U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

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

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

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

1

38–759 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–82]

A THIRD WAY: ALTERNATIVES FOR

IRAQ’S FUTURE (PART 4 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 31, 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

SUZANNE MCKENNA, 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:

Tuesday, July 31, 2007, A Third Way: Alternatives for Iraq’s Future (Part

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

APPENDIX:

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 ............................................................................................ 37

TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2007

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

Benjamin, Daniel, Director, Foreign Policy Studies, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution ..................................................................................................... 14

Keane, Gen. Jack, (Ret.), Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, U.S. Army .. 3

McCaffrey, Gen. Barry R., U.S. Army (Ret.), Adjunct Professor of International Relations, United States Military Academy ....................................... 9

Newbold, Lt. Gen. Gregory S., (Ret.), Former Director of Operations (J–

3) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Marine Corps ........................................... 6

O’Hanlon, Dr. Michael E., Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution ..................................................................................................... 11

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 43

Benjamin, Daniel .............................................................................................. 102

McCaffrey, Gen. Barry R., (Ret.) ..................................................................... 46

Newbold, Lt. Gen. Gregory S., (Ret.) .............................................................. 52

O’Hanlon, Dr. Michael E., joint with Edward P. Joseph ............................... 57

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 41

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 4 OF 4)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Tuesday, July 31, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:05 p.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 afternoon.

Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in

the House Armed Services Committee. This is our fourth hearing

on looking at alternatives and different strategies for Iraq.

My colleague, Mr. Akin and I entered into this series of hearings

because we were frustrated by the tone of the discussion about Iraq

this year and the polarization that has occurred. The political debate on our strategy in Iraq has too often been framed by whatis

characterized as two extreme positions, precipitous withdrawal or

stay the course indefinitely. And these hearings have been an attempt to bring in some smart, experienced people—I am not referring to the committee members, but referring to the witnesses—

smart, experienced people that can help us identify and develop potentially alternative approaches for Iraq. But most importantly is

to educate the committee. Our intent is much less to look at

critiquing what has happened in the past, but to focus on the future.

Over the last three weeks, we have heard from retired senior

military officers, defense policy experts and academics who specialize in Middle Eastern affairs. We have had the Honorable Bing

West, Major General Paul Eaton, Colonel Paul Hughes, Dr. Steven

Biddle last week. The full committee has also been holding hearings on trends and recent security developments in Iraq and the

implications of the recent NIE with respect to al Qaeda, and we expect those kind of hearings to continue when we come back from

the August recess.

Each witness today was selected because of his unique background and perspective. The written testimonies will be made a

part of the record. I hope that we will have some vigorous discussion today not just between us and the committee members, but

you should feel free to have that kind of, you know, intellectual disVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:29 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038759 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-82\212160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
2

cussion amongst yourselves. And we have been pleased over the

last few weeks of how that has occurred.

For today’s hearing we have another distinguished panel, including Retired General Jack Keane, who has been actively involved in

advising the White House and the civilian and military leadership

at the Pentagon and in the field, and who appeared before the full

committee just last Friday; Retired General Barry McCaffrey, who

has been traveling to and reporting on Iraq in his capacity as an

adjunct professor at West Point for several years now, and was a

cliffhanger because he had jury duty this morning, but we wanted

him, and he wanted to be here, and that worked out fine; Retired

Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, former Director of Operations

for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Dr. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings

Institution, who just returned from eight days in Iraq, and recently

had a publication in one of the major papers; and Mr. Daniel Benjamin of the Brookings Institution, whose scholarship in the field

of counterterrorism can give us important insights in considering

the future of Iraq.

Welcome to all of you.

I also wanted to acknowledge the presence of Mr. Saxton, and by

unanimous consent he will be allowed to participate in this hearing

today, along with the other Members.

And I will now turn to Ranking Member Mr. Akin from Missouri.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 41.]

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I wanted to likewise

thank the witnesses for joining us, and welcome you all here.

I won’t repeat what the Chairman has said, but the whole purpose of running a good number of hearings now week after week,

and hearing from a quite a number of various witnesses, has been

to say, well, what are the different alternatives? And are there specific alternatives different than what we are currently doing? And

after reviewing our witnesses’ testimonies, it is clear that some advocate departing from the current strategy; that is, you do not endorse a planning or a plan that emphasizes U.S. combat forces

going door to door, performing a counterinsurgency mission aimed

at securing and holding Iraq neighborhoods.

In light of the increasing reports that the surge is succeeding, I

would like our witnesses to comment on how we in the Congress

should view these developments. And particularly, Mr. O’Hanlon, I

am interested in understanding how the significant changes taking

place in Iraq that you described in your New York article affects

your proposal for a soft partition. Particularly I want to get into

the logic of what is a soft partition.

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

Corps. General McCaffrey’s testimony is heavily focused on this

issue. While I think all Members agree 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:

3

one, training Iraqi forces; two, deterring conventional militaries

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 with these roles

and missions in Iraq is important.

Finally, according to previous witnesses, and there have been

many, 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 if you would take some time this afternoon to discuss how the U.S. should manage the consequences of

withdrawal.

Thank you all for joining us and for giving us a chance to chat

today.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

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

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Akin laid down an agenda there, and I wanted

to discuss the five-minute rule and our limitations on time. We will

begin today with General Keane, who will at some point stand up

somewhere between 2:15 and 2:30 because he has to leave, and we

really appreciate him being here despite that constraint. We will

put on our little clock that will turn red at the end of five minutes.

If you have more to say, you say it. It is more just to give you an

idea of where you all are at. When it comes to our turns, we will

try pretty strictly to follow the five-minute rule. And so because of

the number of you, when we ask a question, we want to hear a response from everyone. If everyone takes five minutes, we will be

here for a half an hour per questioner, which won’t work.

So let us begin today with General Keane, and then we will just

start it and go down the other ways.

General Keane.

STATEMENT OF GEN. JACK KEANE, (RET.), FORMER VICE

CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY, U.S. ARMY

General KEANE. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Snyder, Mr. Akin,

fellow members of the subcommittee, thank you for the invitation

to provide some testimony to you today. And I will make, I guess,

a five-minute opening statement.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the way ahead in Iraq. As

we all know, it is a tough, complex problem, and truly must be approached as a regional issue with global implications. I understand

the frustrations of Congress, as I said last week before the full

committee, because I have been there myself, because we struggled

and failed for three-plus years with our strategy in Iraq.

The President made a tough decision to change the strategy to

conduct a counteroffensive. That operation began in February, and

it is now in full stride with the arrival of our last forces in June.

4

As I said before, this counteroffensive from its inception is temporary. It is not designed to keep those force levels indefinitely.

The time frame, generally speaking, is 12 to 18 months, with the

intent to stabilize Baghdad, create the conditions to permit movement toward reconciliation, and buy time for the growth and development of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

Based on my own observations, I want to share some facts with

you and repeat some of those that I mentioned the last time, and

I will do that very briefly. One is we have seized the initiative. We

are on the offensive, and we have momentum over what we had in

2006, which was the opposite. Security has definitely improved. Michael O’Hanlon’s article lays that out. And clearly sectarian violence is down, June being a one-year low. Suicide car bombings are

down. And most importantly, down on the street, which I visited

twice in the last few months, schools are open; markets are teeming with people, most are operating at full capacity; and the cafes,

pool halls, and coffee houses are crowded. And most importantly,

people believe things are improving.

The grass-roots movement among the Sunni, number three, is

fundamentally a political movement in rejecting the al Qaeda, and

their willingness to fight the al Qaeda, and also move toward reconciliation with the Shia government. This is a huge turnaround,

with very significant ramifications. And people in Washington, I

think, are just beginning to understand the magnitude of what this

is. And I think it surprised all of us to the extent and the speed

at which it is moving. But it should be instructive to us when local

leaders decide to change because their people are pressuring them

to change, how quickly that situation can dramatically change. And

that is to the speed of it.

The al Qaeda, in my judgment, are being defeated in Iraq in

2007. And when we look back at it from 2009, I think we will see

that. Their strategy to use suicide bombers exclusively against the

Shia population has failed to provoke the Shia militia, as they had

done so successfully in 2006. They lost two key sanctuaries in

Diyala and Anbar provinces, and they are on the defensive, while

we attack them simultaneously in every province that they have a

presence, something we have never done before. The Shia militia,

while still killing U.S. troops, are fragmented, with many of their

special group leaders either dead or captured. Sadr has fled Iraq

to Iran, frustrated and depressed, in terms of our intel sources, by

the changing events in Iraq.

Economic progress, we have some, albeit not what it should be,

but there are essential services, microloans, and opening of state

factories beginning to take hold. Much, much more has to be done.

On the political side, no major piece of landmark legislation has

been approved, and it is a disappointment, make no mistake about

it. But the conditions are in place, and they are going to be

strengthened, to achieve political reconciliation as we move down

the road. It remains to be seen whether this government is up to

that task.

So where do we go from here? In my judgment, we have to continue the plan that the President announced in December to grow

the Army and the Marine Corps.

5

Number two, we must continue to cement the security gains that

have been achieved in Iraq. The counteroffensive must continue, in

my view, at least until the spring of 2008 before we begin to return

to presurge force levels during 2008. That is about a 30- to 35,000

force reduction. During 2008, the trends will continue, violence

down, suicide car bombs down, U.S. and Iraqi Forces casualties will

continue to come down, and people will be more secure. More

Sunnis will move toward reconciliation and further isolation of the

al Qaeda. In my view, we will see some central government reconciliation. If we do not, and it is not achievable until the new elections in 2009 with a prospective new coalition, then we will continue to reduce our forces anyway, probably in a more deliberate,

methodical manner, because we will be doing it under fire.

We need to develop a long-term security relationship with Iraq,

which should be solidified in 2008, which contains the following:

one, a recognition that Iraq is defenseless against its neighbors,

and does not have a military organized, trained, and equipped for

external defense.

Two, from 2008 through 2009, continue to increase the size of the

Iraqi Security Forces from the 360,000, 390,000 by the end of this

year, to 625,000 topped out by 2009. And the mission remains the

same: internal defense. Most important, we have to properly equip

this force, and it is not properly equipped.

Number three, continue to expand the quality and quantity of

the U.S. advisory program to meet this need.

And number four, from 2010 plus, assuming internal defense is

no longer a military issue, begin to transition the Iraqi military

from internal defense to external defense. Enter into the Status of

Force Agreements (SOFA), with the Iraqis, which will permit stationing of troops for advisory purposes and force protection in Iraq.

The timeline, as I see it, for this reduction, in summary, is 2008,

down to the presurge levels and possibly beyond will hold Baghdad

and the belt around it, and then reduce from out to the inside; establish long-range security arrangement with the Iraqis.

