training Iraqi security forces; two, deterring conventional militants from intervening in Iraq; three, supporting al

Qaeda’s enemies; and four, conducting direct strike missions.

Almost all of the experts who have testified before this subcommittee on this subject agree that continuing these roles and

missions in Iraq is important.

Finally, according to previous witnesses, increased violence, humanitarian tragedy, a failed state, emboldened terrorists and regional actors will all result in the wake of the withdrawal or significant drawdown of American forces. I would like to know how

our witnesses will ensure that their plan will not make the situation worse.

For those concerned about readiness, how will we ensure that,

subsequent to withdrawal, the U.S. will not find itself in a situation where U.S. forces will have to return to Iraq in five or ten

years?

I would also appreciate it if you would take some time this morning to discuss how the U.S. should manage the consequences of

withdrawal.

Thank you again for being here.

Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the Appendix on page 53.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

All four of you have submitted written statements, and, without

objection, they will be made a part of the record of the subcommittee hearing.

We will use the light system. You will see a green light go on,

and at some point, you will see a little flashing yellow and then the

red light. That is the five-minute notice. If you need more time,

then take it, but it is just to give you an idea of where you are at.

And hopefully, we will be fairly close to that so we can get into our

questions.

I also want to give you fair notice of what my first question will

be, which is—Mr. Akin and I put ourselves on the five-minute

clock, which we try to follow pretty strictly, but I will ask each of

4

you to critique anything you hear from other members or their

written statements in the spirit of a full and spirited discussion. So

you may want to pay attention both to what you hear and what

you say, because you may be critiqued for it by your colleagues.

So, Dr. Biddle, let us start with you, and I think we will just go

down the line.

We appreciate you all very much for you being here and appreciate you all having your written statements in in a timely fashion.

Dr. Biddle.

STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN BIDDLE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR

DEFENSE POLICY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Dr. BIDDLE. Let me thank the committee for this opportunity to

talk with you about this rather important set of issues.

I think the first observation I would make is that there aren’t

any good options for Iraq, either at the extremes or the middle.

There is nothing that looks like an opportunity at this point with

high probability to secure all U.S. interests in the region.

Four years of mistakes eventually can leave you in a position

where you don’t have good alternatives, and I think that is where

we find ourselves now.

Unfortunately, that is true for the extremes of surge and withdrawal. I think it is also true for most of the in-between options

that people have talked about as alternatives to those extremes.

I think when you look across the set of possibilities that have

been raised in the public debate to date, I think one can characterize them as a group as tending, by and large, to reduce our ability

to control the environment militarily in Iraq but still leaving, more

or less by definition, tens of thousands of Americans in the country

to act as targets.

What that creates, I think, is a danger that, over several years

after initiating such a posture, what we are likely to see is continued U.S. casualties, again, in an environment we have difficulty

controlling militarily and less ability than we have now to stabilize

the country or improve conditions around the U.S. deployment. And

I think what that is likely to do is create very powerful pressures

a couple of years down the road to go all the way to zero.

And I think if we are going to go all the way to zero within a

couple of years anyway, the case to be made for saving the lives

in between that would be lost and beginning resetting of the American military a couple of years sooner than we would otherwise be

able to do, to deal with some of the other challenges and contingencies that are going to face us in the world with or without success or failure in Iraq.

Now, the formal statement that I provided looks in some detail

at four particular in-between options: a partial withdrawal of U.S.

troops and a reorientation of those that remain to training and

supporting the ISF; a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops and reorientations of those that remain to hunting al Qaeda; a retreat of

U.S. forces from the center part of the country into Kurdistan.

And I think when you look—rather than trying to pick up each

of these in detail, perhaps what I will do with the two minutes that

remain is spend a little bit more time talking about one of them,

and then I would be happy, obviously, to take questions referring

5

to the others, and speak just a little bit more about the option of

partial withdrawing of U.S. forces and a reorientation of what remains to training and supporting the ISF.

Right now, the U.S. troop presence in Iraq isn’t enough to control

the environment completely or stabilize the country, but it does cap

the level of violence. If you substantially withdraw the U.S. combat

presence, you can reasonably expect the level of violence to increase.

If we are going to take seriously the prospect of training and advising the ISF, that means we are not going to have the trainers

sequestered somewhere safely in the rear in a classroom. They are

going to be out with the ISF, advising them, operating with them,

serving as mentors to them. If the environment they are operating

in gets less secure, one can reasonably expect that the vulnerability

of those advisors is going to go up, and they are going to continue

to suffer casualties as a result.

Second, though, and perhaps just as important, the smaller our

combat presence in the country, the harder we make the training

and advising mission. There are a lot of constraints facing our ability to train, advise and create a capable asset. Arguably, the binding constraint among them, however, is political rather than proficiency. It is sectarianism in the Iraqi security forces.

As the country around them breaks up into factions, it is very

difficult to hermetically seal a military organization from the society from which it is drawn. And what is pulling the country apart

into factions is the sectarian violence level in the country.

If the reduction of the U.S. combat presence causes the level of

sectarian violence to increase, the centrifugal pressures on the society are going to increase as well. And that, in turn, is going to

make the job of creating a disinterested nationalist security entity

that can defend the interest of all Iraqis harder, not easier.

Now, what that does is create a risk of self-fulfilling prophecy

where, the smaller our combat effort, the harder we make the

training effort and the more difficult it becomes to switch from the

one to the other.

I think if we judge that the surge is too unlikely to succeed—and

again, I am a pessimist on the prospects for this surge. I don’t

think it is impossible it could succeed, but I think it is a long shot.

If you think the odds of that long-shot are too long, I think a

stronger case can be made for going to the opposite extreme and

totally withdrawing the U.S. presence from Iraq on a timetable of

ten months to two years. People vary on how long it would take

to get out everything that we have deployed to the country, and beginning the reset sooner and cutting our losses in the process.

The one other recommendation that I would offer to the committee is I think it is terribly important that not just the management

of a withdrawal but also the investigation of various partial withdrawal options be undertaken in the serious, rigorous way that

only properly staffed, military planning process can do.

And I am afraid that, right now, the perceived politics of the situation are such that it is very difficult for military staffs to plan

out any of these options in the level of detail that is necessary, especially given so many of the issues involved are diplomatic, politiVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
6

cal, economic and regional in ways that will inevitably tax the skill

set and the capabilities of any orthodox military planning staff.

In an environment where people are worried that an effort to

plan out something other than Plan A could be viewed as a sign

of disloyalty, it makes that planning effort very, very difficult for

the military to conduct.

One thing that I think would be of particular value for the U.S.

Congress to do is to remove the political Hobson’s Choice associated

with the sort of planning by mandating by law and by requiring

that military staffs, whether in theater or in the Pentagon, develop,

with a proper level of rigor and detail, a set of alternative plans

for either partial or complete withdrawal alternatives to the surge,

not mandating that they be executed, but mandating that they be

planned out in a way that can permit full evaluation of their pros

and cons by those outside the planning process itself.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Biddle can be found in the Appendix on page 71.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Biddle.

Colonel Hughes.

STATEMENT OF COL. PAUL HUGHES (RET.), SENIOR PROGRAM

OFFICER, CENTER FOR POST-CONFLICT PEACE AND STABILITY OPERATIONS, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE,

U.S. ARMY

Colonel HUGHES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to

present my thoughts about what I call consolidating gains in Iraq.

While I remain very engaged in Iraq through my work at the

United States Institute of Peace, what I present today reflects my

own personal views based on almost 30 years of service in the

United States Army and the time that I have spent in Iraq, where

I served with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the coalition provisional authority. I advised General

Eaton on the organization of the Iraqi military and served as my

institute’s chief of party on two separate occasions. My comments

do not reflect the policies of the institute, which does not take policy positions.

As you well know, the Nation is seized with the war in Iraq, one

of the most complex wars it has ever fought. This complexity can

be characterized in many ways, but one fundamental aspect that

must be understood for the United States to successfully interact

over the long term with the Muslim world is that we need to understand this war involves issues rooted in power redistribution

among groups of people who have never experienced the dynamic

processes that the United States now demands that they implement quickly, namely those of political reconciliation.

By saying that, I want people to understand that the notion that

this is purely a sectarian war is a false notion. There are other

causes here that are more related to power redistribution.

Understanding this fundamental nature of the war is crucial to

the development of our war aims and our national interests. So far,

there have been several changes in both, and these changes have

only served to confuse our regional friends and worldwide allies as

7

to our ultimate goals. Additionally, this confusion has opened the

door for our enemies to exploit.

Today, the interests and the goals of the United States are usually reduced into soundbytes rather than studied in their true nature. They are complex and very demanding. As described in the

national strategy document, ‘‘Victory in Iraq,’’ they are outlined

into non-specific type periods, such as short-term, medium-term

and long-term, with just as non-specific components that all parties

accept as important to the long-term well-being of the Republic of

Iraq.

In reviewing these goals, it appears less likely that these can be

attained over what America views as the short term. In fact, many

of these suggest they will be generational efforts. The complex nature of the short-term goals suggest some of its components are not

feasible and should be pushed back on the strategy’s timeline.

The obvious shortfalls in the short term related to political

progress and democratic institution-building has hindered progress

toward the medium- and long-term goals. These requirements lie

outside the vast expertise and capabilities of the Department of Defense.

Without progress in these two specific areas, political reconciliation and democratic institution-building, our military can continue

to fight and occupy more of Iraq’s cities and towns but will never

fully secure those areas for a handover to Iraqi security forces. And

absent that degree of security and handover, our military’s eventual departure will simply open the door for the return of chaos.

This assessment implies our military force may need more time

to achieve their operational goals, as some of our commanders have

recently suggested. Yet, their requests have to be balanced with the

political realities of our country and its long-term national security

interests.

We are engaged in what some call a ‘‘long war’’ and others refer

to as a ‘‘global war.’’ If this is true, then we must place both Iraq

and Afghanistan campaigns in their proper perspectives. They are

campaigns in a long, global war against extremists of all stripes

that threaten our interests.

Perhaps now it is time for us to recognize that we have achieved

change in Iraq and that we should consolidate our gains and take

a strategic pause in order to refocus our strategic gains, regroup

and replenish our forces, repair our alliances, and regain the support of the American people before going back on the offense.

I use the term ‘‘consolidate’’ from the perspective of a soldier.

When soldiers consolidate on their objective, they organize and

strengthen it so that they can make maximum use of their new

gains position. In the case of Iraq, consolidating our gains will be

messy and uncertain. It will require more time and resources to

help the emerging Iraqi government organize and strengthen itself.

But we do not need to continue expending the immense amount

of resources used in our ground war in Iraq when we need them

for our efforts elsewhere in the world. The challenge facing the

United States is how it should best manage its involvement in Iraq

while retaining capabilities of meeting its broader global security

responsibilities.

8

To meet those challenges, the United States should reassess its

strategic goals in light of its regional and global interests. It should

announce a date certain for beginning the redeployment of forces

from Iraq. It should conclude a status-of-forces agreement with the

government of Iraq. It should resource and invigorate a comprehensive, political reconciliation program in Iraq.

It should immediately act to restore and increase both the size

of the Army and Marine Corps refit and reset units that have been

in combat, ensure our special operations forces are being properly

resourced, and care for the families of our military personnel.

The United States should also repair damage done to our relations with our allies and special partners, and it must more clearly

articulate U.S. policy in order to regain the confidence and support

of the American people.

In conclusion, we must maintain our focus on our primary challenges: the proliferation of WMD and the threat from extremists

who threaten our homeland. We should not allow ourselves to expend our military forces, national credibility and treasure on a

ground war that does not deal with our primary threats.

Thank you for your attention and time.

[The prepared statement of Colonel Hughes can be found in the

Appendix on page 64.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Colonel Hughes.

General Eaton.

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. PAUL D. EATON (RET.), FORMER

COMMANDER, COALITION MILITARY ASSISTANCE TRAINING

TEAM, IRAQ, U.S. ARMY

General EATON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the invitation to speak here.

I can’t leave this room without commenting on the state of the

American Army. I am going to talk about the American Army, the

Iraqi army, current operations in Iraq, and the deficient diplomatic

efforts that we have in the region.

First, the American Army: We are under-funded, we are undermanned, and we are overextended. And we have to correct all three

of those points.