2009, continue force reduction and transition to the ISF. Based

on ISF capability and security, we will go down below 100,000 for

sure, close bases as required. We may as well be able to reduce

from the four star command to the three star command, but that

will remain to be seen.

2010, bring the force down to advisory only, with the appropriate

force protection. Transition the Special Operation Force role to the

Iraqi Security Force role, and for sure if we haven’t reduced the

headquarters in 2009, then take it down in 2010.

And then from 2010 on, transition to external defense forces,

while operating a minimum of two or three bases, whatever the

command feels is necessary to do that mission.

In conclusion, as we have always believed, if the counteroffensive

works, you can reduce forces more rapidly because the level of violence goes down significantly, particularly after Sunni reconciliation. If it doesn’t work, the force reduction should be slower, because you are withdrawing an Army under fire, and it must be

done much more methodically and deliberately, but nonetheless

must be done.

6

Complementary to military force should be our diplomatic effort

in the region, which has been from the outset less than satisfactory. And we must take advantage of the mutual interests that the

countries have in the region in Iraq not being a failed state, regardless of the historic differences. It is good to see the Administration

taking this on at Sharm el Sheikh as we meet here today. Thank

you for letting me provide some comments.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General Keane, for being here again this

week.

General Newbold.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. GREGORY S. NEWBOLD, (RET.),

FORMER DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS (J–3) FOR THE JOINT

CHIEFS OF STAFF, U.S. MARINE CORPS

General NEWBOLD. Thank you, sir. What I would like to do is

summarize my written testimony in as brief words as possible so

we can focus on the questions, and hopefully some constructive answers.

In summary, I made my opposition to the war known when I was

in uniform and since I have been out, but I must strongly say that

it is my view that the Nation, having committed to war, it also

ought to commit to winning it. My first preference is that the Nation do all things necessary to win, because the consequences of a

forced withdrawal will be paid by future generations of Americans,

and I think that would be tragic. And that unsettled nature of the

region is a fact, I think, that is known to all.

Now having said that, I must say next that I think that there

are eight ingredients to waging this successfully, and I will provide

some criticism of them. The first thing we need is a coherent and

sophisticated strategy, and so far we have not had one. I am not

speaking of the surge, which I support, but what I am speaking of

is a national strategy. We have been playing checkers while our

enemy has been playing chess, and it is time to change that.

But we also need a militarily effective campaign in the country.

We have had that. The military has performed, I think, profoundly

well, and our young people have sacrificed enormously. They want

to stay in the fight, and they would like to see us win it. But the

corollary to that is what is done by the other elements of our national power, and, frankly, they have not been up to the bargain.

We are occupying a nation of 25 million Muslims that has 40 percent unemployment, and we are surprised that it is in a state of

unrest. We need, and frankly in a panel like this we ought to have,

economists; we ought to have people of the political persuasion to

talk about creating a viable government in Iraq, et cetera. But we

have gone four and a half years without a viable political solution

in Iraq, and I think that is tragic.

On the economic front, the unemployment, the fact that the utilities have not been brought up to prewar levels, that the pipeline

is still subject to attack, I think it should be no wonder to us that

there is an insurgency going on.

On the diplomatic level, the country is not isolated. The insurgency continues to be fed by neighbors, and there are larger issues

than Iraq that need to be addressed by diplomacy. We are starting

7

to see some initiative, but four and a half years into a war is five

years is too late.

Beyond those elements, I would say that the support of Congress

is essential to prosecution of the war. And the fact is the momentum is very strongly moving against that, and it is likely to be exacerbated by upcoming elections.

And finally, I want to spend a moment on the Iraqis. The United

States cannot impose stability and a political solution on Iraq. It

can help to do that, but the Iraqis must take the lead themselves.

While there have been some heroic instances of sacrifice by individual Iraqis or by groups of Iraqis, the fact is that it is still driven

apart rather than driven together. And the factions have not seen

enough way to forming a nation than they have to looking out for

sectarian interests.

I would note one thing. Since the modern State of Iraq existed

since largely about 1934, Iraq has had mandatory conscription

until now. The greatest crisis in the history of the modern State

of Iraq, and they have not seen fit to bring young people out of

their neighborhoods, away from their sectarian mullahs, into a national entity, which would help the unemployment, which would

guard their economy, which might even be a civilian conservation

corps. But national service for a nation, that would indicate to me

a commitment on the part of the Iraqis. It would indicate to me a

commitment on the part of the Iraqis if they were willing to solve

the oil problem, a division of the oil.

But as I said in the beginning, we cannot impose stability and

a settlement on the Iraqis. They have to be willing to do it. And

I think they need an impetus stronger than they have received so

far.

My view is that the Nation, the U.S., is tired, that our people

have grown exhausted by the war and by the debate over the war.

They are tired of shouldering a burden largely with the British,

and they wonder when it will ever end. The political nature of the

debate in the United States has become more divided and divisive.

The military is strained and stressed in ways that probably can’t

sustain this surge level beyond next February or March, and they

deserve everything we can give to them. And I think the Iraqis

need the impetus I have talked about before.

One caution before I make my recommendation. For those that

would recommend a quick withdrawal, I think they also ought to

sign on for the consequences. And the consequences are obvious. If

we do not want local genocides and a civil war, then we shouldn’t

argue for a quick withdrawal. If we don’t want a destabilized region, we shouldn’t argue for quick withdrawal. If we don’t believe

that the free flow of oil is critical to the world’s economy, then we

ought to pay attention to the follow-on forces that will be required.

If we don’t want an unstable region and an Iraq that may foment

terrorism, then we ought to be able to commit the resources in support of the assets of the United States that are necessary to quell

that.

Now, my view. My view is we need a more modest set of goals

than we have had as part of our national strategy. Setting new

benchmarks and then achieving them would go a long way to being

able to claim that we achieved what we wanted in Iraq.

8

I also think that the U.S. and our allies have paid a very dear

price for what we have done not only in the young lives of Americans and how much we have committed of our national coffers. It

is time for us to at least call for other nationals to be held accountable, those that pledged so much money at the beginning of the

war and have yet to ante it up. The U.N. has been, in the Army

term, absent without leave for years, and it is time to hold them

accountable.

I think the U.S. has to pledge that whenever the withdrawal is

completed, that we will not tolerate Iraq being a basis for terrorism. And I think we ought to also combine with the other nations

of the region and the world to indicate that the world’s economy

depends on oil, and that that coalition of nations will ensure that

it happens.

I think we ought to also commit publicly to the world that whenever the withdrawal takes, it ought to not signal a lack of U.S. resolve; that the U.S. is committed to our national security, to regional security, and the world’s security, to play a role of leadership, and we intend to do that now and into the future.

I think we need to indicate a timeline for the withdrawal of

forces. I am a strong minority opinion in that regard. I would not

indicate an end date, but I would indicate a start date. And I would

indicate that as the beginning of next spring. I would preserve the

flexibility of our commanders and the flexibility of our national

strategy in determining the speed of that withdrawal. And frankly,

I would make it a point of leverage on the Iraqis for standing up

their own capability.

And finally, I recommend that the U.S. Congress craft legislation

similar to Goldwater-Nichols, that would create an interagency

process that is a parallel to what has been done for the U.S. military. It is long past due time to have an efficient, interagency national security process with all the incentives and disincentives

that made Goldwater-Nichols effective.

The only reason I agreed to appear before this subcommittee is

this subcommittee has a reputation for bipartisanship and sincerity

in approaching this issue. It is, as General Keane said, an impossibly complex, nearly theological problem. And not only do I applaud what the subcommittee is trying to do, but I urge them to

be as active as they can in trying to reach out and gain a center

of our national opinion so that we can move forward on this.

That is my comments, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General. We appreciate your thoughtful

comments. My wife’s a minister. She likes theological problems.

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

Appendix on page 52.]

Dr. SNYDER. General McCaffrey, we understand you are here

today because some attorney downtown decided that the former

drug czar was not the best person to have on a jury on a drug possession charge, and they dismissed you from the pool. General

McCaffrey.

9

STATEMENT OF GEN. BARRY R. MCCAFFREY, U.S. ARMY (RET.),

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY

General MCCAFFREY. No comment on that case.

Let me thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before

you. I am very proud to be associated with the people on the panel.

I have known them all for years. Michael O’Hanlon is one the most

objective, astute observers of the situation in Iraq that I follow. I

certainly would associate myself with General Newbold’s comments. That was right down the line, to be blunt, of what I believe.

Let me add some viewpoints. In my written testimony I spend a

good bit of the time talking about resourcing the military to carry

out the national security strategy we have chosen, or alternatives

in the coming years. Let me turn directly and solely to Iraq.

A couple thoughts. First of all, we are in there. We have got

160,000 troops involved. We have had 32,000 killed and wounded.

We are spending $12 billion a month. Oil is at stake. Our allies’

safety and security, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Gulf Coast

States, the Jordanians, there is a lot at stake. And I could not

agree more that the consequences of failure will be monumental to

the American people for the coming 10 years or more. So we

shouldn’t be unmindful of that. And certainly one option I would

immediately take off the table, we do not, in my view, in a responsible way have the option to walk away from the table. As General

Colin Powell said, if you break it, you own it.

I also think the whole notion of bringing David Petraeus, who,

I might add, probably is the most talented person I ever met in my

life, but bringing him home in September to articulate where we

are, why it is going in the right direction, and gaining the support

of the American people is a grievous mistake. There is no reason

why in September a bitter civil war in Iraq will be substantially

changed. Yes, there are international terrorists there. Yes, there

are 500 or so al Qaeda terrorists, most of them, I might add, who

are Iraqi. But the bottom line is we are engaged right now in trying to tamp down a terrible struggle to the death for political survival in a bitterly divided nation. It seems to me we have to give

General Petraeus a year to see if this so-called new set of tactics

and approach will work, or I don’t see any particular pay-off.

Second, it seems to me we now have not only a new, brilliant,

modest, experienced, team-playing Secretary of Defense, we have

got to give Dr. Rice and her ambassador Ryan Crocker the opportunity to start arguing for regional dialogue. That isn’t an AAA

conference, that isn’t two one-day meetings. It seems to me you set

up a forum, probably in a safe zone, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or wherever, and you get the parties talking for the next five years. We

have got to give her a year to engage regional dialogue.

Third, and the thing that I banged away at from the start, here

we are losing 1,000 or so marines and soldiers killed and wounded

a month, quite happily putting almost half of our combat power on

the ground in Iraq, but we have not adequately resourced the Iraqi

Army or Police from the start. It is immeasurably better today than

it was a year ago. Petraeus, Dubik are now starting to get the

kinds of resources they need.

10

But at the end of the day, we are out of Iraq in 36 months or

less unless the Iraqis turn this around. When we leave, will we

leave a force that has the potential to maintain internal order? And

if the answer is it is 500 Cougars instead of 5,000 armored vehicles, if the answer is it is 70 junk Soviet helicopters when we have

got 900 helicopters on the ground, if it is 3 C130’s when we are

using a huge piece of our Air Force lift assets to sustain this war,

then we are not in the right ballpark. We cannot allow the Iraqi

Army and Police to try and confront the situation on the ground

with the anemic resourcing we have done to date.

Fourth observation, it seems to me, and this would be, you know,

an almost antistrategic note, that we have got to draw down the

force in Iraq. The Army, and to a lesser extent Marines, Air Force

lift, Special Ops are starting to come apart. I would actually tell

the Commander of CENTCOM, when this Administration leaves office, you have this force down to ten brigades, and you tell me what

you are going to do with those ten brigades. But it is unmistakable

in my mind that starting in April, the U.S. Army starts to unravel

at an accelerated rate. It is already severely degraded. This is the

first time since World War II that we are strategically as a ground

combat force in such a vulnerable position. If the other shoe drops,

Castro dies, a half million Cuban refugees, miscalculation on the

Korean Peninsula, a whole series of potential vulnerabilities, a

major strike on the homeland, with millions of refugees in flight,

we have left the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. National Guard, the

central load-bearing institution of domestic security, ill-equipped to

move forward. So we have to draw down the force. We have got to

tell the force providers, get on with it.

Fifth, it seems to me we have to get out of the cities. Now, I have

no real argument. I think Petraeus has come up with a committed

engagement strategy. I personally do not believe we are in Iraq to

fight a counterinsurgency battle or to win the hearts and minds of

the Iraqi people. We are there strictly to stand up a government,

stand up a security force, ensure there isn’t regional mischief that

would knock the Iraqis off track, and then to largely disengage. So

I think we ought to get out of the city. I don’t understand why

30,000 U.S. combat troops in the city of Baghdad with 5-, 6 million

Arabs murdering each other with electric drills, car bombs and 120

mortars, why are U.S. GIs door to door the solution to an underlying bitter sectarian struggle?

Seventh, we got to resource our failing military. And when I say

resource, I don’t just mean manpower. You know, we got this almost ludicrous notion that we are going to build the Army at 7,000

people a year. For God sakes, there are 300 million of us. We would

have come apart already were it not for our Reserve components

and National Guard. The Army should be 850,000 people. The Marines are short 25,000 at a minimum. We have 124,000 contractors

on the ground in Iraq, without which communications doesn’t work,

logistics doesn’t work. Almost no military function can be carried

out except maneuver warfare because we lack the uniform capability to carry out these operations.

I might also add that 20 years from now when this committee

has a hearing, the question will be, as the PRC legitimately

emerges as a giant economic and military power in the Pacific reVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:29 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038759 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-82\212160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
11

gion, do we have a high-technology Air Force and Navy two generations in advance of the threat as a deterrent to mischief in the Pacific region? And I would argue we are draining modernization dollars out of the Air Force and Navy to spend on consumables to

fight the short-term war.

We can’t forget about the next tier of countries, Saudi Arabia and

Pakistan. I went in for General Abizaid, spent a week in Saudi

Arabia looking around. These people are drowning in money. They

send their kids to our schools. They bank here. They had three U.S.

Senators visit Saudi Arabia in three years. We have shunned them

in the international community. They are vulnerable to what they

see as the Persian threat to the east, and now, given the mess we

have made of Iraq, to the north. The Pakistanis are vital to our

continued prosecution of the operation in Afghanistan. So we got

to pay some attention to the next line.

And finally, and I am echoing General Newbold’s comments here,

I actually don’t think, notwithstanding the incredible leadership we

now have, thank God, engaged in this, Secretary Gates, Rice,

Petraeus, Crocker and others, I don’t think we are going to decide

the outcome in Iraq. I think this is an Iraqi issue. It bothers me

intensely when I hear the great pride all of us have at battalion

and brigade commanders with CERP funds picking up garbage, fixing sewage systems. That is not why this war is happening. These

people aren’t murdering each other because they are out of work

or there is trash in the streets. They are fighting over something

quite logical, power and survival, and the world that will exist

when we come out of Iraq. So I think we ought to have a more—

as General Newbold already articulated, a more modest view of

what is possible. This is going to be an Arab country and an Arab

army when we leave in three years.

Thank you.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General McCaffrey.

[The prepared statement of General McCaffrey can be found in

the Appendix on page 46.]

Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to acknowledge the presence of Adam

Smith of Washington State, who is a member of the full committee,

like Mr. Saxton, but is also not a member of this subcommittee.

And we appreciate him being here today, and, without objection,

will be allowed to participate.

Dr. O’Hanlon.

STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL E. O’HANLON, SENIOR FELLOW,

FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

Dr. O’HANLON. Thank you. It is an honor to be here. I appreciate

the opportunity.

The previous witnesses have already talked a lot about conditions in Iraq, and I would agree with General Keane and others

that a number of trend lines are in the right direction at the tactical military level against certain of our enemies.

But, Congressman Akin, you asked me to talk about my trip and

the concept of soft partition. I want to hone in right on that, because I think that overall we are seeing greater progress against

the extremist militias, al Qaeda in Iraq and related Salafist movements, some of the more extreme Shia militias; less progress, howVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:29 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038759 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-82\212160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
12

ever, in dealing with the sectarian war, the civil war. And I think

if I was going to summarize our progress so far, we are actually

making a fair amount of headway annihilating al Qaeda in Iraq

and other Salafist movements, especially since the Sheiks have

started to switch sides and work with us. But all we have done

with the civil war is suppress it. We haven’t solved it. And it is

mostly because of the Iraqi political leadership not having done

their part, whether at the top down or even at the bottom up so

far.

Let me, if I could, begin with an image of a neighborhood. I know

a lot of you have been to Iraq, and a lot of you have studied the

different neighborhoods. A couple neighborhoods in Baghdad where

the problem was vivid for me. Both of them were sort of along the

airport road, from the Green Zone toward the west of the city, al

Mansur to the north of the road, west Rashid to the south.

In the al Mansur area, and this is Ghazaliya specifically, what

you are seeing is you have got Shia up in the northeast part of that

neighborhood, and it is probably half a million people or more in

this overall sector of town. It is a large part of Baghdad. And you

have got Sunnis sort of to the southwest. And what we are doing

is putting up a lot of concrete barriers and allowing a lot of Iraqi

forces to man checkpoints, protecting their own neighborhoods. And

there is a real good logic to that as long as we are there.

But what is the transition strategy? Which Iraqi units are going

to be able to replace us in that objective, nonsectarian way? Now,

you could say that the Shia can patrol their neighborhoods, the

Sunni can patrol theirs. And that works as long as no one decides

to rock the boat too much. But then they can start blocking each

other’s access points into their neighborhoods. They can start getting in mortar fire into each other’s zones. You can imagine that

coming undone. So that is a hard problem.

Even worse is West Rashid to the south of the airport road, because there, again, remarkable progress of our forces in essentially

freezing in place the current situation, suppressing the violence.

But what you have got is a checkerboard, Sunnis here, Shia there,

Sunnis here, Shia there, all over that district. And there is not an

economically viable subunit you can create that is all or mostly

Sunni, and then another one that is all or mostly Shia. You can’t

even begin to put up concrete barriers and checkpoints, because if

you try, you cut these people off, little urban ghettos of a few

blocks on a side, and it doesn’t work.

So this, for me, is the challenge. I don’t think we have got this

solved. I wrote an optimistic, overall positive op-ed yesterday with

Ken Pollack about a lot of our progress, but this piece of it is going

to require some major headway if we are going to be seeing our

way toward a viable outcome in Iraq, and also some kind of an exit

strategy.

So are what are the various ways you could see that happen?

Well, one of them, of course, is if current strategy can really succeed on the political front in a way that it so far has not at all.

And the Iraqi leadership is going to have to come along and start

making compromises at the top. Over time you can try to build a

nonsectarian military. General Keane quotes the total numbers. I

am actually even more interested in the numbers that we think are

13

nonsectarian, and right now that is probably in the few thousands,

a few thousand total people equivalent. And we are going to have

to get those numbers up into the tens of thousands so they can at

least patrol these intersectarian fault lines.

That is one strategy. Political leadership at the top helps create

a more viable environment for compromise. And then from the bottom up you build up these nonsectarian security forces, and you develop a transition strategy. That is ambitious. So I put out another

proposal, which is also ambitious, and this one is with Ed Joseph,

the soft partition argument, building on Senator Biden. And I know

people like Rahm Emanuel and some others have some interest in

this kind of idea as well.

The idea there is to say maybe it is just too much to preserve

some of these checkered neighborhoods. Maybe you are better off

allowing people, or even encouraging people, not forcing people, to

move, so that you essentially have more sectarian homogeneity in

some of these neighborhoods, and you can put your more modest

number of nonsectarian forces along the fault lines between these

different groups. And the concept here is Baghdad is going to be

mostly a Shia city. It already is, frankly, but you would allow the

process to go a little further forward. But you would help the people who move with houses and jobs, and there are a number of

mechanisms by which you could do that. I won’t go into the details

right now. But that is the kind of concept that I think is behind

soft partition.

You also then take this notion we are applying at the neighborhood-by-neighborhood level and you broaden it, which is the idea

of creating local security forces that are designed and hired to protect their own people, their own neighborhoods, their own kin. That

is what is working in al-Anbar. That is what is working in a number of other places. The logic of soft partition says do that more

generally throughout Iraq. Try to create three autonomous zones.

And most security forces then work for the autonomous regional

governments. And, of course, the police would be recruited and

trained locally and protect their own neighborhoods.

So another big piece of this, in addition to the job creation, the

housing help and the population movements, is putting more of the

security forces under the control of the regional governments.

There are a number of other aspects that we try to think through

in this report that I did with Ed Joseph on the mechanics of soft

partition. I am happy to discuss those in the Q and A. I don’t want

to throw too much detail right at you in the way of just conjuring

up this image.

But let me conclude by saying I would agree with a number of

the American and Iraqi officials we met with last week, and a number, of course, of you who have talked with me about this plan who

say it can’t work until the Iraqis want it, and right now for the

most part they don’t. A number of Kurds do, and the occasional

Shia. Mr. al-Hakim, for example, has been in favor of this at times.

But precisely because Hakim is in favor of it, other Shia are not

in favor of it. And Sunnis still worry that this will be a way to ultimately put them off in the western ghetto of Iraq, without oil,

without much control and influence in Baghdad.