We have to grow the Army and the Marine Corps to meet the

foreign-policy demands of our country. We have to commit the resources necessary to rebuild, refit our equipment, and to properly

equip our forces both in the theater of operations and in training

right now. We are having to shuffle equipment back and forth from

units to conduct the training for deployment. So we have to correct

that situation.

The Iraqi army: We started the Iraqi army program to recruit

nationally, make the army representative nationally, ethnically and

religious, and to employ locally. The original plan was that we

would recruit these men to defend the Nation from enemies from

without. And that evolved into what we have to do right now in

a counter-insurgency environment.

The Iraqi army is still not properly equipped, and we still don’t

have enough men under arms to meet the demands placed upon

the Iraqi army.

9

And we have departed from a nationally unifying system. Originally, the army would have been a nationally unifying force, an instrument to provide for the unification and the integration of the

country. We have departed from that, and I am not sure that is a

good decision.

My last information is that we are talking about reinstituting

what we did with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), locally recruited, locally employed, which gives us basically militias under a

national uniform.

Current operations: I think that what General Petraeus is doing

right now is absolutely on the mark. It follows a very good article

by Lieutenant Colonel Doug Ollivant about inserting forces into the

region, into the neighborhoods, into the communities that need the

security operations, and a departure from these very large forwardoperating bases that heretofore we had been restricted to.

I think what General Petraeus is doing is absolutely on the

mark. The surge was very small, and it was actually a compromise

with the Army because that is all we could do. We have not grown

the Army to meet the requirements in Iraq or elsewhere. So the

surge was a compromise, and the Army cannot sustain it.

The Army status right now drives us to a reduction in forces in

theater, and we have to lay it out. And I think that a 24-month

period is about right to draw down combat forces in theater.

If we don’t do it and if we don’t start it now, we are going to go

back to something that General ‘‘Shy’’ Meyer talked about back in

the 1970’s, the hollow army. And his comment recently is, ‘‘You

may not know the Army is broken until after the Army is broken.’’

The real issue is we have not surged diplomatically in order to

meet the military surge, the military increase.

A case study is up in the northern part of Iraq. The three northern provinces have their own economy, have their own government,

have their own security forces. The Kurdish region is stable. What

is not stable is outside the borders of the Kurdish region. We have

a very large number of Turkish units massed on the borders, and

that is a source of concern.

We have to regionally divide Iraq and identify strong actors internal and strong actors external, bring them to a Camp Davidtype situation and hammer our the requirements to keep the entities outside and inside from falling apart.

So that would mean you bring Barzani, Talabani, and the presidents of Iran and Turkey into the room and hash out the interests

that both parties have, repeat that process with the Sunni region

and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, repeat that with the

Shia region and Iran.

Regional debate, regional meetings orchestrated by the United

States—that type of diplomatic surge is overdue and is the only

way out.

The best article I have seen lately is, ‘‘The Road Out of Iraq Goes

Through Tehran,’’ and this Administration has heretofore refused

to talk to Tehran. We have something going on right now, but our

road out is through Tehran.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of General Eaton can be found in the

Appendix on page 59.]

10

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General Eaton.

Secretary West.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANCIS J. ‘‘BING’’ WEST, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

Secretary WEST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don’t see a way out of this polarization, Mr. Chairman. There

are two views, and you heard them now, of Iraq.

View one is what I call the sectarian camp that says the essential problem in Iraq is the antagonism and the hatred between

Sunni and Shia, and that is going to persist regardless of what we

do. And therefore, the situation, in essence, is hopeless and, as Mr.

Biddle was saying, if you believe that, better get out now than

later.

The other alternative is the alternative that General Patraeus

and others say, that the root cause of the problem here is the terror

driven by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). And because al Qaeda in Iraq

kills, slaughters so many of the Shiites, that they keep the cycle

of violence going. And if you can break AQI, you can break the

cycle of violence.

There is no compromise between those two positions. You believe

one or the other.

So, in the end, what we are talking about here is a military judgment about what is happening in Iraq. And none of us really are

in the position that General Patraeus, General Odierno and General Gaskin are to give you their straight-from-the-shoulder, and I

think they are going to in the September evaluation of that essential issue.

And I know that they are going to bring it up as the essential

issue. I can say with full confidence, being back there in May and

coming forward and the e-mails I get from the field, I never believed I would see Anbar swing the way Anbar has swung.

I mean, when you are in the middle of a war, the question is,

who is winning and who is losing? And right now, AQI is on the

defense, not on the offense.

I believe that if you would have this hearing in June of 2008 on

the current course, you would probably see that we have a substantial number of combat units out, probably pushed up the number

of advisors we have, and those advisors, as was pointed out by the

other members, would be in combat. They wouldn’t be in the rear.

So that we would be in Iraq for several years, as we are in Afghanistan, but we wouldn’t be pushed out of Iraq.

And I think that is the essential issue that this is going to come

down to. Does one believe it is hopeless and we are losing, or does

one believe that we can prevail and get our troops out? That, sir,

in the end, I believe is a military judgment.

The word that I have heard—and watching it for myself over

there, I am really surprised by what I saw in Anbar. And Anbar

was the toughest nut. AQI has been pushed back now out of Anbar.

They said they were going to go to Baghdad. They lost some fights

in Baghdad, and now they are up in Diyala.

The nature of this war is the highway system. AQI has a darn

good way of communicating with one another, and no one controls

11

those highways, and can move 400, 600 kilometers in 1 day, and

they do. And we were fighting them in Fallujah in April of 2004.

They moved out and went to Ramadi, 60 miles away. When we

went back in with the Marines in November of 2004, they went to

Mosul, 300 miles away, and did it in 3 days because you can just

drive up and down the highways.

So in order to keep after AQI, you have to stay on them and stay

on them and stay on them. And that is what I believe General

Petraeus is doing now.

I don’t believe we intend to keep the kinds of troops we have over

there for the long haul, but I am really interested in what he is

going to say in September because I think he can give us a better

military judgment than any of us can.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Secretary West can be found in the

Appendix on page 56.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, gentlemen, for your thoughtfulness in

being here and thoughtfulness of your statements.

Members, what I suggest we do—and in the other hearings, we

have been pretty flexible in our five minutes. We have eight members here. I know of at least one other member coming. I would

suggest that we are fairly strict about the five minutes so we can

circle around and go through a second or even a third round if we

get to it.

What we will do is, if I start my questions, which is already apparently on, I have got five minutes. If I ask one question and you

all get to respond to it, if you each take three minutes, we get to

one-and-a-half of you. If you all could limit your answers to about

one minute, given that we have got some flexibility here, but if can

get to the point, then we will be able to get more of the thoughts

out there.

My question is, in the time that we have left, if you all—I just

want to give you a chance to respond in the spirit of intellectual

exchange here on anything you have either read from the opening

statements or have heard today from the folks at the panel you

think need to be fleshed out a little bit more or that concern you

or that you agree with.

Let us start with you, Dr. Biddle, and just go down the line

again.

Dr. BIDDLE. Okay, well, with a minute I will respond mostly to

Secretary West, with whom I am in a surprising degree of agreement.

I don’t think things are hopeless. I mean, the written statement,

to a greater degree than I was able to do in the spoken statements,

says there are two defensible alternatives, and they are either/and.

Where I think I probably disagree is over how much better than

hopeless it is. I think it is an extreme long-shot.

AQI is not the totality of the problem. The President doesn’t

think that totality is the problem either. It is an accelerator of sectarian violence and factionalism. Unfortunately, sectarian violence

and factionalism is a bit like the toothpaste in the tube. Once you

have created a condition of radical fear among groups, it is then

very difficult to overcome that and reverse the process.

12

I don’t think it is hopeless. I think the Anbar tribal rebellion is

actually a model that provides such a glimmer of hope as we can

get in Iraq. I think the way forward, if we are going to stay, should

be oriented around maximizing the chance that we can replicate

that model elsewhere.

But we have to do that a lot. There are a lot of factions that need

bilateral negotiations to settle ceasefires with. To do that across

the whole country is not impossible, but it is a very tall order.

Given that, what I think we are looking at is a long-shot, not a

zero prospect, but a long-shot.

Dr. SNYDER. Colonel Hughes.

Colonel HUGHES. The idea that this war is essentially a military

war, if anybody holds that, they are just wrong. This really does

require a political settlement by the Iraqis.

But as I said earlier, we are asking the Iraqis to undertake

something that they have never had to do in three generations, and

that is reconcile with one another. In the days of Saddam, if you

had a difference with somebody, you just shot the person and you

drugged their body through the streets. Now we are expecting them

to figure out how to sit down and work together in a society where

the entire lifestyle has been zero-sum gains. That is a very difficult

proposition to demand of them.

Now, my institute is working with some of the EPRTs, embedded

provincial reconstruction teams, to help alleviate or to kick-start

some of the local-level negotiations necessary to bring some fruit to

this process. But it is a challenge. It is a challenge because the

EPRTs are not properly resourced or funded to do this kind of

work. Certainly we are not. But you also have the challenge of security there. And sometimes, if you let the Iraqis settle the security

issue, you let their local solutions kick in, it is amazing what you

can get done.

And I will just hold it there.

Dr. SNYDER. General Eaton.

General EATON. We have to provide a forcing function for General Petraeus to get the government of Iraq to move forward. And

the only thing that I see is the diplomatic efforts that I talked

about elsewhere, but a timeline for departure, lay it out so he is

able to tell the Iraqis that the end is coming, and that the patience

of the American people are going to drive this, and that we lay out,

as has been discussed previously this morning, the Plan B that illustrates to Iraq that there is a draw-down and it is going to be

orderly and it is going to be predictable.

And the message on all that is not to the enemy, it is to the people of Iraq and its government.

Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Secretary West.

Secretary WEST. It is absolutely a political local settlement. It

will be settled locally in Haditha and Al Qaim and Baghdad, et

cetera, which causes me to think that that feckless, poor, ill-performing senior government can be allowed to be feckless, poor and

ill-performing for another ten years if you get some of the local conditions right and we won’t have all of our troops there.

13

So I see no contradiction between saying you can still have a

mess but it won’t be our mess as much because we won’t be there.

It will just be another messy government.

But the key is, in my judgment, fracturing al Qaeda, and we are

well on our way to doing that.

In terms of keeping some sort of peace among the sectarian

groups, I don’t see that as being that much of a problem, because,

unfortunately, they have already separated themselves to a large

extent.

The key is our advisory effort, because our advisors in essence

are looking over everyone’s shoulder, every single police chief,

every single battalion. So the issue becomes, is the new agreement

we are going to have with Iraq in December that goes before the

United Nations, will there be an agreement with Iraq that we are

going to continue with the current advisory system as we have it?

Because these advisors are the enforcers of non-sectarianism.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all.

And you hit exactly five minutes, so we appreciate that.

It turns out, I don’t think our clock system is working, so I will

give kind of a gentle tap with the end here, Mr. Akin, when we get

to the five minutes, if it doesn’t work.

Mr. Akin, for five minutes.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

I think we have heard from quite a number of different witnesses—and I appreciate your comments, Mr. West.

The concern that I have is, first of all, it seems like it may be

a both end. The first issue, you have a military peace, that has to

be taken care of. But you also have sort of a political peace, and

that has to be dealt with as well.

My sense is, is that from the brief we got from General Petraeus

and also Ambassador Crocker was that they had really analyzed

the whole situation and understood the nations around it really

with internal politics going on, and they had a plan, and they are

balancing and putting things together to make that work.

My concern is not so much being able to break the AQI—which,

I think if we keep denying them territory, there is going to come

a point where there is no safe place for them. My concern is,

though, the political peace that, seems to me, I wouldn’t assume

the politics is necessarily going to straighten out even if we do get

the military side. I think it is a both end situation.

And my question is, have we given so much authority away to

the Iraqis that they get it all messed up, we are kind of sitting on

the sidelines, helpless? Or are we in a position—I mean, when

Douglas MacArthur was in Japan, he let the Japanese write their

constitution. They screwed it up, so he said, ‘‘That is no good. I will

write one for you.’’ He said, ‘‘Use this one.’’

Are we in a position where—I mean, one of the things that could

work very well on Iraq is federalism, which they don’t understand

but could allow a lot of autonomy to these different areas. We could

limit the Federal Government to very specific functions.

Are we in a position to make those kind of political changes? Are

we kind of off on the side and not really involved to the degree that

we should be politically?