14

And there are a lot of things that you have to mitigate in terms

of people’s fears before this plan can work, but I think if you share

oil equally, which, you know, on a per capita basis, which has to

be part of any future concept for Iraq, soft partition can actually

offer something to each major ethnic group. For the Kurds, it is not

much change from what they have got. For the Sunnis, it allows

them to institutionalize policing themselves and get the Shia militias to agree to stay out of their neighborhoods and give them some

more defensible front lines. For the Shia, it allows them to finally

build the democratic Shia-led state that, frankly, they have wanted

for a long time, and for two and a half years after the invasion they

were willing to try to build without much violence, until things just

got out of hand.

So I am happy to go into this in more detail later, but my trip,

as much as it made me optimistic about the tactics that we are

using and the military progress, it led me to think that we have

not yet solved the ethnic problem or the sectarian problem. We

have to get a solution to that. One piece of it could be the current

strategy, and we finally see reconciliation and compromise among

the different leaders in Iraq. But another strategy might be for

them to agree, listen, we better agree on one thing if we can’t agree

on other things, which is we are better off living somewhat apart

and preserving a limited state rather than pretending we can actually stitch it all back together.

So I still stand by soft partition as my preferred political framework. Unfortunately, right now I don’t have enough converts to

have that be the main proposal. So Senator Biden and a few others

and I are going to keep pushing it. I don’t think it has to be the

framework. I think you might be able to pull it off with the current

strategy, but I am dubious, even after my generally inspiring trip

of last week. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. O’Hanlon joint with Edward P.

Joseph can be found in the Appendix on page 57.]

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Benjamin.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL BENJAMIN, DIRECTOR, FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, SENIOR FELLOW, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

Mr. BENJAMIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Representative Akin, members of the committee, I want to thank you for the

opportunity to testify today, and especially to be in here in such

distinguished company.

The previous speakers have all addressed the very largest issues.

I would like to narrow my focus a little bit here and discuss really

just the different sort of scenarios we might envision in terms of

the terrorist threat as it might develop, depending upon how we

pursue our policy in the region.

Let me restate the obvious and say that prediction in this environment is especially hazardous, and we have all paid a price for

overly optimistic scenarios over the last several years. Let’s begin

by acknowledging a fact that I think now is beyond dispute. There

were no jihadist terrorists in Iraq before the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Today there are probably several thousand. Some are undoubtedly

foreigners, including most of the suicide bombers. Nonetheless, this

15

is primarily an Iraqi group, and it will comprise a significant security threat for some time to come.

Well, what is the future of al Qaeda in Iraq? We have heard from

my colleague Mike O’Hanlon, the man in the next office, that there

is good news, and I welcome that. But I have to say that we have

had an awful lot of relentlessly downbeat news over the last few

years, and at the moment I am prepared to look on the pessimistic

side and to prepare for the worst.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has shown itself over the years to be an

adaptive and highly mobile organization. It can move operations to

areas of greater opportunity at really the snap of a finger. It is resilient. It has demonstrated the ability to penetrate Iraqi forces

and the regime. And we need only think back a few weeks to the

bombing in Baghdad that killed several of those al-Anbar sheiks

who had decided to cooperate together against al Qaeda. I would

argue that absent a broader political agreement that creates a

framework for nationwide security, we may reduce the group, but

we will not eliminate it. And the fact is the tool we have used

against al Qaeda, our military, is far from the ideal one for combating terrorism, through no fault of its own. It simply wasn’t designed to do this, and it is a very difficult target for the military.

Until we have a strong Iraqi intelligence service working in the

country, we will continue to face very serious difficulties.

Well, what is al Qaeda in Iraq going to be doing over the next

few years? If we maintain our presence in the country, I think

there is no question they will continue to target us first and foremost. After all, this is how they demonstrate their valor to likeminded people within the Muslim world, and this is how they demonstrate their bona fides, by killing Crusader forces. We should

also expect AQI to continue attacks designed to cause large numbers of Shia casualties and to stoke sectarian strife.

What if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, under whatever set of circumstances? A central argument of the Administration has been

that a U.S. Departure from Iraq would lead to a jihadist takeover.

I do not find this to be a credible scenario. Al Qaeda is losing support among Sunnis, as we have heard, and a few thousand people

are simply not going to take over the country. Even if all the other

Sunnis stood aside and the Iraqi military were to dissolve, the Shia

militias would still stand between al Qaeda and that kind of dominance. Al Qaeda in Iraq has also shown an incapability of holding

territory over a sustained period of time. In short, jihadist Iraq is

an improbable outcome.

A more likely outcome, actually, of our departure is that the Shia

militias would be galvanized to take on al Qaeda directly, and that

some of those who have enjoyed watching the United States kill

Sunni opponents for them would move into action. I don’t think we

should have any—and by the way, they might be much more successful than we are because they would be less constrained, shall

we say, in the use of force.

We should not have any illusions about what this would look

like. It would occur within the context of considerable sectarian violence. AQI will not shy from this fight. There is a strong anti-Shia

animus within al Qaeda in Iraq and within the broader jihadist

movement. Jihadist communications frequently describe the Shia

16

as worse than the Americans. And the rise of Iran is viewed as a

deplorable event.

Let me emphasize I do not consider withdrawal from Iraq and

leaving the Shia militias to take on al Qaeda to be an attractive

course, but I am skeptical, as I suggested before, that we can

achieve the, quote, complete victory that the President has called

for in his speech in South Carolina referring to al Qaeda.

Let me try to summarize some of the other points in my testimony and move us right along. If we do depart Iraq, we will need

to devise a reliable covert capability for dealing with the problem

of terrorist safe havens in largely ungoverned space. The problem

already exists in Pakistan and may well materialize in Iraq. My

own view is that our senior military commanders have been averse

to using Special Forces on counterterrorism missions for which

they are very trained. And I argued in a recent New York Times

op-ed with Steven Simon that it is time to look at deploying the

CIA and giving them more responsibility in this area.

Another Administration argument is a U.S. departure from Iraq

will embolden the terrorists. Well, obviously there is a great degree

of truth in this, but I would add that the terrorists to a large degree already believe that they have been victorious, and one need

only read their comments on their Web sites and the like. And I

think we need to ask what are the implications of the sense of

achievements that they have developed?

Well, it is often suggested that leaving Iraq before the destruction of AQI will lead to an enhanced jihadist threat to the United

States homeland. Undoubtedly, if there are more jihadists out

there, then there is a greater aggregate threat. However, most of

AQI’s fighters are going to be incapable of participating in any kind

of direct attack on America because they lack the cultural abilities

to navigate in Western societies. A few may try to carry their violence to the West, and the possibility that one of the doctors involved in the recent car bomb conspiracy in the United Kingdom,

that he was an Iraqi jihadist, is certainly an ominous hint. But if

the U.S. forces depart, I suggest the more direct threat will be offshore to American interests, and especially to the regimes of the

Muslim world, which are still viewed as apostate and deserving of

overthrow.

The dangers associated with this are evident from the recent uprising at the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where fighters

from Iraq reportedly played a key role. We can also look at Saudi

Arabia, which recently announced the arrest of 172 militants, a

very striking event. Terrorism is a game of small numbers, and 172

in this context is a very large one. The return of only a couple of

hundred jihadists to Saudi Arabia could prove a challenge for the

Interior Ministry and its forces. Other countries that face serious

domestic terrorist problems include Jordan and Syria, the two

major recipients of refugees from Iraq’s turmoil.

Farther away, we can also see that there may be some spillover

from Iraq, particularly in Europe. The number of Muslims who

have traveled from Europe to Iraq appear to be relatively small,

and many of those have been killed in action. It is also true that

Abu Mussab al Zarqawi was building a network in Europe. But I

think a consideration of the European dimension of the problem

17

points to one crucial conclusion. Against all the problems we may

face by departing Iraq, we need to balance the gains we would

make by reducing the ability of AQI members to galvanize others

around the world. In Western Europe and even the United States,

the ability of al Qaeda in Iraq to broadcast its heroic deeds in the

form of videos and communiques has had a powerful effect on those

liable to be radicalized. Some European experts contend that a U.S.

withdrawal from Iraq would significantly reduce terrorist activity

in their continent. I can’t say that with any certainty, but we need

to recognize that this would cap the radicals’ ability to argue that

the United States is a predatory power that is occupying an Islamic

nation.

I think that we need to recognize that we are on the horns of a

dilemma. On the one hand there is the jihadist myth that says the

United States is a paper tiger, and that will result in a certain

amount of jubilation if we depart. On the other hand is the argument that we are a predatory power in occupying Iraq. To a certain

extent I believe the jihadists have already declared the first part

to be—I am sorry, have already discounted the first part; that is,

it is already built into their appreciation of their situation. We

would benefit greatly by no longer having them able to make the

second argument.

Let me also just turn to one other potential development, and

that is the danger of what we might call Afghanistan two. The

news that Saudi Arabia, for example, is buying up tribes in Iraq

suggests that what we face over the long term, whether we stay or

not, is a proxy war, and this could have devastating implications

for the neighborhood and for the rest of us.

I view the likelihood of a wider regional war as being rather

slim. These are not militaries that are going to invade each other.

They are not capable, by and large, of offensive operations. But if

they do start conducting a proxy war in Iraq, then the possibility

of anti-Shia sentiment being used to mobilize the Sunni world is

quite dangerous indeed, and we could see this becoming a conflict

that sucks in radicals from all over the region. And with all the

money and weaponry that would be delivered to them if this is a

replay of Afghanistan, we could see a recreation of organizations

like al Qaeda, as we did in the 1980’s and the 1990’s.

I think the United States ought to make it a high-level diplomatic priority to prevent that. I am fully cognizant of the fact that

we have very few levers to deal with this precisely because of our

lack of influence over Iran. Nonetheless, I think that this is something we should be clear-eyed about and recognize as one of the

worst possible outcomes we could face. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Benjamin can be found in the

Appendix on page 102.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Those

buzzers you heard were the sound of votes going off. What we will

do is we are going to take a few minutes, we will use my time, Mr.

Akin, and see if anyone has questions for General Keane, because

you will have to leave during these votes. This is a series of eight

votes. I hope the rest of you can stay. Lori on the staff here will

help you find rooms with phones, or rooms with privacy or treats,

or whatever you need to entice you to stick around, because most

18

of us will come back after the votes. We have about probably five,

six minutes before we have to leave.

General Keane, I wanted to ask you one question and see if anybody else has any specific questions for you before we have to run

across the street. When you and I talked on the phone last week—

and I hope you don’t mind me sharing this little tidbit here—you

expressed frustration, as Mr. Akin and I have, with the polarization that has gone on in this debate. It is not just in this town; it

is just the way the nature of the debate is around the country. And

the comment you made to me stuck with me in which you said, you

know, the sides aren’t that far apart; that, in your view, you used

to talk about 12 to 18 months, and I think you then expressed a

view that people who recognize—are interested in pulling troops

out recognize it is going to be a fair amount of time to withdraw

troops if we started today.