14

Secretary WEST. Mr. Congressman, General Eaton began a system with the advisors on the military side that is now working terrific. All the way down to every single company, there is an American advisor but he is also a conscience.

The State Department, as General indicated, lagged badly, and

it has only been under Ambassador Crocker that they have begun

to insert some smart guys at different levels to say, so-and-so is a

bum and you have to get rid of him. But they have begun that.

I think if you had a classified hearing and brought some of them

in and say, ‘‘Do you know who the bad apples are at the top that

have to go?’’, they could say, ‘‘Yes.’’

My feeling is that Maliki isn’t that strong. But I think you are

going to have a lot of sloppiness at the top if you don’t have this

level of violence.

General Eaton is right. We are behind it in terms of the diplomacy and struggling to catch up. But I think you can tolerate that

if we don’t have 135,000 Americans in the country.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

Anybody else want to comment on the same question?

Dr. BIDDLE. Sir, the issue of federalism is something that is part

of their constitution. It focuses on the idea of federalism. The issue

is the mechanics and the implementing laws that provide for that

sort of thing.

And that is being worked out through the constitutional reform

committee’s work, which has recently reported back to the council

of representatives and has again been given some more homework

assignments to work. But that is a very active issue among the

Iraqi government right now.

Mr. AKIN. Are they starting to get the concept? Because when I

talked to the State Department three years ago on a couple tours

back, they said the whole idea of federalism under these guys is

just like somebody from Mars. They just didn’t—everything was

top-down from their point of view.

Dr. BIDDLE. Correct.

Mr. AKIN. But you take a look at the Kurds and the Shia and

Sunni, it seems like it is ready-made for a central constitution that

says, ‘‘All we are going to do is this, this and this, and everything

else is going to be regional.’’ I should think that would help a lot.

Dr. BIDDLE. The constitution recognizes just one Federal entity

at this time, and that is the Kurdish regional government. It does

provide for the creation of other regional governments, but the implementing laws have yet to be worked out.

But the U.S. Institute of Peace has worked at it for many years

now with the national government, and we are as frustrated as

anybody with the results that we are seeing. And that is why now

we are pushing out into the provinces.

And, for example, the work I did in March with the Baghdad provincial council was astonishing. It taught me an important lesson

that we all need to understand. The Iraqis do not possess the tools

with which to tackle these kinds of issues. And so they need the

training. They need the mentoring in political reconciliation and

the ideas of working through these various issues.

But the provincial council members soaked this up like a sponge.

It was amazing to me.

15

Afterwards, I had the district council representatives from Sadr

City and from Adhamiya—the adjoining predominantly Sunni district—those come to us and say, ‘‘We want more of this training,

and we want to do it together.’’ And for the very first time in their

history, Sadr City and Adhamiya sat down at the same table and

started talking about issues.

So at the grassroots level, there is hope, but it just needs to become a principal focus of what we are doing over there.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

Mrs. Davis for five minutes.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you all for being here.

I wanted to go back to the Anbar situation a little bit, because

I think one of the important things that was said that, rather than

focusing on top leadership necessarily in Iraq, that it may be

through the grassroots efforts that more change is going to occur.

But I also have felt a great concern from a few who believe that

our working with the militias there might in the short term be a

good idea but further out, that there is a real down side to doing

that. And that it may work in areas where you have more homogeneity, but as you move through different areas of Iraq that that

is going to be a problem.

Could you all comment on that and whether you think there is

a significant down side that maybe not necessarily ignored like now

but perhaps not being addressed in the way that it should?

Secretary WEST. I would simply say that each tribe in Anbar

knows exactly where its boundaries are, and every one of them

wants to push out, and every time they do now, the other tribes

are pushing back.

Really, one of the reasons for the awakening spreading among all

the tribes was that it only began with about 16 of the 23 tribes.

But the other seven quickly said, ‘‘Wait a minute, we are going to

start losing some of our smuggling. We are going to start losing

some of these goodies that they are offering if we don’t get on the

bandwagon.’’ So in self-defense they are going onboard.

The tribes take care of the tribal sectors and are very jealous of

the other tribe coming in. What I don’t see out of the Anbar situation is that these tribes somehow would come together and be a

threat to Baghdad. They are much more parochial, extremely parochial people. And they are interested in their tribal areas.

General EATON. My position is any ally you can find is worth

having, and the original relationship that we had with them was

very positive. They were very helpful and they were very willing

to go to great lengths to expose themselves to some risk by coming

into the Iraqi army.

So the pursuit of alliances with the tribal factions and with militias, I think, is a very positive move on our part.

Dr. BIDDLE. What we are presented with in Anbar right now is

both a window of opportunity and a window of vulnerability.

With the tribes banding together to push AQI, they are now trying to be brought into the recognized Iraqi police and military

forces in the province.

16

The question remains, how will the central government deal with

these new approaches? Will they accept these new tribesmen in for

training and such, or will they reject them because they are tribesmen and perceived to be a militia? That is a major concern right

now.

The prime minister, he feels that our activities in aligning with

tribes and local groups is creating more militias that could potentially become a long-term threat to his rule. So I don’t have a good

answer for it right now because I am——

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Any sense to how the Shia population

perceives that at all?

Dr. BIDDLE. I am sure the Shia population—the political parties,

let us call them that—that the Shia-dominated political parties do

not like this development.

But then again, let us recognize that the supreme Islamic council

for Iraq, whatever they are calling themselves today, had the organization which was completely folded into the ministry of interior.

General EATON. Clearly, there are important risks either in arming local factions or simply in tolerating the continuance of local

armed factions that they agree to fight people we like and stop

fighting people that we would rather they not.

I think at this point in Iraq, though, we are beyond the point

which we have the option of turning to something that is low-risk,

low-cost, high probability of success. I think if we decide for whatever reason we are going to continue and that we are going to give

it our best shot, I think, at this point, our best shot lies through

some program of exploiting something like the Anbar awakening

through a series of bilateral cease-fire negotiations with local actors

which we hope will accumulate around the country.

That the day in which we could hope to prevail in Iraq, by creating a government monopoly of force, and reducing the strength of

all non-government actors to the point where they are marginal

and unimportant, I don’t think that is a realistic hope at this point.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Where would you all put this strategy

in terms of priorities and, I guess, hopes for the future? Is this a

strategy that you think has high hopes for trying to turn the situation around or do you think it has relatively low? I got a sense from

you, Colonel.

Colonel HUGHES. Well, in Anbar, it is a de facto, it is already

done and now moving to other areas. I don’t know how it will do

in other areas, but I mean, in Anbar, this is yesterday’s news. It

is done, settled, they have moved on.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Go beyond that for me, in terms of

that as a model.

General EATON. It doesn’t always work out. The Fallujah Brigade, our efforts back in April didn’t work out terribly well. But it

was worth a try, and I think that we may not be a 100 percent success, but again, I think that any enemy that we can turn, whatever

organization is effective in providing security, to bring them into

the fold.

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Gingrey for five minutes.

Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

And I thank all the witnesses.

17

I want to first of all say welcome to the committee to General

Eaton in particular, who was former commander of Fort Benning,

home of the infantry, and I represented that area in Columbus,

Georgia.

I like you better as a general than I do as a civilian. General

Eaton, I have to say that. I wish you were still in the military. I

don’t agree with everything that you have said since you have gotten out.

I want to ask a couple of questions.

And first of all, to General Eaton and to the Colonel and to Dr.

Biddle, it seems that all three of you in your testimony, your presentations to us here this morning take a pretty dim view of the

current situation and that you are in favor of getting out ASAP.

I think the comment has been made, General Eaton, you said the

road to withdrawal is through Tehran, through Iran. I would suggest the road of withdrawal will be through Kuwait, and on the

highway of death. I think you understand that very well, General

Eaton.

And I would like to ask the three of you to comment on that in

regard to the mass casualties that could occur with 160,000 of our

troops with all of their equipment going from Baghdad to Kuwait,

trying to get out of that country.

And also, General Eaton, you said very clearly that you think

that we need to lay out the draw-down plan, not to give it to the

enemy but to give it to the Iraqi people. How do you think the

enemy is not going to obtain that plan as well and make it even

more devastating? So comment on that for you, if you will.

And then to Secretary West, who I am very much in agreement

with, I would ask you what are your thoughts about permanent

basing in Iraq. That bill is going to be probably presented to the

House to vote on later this week in regard to whether or not we

should have permanent basing, particularly in light of the embassy

that we have there now.

General EATON. Congressman, thank you very much.

And I will tell you the retirement has been liberating. I have enjoyed myself a lot here. And I have said some things that are fairly

difficult to state, particularly with two sons in the Army.

First, I do not advocate a precipitous withdrawal. I advocate a

very methodical and very measured withdrawal of combat forces.

The missions providing for the development of the Iraqi army and

security forces and providing for the security of those men and

women, I believe, is a continuing effort that we need to maintain.

Second, I advocate that we lay this out for the Iraqi people, and

the message is really to the Iraqi government to get their house in

order, to fulfill the benchmarks that they said they would fill, and

to get this thing moving forward. And the message is not to the

enemy that we are leaving precipitously; the message is to the

Iraqi people, we have to discipline the process. If we don’t, we will

be dragging through this for years and years, and we have got to

have a force in function.

As far as the withdrawal of troops, if you don’t plan your way

out of something, it will look a lot like Dunkirk, and any time you

go in, you have to plan for your extraction. And the extraction

18

while you are under pressure, while you are in contact, is very difficult indeed. And we are very exposed right now.

If the Iranians thought that it would be in their interest to attack in great numbers, we would have a very, very difficult situation. I am confident that we have plans on the shelf right now to

avoid that.

Dr. GINGREY. General Eaton, thank you.

With apologies to the other two witnesses, I am going to shift to

Secretary West because I want the answer—and my time is running out—I want the answer in regards to your opinion on the basing.

Secretary WEST. Sir, I think it would be so incendiary I would

see no reason to even discuss permanent bases. By definition, our

embassy is a permanent base, the way we are putting that thing

up.

But beyond that, I cannot imagine us not being in Iraq for about

as long as we are going to be in Afghanistan. But we don’t have

to wave a huge flag about it. It is just going to be a fact of life.

Dr. GINGREY. And we can go to the other two witnesses regarding the other question.

Dr. BIDDLE. Sir, one of the things I said in my statement is that

any withdrawal, any redeployment discussion of U.S. forces from

Iraq must be done in close consultations with the Iraqis and regional partners, and that we would have a remaining element

there, as Secretary West just indicated. Because we still need to do

the training and the equipping of the Iraqi military.

Just as important, we need to be able to conduct counter-terrorism operations. And the Iraqi military is not going to be set to actually provide surveillance or security along their borders for many

years if they are going to be tied down fighting internal insurgency.

So I am not in favor of a precipitous withdrawal. This does have

to be methodically based.

In fact, as the withdrawal is planned or as the redeployment is

planned, I would even suspect that there would need to be an increase of U.S. force structure to provide security along that particular avenue you just described.

Colonel HUGHES. Two very quick points. The first is, I think either of the two extremes are defensible. I mean, I don’t think there

is a clear case for withdrawal precipitous or otherwise. I think you

can also make a case that a one-in-ten long-shot—and I think that

is kind of the ballpark of the odds here—is worth taking if you

think the costs of failure are high enough. It is the middle-ground

options that I think are the weakest on the analytics.

As far as the withdrawal itself goes, I don’t think anyone would

support a precipitous withdrawal, but if one is going to argue for

withdrawal—and, again, I think it is a defensible case, I think we

have to expect that we are going to have to fight our way out. And

that withdrawal for it to be other than a rout is going to be a slow

process.

Again, I have heard estimates ranging from ten months to two

years. I think the case of withdrawal, if one is going to make it,

is you are going to face that sooner or later anyway. I mean, if the

surge is, let us say, a one-in-ten long-shot, that means you have got

19

a nine-in-ten chance that whether you like it or not, this is where

you are going to end up in a few years.

The issue, in all likelihood, is you want to do it later or do you

want to do it sooner, and what does it cost you to defer it?

Dr. GINGREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Our last person for questions who was here at the

time the gavel went down is Mr. Bartlett for five minutes. And

then we will go to Mr. Sestak, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Jones, and Mr.

Cooper.

Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

Colonel Hughes, you mentioned that this was not a war that we

are involved in, it is a couple of campaigns in a war. It seems to

me that the enemy that we now fight in Iraq is very different than

the enemy we went there to fight.

As I remember, the reasons for going to Iraq, which I had some

concerns with and was called to the White House because I had

those concerns, was there were weapons of mass destruction there.

I saw no way they could get them to us. They could walk to Germany and France. And I made the argument if our allies weren’t

concerned about the threats, I had trouble understanding why we

should be concerned about the threats.

And Saddam Hussein was there. There were no weapons of mass

destruction and Saddam Hussein has been deposed. And so the

enemy there now is violence and al Qaeda.

And in the second round, I want to come to the violence part of

it. But as far as I know and judged from all of the testimony that

we have had, that there was little or no al Qaeda before we went

there. And so now the big fight is with al Qaeda.

Did they arise de novo, or did they come in from another country? How did they get there in these large numbers?

Colonel HUGHES. When we entered Iraq in 2003, there were two

organizations that we saw with General Garner that you could say

were terrorist organizations. One was the mujanedin-e Knalq

(NEK), which was the passively sponsored or supported or at least

recognized force of Iranians that were based in Iraq that would

conduct operations into Iran. And that force has been policed up.

The other one was based in the Kurdish north on a mountain top

that was very difficult to get to that could have been taken out

without us having to invade Iraq.

But without getting into history, what we see in Iraq with AQI

now, al Qaeda in Iraq, is an Iraqi organization that has grown up—

this is predominantly Iraqi now. It did begin with foreign leaders

and foreign support, but today it is predominantly Iraqi. Today it

is under a great deal of stress because of Iraqis, because Iraqi

tribes are attacking them, because Iraqi citizens are reporting on

their activities, and because the multi-national force is pursuing

them.

The question is, what is the threat to the United States? Is AQI

a threat to the United States? Or is al Qaeda currently residing in

Pakistan the threat? And I would submit that al Qaeda in Iraq is

not the threat to our homeland. It is al Qaeda in Pakistan right

now that is the threat to our homeland. And that is the issue we

need to be taking care of.

20

I mentioned that this is a campaign, just as we had World War

II with many campaigns and Vietnam with many campaigns. And

even in Desert Storm, we had three separate campaigns. You

know, you can have varying levels of success in a campaign and

still win the war, as long as you have strategic thought and guidance and vision about what you ultimately want to achieve.

If we are going to focus on fighting a ground war in Iraq, I have

to ask, what does this contribute to our ability to dissuade Iran

from obtaining nuclear weapons or from getting after AQI in Pakistan?

If the al Qaeda like any that we are fighting in Iraq is not a

threat to our homeland, their goal is simply to get us out of Iraq.

Their goal is to force us out. There were 33 insurgency groups that

have been identified in Iraq, and the one common identifier among

all of them is get the foreign occupation out of Iraq.

Once the Americans leave, there could be a lot of gun-play between these guys, and I suspect there will be. But principally, they

and all the other groups, want us out of Iraq because we are a foreign occupation force. And that has been a traditional earmark of

Iraqi nationalism for many, many decades. I mean, just ask the

British.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back and wait until the

second round for my next question. Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Sestak for five minutes.

Mr. SESTAK. Thank you.

Let me tell you what I heard that fell upon me.

First, Dr. Biddle, you said, as well as the general, our leaving is

going to be challenging if not done deliberately. You remember,

General, it took us to get out of Somalia, 6 months after Blackhawk

Down, 6,300 troops, and we inserted another 19,000 personnel. The

160,000 troops in Iraq and over 100,000 contractors, anyone who

thinks we are going to turn around tomorrow and not do it an a

deliberate way without a turkey shoot on that one road, that is

what fell upon me here, is a timetable withdrawal can’t be precipitous.

Then you spoke about training, and so did you, Dr. West. We

have about 48,000 combat troops out of the 160,000 that is over

there. That is all. We have got 8,000 advisors over there. Do we

really think we are going to come down to 60,000 troops and build

up the 20,000 advisors and have how many combat troops to prevent another Blackhawk Down?

And that is what I heard from you. The head of the National Intelligence Council told us the other day that it is an art, not a skill,

to determine which of those Iraqi forces would be loyal or motivated to protect our troops once embedded there.

So those who want to leave behind a touch back, sort of like immigration touch back, you know, you kind of give it—okay, we will

leave some training troops behind. Well, I tell you, that really worries me after watching Somalia.

And then, I step back and I hear, sir, about Al Anbar province

and been there. That started before this surge started. They were

coming over to us, those tribal chiefs after watching their 15-yearVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
21

old sons being run over 15 times as they stood the families there,

and they said, enough is enough.

But when they look to the East, nobody in Baghdad, despite the

more stable, security situation, militarily, saying come on in and be

all you can be in our government.

So I step back and come back to you, General, for my real question because I think the key is from you.

The key, the road out of Iraq is through Tehran. And the National Intelligence council tells us that is we precipitously withdraw in 18 months a year ago, there would be instability in that

country and chaos. But when asked, if Iran were to be involved in

the negotiations, would it be a different outcome? They said tough

question to answer but yeah, probably.

So tell me, how do we get a safe redeployment with the, what

I believe is my major concern, the strategic readiness of our military, improperly engaged throughout this world already here at

home to have a better security for America via Iran, Syria, and

Saudi Arabia. So from a military man who is saying it is diplomatic

diplomacy I gather, how?

General EATON. Seventy percent of the Iranian population is supportive of normalization of relations between Iran and the united

States. Iran occupies a terrific amount of boarder with Iraq. They

are, in fact, astride our line of communication to Kuwait. Were

they to embark upon an ambitious dismounted light infantry attack, they would have a terrific opportunity to cause us great

harm.

We are beginning to negotiate from a position of weakness and

that is never a great position to be in when you are negotiating

with somebody who is locally strong.

Putting in a couple of aircraft carriers off the Iranian shores is

a pretty good start. And the commitment to sit down and hash out

what their interests are, what our interests are, and getting after

a negotiated agreement or a best alternative to a negotiated

agreement——

Mr. SESTAK. If I could, General.

Yesterday in a meeting at the White House, Stephen Hadley

said, private meeting—not private, it was private to be talked

about but it was a small group—said, well, it is hard to negotiate

with Iran because, A, we are in position of weakness; B, like Crocker said yesterday, they are involved destructively. They are fighting

our people. It is almost as a going-in position.

Do you agree with that part of it, that we have to have them

seize their destruction before we negotiate this?

General EATON. We have allowed ourselves to be in a position of

weakness. There are a great number of ways to get after Iran to

improve the odds of success negotiations, and without violence. The

international community, I believe, would be very helpful. And we

are about out of my expertise right now, but very capable people

can figure out incentives and disincentives to bring to the table

with this President.

Mr. SESTAK. Thank you. I am out of time. But I honestly believe

that doubling down a bad military bet isn’t the answer and diplomacy as we redeploy is the key with those nations who have influence. Why don’t we use it?

22

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Andrews, five minutes.

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the witnesses for your excellent testimony

this morning.

Secretary West, I think you have exactly captured the dichotomy

of public opinion between those who believe that the Islamist terrorists are the principal problem in Iraq versus those who believe

sectarian violence is the principal problem. I think that is exactly

right.

I want to explore your analysis and your conclusion. With did

AQI come into existence?

Secretary WEST. I would probably say it was the battle of

Fallujah was what really made AQI. When we backed out of

Fallujah, that is when Zarqawi gathered so much strength that we

had these weirdos and coyotes and wolves coming from all over the

place for the next battle. And that was the turning point.

Mr. ANDREWS. When would you date the emergence of AQI as a

viable force to create disruption in Iraq, what date would you put

on that?

Secretary WEST. Oh, August of 2003.

Mr. ANDREWS. When would you say——

Secretary WEST. From then on they were a force to be reckoned

with.

Mr. ANDREWS. Well, when would you say they reached a point

where their strength increased considerably?

Secretary WEST. They became, in my judgment, the dominant

force among all the different elements after they were able to regroup in Mosul in November of 2004 after they had been——

Mr. ANDREWS. Okay.

Secretary WEST [continuing]. Kicked out of Fallujah.

Mr. ANDREWS. And prior to November of 2004, the average attacks per month in Iraq were just shy of, I won’t say average, the

height were around 3,000, the lowest were 1,800 so the average is

going to be 2,300 or 2,400 attacks a month, who was engaging in

those attacks, if AQI was not yet a significant force.

Secretary WEST. The psychology of beginning to perceive you

don’t have anything to lose by striking at somebody and you have

a high degree of testosterone, you are out there with different kids,

would cause practically anyone to pick up a weapon, go out and

start shooting.

Mr. ANDREWS. I appreciate that.

Secretary WEST. So the number of incidents——

Mr. ANDREWS. My time is limited. I wanted to ask you to answer

my question, though, which was that prior to November of 2004,

who was propagating these 1,800 attacks per month? AQI wasn’t

much of a force——

Secretary WEST. Correct. AQI was not the dominant force. You

had many different insurgent groups who were hostile to the Americans.

Mr. ANDREWS. Do these insurgent groups still exist. Have they

gone away? Have they evaporated?

Secretary WEST. That is the interesting thing, sir, that if you

look at Anbar where most of the attacks took place, over 50 percent

of them, the attacks now from last year in July at 400 have

dropped to 100. So it is the same tribes that were on the other side

23

shooting that now are no longer shooting but they haven’t come

over as individual insurgent groups.

Mr. ANDREWS. I wanted to ask General Eaton and Colonel

Hughes, if I read your testimony correctly, I think that you think

that the prospects for political settlement are enhanced with some

kind of orderly withdrawal by the United States. Did I correctly

state that in both of your cases?

Okay.

General EATON. Correct here.

Mr. ANDREWS. General Eaton, what do you think that political

settlement might look like?

General EATON. Political settlement. Are you talking about the

government of Iraq?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

General EATON. We have heard discussion today and pretty

articulately laid out that a relatively weak federalist approach to

governing Iraq is probably the way out with strong local governments.

Mr. ANDREWS. What do you do about the problem of mass internal migration of Shia Iraqis from central Iraq which is predominantly Sunni area, what do you do about the people who are living

in integrated neighborhoods and towns?

General EATON. Facilitate that.

Mr. ANDREWS. Facilitate the migration——

General EATON. It is happening right now in a brutal way.

I believe our efforts to facilitate the migration or re-migration as

we are watching right now with the northern part of Iraq near the

Kurdish boarders——

Mr. ANDREWS. In my remaining time I would ask Colonel

Hughes or Dr. Biddle how they think the government of Saudi Arabia would react to such a plan where there was the existence of a

large Shiite republic or large Shiite quasi-state on its borders?

Dr. BIDDLE. In my contacts with the Saudis, they would not view

that as favorable to their security interests. But I would like to revisit this issue to what some have referred to as ‘‘soft partitioning

of Iraq.’’ I think that would be a very, very dangerous path for the

United States to engage in.

The fact, the history, remains that soft partitions don’t happen.

All we have to do is look at Africa. We can look at India. We can

look at Pakistan. We can look at the Balkans. And let me remind

you that the level of violence and destruction in Iraq today doesn’t

even come close in a per capita sense what occurred in Bosnia. Not

even close.

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you very much for your testimony. I appreciate it.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Jones for five minutes.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

And General Eaton, I want to say that I appreciate your service

when you were in the military. But I appreciate you even more now

because of your honesty and integrity.

I wish my friend from Georgia was still here to hear me say that

but I mean that most sincerely.

I want to thank you, General Batiste, General Zinni, General

McCaffrey, and anyone else I have left out by name for being willVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
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ing to stand up and try to inform the Congress and the American

people about the truth.

If you will give me a yes or not to this, and I have got one other

question.

General Batiste in an ad in April this year—I have always said—

this is General Batiste—I have always said—excuse me—Mr. President, I have always said that I will listen to the request from my

commanders on the ground. General John Batiste. Mr. President,

you did not listen.

Is he listening now in your opinion?

General EATON. No, sir, he is not.

Mr. JONES. Okay, thank you.