Would you flesh that out for me? What do you mean when you

say the sides aren’t that far apart, if I am quoting you right? Because that is not the way those of us here in this town see it.

General KEANE. Yeah, I think so. I don’t disagree with the President in not stating when he would believe we would have a withdrawal of surge forces, because he doesn’t want to flag that before

an operation actually begins. And I think that is appropriate behavior for a Commander in Chief.

But for the life of me, one of the things that just always has frustrated me, why we could not get senior congressional Democratic

and Republican leaders together and share the details of what the

intentions were; that this was 12 to 18 months at best, and we

were probably going to go back to presurge levels in 2008 one way

or the other, which is—believe me, is going to happen one way or

the other, one way being it is successful, the other being it is not.

And if that is the case, that they—we may be, at least at this tactical level, which this is, to take, you know, a bipartisan approach

to it, given the fact that the withdrawal of troops has become such

a trigger point, you know, for so many people. And I have been

frustrated from that ever since I got involved in the details of this,

going back to the November and December time frame on this.

Other than those who want precipitous withdrawal, and just

keeping moving it right out of the country as fast as you can get

it, I believe they are on one side, and they are in the minority,

where there are others who want to start to begin some kind of a

phased withdrawal, and so does the Administration, and so do the

military commanders. And why we couldn’t put that together somehow is frustrating to me.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Akin, do you have any questions for General

Keane?

Mr. AKIN. Yeah, just a couple quick ones.

I forget how many witnesses we have talked to, but, boy, we have

talked to a whole lot of them, because we have been doing this for

a number of weeks at a time, and this has been really popular.

Usually when you see a committee sitting there, you see the Chairman and the other guy who is the Ranking Member, who is sort

of the captive audience that has to be here, and there is nobody

else. In all of these hearings you see many Congressmen sitting

19

here, because people are very interested in what we are talking

about.

Now, one of the things that has happened is a chance for—having sitting here, has been seeing a pattern in what we have heard

our witnesses say. So I just want to check if you fit into the same

pattern. The first pattern is a fairly rapid or precipitous withdrawal of troops, aside from leaving us somewhat exposed as we

are retreating, is going to create a lot of problems, first of all, in

terms of a great deal of killing within the country, and then also

regional instability at a minimum. Do all of you pretty much agree

that we just can’t zip out of there very quickly? Is that pretty common? Everybody else has said the same thing.

Everyone else said the same thing. The second thing we asked

was—we asked every one of you and tasked you when you came

here to this hearing to come up with—if you don’t like what we are

doing, give us a better alternative. Now, of the different people we

have heard from, nobody has really offered us a very different alternative. They have given us all kinds of lists of insights and some

of them very helpful and insightful. But when you come down to

what we have heard, most people are saying what you are doing

right now, I can’t think of something a whole lot different. This has

got to—do you disagree with that.

General MCCAFFREY. I would not be in that camp. I think from

the start that the notion that we have not focused as a center of

mass on the training, equipment and deploying Iraqi security

forces was a fundamental mistake of the war. I wouldn’t have dismissed the old army. I would have fired all their generals; taken

the captains and made them lieutenant colonels; equipped them in

a first-rate fashion. And it is still grossly under-resourced. How

could we possibly sit there and boast, to me, in Iraq that they were

going to send 500 cougar armor vehicles to the Iraqi Army and me

counter with, the right answer is 5,000? And in every case across

the board—we are now in, what, year four of the war, we have got

an Iraqi army driving around in Toyota trucks, no mortars, no artillery.

Mr. AKIN. Let me explain what I am saying. What I’m saying is,

starting with the beginning of this year, with the new approach

that we are doing, which is significant——

General MCCAFFREY. I still don’t see an argument for the Iraqi

security forces as a——

Mr. AKIN. So what you are saying is——

General MCCAFFREY. All the arguments over withdrawing U.S.

Forces—turn the argument around and talk—regional dialogue, internal political reconciliation to build the Iraqi security forces. That

is the future of the war because we are coming out one way or the

other in the next 36 months. This war is an endgame.

Mr. AKIN. You say we are not doing that currently now anywhere

near what——

General MCCAFFREY. Not even in the ballpark.

Mr. AKIN. Of what you think we should be doing.

General MCCAFFREY. Right.

General KEANE. In addition to that is that we have finally owned

up to the fact that the size of the Iraqi security forces, which have

gradually, incrementally increased in our objectives, is decidedly

20

inadequate given the level of responsibility for internal defense.

And that thing has got to grow, and I think rightfully so, the commander is talking about 600,000. And some of us for some time

have been arguing for 600,000 or 700,000 is about right, and I completely agree with what General McCaffrey is saying, that we have

got to properly equip them finally.

Dr. SNYDER. I know the doctor wanted to give a question to General Keane. It is fair to say to Members, we have got less than five

minutes to go on the vote. We are in recess. General Keane, thank

you for being with us. I hope the other four of you can stay because

we are very interested in what you have to say.

[Recess.]

Dr. SNYDER. We will resume our hearing.

Gentlemen, I apologize for the delay. And it is bad timing, but

that just happens sometimes.

Mr. Bartlett, for five minutes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much, and thank you for your patience. I am intrigued by the discussion, Dr. O’Hanlon, of a soft

partitioning of Iraq. For a long time, I have felt that there are only

two probable outcomes: One is a soft partitioning, and another is

another strongman hopefully a little more benevolent than Saddam

Hussein was. I just don’t see any middle ground for people who

have been at each other’s throats for 1,400 years, which is why, by

the way, I voted for the Spratt substitute which said we shouldn’t

go to war in Iraq unless we had a U.N. Resolution so that it wasn’t

our war; it was their war. If the President couldn’t get that, I wanted him to come back to the Congress for another vote before we

went there.

My question about the soft partitioning is, how do you handle

those that are living in the wrong place? Clearly we could have

built a McMansion for each one of them with far less money than

we spent on the war if that is what we were going to do going in.

And second, what do you do about those mixed marriages, you

know, to make sure that there wasn’t going to be any problems?

Before you answer my question, before my time runs out, I would

like for you to help me in the little poll I have been conducting. If

you will take a piece of paper and write on it four things: They

hate each other. They hate al Qaeda—General McCaffrey, unless

you have a fantastic memory——

General MCCAFFREY. I am actually sort of reluctant to get involved in wherever you are going.

Mr. BARTLETT. I want you to write down four things, and beside

each one of those four things, I want you to put down the percent

of the violence in Iraq that you think is engendered by that. Okay?

So the four things are: They hate each other; they hate al Qaeda;

they hate us; and something else. We are just trying to get some

sense of what the problem is. We have a lot of violence in Iraq, and

we are trying to get some sense of where it is coming from. And

we have now asked a number of people this same question. Hate

each other, hate al Qaeda, hate us and something else. If you

would just write down the percentage of the violence in Iraq that

you think is engendered by each of those.

General McCaffrey, you seem to have finished. If you could give

me your numbers.

21

General MCCAFFREY. I don’t want to accept the premise of your

argument. I think that where we are is, we are involved in a struggle in a country of 28 million people. We have got 160,000 of our

terrific kids in there. It is overwhelmingly a civil war between two

of the three factions. There will be a second fight between the

Kurds and the Arabs in the coming five years. And interlaced with

that, we had a huge failure of governmental institutions in Iraq allowing massive criminality, men who threaten Iraqi mothers and

business people. And then, on top of that, we have got elements of

an international jihadist movement throwing kerosene on fire. So

I think that complexity is what we are trying to deal with.

Mr. BARTLETT. They hate each other you would place very high?

It is a civil war?

General MCCAFFREY. I think the dominant challenge right now

is—but I am not sure it is hatred. It is fear, fear of the future. It

is, where am I going to be five years from now when the Americans

are gone? And that is really the crux of it. And they are logical to

be fearful of the future.

Mr. BARTLETT. One of our witnesses described—if you had to use

one word to describe the climate over there, it is fear was the word

he used, if you had to limit it to one word.

General Newbold, do you have numbers down by yours?

General NEWBOLD. Sir, I am with General McCaffrey on this in

one sense, and that is, I am reluctant to give precise numbers. I

would say overwhelmingly the two reasons for the violence in Iraq

are: They perceive us as an occupying power in their country; and

the other one is the bitter sectarian issues and the fear, as General

McCaffrey described, to cause them to want to defend or attack.

Overwhelming it is those two, and there is some fighting with al

Qaeda now.

Mr. BARTLETT. So problems with each other and with us are the

two major reasons from your perspective.

Do the other two have numbers down?

Dr. O’HANLON. I will go quickly if you allow me to modify, as

General McCaffrey has, from hatred to fear. I will say 50 percent

for that; and then 35 percent al Qaeda; 15 percent U.S.

Mr. BARTLETT. And one last.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I think I am going to duck on the numbers as

well. But I would note that if you simply break down the number

of casualties, then it is overwhelmingly sectarian. But if you were

looking at the amount of ordnance that is being spent on attacking

the United States, you might come up with a very different sort of

figure. So, you know, it is a very confusing sort of situation. In

terms of the big picture, I think there is relatively little violence

that involves their hatred for al Qaeda. But that is simply because

of the numbers that are involved.

Mr. BARTLETT. That has been pretty consistent with all of the

witnesses. So you would put down problems with each other and

problems with us are the two major reasons for the violence?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Yes. And sometimes it is hard to disentangle

them, too; in other words, that our presence may be providing an

opportunity for sectarian violence by providing a shield of some

kind or—it is simply a profoundly complicated dynamic that is unfolding. And in fact, even to say it is sectarian is often confusing

22

because we have lots of violence between Shi’a, for example, and

lots of violence between different groups of Sunni. So, very often,

it is criminality; it is turf protection. I think that what we are getting at here is the concept of a civil war is in some ways not appropriate for this. There is a civil war going on, but there is also a

war, as Thomas Hobbes would have called it, a war of all against

each other. And that is part of the reason why bringing a pacification strategy to any kind of successful conclusion is so difficult.

Mr. BARTLETT. I understand the problem, Mr. Chairman, giving

a quantitative answer to a qualitative problem. But thank you all

very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Davis for five minutes.

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

Thank you all for being here. Let me just catch my notes for a

second. One of the things that was said earlier is that I think,

maybe as General Keane said, that he was perplexed by the fact

that we hadn’t really spoken about our intentions, had not been

clear about where we were going. And on the other hand, you

spoke about the need for regional strategies, a strategic plan. I

would like you to talk a little bit about the capacity issue because

I have always been concerned that we didn’t really have the interagency infrastructure. We know that. It was mentioned that we

should provide the military resources, too.