The second part and because of your comment and maybe others

if you want to add, please feel free to do so without me calling you

by name, I have Camp Lejeune Marine Base in my district. I have

great love and respect for those in uniform no matter which

branch. In April of this year, there was in a North Carolina paper

the heading, ‘‘Deployed, Depleted, Desperate.’’ There is a question

for those would will support President Bush’s strategy to stretch

out the Iraq war until after he has left office and for those who

think we should be prepared to continue our bloody operations of

Iraq for five to ten years.

Are you ready to support—this is the article, not be speaking,

this is the article—are you ready to support reinstating selective

service, the draft, even if that means your sons and daughters or

your grandchildren will have to put on the uniform and go hold

these cities and towns of a nation in the middle of a civil war?

A couple other points and then I am going to stop.

The President’s strategy of adding 30,000 or more troops in Iraq

may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. They were not

30,000 extra troops sitting around doing nothing when the call

came.

Last point. The demands of the war on our troops and their

aging, worn-out equipment already has pushed the annual cost of

enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses above $1 billion and advertising to about $120 million annually.

Do we have five years before the Marines and the Army are broken?

I will go to you first, General Eaton, and then anybody who

would like to speak.

General EATON. No, sir, we do not. And one of the appeals that

we have that Generals Batiste and others is we have got to grow

the armed forces to meet the foreign policy demands. We are funding cold war systems to an extravagant degree.

Now, the theory of control of the commons with large navies and

air forces, all that we have to manage. But we are shortchanging

the Army, shortchanging the Marine Corps, and our numbers of

personnel whoa recommitted to doing the hard work of today, and

we are not funding these services properly in order to re-arm and

refit.

The outcome of that is that—my firstborn son is now in his sixth

month of a 15-month deployment. We are using a backdoor draft.

I don’t yet endorse the draft. I have to state because this came up,

my wife endorses the draft because she told me to say that.

25

But I will tell you the draft, you get into the tyranny of large

numbers and you will compromise the very technologically and

training-proficient force that we have.

Mr. JONES. Real quickly, I would like to go to each one.

Do you support Senator Webb and Senator Hagel’s positions that

these men and women in uniform need more time to rest and be

home before they are sent back over. And if I could start with you,

Secretary West and go right down, yes or no?

Secretary WEST. No, sir, I do not.

The big difference on this panel is starts with General Gaskin

whom I admire tremendously. I am sure you do from Camp

Lejeune. He said we turned the corner in Anbar. I do not believe

I agree entirely with pushing more infantry, agree entirely that the

Army and marine Corps need more.

But I do not believe that we are going to be seeing this surge indefinitely at this level.

I think the big difference here is that Mr. Biddle said he gave

it a one in ten chance. When I came back in April, I said it was

a 50/50 bet. From what I have heard from my e-mails from the marines, I now put that as a six in ten chance that we can pull this

off.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Secretary, I need to get an answer to the question about Senator Webb and Hagel. Yes or no would do it for me

since my time is up.

General EATON. I support the Senator Webb, Senator Hagel approach.

Dr. BIDDLE. I do, too, sir.

Colonel HUGHES. I do not.

Mr. JONES. Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.

Mr. Cooper for five minutes.

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your holding this extraordinary series of hearings. If only we had had a similar level of scrutiny years ago, Members of Congress would understand a lot more about the problem.

I would like to ask which ever panelist would like to respond, for

those who point to progress in recent news in Iraq, how can we be

sure that progress will be lasting given what seems like an inevitable troop reduction?

For example, if you look at things like the progress that apparently has been made in Anbar, if you withdraw those troops, how

do we know the tribes will not switch allegiance again or change

their behavior? Sadr is dealing with the Maliki government, how

do we know those won’t change substantially once we reduce our

presence? Enforcement of things like, you know, the remarkably

tenuous oil law that seem almost too much to hope for. The sectarian or terrorist violence, however you want to characterize it. You

move a lot of the checkpoints and oversight, what happens then?

I wonder, and we trained, what, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi

troops. They leave one week a month to go back home, deposit their

pay. We don’t really know where they go and what they do. We

don’t know if they are part of the reason for the spike in violence.

26

So it is a remarkably confusing situation for any policy maker

but if you could help enlighten me on that issue, I would appreciate

it.

Dr. BIDDLE. I think it is very hard to make progress lasting after

a complete departure of U.S. troops. Historical analogies are always problematic but I think the best analogy to the situation we

have in Iraq are civil wars back in the Balkans where the route

to civil war termination is negotiate some sort of settlement among

the parties but because the parties don’t trust each other with

guns, a third party to act as peacekeeper is required for those deals

one reached to be stable so the spoilers don’t blow them up within

a week of the ink drying.

And I think unless, if one takes seriously the idea that we are

going to stay, do our best to produce stability, the route to it is

going to be through bi-lateral deals through something like the

Anbar Awakening. I think the implication of all that is to make it

stable is going to require a third party presence over a generational

duration as it has in other situations where we have seen similar

ethnic, sectarian, and other civil conflicts.

Mr. COOPER. The reducing our forces might make it more sustainable because there would be less op tempo stress or——

Dr. BIDDLE. Reducing our forces enables us to reset our forces

faster. Reducing our forces removes one of the primary caps on the

violence levels in Iraq if we do it prior to negotiated settlements

through some significant fraction of the country. Reducing our

forces to the point where they cannot act as effective peacekeepers

following a negotiated settlement to the conflict makes that very

negotiated settlement of the conflict unstable and unlikely to persist.

Colonel HUGHES. Sir, the notion that the United States can be

a peacekeeper in Iraq is weak because we are a belligerent and

Iraqi people see us as belligerent. The notion that the United

States can assist, for example, in the demobilization, disarmament,

and reintegration of insurgence back in the civil society is faulty

on the same basis. We need a third party. I agree with Dr. Biddle,

but it cannot be the United State because we have as much blood

on our hands as any of the insurgent groups have over there.

Mr. COOPER. I just have a moment remaining. I am not sure if

anyone has asked the warfare and information age question yet.

But I worry that we have made the al Qaeda brand unintentionally

and that encourages their almost automatic network franchising

that is something that perhaps our military is not as adept at dealing with as they should be. Am I mistaken in the view?

Dr. BIDDLE. I am not sure we understand your question, sir.

Mr. COOPER. By focusing on a few people in Pakistan, that we

apparently did not succeed in routing out in Tora Bora and the

massive worldwide publicity, gave a certain celebrity status——

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes.

Mr. COOPER [continuing]. To those folks. And then, even European countries claim some association or affinity through the Internet with these folks, claim training techniques and others. Then all

of a sudden we have metastasized the problem. So in today’s information-age world, brand is important and a lot of people get selffulfillment and identity in that.

27

And then, you add the free franchising capability——

Dr. BIDDLE. Right.

Mr. COOPER [continuing]. No payment is due. All they have to do

is claim affinity then somehow there own self-esteem is bolstered

by this.

Is this a different way of dealing with the enemy?

Dr. BIDDLE. You are correct in your understanding of that, sir.

They are very savvy in their ability to handle the media.

Mr. COOPER. But are there any effective U.S. countermeasures to

that? We recognize what they are doing but how do we oppose

that? It almost seems like beyond the comprehension of——

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, one possible approach to this at the level of national foreign policy and strategy is with the enemy we have declared war on in this conflict is very ill-defined. Al Qaeda is the

best-known brand, if you like, within this vaguely-defined group.

But we have thrown the net very broadly over a large collection

of terrorist organizations that might or might not have thought beforehand that they are allies of al Qaeda.

Arguably what we have done to make this problem, you know,

worse than it might be, is by creating a very recognizable brand

and then encouraging lots of others who weren’t—I don’t know how

far I want to force this marketing metaphor—who weren’t necessarily part of the company before to think about becoming affiliates because what we have told them essentially is the only difference we see between you, Hamas, Hezbollah, whomever else in

al Qaeda is the ordering which we mean to destroy you.

That makes that brand of al Qaeda substantially more appealing

to organizations that normally have a great deal of difficulty collaborating with one another.

If we were clearer on the definition of the enemy in the war, perhaps we could affect not necessarily the salience of the brand per

se but the attractiveness of the brand in bringing in marginal and

infra-marginal actors that might otherwise be disinclined to cooperate with them.

Mr. COOPER. My time has long since expired.

Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Sanchez for five minutes.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And I am sorry I arrived late. I had a Homeland Security Committee at the same time. And so excuse me, gentlemen, if I ask a

question maybe you answered earlier.

I did read your testimonies and, you know, I personally I believe

we are getting out of Iraq. We just don’t have the resources to stay

there much longer and it is just a matter of time so I think these

hearings are incredibly important.

And I say that, you know, having, you know, looking at the leadership that we have out there that we keep touting, Petraeus,

Odierno, and all of these others and I just have to say, you know,

I was there the day after we caught Saddam in Iraq and I asked

General Odierno, how many insurgents are left and he said, oh, we

have turned the corner. We are done. We have just got a few left,

Congresswoman. So how many would just a few be? We went back

and forth and finally he told me 357. So Odierno is the general out

there running some of this stuff and Petraeus. Petraeus was there

28

when I was there and he was training up the Iraqi and doing the

Iraqification of the army.

It hasn’t gone anywhere. And recently, I was out there and saw

General Petraeus’s operating engineer in Baghdad and the four

provinces there, and I said, ‘‘Well, how many policemen and Iraqi

army do you have in your provinces?’’ And he told me, ‘‘About

36,000.’’ I said, ‘‘I think you are completely wrong.’’ And an hour

later, I saw Petraeus, and Patraeus said, ‘‘He is completely wrong.

It is double that.’’

I mean, I, quite frankly, don’t think even the people on the

ground know what is really up out there. It is just a matter of

time.

So here is my question—because we are going to get out—what

are we going to leave? How are we going to leave? I think that is

what much of this we are all grappling with, what is the best plan?

And we go back to this whole intent, I look at, Dr. Biddle, your

testimony said each of Iraq’s neighbors have vital interests in Iraq.

Syria and Iran. How do we get them into talks to make them understand we need to leave to leave this place without it going to

hell? Or do you just think that they want to see that happen?

And maybe we can start with Dr. Biddle and go down the list?

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, with respect to Syria and Iran, but also the

neighbors generally, each of them, obviously has vital interest in

Iraq. They also have some degree of shared interest with us and

some degree of conflicting interest with us.

The ideal outcome for Syria, Iran, and Iraq is not the same as

our ideal outcome. But at the same token, none of us wants chaos

and ongoing condition of anarchy in the country.

But the challenge in diplomacy with respect to the Syrians and

Iranians is to take the bit of this where our interests and their interests converge—nobody wants anarchy—and somehow or another

deal with the parts where our interests are in conflict. Iran wants

a safe proxy with a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq for example, and we would prefer not to have an Iranian proxy in the form

of the Iraqi government.

That is a very challenging diplomatic problem in part because of

all the other problems in our relationships with these two countries

and the natural temptation on the part of both Syria and Iran to

use our interests in Iraq to extort from us things that they want

in other areas. And given that our leverage over them is weak, we

have already been trying to apply leverage to Syria and Iran to

change their policies on all sorts of things for a generation. We

have shot most of our ammunition in that sense.

Given that we don’t have a lot of easy alternatives to turn to,

economic sanctions, for example, I think what we are probably

going to face is a situation where if we really want them to come

a long way in our direction in this negotiation, it is probably going

to require quid pro quos on other issues that we are likely to find

very expensive. I think some of the more important dimensions of

quid pro quo are, for example, the nuclear program for Iran, and

for the Syrians, for example, influence in Lebanon.

I think it is terribly important that we engage them diplomatically as a way of exploring just how big is the common interest

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ing interest zone. Maybe we can find some more shared interests

in there that we can exploit by talking with them.

At the end of the day, it is far from clear to me how much of the

two really important quid pro quos this Administration is willing

to yield in order to get their assistance in Iraq. And even if they

did, how much their assistance in Iraq is worth.

Clearly, Iran, for example, has been tremendously unhelpful in

Iraq. But at the same token Iran’s proxies in Iraq don’t share

Iran’s interests completely either whether they can get them to do

what we want them to do isn’t clear either. So we should talk but

it is an expensive and fraught process.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Anybody else on the panel?

General EATON. Egypt did not recognize Israel out of the goodness of Anwar Sadat’s heart. He didn’t wake up one day and fall

in love with the Jewish state. It became a very expensive endeavor

on the part of the United Stated to bring him along.