I think, General McCaffrey, you mentioned that we ought to be

giving the Iraqis better equipment, more equipment. Why aren’t we

doing that? This whole issue of whether we are able to develop the

capacity to do what we want to do right now, where do you see

that? If that is something we should be doing, why aren’t we? Is

that a problem of the Congress? Is it something that, again, in the

capacity that we ought to be doing more in terms of oversight?

Where do you see that? How would you grade that, and how would

you grade it in the next six months? I mean, how is it going to improve?

Dr. O’HANLON. I can begin with an anecdote from my trip which

is that we met a number of Iraqi security forces complaining about

how Baghdad was not providing them the equipment that they

were due. And this gets to the point General McCaffrey was making, and I will defer to him and others in a second. But there is

the question of whether the U.S. should be doing this now or the

Iraqi central government. Unfortunately, if the Iraqi central government won’t, that doesn’t happen. So you could conclude, if they

are not doing it fast enough, we really have to step in even though

it breeds a certain dependency in them. That is the conundrum I

think. It is not for sure lack of attention to the issue. But they are

complaining that, for example, some of the Sunni units are not getting help from the Shi’a dominated ministry of the interior. And

that is a big part of the challenge. And just also Baghdad not having the capacity to administer properly. It is one of the reasons

that those of us who favor decentralization or regionalization believe that you have got to lower the role for Baghdad in some of

these decisions.

23

General KEANE. If I could make a comment. The first part of

your question, ma’am, addressed intentions and interagency process, et cetera. We have done extremely poorly in that regard. The

interagency process has been broken. The Afghan crisis and the

one in Iraq have been militarized. And it is my strong view that—

particularly in Iraq, where you are dealing with an insurgency and

a civil war—that the problems and therefore the solutions have a

breadth about them that are economic, political, diplomatic, informational and military and that we have done extremely poorly in

understanding the sophisticated nature of the conflict and therefore

in articulating our intentions and the clear strategy for going about

it. And that is why I recommended the Goldwater-Nichols for the

interagency.

General MCCAFFREY. Let me first of all endorse General

Newbold’s characterization of the struggle. Put it in context, from

the start, I thought taking out the Saddam regime was the right

thing to do. And General Newbold and others were looking prescient and in later years didn’t agree with that. But I thought

going in and knocking him out of office before he got nuclear weapons, we would have to do it now or five years later. And I now

think that the consequences of leaving them in the lurch will be

catastrophic for the region, for the Iraqi people and for our own interest.

Having said that, even the President’s characterization of the

struggle uses conceptual architecture that is entirely inappropriate

in my personal judgment of what we are doing, talking about victory, talking about al Qaeda in Iraq, mentioned 30 times in a

speech, they will follow us here. That is not what is going on for

God’s sake. We are not going to have a classic military victory in

Iraq. I don’t even like the word counterinsurgency.

The Maliki government—the Kurdish in the north are doing

pretty good. But if you look at each province of Iraq in turn, there

is no province in the country in which the central government

holds sway. How can you talk about an insurgency against a government that is dysfunctional? So if you can’t talk about the problem in a realistic light, then you can’t come up with a strategy to

confront it. And that has been part of our problem. Mr. Rumsfeld

was in denial of the evidence in front of his eyes and dominated

this government and intimidated the Congress. And we are way

down the road now and in trouble.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Jones for five minutes.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you. And I thank the panel for

being here. And for a moment, I have to go back a little bit in history. For the last four years, I have sent over 6,700 letters to families and extended families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan

and Iraq. That is my mea culpa for voting to give the President authority to go into Iraq. Afghanistan, I am all for it. Rudyard Kipling wrote some writings called, ‘‘Epitaphs of the War, 1914–1918.’’

His son was killed in World War I. He did not become a hawk after

his son’s death. And under, ‘‘Common Form,’’ he said, ‘‘if any question of why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.’’ And I feel

guilty because I didn’t do what I should have done when we were

getting all these classified briefings.

24

General Newbold, very quick. I want to read from your article in

2006 why Iraq was a mistake: From 2000 until 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the

Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a

party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq and unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view

that the zealots’ rationale for war made no sense.

When you wrote that article, did anyone in this Administration

call you and say, General Newbold, why did you write that? Tell

me what happened that made you want to write that article? Did

anyone ever ask you that question?

General NEWBOLD. No, sir. I think I was off the Christmas card

list by that time.

Mr. JONES. Well, I am there with you, by the way, now because

of my position. I say that, Mr. Chairman, because we cannot go

back. You are right to say we do not go back. But if we don’t learn

that, whether it is a Democratic Administration or a Republican

Administration, that we must demand the truth and those who created the lie and the misconception and manipulated the intelligence should have to go before the American people and apologize.

They should have to apologize because you do not send people to

war unless you have no other choice. And we had a choice. And we

did not pursue the options.

And again, I want to thank you, General Newbold; you and General McCaffrey, I thank you both, and these fine gentlemen to your

left. For the military people, as far as I am concerned, you are two

of the top heroes in this country. And I thank you for being men

of integrity that deal with honesty—whether I agree with it or

not—that you deal with honesty, and I appreciate that from both

of you.

When I listen to General McCaffrey and General Newbold and

Dr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Benjamin, I hear what might be happening

is good or somewhat good. You talk about, Dr. O’Hanlon, the fact

that we have got to have a stable government. You made that

clear. I am not putting words in your mouth. You made that clear.

You said the military cannot do it.

I hear General McCaffrey and General Newbold say that, by

April of next spring, if we are still there under this stress and pressure, meaning our military, we are going to start to unravel. General McCaffrey, when we start to unravel, what should Members

of Congress be looking for to see that we are unraveling?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I think for the last 24 months, I have

been talking rather predictably about what will happen when you

get an Army of essentially 500,000 people, you call up a huge number of your Guard and Reserve to sustain it, you put them in an

operation where essentially we have got 44 brigades; 22 are in

Iraq; 2 are in Afghanistan. Right now, we have no operational strategic reserve. If there is a problem in Korea, Cuba, you name it,

we are in trouble. Thank God for the Air Force and the Navy and

for nuclear weapons, which are providing a deterrent element to

mischief during this period of huge vulnerability.

I personally don’t believe—I better not believe that this Secretary

of the Army, this Secretary of Defense are going to sustain this

surge beyond April. The next rotation does not work. We are going

25

to start sending—one of my sons, a fellow entry battalion commander in the 82nd airborne, had a battalion that was home for

48 days; they sent them back on 6 months, extended it to a year,

extended it to 15 months. We are going to have our staff sergeants

and our captains are going to walk on us. So the leadership—our

most precious asset isn’t our equipment, our marvelous technology;

it is our leadership. And I gave a talk yesterday, a couple of days

ago, in the Army-Navy Club. One of the dads came up and said,

my son is now deploying on his seventh tour as a JASOC operative.

We have allowed this tiny military force and an undermanned CIA

and Defense contractors to fight the war. And the rest of us aren’t

in the war.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Johnson for five minutes.

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you.

I was struck with some of the testimony or by some of the testimony today having to do with the anguish in not being able to

make things happen with the Congress; in other words, Congress

not being able to come together to kind of work on something

that—come to a consensus as far as our strategy for going forward.

And it just seems to me that we have to take into consideration the

fact that Congress is elected by the people, and Congress is a coequal branch of government to the executive branch.

And in the Congress, you have got two Houses; someone elected

every two years. That is us, the House. And it makes us very in

tune with the people. We are subject to the people. And the people

were at one time in favor of this war, but they have now lost confidence, and the American people want to see this war come to an

end. They want to see us redeploy our troops and get them out of

harm’s way in the midsts of a civil war in Iraq. And I think that

that is the reason why Congress and the military leadership, along

with the executive branch, were unable to come up with a consensus. It is because of the American people, and that is to be respected, and that is really an admirable part of our system of government.

And I respect the people, the collective wisdom of the people. And

I don’t fear what will happen in Iraq when we come out because

come out is something that we will have to do. And I think you all

agree with that. It is just a matter of when. And certainly how is

extremely important. And as soon as we can re-enlist the confidence of the American people in terms of how we exit from Iraq,

that is going to be the best thing that I think we can do.

And so I have a hard time, General Newbold, with this concept

of winning the war in Iraq or victory. Many people in America feel

like that is not possible. What is your definition of winning the

war?

General NEWBOLD. Well, sir, you will recall the way I characterize that is that, having gotten into a fight that we should not have

entered into, then it was important to win. And using that very

general term, because the consequences of disruption to the region

and et cetera were so grave. But following that, I then outlined the

reasons why I don’t think that is any longer possible and that it

is important to have a strategy of more moderate aims to sustain

America’s leadership in the world community and to conduct the

withdrawal in a way that may allow the Iraqis to assume their reVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:29 Oct 20, 2008 Jkt 038759 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-82\212160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
26

sponsibilities, the preeminence of their responsibilities, while we

draw down our forces. So what I am trying to do is, in a moderate

withdrawal timeline, is to retain as much as we can of our strategic

interests in the world while giving some opportunity for the Iraqis

to govern their own country.

Mr. JOHNSON. In terms of being able to supply the Iraqis, I think

someone mentioned about we have an anemic resourcing of the

Iraqi army. General McCaffrey, isn’t that because we cannot trust

them to not turn those arms against us?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, certainly there are a bunch of valid

arguments for not appropriately equipping the Iraqis. They are

going to use the weapons against each other. They are going to use

the weapons against their neighbors. They are going to use the

weapons against us. They are simple people. They can only use Soviet junk, so we are going to give them recycled Soviet equipment.

A bunch of those arguments are all very interesting, but a prerequisite to us getting out of there in 36 months is leaving in place

security forces that can protect the people. I actually think Dr.

O’Hanlon is right. I don’t think we are going to adjudicate soft partition. But I do think we can leave neighborhood cops with guns,

regional forces. Because in that part of the world, disarmament invites slaughter. So I would argue that we—necessary, but not sufficient condition of withdrawal is that we better stand up the Iraqis

in an appropriate way. Certainly helicopters, C–130’s, body armor,

U.S. small automatic weapons, light-armored vehicles. If we are willing to spend $10 billion a month driving around

Iraq getting blown up by IEDs, why wouldn’t we be willing to

spend $5 billion a year for the next 3 to 4 years to appropriately

equip their security forces? And so any concern about their trustworthiness, I would probably endorse. They are not very trustworthy right now. The Iraqi police are a uniformed criminal operation. The Iraqi army is a pretty thin reed except for certain kinds

of units. We have got to stand them up. We are going to be out of

there in 36 months. We have got a very short period of time to accomplish these missions.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Sestak for five minutes.