That kind of negotiation is simply hard work among diplomats

to work out what Dr. Biddle alluded to.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.

Gentlemen, we are going to start a second round. It will be the

same format.

And I will begin for five minutes.

I wanted to ask the question with regard to what could come if

things don’t go well with regard to the United States troops

present. What can go wrong with regard to the Iraqis. I think that,

Dr. Biddle, you referred to that we are capping the violence.

There have been a variety of different predictions about what

could happen if we did a precipitous withdrawal or just left in the

current situation. Last week, we heard from Dr. Daniel Byman,

and in his written statement, and he followed up with it when we

asked him about it. And he said that if—he reluctantly has concluded that we need to leave. But his conclusion is the result will

be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths. Hundreds of

thousands, if not millions of deaths.

And I pursued it with him and said, you know, substantial numbers of that are going to be kids. Are you saying that when we

leave, that there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of

deaths of children? And he acknowledged that is his prediction

based on studying of civil wars and everything like that.

My question is, where do you all foresee or see from your different perspectives our responsibility as a nation as the group that

took out Saddam Hussein, took out a police state. They had their

own kind of violence but it was a different kind of violence that

didn’t result in the kind of numbers in recent years as Mr. Byman

predicted.

What is our responsibility or morality? We used to talk about

Secretary Powell’s statement, if you break it you own it. And we,

I think, we and our military, General Eaton, and the Congress, and

the American people, if we saw million of people, including millions

of civilians die in a fairly short period of time, that may do something to our psyche as a nations.

30

So my question is, where is our responsibility or morality regardless of what you think about the different options out there? Secretary West.

Secretary WEST. Again, I am the odd one out here because I don’t

see the degree of the pessimism but if you start with your quitting,

if you start with we are leaving because we consider a civil war inevitable and therefore, we are just packing up and going. Once you

have quit, you have no control over what happens after you quit.

And I think we would, in this country, look at ourselves the way

we did after Vietnam and it would be a bad time for us for about

five years, both in our own self-esteem, how others look at it, and

some of us would argue that we had a moral responsibility that we

let down on unnecessarily and other would argue, no, we had done

all we could and we have a bitter debate but we wouldn’t have a

national consensus about our moral responsibility.

Dr. SNYDER. General Eaton.

General EATON. Nations have interest that don’t have friends. If

it is a vital interest, nations will act. The argument based on moral

grounds didn’t with respect to Vietnam. We basically allowed South

Vietnam to go down in flames because we withdrew support for the

South Vietnamese army.

It is different in Iraq. I think the outcome can be very detrimental to this nation’s vital interests and certainly to a lot of other nations dependent upon the oil coming out of that region. Because I

think the whole place will collapse if we have a disaster in Iraq.

Dr. SNYDER. Go ahead, Colonel Hughes.

Colonel HUGHES. Sir, the American people bear a moral responsibility to the people of Iraq for what has gone on over there. And

it transcends the scientific, almost theological discussion about

vital security interests.

One thing that we can do to help mitigate whatever occurs is to

fix the refugee admission issue here with the United States. There

are many Iraqis who are fleeing the country, predominantly are

Damascus and Amon but now it is growing in Cairo. And all of my

contacts throughout the Middle East tell me this is viewed with

great concern that this could become another destabilizing factor in

the Middle East just as the Palestinian refugee issue destabilized

so many places in the Middle East.

We need to fix the refugee situation and make it easier for the

United States to fulfill its obligation to those Iraqis who have

worked with us and bring them into the country.

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Biddle.

Dr. BIDDLE. I think we have a terribly important moral responsibility to Iraqis that as moral philosophers would put it, aught implies can. You only have a moral responsibility to do things that

are possible.

The question of whether or not it is possible for us to stabilize

the country is debatable at this point. I think it is possible but improbable. How improbable it has to be before you decide you can

no longer effect this in trying only magnifies the moral problem by

increasing the death toll associated with the effort is a judgment

call, which again, is partly why, I think, either of the two extremes

is a defensible position.

One place where ought——

31

Dr. SNYDER. Let me interrupt and we will go to Mr. Akin. You

have been very clear that you feel U.S. troops are currently capping

the violence.

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes.

Dr. SNYDER. Currently.

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes. And we could——

Dr. SNYDER. And do that for a sustained period of time.

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, the challenge is how long can we continue to

that before you get what perhaps is the inevitable.

Dr. SNYDER. Right.

Dr. BIDDLE. And the act of continuing postpones the deaths of

some Iraqis in exchange for accelerating the deaths of some Americans. So the moral calculus isn’t obvious either way.

Once place where ought and can come together, though, as Colonel Hughes is pointing out with respect to the refugee problem.

There is an areas where our responsibility can be addressed by

things that we can control. And I would agree with him forcefully

that I think that is an area where we need to take action.

Dr. SNYDER. Although we should not think that amending our

immigration laws to deal with probably tens of thousands of Iraqis

is somehow going to take care of any responsibility we may feel as

a nations toward a civil war in a country of 25 million people.

Mr. Akin for five minutes.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate all of your perspectives in helping us on

these interesting questions.

I would ask you now to—let us stand way back away from the

whole situation. Some of us have sat on the Armed Services Committee here for a number of years. And I guess what I am interested in is what is the take-away? What have we learned? Let us

assume this problem was either fixed or we ran away from it and

was a disaster, either which way, but what are the things that we

should learn?

Now, my impression, I guess, sometimes we get to ask questions

or we can also give answers. You know, my impression is, is that

some—I guess it was almost 20 years ago this committee met with

three different militaries that represented the United States. One

was called the Air Force. One was called the Navy. One was called

Army. And we said we want you guys to be one. We called it Goldwater Nichols. We talked about jointness.

That has been, by most people’s assessment, highly successful.

My sense is the take-away here is we need to carry jointness beyond just the military but perhaps to state and commerce and the

other groups or at least have these different, what do you call

them, Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams (EPRTs) or

whatever they are, but the group that can go in and deal the banking question or oil question or hospital or whatever it is and beyond just specifically military things.

That is my take-away. We need to have jointness but I am openminded. Everybody gets a minute shot here. What is the number

one take-away?

Secretary WEST. Sir, I will start at this end of the table and just

go down it.

To me it is in the society at this particular point in time, wars,

regardless of the tiny level of casualties compared to others or comVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
32

pared to anything like drunk drivers killing people, or something,

is still so horrendous how we view things that I would say it is the

notion that we must a belief in ourselves that causes a joint sacrifice by the entire nation before we ask our sons and daughters

to go to war. And we did not have this time.

Mr. AKIN. Joint consensus?

Secretary WEST. Joint, sir, in that it is the Nation as a whole

that says, we are in this as a nation and we will sacrifice as a nation because this interest is vital. Ann if a President can, say you

can’t do it on the cheap and if the President says, I don’t think I

have to bother about that, then I don’t think we should go to war.

So my great lesson would be, if you can’t get the country to unite

for a sacrifice, don’t do it.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

General EATON. That was pretty eloquent.

I would also offer that our state department is not properly organized nor is it properly resourced nor are its personnel policies appropriate for the world we live in today.

Regional commands are working very well in the Department of

Defense. I would go after a regional command approach for the

State Department. They need a bigger budget and they need different personnel policies so that we can direct their people to do

the things that we are asking them to do today they are not doing

in the EPRTs.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

Colonel HUGHES. Sir, as you know, I worked on the Iraq study

group and in doing the work, the big lesson that came out is exactly what Secretary West just raised. You have to have a national

discussion about why the Nation wants to go to war before the first

deployment occurs connected to those operations.

We did not have that. it should have occurred in 2002. The Iraq

study group was almost retroactive in restarting that debate. And

that is the lesson all of Americans need to hear and take to heart.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

Dr. BIDDLE. And one lesson we should learn and one that we

probably will but shouldn’t, the one that we should—although,

again, as Colonel Hughes said, the importance of dissent in an

open marketplace of ideas. It is not clear that the Defense Department in 2003 was sufficiently opened to a diversity views to allow

them to make good decisions in extremely complex environments.

The lesson I am afraid we will learn that I don’t think we should

is that we went from a single-minded focus on major combat as the

only primary mission for the U.S. military. And it ill-served us in

Iraq, so we should now go to a single-minded focus on counter-insurgency and conflict as the only mission we should organize the

U.S. military around.

The future, I suspect, is more diverse than that. The sheer difficulty of simultaneously doing two or three things very well should

not be underestimated. The danger that is enormously great that

that will become a recipe for mediocrity at many things altogether

as once. The business of avoiding single-minded focus on any single

military challenge is organizationally and culturally much harder

than it looks and I am concerned that the single-minded focus that

33

we had before could be replaced by one that will serve the United

States no better.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. We have been joined by Mr. Saxton, and without

judgment, he will be allowed to participate in the questions at the

end of this round.

Mrs. Davis for five minutes.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen, again, for being here.

And I appreciate the fact that you brought up, you know, are we

a military at war are we a nation at war? The veterans in my community ask me that question and I think that it is something we

need to address and we somehow kind of pushed that aside and

had we approached it differently, perhaps we would be in a different spot today. I don’t know if any of us know that.

I wonder if you could continue perhaps a little of the comments

you just made because I think the lessons learned is something certainly in the services that we know is applied. And what do you

feel that the Congress has really missed in all this?

Is there some opportunity here to address issues whether it is

the leaving, the part of leaving and I think Secretary West, I think

you mentioned that the Congress plays a role in this obviously, in

the way that we talk about it.

At the same time, we have an issue of whether any way that we

talk about it is a sign of weakness. I think, Dr. Biddle, you mentioned Congress should mandate it.

What is it that we need to do that perhaps different from the

conversation, the discussion today?

Dr. BIDDLE. Maybe I will start at this end this time.

I think the perception that discussion and debate is weakness is

much more sustainable when there is not much discussion and debate going on. If it is an ongoing every-day feature, the national

dialogue about national security, then it doesn’t get represented as

because it is something that only happens when failure is apparently looming, it is therefore a signal of failure.

I think a healthy debate at all times in which people’s patriotism

is not called into question by their willingness to question the very

complex subject matter at take here, is terribly, terribly important.

But again, both within the Congress, but within the executive

branch. One of the difficulties we have now is because this debate

has been muted until fairly recently, there is now a great deal of

concern within the executive branch that thinking through all the

alternatives in the rigorous, well-supported, carefully staffed out diverse ideas represented way we would like it to be done, will be

read as a sign of lack of confidence in their own policy.

We have gotten ourselves into this fix because we have not heretofore been examining all possibilities with the degree of rigor and

intensity that they deserve. At the moment, again, I think the way

to get us out of this fix is for the Congress to legislate something

so that it no longer becomes an apparent sign of lack of confidence.

I think more broadly, we just need a healthier debate at moments prior to looming potential catastrophe. And there are two

34

points in time I thing where we made mistakes as a nation, as a

people, and the Administration made a mistake.

The first one was, in 2002, when Congress issued the blanket authorization for the use of force. Rather than demanding that consideration be given for a formal declaration of war or the invoking

of the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act, I am not a constitutional expert, but it sure seems to me that it is a fig leaf for people

to hide behind rather than to try and actually make something useful come from it.

And I think that there ought to be some healthy debate within

the halls of Congress about its responsibilities as the body that is

supposed to, you know, authorize the use of military force and take

the Nation and the people it represents to war.

General EATON. The executive branch has gotten too strong. The

commander-in-chief notion that the President is commander-inchief was seen by the founding fathers as the number one general,

not the man who would decide that the entire nation would go to

war.

We have a concentration of power, had a concentration of power

in the hands of the President and Vice-President and the Secretary

of Defense. Congress went mute and allowed it to happen. And the

generals stayed silent as well.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Secretary West, did you want to comment?

Secretary WEST. I think Steve is really on to something. It is just

a question of how it would be done. We know it is inevitable that

General Odierno and the others in the next couple of months are

going to be talking about a Plan B.

Having a discussion that is fairly open, Steve may be onto something. I just don’t know how to work it out. I will say this much.

I do know the House Armed Services Committee is trusted more

than any other committee in either branch down at this end. So if

anybody could do it, it would be the House Armed Services Committee. But I am not sure exactly how it would be done.

But he is right. If there could be a more open discussion of these

things before it was decided, it would make a vast difference.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Bartlett for five minutes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you.