Mr. SESTAK. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I thought that the general, prior to his leaving, although I have

a different reason why, was correct that there is some commonality

that I think the Republicans and the Democrats might begin to

think about of coming together. Because while I think this war is

absolutely necessary to end, it is very insufficient. How we end it

as you all have pointed out, the means by which we do so is actually more important to our security and to the safety of our troops.

The four elements that I am curious about is how you spoke of

the U.S. Army, that it is—General, in your terms, that it is going

to unravel in an accelerated way beginning next spring. So some

drawdown needs to begin. And then I am taking that, how quickly

that drawdown can be done. Despite those that would like it very

soon, an Army study in 2005/2006 showed that, with 58 fort operating bases in Iraq and their assumption at the time that it would

take 100 days to close four at a time—now, that is conservative—

that is 4 years. You look at Kuwait, and we can only put two to

two and a half brigade combat equivalents into Kuwait to clean

27

them up, shrink wrap the helos and get them on the ships at a

time unless we build more of those facilities. That is 18 to 24

months, because we have 48 combat equivalents if you take all the

logistical stuff. And that doesn’t include the 70,000 other containers we will probably have to leave behind. So we are beginning to

unravel. It is going to take some time to do this. So it is not like

the Soviet Union getting out of Afghanistan and losing 500 troops

as they got their 120,000 out in 9 months.

The second one that I feel on the political sphere is you bring up

the specter of the weight of defeat, the concern with that. On the

other hand, you also brightly brought out—particularly you did,

General, when you talked about the People’s Republic of China, for

instance, where I really believe the center of gravity for us in the

next century is in the Western Pacific. What can’t we do because

of this specter of defeat if we stay too long? Because you have to

weigh both of them because, to me, Iraq is a set piece within an

overall security environment. President Bush said we won’t have

an open-ended commitment. Defining the end of that word open is

the critical issue here. What is that timeline? You said 36 months.

I mean, when do you generals say, you know, we can’t have a specter of defeat. We are going to try some moderated benchmarks so

to speak. But when is enough, enough that the Iraqis do not have

to give us permission, when we say enough is enough as you weigh

both of the military timeline versus—I think it actually fits well

into trying to have us come together from those who want out soon

to those that realize it is going to take us time to begin to address

our strategic interests by giving us some time for the regional. But

what is that timeline? Yours is 36 months; correct, sir?

General MCCAFFREY. The reason I use 36 months is I actually

don’t think Congress should or will have a major impact on the

operational decisions in Iraq nor the withdrawal rate until this

President is out of office. I think he is going to be forced into a

drawdown by the impending partial collapse of the U.S. Army by

next spring. So I think he is going to start drawing down. We will

hit the end of his Administration. Then we’ll have to see, what

have the Iraqis done? If it looks like it does today, the next President is pulling us out. If it doesn’t, if they draw back from all out

civil war, I suppose we could be there for 15 years with 30,000 or

40,000 advisors, log, air power, intel, which would be a nice outcome if the Iraqis stabilize the situation. So that is the question.

Will that happen? Yes or no; I really don’t have a clue. Certainly

it doesn’t look very good right now.

Mr. SESTAK. General.

General NEWBOLD. I’ll give you the logic for my timelines. First

of all, I agree with General Keane and General McCaffrey, that we

can no longer sustain the current levels of operations in Iraq beyond about next February. So the forces have to start drawing

down then anyway. It is my belief that we ought to use that as an

impetus to the Iraqis, and we ought to use it to let a little air out

of the balloon of the stressed forces and also to let some of the

steam out of the hot political debate right now. It is my belief that

the timeline will accelerate or decelerate depending upon actions

over there.

28

We can indicate a general timeline, but the events get a vote of

their own. If, for example, the civil war spreads and it becomes

much more virulent and violent, for my own part, I think it is time

to accelerate the timeline. If the success in Anbar or in Kurdistan

spreads elsewhere, then I think General McCaffrey’s alternative

that he listed as one of his may allow us to retard the timeline a

little bit because essentially violence is disappearing in vast segments of the country. So, beginning next February/March, I think

we start our drawdown. I think under the most optimistic

timelines, we couldn’t do it under a year without abandoning people and things and that the circumstances on the ground will probably define whether it is a year or three years.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Saxton for five minutes.

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And first, thank you for making it possible for me to be here. I

appreciate it very much. I think this is one of the most important

activities that is currently going on in the Congress, and I thank

you and the ranking member for initiating it.

There has been a lot said about Iraq and lots of different opinions relative to the process of creating a more stable situation

which serves the interests of the Iraqi people and certainly serves

the interests of our constituents here in America as well. My perception is that, in the region, Iraq certainly does not exist in a vacuum and that it has some neighbors that have the potential and

in fact are troublesome—don’t have the potential of being troublesome; they are troublesome. And I am just curious if you have

given much thought to what activities we might see on the part of

Iran once we see the—whether it is a year from now or three years

from now—when we have a significant drawdown and hence less

capabilities and a still building or emerging capability on the part

of Iraqi forces, who are currently trained—in the process of being

trained for internal security, not external security. I see the Iranians as troublemakers, not just now but in the future. I think

they have some objectives which take them literally through Iraq

to Syria and Lebanon and maybe some other places. So I was wondering if each of you share my concern about that, and if so, should

we be making some plans currently to try to deal with it before it

happens if it does happen?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Shall I take a crack at that? I think the Iranians

perceive their foremost goal right now in getting the United States

out of the region. And Iran is a country that has traditional borders. It certainly wants to have a great deal of influence over Iraq.

It is unclear how much influence it ultimately will have over Iraq

because of tensions between Shi’a in Iraq and Shi’a in Iran. And

that is a very complicated issue in its own right. I think Iran also

wants to be a regional hegemon. I don’t think there is any question

about that. I don’t see Iranian forces mobilizing beyond their borders. I am not sure why they would want to do that since that

would, I think, spoil their effort to be a regional hegemon without

incurring great costs. And it seems fairly clear that the Sunni powers in the region would not look kindly upon that.

The Iranians have over time shown a willingness to use subversion and terrorism as tools of policy, and they are certainly determined to acquire nuclear capability at a minimum. But I don’t see

29

them acting as a military force that is going to march through the

region, if that answers your question.

There is no question that they have been put into an extraordinarily advantageous position by the fact that we removed their

enemies to their west and to their east, and we may regret that

at some point. But I also think that we as a great naval power and

with many friends in the region have many different instruments

for maintaining hedges against Iranian ambitions. So I don’t see us

as being completely out of luck in that regard. That said, the diplomacy over the nuclear program is very frustrating at this point.

General NEWBOLD. If I could, Congressmen, I personally share

your suspicion of the radical regime in Iran. The issue is, how do

we address it? For my own part, I think a military action against

Iran would be ineffective and counterproductive. The great Achilles

heel of Iran is economic. The official unemployment in Iran is 20

percent, and there are estimates that that is hidden, and it is probably double that. I think Iran is a little bit like al Qaeda and

Anbar. They have the great capacity to ruin themselves. So that by

employing the most effective tool to convince Iranians themselves

that their extremist regime is undermining their country and their

way of life, I think we have a better pathway out of that while

maintaining a military——

General MCCAFFREY. Perhaps I could add to that. Go directly to

the point of contention of Iranian nuclear weapons. In my judgment, they made that decision ten years ago. They are going nuclear. The consequences will be harmful to the security of the Iranian people. It will prompt a reaction from their Sunni-Arab neighbors; the Saudis and the Gulf Coast states are already talking

about nuclear power requirements—that is step one—to countering

with an Arab-Sunni bomb, the Persian-Shi’a bomb. Iran does have

huge internal contradictions. Half the Nation is Persian. Their unemployment is terrible. The economy is terrible. The government is

goofy and doesn’t have the loyalty of the people. Their ability to

project power is tiny compared to the U.S. naval and air power we

could bring to bear.

Having said that, I would caution people. Military Science 101

is—the most dangerous military operations we conduct are retrograde operations, and we have done a lot of them over the years,

pulling out of the disaster of the Korean War up north in the Yalu

river. We pulled out of Vietnam, and we are about to do the same

thing in the coming two to three years. During that withdrawal, I

would not find it beyond belief that the Iranians would intervene

in a manner to humiliate the U.S. Armed Forces during withdrawal. And I think the ability to put a huge Shi’a population, to

have them try and seal off our lines of communications as we come

out with the assistance of significant Iranian military intervention

is there.

That is why I have been extremely concerned about that BakerHamilton Commission, the notion that we will get the combat

troops out and stand there with embedded trainers. I think 34,000

Americans spread all over that great country will be potential hostages to Iranian intransigence if we went that road. I personally

told the President, you keep a floor of something like seven brigades. And if you think politically you have got to go below that,

30

get out of Iraq in its entirety and don’t stand there except for a Marine battalion in the green zone.

Mr. SAXTON. Let me just ask about the seven brigades. Would

you leave them in place where they are? All of our brigades are

kind of located in Baghdad or kind of the central part of the country. Would it make more sense to put them someplace else under

those circumstances?

General MCCAFFREY. Personally, I think we ought to get down

to ten brigades and have a clump of combat division down south

to guard our LOC, someplace where you can keep the lines of communication open. You have got to keep a division around Baghdad

to tell the Iraqi army, don’t throw the government out of power, or

we will re-intervene. And you probably need a substantial force out

in the western desert to protect the Sunnis, as we withdraw, from

Shi’a revenge.

But the whole Kurdish question then is the next shoe. How do

you deter the Turks from intervening? I think we are going to have

to keep substantial combat forces in division-size clumps with

armor, high intensity combat capability until we pull out.

Dr. SNYDER. General Newbold, I was one of those that did not

vote for the resolution in 2002, but I find myself in the position of

having great concerns about, where is our responsibility now that

we are there? You all have approached this from the national security perspective; how can we salvage what is in the best interest

for our country.

Taking a little bit different tact on it, where is our responsibility,

the morality of the issue? We had Dan Biden a couple of weeks

ago—he is probably wrong like everybody will be wrong about

things we say about this predicament in the future. But he says

his prediction is he reluctantly has concluded we need to leave, and

the result will be hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iraqi

deaths. And I asked him that question, where is our responsibility

as a nation, as Mr. Johnson pointed out, that overwhelmingly supported this war? Does that enter into your thinking at all about

where we are now in terms of our responsibility as a nation?

General NEWBOLD. I think it does for the very personal reasons

on the ground that relate to individuals and genocidal activities

and et cetera. But there are strategic reasons for that as well. The

United States is committed to this. It has a reputational issue. It

has credibility issues for now and in the future. So for both of those

reasons, I think the United States has to be prudent, as Congressmen Sestak said, in the manner of our withdrawal.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Benjamin, in your written statement, you discussed a little bit—well, I will probably do an inartful job of summarizing this—that you are saying that if U.S. troops were to

leave, that the publicity that would come from that has probably

already occurred in terms of the damages being inflicted on U.S.