Secretary West, relevant to your observations that there are different reactions to a death depending upon how it occurred, it

takes cigarettes just about three days, in fact a bit less than three

days, to kill more people than all the people that we have lost in

the multi-year war. And there is no outrage to that.

I would like for you, if you will, to help me in a little poll survey

that I am doing. You each have something to write with and a

piece of paper?

If you will write down four things for me on that piece of paper.

The first one is, they hate each other hate al Qaeda, they hate us,

and something else.

So four lines, hate each other, hate al Qaeda, hate us, and something else.

35

Now, if you will put down—there is a lot of violence in Iraq—if

you will put down the percent of the violence in Iraq that you think

is engendered by each of those.

Now, in a prior hearing, one of our witnesses thought this was

an essay test. This is just some numbers.

Okay.

Hopefully, they will add up to a hundred.

We will trust you that you will read what you have written on

your paper, not be influenced by what the others have written

down.

Secretary West, what are your number? Hate each other? How

much? what percent?

Secretary WEST. Thirty percent, sir.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thirty percent because they hate each other. All

right.

They hate al Qaeda?

Secretary WEST. One percent, sir.

Mr. BARTLETT. One percent. Wow.

Secretary WEST. This is the violence. When you say hate al

Qaeda, how many kill al Qaeda because they hate al Qaeda?

Mr. BARTLETT. No, I mean how much of the violence is Iraq is

engendered because——

Secretary WEST. Oh, because of al Qaeda.

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, sir.

Secretary WEST. Oh, oh, I am sorry. Then, basically, 40 percent

is al Qaeda driven.

Mr. BARTLETT. And 30 percent is——

Secretary WEST. Hate us.

Mr. BARTLETT [continuing]. Rethink the 30?

Secretary WEST. Are opposed to us.

Mr. BARTLETT. Okay.

Secretary WEST. Thirty percent against us, 30 percent against

each other, and al Qaeda is 40.

Mr. BARTLETT. How much they hate us is how much?

Secretary WEST. I am sorry, sir, 30 percent.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thirty percent.

Okay, they may mean something else in your world, okay, good.

Thirty, 40, 30.

General Eaton.

General EATON. Fifty, 10, 40.

Mr. BARTLETT. Fifty?

General EATON. Hate each other.

Mr. BARTLETT. Ten, forty.

General EATON [continuing]. Al Qaeda 40 percent hate us.

Mr. BARTLETT. Colonel Hughes.

Colonel HUGHES. I guess I am the odd man out, sir. Five percent

hate each other.

Mr. BARTLETT. All right.

Colonel HUGHES. Forty percent hate al Qaeda. Forty percent hate

us. And 15 percent is due to something else and that something

else is crime.

Mr. BARTLETT. Crime? Okay.

Secretary WEST. Good point.

General EATON. Very good point.

36

Mr. BARTLETT. Okay, Dr. Biddle.

Dr. BIDDLE. I would say 55 percent on hate each other, 25 percent on al Qaeda, 20 percent on hate us. And I would also add at

least 10 percent on something else, chiefly crime.

Mr. BARTLETT. Crime.

Dr. BIDDLE. And add personal vendettas and other things in that

category.

Mr. BARTLETT. Okay.

So roughly, a third of the violence would go away if we leave if

I average out your numbers.

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, provided they don’t try to kill somebody else.

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes. Okay.

But at least for three of you, the hate each other was a pretty

big number. And our leaving is not going to change that, is it?

Dr. BIDDLE. No. The percentage may change if we leave.

Mr. BARTLETT. Oh, they will because we are not there any more

so those who hate us will be hating somebody else.

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes. I would be careful about the inference that they

hate us percentage of the violence will disappear and be replaced

by peace and tranquility——

Mr. BARTLETT. Right.

Dr. BIDDLE [continuing]. If we left.

Mr. BARTLETT. I thank you very much. I am just trying to get

some feel as to what the experts think the climate is over there

and this little survey helps me get some feel for that.

I am adding that to my growing list. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Sanchez for five minutes.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to go back and ask Major General Eaton, you said

that the State Department was not structured correctly for the

types of challenges that we have like Iraq, maybe Bosnia and

Kosovo, I don’t know, going back to your experience, or for the future. Can you, having been a general, and having seen this transition that we do, what do you think we need to do to restructure

that State Department so that they can do more of this transition,

some call it nation building, I mean, I don’t know what to call it,

I just know, you know, once the military has done its job, we really

should get them out. We shouldn’t ask the Army to build the nation, if you will.

From your standpoint, having watched now, much of this happen

in different areas, what do we need to do to change this State Department to better adapt for the future?

General EATON. First, the Department of Defense does not manage language foreign area specialists particularly well. We have a

tendency to train and then grind them off. The State Department

sees that——

Ms. SANCHEZ. Go back to that. So the Department of Defense,

are you talking about local people that we are using or people in

the military that we are using for language or State Department

type of people that we are using for language purposes?

General EATON. The Department of Defense does not see language proficiency for an area officer proficiency as important

enough to do what we need to do within the military to——

37

Ms. SANCHEZ. To have that type of capability within the military.

Are you suggesting that our military should have some of thee

capabilities so that they, in fact, do some of that nation building?

General EATON. The military justifiably does not see that as its

main responsibility. The responsibility of the military is to fight

and win the nation’s wars. The State Department sees that as a

primary requirement, as a primary effort.

Ms. SANCHEZ. For the Department of Defense or the State Department primary?

General EATON. State Department.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay.

General EATON. That is, diplomats learn languages——

Ms. SANCHEZ. Right.

General EATON. Diplomats learn how to swim in the environments where they are.

The organizational issue for the State Department is we have the

Department of Defense organized in regional commands. Every

square inch of this planet now belongs to a four-star admiral and

general.

I believe that a similar approach, perhaps overlaid on existing

boundaries, needs to happen within the State Department.

Two, they are not resourced to meet the expectations that we

have, that the military has of the State Department.

And their personnel policies allow members of the State Department to say no to an assignment.

Ms. SANCHEZ. So somebody that we think is the best-qualified to

go into Iraq can actually turn down that assignment.

General EATON. Secretary Rice cannot direct people within State

Department to go fill the EPRTs who we have right now. Hence,

those are being filled by military.

Ms. SANCHEZ. As opposed to your experience where you can send

wherever the service tells you to go or you get out.

General EATON. That is right.

Well, you don’t even have that. I mean, you go to jail.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Some cases you get out. You just said you retired.

So would you advocate then that the Department of Defense

bleed over into some of the skill set or are you advocating more

that we really put the line in between what the Department of Defense does what Department of State does and that we actually resource and change the way it is structured and the requirements

of the State Department?

General EATON. I would not change the main effort of the Department of the Defense to fight and win the nation’s wars. I would

increase the capability of the State Department to be aggressive actors in the theaters of operations where they are not aggressive actors today.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, General.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Saxton for five minutes and then we will go to

Mr. Sestak.

Mr. SAXTON. First, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for making

it possible for me to be here today. I happen to, as all of you do,

I am sure think that this is one of the most important periods of

38

time that our country has faced in a long time so I appreciate being

able to be part of this discussion.

Gentlemen, each of you have expressed yourselves in the last few

minutes since I have been here—I apologize for not being able to

make it earlier but I was interested in something Dr. Biddle said

in that before we enter into a situation like this again, conflict or

whatever, that we ought to have a national discussion and ‘‘examine all the possibilities.’’ I think that is great advice.

And a few minutes later, Secretary West talked about our military leaders and all of us here in the Administration and in Congress considering a Plan B.

And I guess by question would be this. In terms of examining all

possibilities as we move forward from the point we are in, which

we obviously can’t do anything about now. We are where we are.

It would seem to me that we ought to have a discussion and I suggested this to my colleagues previously about where we go from

here in examining all the possibilities including the recognition

that Iraq does not exist in a vacuum, including the recognition that

the country to its east, Iran, has demonstrated that it has aspirations to do some things that involve Syria and that involve

Hezbolla, that involve perhaps the Shia majority in Iraq, that perhaps involve the state of Israel, and their support of terrorism may

by a subject that even involves the United States.

So I guess my questions is, in examining all the possibilities for

decisions that we are about potentially about to make and recognizing the Iraq government doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and recognizing

that the other factors are, in fact, factors that we ought to be talking about, give us a quick one minute or two or whatever it is, each

of you if you would, be kind enough to, on your assessment of what

are our decisions we make, what are the ramifications of the decision we may make?

Secretary WEST. Excuse me, sir, you mean relative to the Iranian

dimension of the whole problem?

Mr. SAXTON. Relative to the what decisions we have to make

about Iraq and the other factors that I mentioned?

Secretary WEST. I will just touch on two and quickly move.

You did mention, sir, that I think you should keep an eye on.

And that is that the United States and Iraq together have to come

to terms before December and go to the United Nations with the

United Nations Security Council will then issue in December a

statement about the role of the occupying power. That is going to

be very interesting to see how we in Iraq work out our differences

to go before the U.N.

Separate statement about Iran, I think we have been tiptoeing

around the tulips too long. If they are killing Americans, there

should be a punishment for killing Americans. That may be easy

for me to say versus the President, but if anything, I think, sure,

I am perfectly willing to talk to them, smile genially like President

Reagan did and at the same time say, gee, I am sorry, but you just

lost the place where those bombs were coming from.

General EATON. We need a powerful diplomatic engagement. Essentially, Iraq is a protectorate right now and we are its protector.

We need to distribute that to other nations of interest.

39

And with respect to Iran, we suffered significant casualties during the Vietnam war at the hands of Soviet weapons and Soviet

Proxy forces. Yet we maintained aggressive diplomatic action with

the Soviet Union.

I would endorse aggressive diplomatic action with Iran. And it is

not necessarily all done by diplomats.

Colonel HUGHES. There are two vital interests that the United

States has to deal with today and that is the proliferation of WMD

and the issue of terrorism. You know, when it comes to WMD, we

have accepted North Korea holding onto a stockpile of plutonium

even though they are now shutting down a reactor they no longer

need.

We have allowed the Russians to continue to support for the Iranian nuclear reactor.

We are allowing the Iranians to move on producing plutonium for

their uses. And we are not doing much about it except with some

feeble diplomatic initiatives.

We are not bringing all of our national power to bear on this.

And that needs to be fixed. It is difficult for the United States to

fix it, though, when it is mired in a ground war that doesn’t have

any relationship to this particular problem. And the United States

needs to resolve its presence in Iraq one way or another. In doing

so, that will allow us to repair the alliances that have been fractured by this war and our partnerships with special friends.

It will also allow us time to fix our military so that it is capable

of doing the job when it is called to, again, do whatever the Congress wants it to do.

Dr. BIDDLE. I think we have a number of profound interests at

stake in Iraq, some humanitarian, some of them security. Among

the security interests, I would highlight one that we have created

for ourselves through the war in Iraq, which is the danger, not a

certainty, but the anger of a possible regional conflict spanning the

major energy producing countries of the Mideast if our policy in

Iraq fails.

The challenge is sufficiently grave as a threat to American national interest but I think it warrants the most intensive analytic

effort we can provide to figure out how to mitigate it, particularly

because migrating will require an unusually close marriage of diplomatic, political, economic, and military tools in ways that we

have historically not done all that well all that consistently.

And I think when I talk about the need for healthy U.S. debate

on this kind of question, an essential piece of that debate is bringing together very, very different kinds of expertise that will almost

never reside in single individuals. And somehow or another, getting

the people who know regional politics in the Mideast, diplomatic instruments and tools and potentialities, the economic implications at

stake here, and the detailed military problems, not just strategic

but logistical, tactical, operational, and all the rest, in a way that

allows them to hammer out some sort of integrated strategy for

dealing with this conundrum.

That is not an easy thing to organize. And I think unless we

have very self-aware by organizing it, we run the risk of confronting this risk with the kin of tunnel-vision approach that is easy

40

and natural but would be very unfortunate as a response to this

problem.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Sestak for five minutes.

Mr. SESTAK. Thank you, sir.

One quick comment and then I have two questions. I least I will

get one in.

If I could, General, in your comment, I always remembered General Shalikashvili saying, I can’t just hang out a sign in front of

the Pentagon saying we only do the big ones.

And I think the key point I think in the debate between you and

Ms. Sanchez was that in the military, there is U.S. force. And there

are U.S. forces. The force is really meant for why you all exist, to

fight and win our nation’s war, hopefully, because of that ability to

deter them.

But there are forces that at times can be helpful to the nationbuilding process from logistics to civil affairs units and all. And we

never want the second to overtake the first I think is your overarching point. And that is what I took it.

My second one though is, if I can build off of what you just said,

Doctor, and what I think Mr. Saxton said well. I am a date certain

guy for my own reasons. But set that aside and enough time because if anybody thinks they can get out tomorrow they just don’t

understand the military situation or diplomatic, I think.

My take on it, though, is, while ending this war is necessary, it

is insufficient. How we end it in the means by which we do so is

actually more important because it has to do with the safety of our

troops and for our overall security.

The aftermath, we will own. We will own because by first of all,

the dog may catch the car soon, and something maybe implemented.

I honestly think Democrats have to turn, if they are, away from

pure opposition to this war into trying to address in a bi-partisan

way a war that is not Bush’s war. It is America’s war because the

consequences of the aftermath are so great.

With that as background, I understand what you said, each of individually what we should do. What should Congress do in the

months to come because we need the Republicans and they need

us in a sense end this tragic misadventure in the right way.

What and how? As I watch Senator Lugar, as I watch what happened on the Senate side, I didn’t see them go to the next step for

probably good reasons over there. But this is our war.

And I am so worried about the Army with not one active unit Reserve, Guard, that can state of readiness to help those 30,000

troops sitting in South Korea if they were attacked tomorrow because they are not in condition and everywhere around.

What should Congress do? I mean like now.

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, there are a couple of different ways to think

about what congress can do.

One thing Congress can do is mandate troop withdrawals

through control of the purse, for example. So there is a great deal

of interest in the Congress at trying to find a middle ground, troop

presence in Iraq figure that perhaps would allow for bi-partisan

compromise, or perhaps would be a slow way to ease into a total

withdrawal.

41

I actually think the most useful role that Congress can play at

this point is causing ideas to be discussed that otherwise won’t be.

And again, I don’t want to return to the same idea too often but

in an extremely complex subject matter problem like how in the

world do we mitigate the costs of either total or partial withdrawal

from Iraq, the natural tendency of the government, especially in a

situation as polarized as this, is not going to be to examine an all

possibilities with the kind of rigorous, multi-disciplinary approach

that we would all like.

The political catch-22 in doing that kind of planning can be overcome by law and that notion of creating ideas and information

around which policy can be made, not just for lawmakers but also,

for officers and strategic planners and people in the executive

branch. I think that is a way that Congress can at this point in

time, help us move forward in addition to just thinking about

should we get out, should we not, what should the force level be.

Colonel HUGHES. Sir, that is an excellent question and I am glad

you asked that.

The biggest issue that confronts General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker today is how do you wrap your arms around the political reconciliation issues of Iraq? And this nation lacks that ability because you don’t have an Office of Political Reconciliation in

the Department of State Foreign USAID. There are certain entities

in the town and maybe this is a shameless advancement for my

own institute but that is what we do.

You need to empower entities like the Institute of Peace that do

political reconciliation work so we can get out there and, you know,

have a broader net to cast over Iraq and its provinces. We are seeing progress there but it is slow and it is very, very consuming in

terms of resources for us.

General EATON. The issue before Congress is the President of the

United States and his stubbornness and unwillingness to deviate

from stay the course.

That is the drama. I hear too much about the commanding general in Iraq and less about the Combatant Commander Fallon. Admiral Fallon has the entire region. He has all the countries that

have a factor on the problem.

The President of the United States will not shift off his definition

of victory. His definition of victory is not going to happen. It is

going to be something else crafted with the countries of interest

around Iraq. You have got to reach out to the Republican Party to

help the President shift off of his notion of victory.

Mr. SESTAK. I agree.

Secretary WEST. I believe, sir, that the House Armed Services

Committee, as I said earlier, is probably the only committee that

really has the credibility inside the military. That if you were to

say why don’t we have some fulsome discussion about Plan B that

you could get it.

Mr. SESTAK. You are saying we should be saying that.

Secretary WEST. I believe you could do that, sir.

Mr. SESTAK. That is——

Secretary WEST. I think this committee is probably the only committee that could do that.

42

Dr. SNYDER. We have some votes coming up but we will give

members, if anybody has any other questions.

Mr. Bartlett. Okay.

Ms. Davis, any follow-up questions?

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Yes. Just——

Dr. SNYDER. You have the microphone for five minutes.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

I think going back a little ways to our discussion about al Qaeda,

I think it has been clear that I know several of you at least feel

that that is central to what is happening today and yet, we really

need to involve the neighbors.

What impact do they then have on what al Qaeda continues, how

they continue to grow or how they continue to create the situation

there and even as we project here in the states? What influence do

they really have?

What are the costs then of trying to work with them as well? I

think, Colonel Hughes, you addressed this or Dr. Biddle, the cost

invoked and whether it is a nuclear or whatever it is, vis-a-vis

Iran, how do you asses that?

If al Qaeda is so central, and we need to work with Iraq’s neighbors, what impact do they rally have on all of that?

Colonel HUGHES. If I could say something. Let us be specific. Al

Qaeda in Iraq is al Qaeda in Iraq. They don’t have allegiance with

any of the neighbors. The foreign fighters who come in do not come

predominantly except in one case from one particular neighbor.

Saudi Arabia has a lot of people that have come in. We are seeing

a growing number of foreign fighters coming from North Africa. We

also have Chechnyans coming in but you don’t have Iranians coming in. You do have some of the bleed over from some of the other

neighbors as I said.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Would you say just al Qaeda rather

than al Qaeda in Iraq then. Is there something that we are trying

to a way of working with the neighbors that would impact al

Qaeda?

Colonel HUGHES. If we could forge a common stand among the

neighbors and Iraq against al Qaeda, I think everybody would benefit from that. Nobody in that region likes Osama bin Laden and

what he stands for because he is a threat to every one of them. You

know, so nobody has an interest in supporting al Qaeda in Pakistan or al Qaeda in Iraq. It is not in their best interests.

General EATON. I believe there are two al Qaedas. There is the

al Qaeda of the private soldier, the foot soldier, the guy who can

do basic infantry work. And then, there is the al Qaeda that was

able to do the low-tech, high-concept attack on the United States

on 9/11.

Those are very different——

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Right.

General EATON [continuing]. Entities. And our problem is the silent majority, the silent majority of Muslim nations unwilling, as

we are discussing here, to step forward and say enough and to

eliminate that issue in their countries.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I guess just to follow up on that

though. Do we have a strategy for doing that whether it is in the

hyperspace——

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General EATON. I would go back to the diplomacy issue and convincing Saudi Arabia that it is not in their interest to continue a

blind eye of developing this al Qaeda fighters and sending them

into Iraq.

Secretary WEST. Technically, Syria is allowing about 70 foreign

fighters, 85 percent of them being suicide bombers to come through

per month through the airport at Damascus.

Iraq is averaging one suicide bomber a day, which is equivalent

to one thinking cruise missile murderous bastard a day just killing

hundred and hundreds of people. This is what causes many people

to believe that if al Qaeda in Iraq that is doing this could be

stopped from doing it, you could stop the cycle of violence.

But our influence over Syria to cause them—and they could shut

down the Damascus airport any time they want—but we don’t have

the leverage with them to persuade them to do it. One a day are

coming in and just massively killing in Iraq.

Dr. BIDDLE. Again, I think the central problem is leverage and

again there are mixed motives on all parts. But the Syrians, just

like everyone else, are threatened by global al Qaeda. I mean, global al Qaeda’s primary target are secular authoritarian regimes in

the Mideast. Well, Syria would be fairly high on that list if you

were just to look at they are most opposed to and the kinds of governments are available.

The trouble is, on the one hand, they don’t show interest with

al Qaeda. On the other had, they don’t show interest with us either. And at the moment, in some ways, our policy in the region

is more threatening to them than Osama bin Laden’s.

The challenge in dealing with all these countries in diplomatic

interchange is to try and expand the current range of common interests and deal with the areas where what the want in Iraq is different from what we want.

My concern is the areas where what they want and we want are

different for both large and very, very important to these states,

who after all, are neighbors of Iraq, who have absolutely viral national security interests and what that country looks like in five to

ten years.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Sestak, we are going to give you the last word

but it better be a reasonably quick word since we have a vote underway.

Mr. SESTAK. Yes, sir.

I have one question that gets back to Iran. Traveling through

Iran with Iraq with Senator Hagel for three days. Being with that

senator was the best three days I have had in Congress.

I was taken where everyone said the influence of Iran is undo.

It is there. It is pervasive. And they talked about Syria, too. Saudi.

And having always believed that, though not as well stated as the

road out to Iran—I am going to use that from now on.

General EATON. As a footnote, Congressman, I didn’t invent that.

Mr. SESTAK. I got it.

I am taken with incentives, incentives that change behavior. You

reduce taxes and it changes your behavior. I am also taken with

that saying in the Middle East, having been there lots of times,

imshala, God willing tomorrow. It seems to me there needs to be

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incentive that change the behavior of Iran from destructive to trying to get influence to be constructive.

General Eikenberry and his departure from Afghanistan said to

us in a hearing when asked, does an end work toward our interest

in Afghanistan? The answer was yes, not because he wants the

same interest, he would want Taliban, he would want al Qaeda

there, put half-a-million dollars in roads. There are some common

interests.

I am trying to find those Venn diagrams where things overlap,

what are those incentives? Because I do believe engagement should

be with consequences. Diplomacy can be tough, sanctions, whatever. What are those incentives—even withdrawing troops could be

an incentive. What are some incentives, positive and negative, very

quickly, that you think could bring about parties to the table to

help facilitate an aftermath that is more accommodating toward

stability, particularly with Iran?

Dr. BIDDLE. I think with Iran, the critical common interest is nobody wants anarchy. The problem is the kind of non-anarchy they

want and we want is very, very different and getting them to accept something that looks like more like our version of non-anarchy, something other than a Shiite dictatorship that will follow the

wishes of Iran, is going to be something that is going to require us

to sweeten the deal with the Iranians because I think at the end

of the day, they think they are in the ascendancy here. We are in

decline. They have the arrows in the quiver. We don’t.

Their willingness to compromise with us simply is a way of

avoiding chaos is going down not up because they think they can

avoid that without our help. In an environment in which at the moment, they think they are holding the cards and it is just a matter

of waiting it out until the United States leaves so they get the version of non-anarchy they prefer, rather than the version we prefer,

we are probably going to have to give them something else that is

in our power to give that they actually care about, which is primarily, I suspect, their nuclear program. Secondarily and somewhat more broadly, the sense of respect from the Untied States.

Those are the two things they want from us that we haven’t

given them and we don’t particularly want to give them either of

those, especially ground on their nuclear program. But I have a

feeling we will have to if we are going to make any headway.

Colonel HUGHES. You need to look at Iran in its total complexity.

If we keep think about Iran merely as a supportive factor to an insurgency and growing civil was in Iraq, we are missing the boat.

The Iranian government is stressed. They are severely overstretched in a number of things. There are riots all the time in the

north. There are reports of public shootings of Kurds all the time.

They have got gas and fuel crisis. They claim they need the nuclear

energy because their oil infrastructure is collapsing.

You know, so there are a lot of different things we need to look

at and understand about what makes Iran tick today and then see

how we can turn those into leverage points that would help us influence their behavior in Iraq.

Mr. SESTAK. General.

General EATON. I would only add that, excellently stated, we

have a military problem right now with Iran. We are at a convenVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:39 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038758 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-78\206160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
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tional military disadvantage right now because of their geography

and our poor structure tie down. Diplomatically, politically, economically, we can generate the upper hand, particularly in the

international community very quickly to leverage them.

Mr. SESTAK. Sir.

Secretary WEST. Cause them pain. We are the greatest country

in the world and the most powerful country in the world and they

are in a position where they are training, equipping, and planning

the deaths of Americans. I would figure out a way of putting a stop

to that and put the fear of god in them.

Mr. SESTAK. Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Secretary West, General Eaton, Colonel Hughes,

and Dr. Biddle, we appreciate you being here. I think it is the kind

of discussion that this committee likes to have and needs to have

and will be an ongoing discussion for months and years to come.

Thank you so much for being here.

The committee is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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JULY 25, 2007

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