Forces. Give me a brief answer. But isn’t that part of what happened after Somalia, after the Lebanon barracks bombing, after

Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, that each step of the way, we said

that if we pull back, if we pull back, if we pull back—I am just

stating this as an argument—it didn’t work out the way we

thought it would? How can you so strongly make this statement

that somehow the complete withdrawal at this—starting next week

31

or next month, would not be perceived as a much greater defeat for

U.S. Forces than the kind of activity that is going on now?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I think it would be perceived as a much greater

defeat than——

Dr. SNYDER. And that answers my question.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Than Somalia and others. What I am saying is

that they have already registered a sense that they have achieved

that goal.

Dr. SNYDER. So you don’t think the decision by the Congress

three months from now or on the defensive ropes this week—I am

just making this up—that that would not be perceived as greater

than what is going on now?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I think, at the margins, it could certainly make

a difference. But I think the jihadist movement believes that it has

achieved a great feat.

Dr. SNYDER. I don’t think that General Newbold and General

McCaffrey or General Wes Clark, who was here a few weeks ago,

think that that would only be at the margins. Would that be a fair

statement? I am getting a nod of the head from General McCaffrey.

General MCCAFFREY. That is a fair statement. Dan Benjamin

and I agree on a lot of things. In that regard, though, I have a

greater fear of the consequences of an accelerated time.

Dr. SNYDER. Which, also, Mr. Benjamin, is probably accurate in

predicting the unreliability of all our predictions is a problem.

Mr. BENJAMIN. That was the easy part.

Dr. SNYDER. Yeah.

General McCaffrey, Dr. Kahn was with us about two or three

weeks ago, and he is the only person that suggested that he

thought that the Muslim world that had military needed to be stepping forward and helping with this troop situation. There was a lot

of skepticism expressed by the Committee about that. He suggested

there ought to be about 50,000 Muslim troops. Our leverage there

is, we have really large amounts of money going to countries like

Egypt and Saudi Arabia to help them. Is that at all a realistic possibility?

General MCCAFFREY. No. It is not even on the table, nor am I

confident it is even a good idea. If we introduced large numbers of

Egyptians, Syrian forces, would we not start building an enhanced

threat to the 80 percent of the country who are not Sunni Muslim?

Would that then generate increased intervention by the Iranians?

But it is not going to happen. It is like legalizing drugs or—it is

an interesting debate, but nobody is stupid enough to do it. So the

Egyptians are not going to intervene in Iraq at this point. Certainly

the Saudis are not.

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. O’Hanlon, in your statement—this is my last

question. In your soft partition, the movement of two to five million

people in a country that has already had several million move, that

doesn’t seem very soft. You are asking impressive numbers of people to give up land that may have been in the family for generations. That doesn’t seem like a very soft partition.

Dr. O’HANLON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It gets to Mr. CongressmanBartlett’s question as well, which we

didn’t have a chance to discuss before. This would be a voluntary

relocation problem. You only move if you want to, and you only do

32

that, presumably, if you—if the fear for your own security is great

enough and justified——

Dr. SNYDER. If half the neighborhood leaves and the police say,

you can stay here, but we are going with these folks, that is not

very voluntary.

Dr. O’HANLON. I agree with you. It would be hard for people to

stay behind. But you would have to work out security procedures.

And we try to spell them out in the report where you would actually promise people a certain amount of residual security in the

neighborhood they remained. And one last point, very quickly, on

the issue of mixed marriage, people can choose if they want to go

or not. But our presumption is, if you get up in the range of 90-

plus percent of ethnic homogeneity, you have much less sectarian

strife. Because it is not so much hatred that drives it; it is fear.

If you have 90 percent dominance of one group in one area or another, it is clear who is in charge, and therefore we think there will

be less violence.

Dr. SNYDER. Gentlemen, I am cognizant of the time. You have

been very patient with us with the votes. Mr. Akin and I kind of

shorted ourselves just before the vote. I took five minutes. We’ll let

Mr. Akin see if he has any further questions, and then we better

call it a day so you all can get on with your lives.

Mr. Akin.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to probe a little

bit further on a couple of things that you had said, Dr. O’Hanlon,

that struck me as interesting. And that is that we are having—the

successes are the most optimistic things you hear. The first things

you were hearing almost a year ago was there has been some

breakthroughs in a few areas with a few sheiks in the Anbar province. And then the thing seems to be expanding. We seem to be

capitalizing on the mistakes of the enemies. And at a local level,

we are achieving some successes, apparently. I guess my question

is this, why don’t we just capitalize on that? Why don’t we drive

that? Why don’t reward the local communities that meet certain

basic parameters and further guarantee them maybe by whatever

coercive force we can bring to bear on the central government to

say, look, there are a lot of things that are going to go on here that

are not the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. I am talking

like kind of a Republican conservative. Bear with me.

For instance, education and your local police force and food distribution, et cetera, et cetera, the Federal Government has nothing

to do with that, and you are going to be in charge of that right here

in your town, and it is time for you to start putting your own

neighborhood together, your own province or state or whatever you

want to call it together and basically—because what I am hearing

is the military may be having some modicum of success. But the

State Department and the political piece of it, we don’t have a lot

of confidence the politicians in Baghdad are going to solve their

own problem. Why don’t we instead say, look, why don’t we build

Iraq the way America was built? Why don’t we start with the local

towns and the local states and build them up and give them certain

basic rights under themselves and use that as pressure to help

bring the centralized thing more into focus and approach it from

that point of view. I guess my question is, then, is that practical?

33

What would be the political obstacles to doing something like that?

And do we have enough influence to basically start driving a local

solution and put local—and then I think the political piece—this is

the American public. Americans love to keep score. We are sick of

always seeing that the bad guys have got four more runs on us,

and we never see what we are getting done.

It seems like if we put a list together—these are parameters of

a successful community. There is a minimum amount of violence.

We have got this, this and this, and all these pieces in place. If we

start coloring the map in, which communities have gotten in and

which ones haven’t, and when you do, we create rewards. Is that

a possible way to move forward, Dr. O’Hanlon, to start with?

Dr. O’HANLON. Congressman, great set of questions. And in fact

a lot of the benchmarks that we have not talked as much about as

the oil law or the debaathification process have to do with empowering the regions. There is the regional powers that—there is the

idea of having the regional elections so they can be a more representative government. I think Governor Tommy Thompson has

put forth a plan that tries to argue for this idea of empowering the

provinces. I think Ken Pollock and Tony Cortisman, my two colleagues on this trip, both have some sympathies there.

The main thing that will not achieve, that soft partition would—

because soft partition I distinguish from what you are saying as

creating three autonomous regions and rebuilding the security

forces along those lines. The soft partition is more if you worry

about the security problem. Your approach I think is more of a way

to try to do bottom-up politics and hope that the security problem

might actually diminish on its own if governance capacity and the

confidence with which services are delivered improve and then people have more stake in the system. So I think it is a very interesting proposition.

The bottom line—I won’t say who said this to me in Iraq. It is

not super sensitive anyway. Frankly, what we need is for one of

these kind of Plan Bs to be become Plan I, where if the Iraqis

would enthusiastically get behind either soft partition or your approach similar to Governor Thompson’s or another approach of decentralization, I think it would be great. And If it doesn’t happen,

of course, there is only so much we can push.

It raises the question, should we be more actively trying to construct a new political arrangement with them? And I would say

yeah. I mean, I think you try to work in this current approach for

a couple more months, let everyone know that the surge is achieving some military goals, but it cannot continue to do so unless

there is political help from Baghdad. If that doesn’t happen in the

course of this fall, let’s say, then we’ve got to find a Plan B or give

them an ultimatum, Plan B or get out. I think that is the conversation we may need to have with them within let’s say six months.

Mr. AKIN. I guess the way I was thinking of packaging it wasn’t

so much that it was a Plan B, but it is one more step forward. And

the first step was to create some level of peace on the street. But

I think the leverage is you say, look, Mr. Sunni, we understand

this town is 60 percent Sunni and you guys will have a lot of influence running the local police, but you have got to understand that

there is another town over here that is 60 percent Shi’a. And

34

maybe one of the parameters is that there has to be justice and

consistency the way laws are administered by local police. Anyway,

I appreciate what you are saying. I didn’t know that other people

had been working—I wanted to give one last part of a minute. Anybody else want to take a shot at why that is a lousy idea or if you

like the idea?

General MCCAFFREY. Let me, if I may, add one thing. I am sympathetic—I listened to Senator Biden with great admiration. And

Dr. O’Hanlon certainly has been thinking about this very objectively for several years now. I don’t think we have much of a vote

left. We gave them a constitution. We gave them a security force.

We are on our way out. The American people have had it with this

thing. We are not going to keep up $10 billion a month. We are not

going to redesign the governmental architecture of Iraq. They may

do it, or they may decide to do it through warfare. But I think, to

be honest, this discussion is outside of the reality of Iraq. I don’t

think this is going to happen. We are not going to direct it.

General NEWBOLD. My only comment was, Congressman, in the

summer of 2003, I was approached by a member of the National

Security Counsel staff for ways to seek stability in the country, and

I proposed almost precisely what you are recommending. I think,

at that point, it was important to establish the basis of governance

from the bottom up and to give exaggerated rewards and exaggerated disincentives for those that were turbulent or sectarian or et

cetera. I agree with General McCaffrey that the genie is probably

out of the bottle, but I wish they had done it in 2003.

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis wants the last word here.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. That just raises the question, the PRTs that we have put out there, we are trying to have

them model some of this behavior, correct, and hopefully within an

Iraqi mind-set as opposed to a Western mind-set? But that doesn’t

jive with what you are just saying. Is that effort worthwhile? Is it

working in the way that we are hoping it would?

Mr. O’HANLON. There is a certain amount of the effort that, you

are right, is already happening and we are trying to expedite. It

is not quite as radical as to say most of the budget resources

should go to the provinces. We are trying to give them more powers. I think it makes sense. From what I saw of the PRTs, they are

doing a reasonably good job, but it is a very fledgling effort in the

broader situation. So I think it really should be viewed as a plan

B, because it would be enough of a departure from what is going

on right now. The idea of giving most of the resources to the provinces would be a big change.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. But it is our mind-set more than—

isn’t it?

General MCCAFFREY. Let me offer a countervailing view. I think

that whole notion of the PRT in Afghanistan was incredibly sound.

A 14th century country, pathetically grateful for our intervention,

you can get out with a small security detachment and stay alive.

It has been absolutely marvelous.

In Iraq, I don’t understand what we are doing. We are coming

out of there, we are not there to rebuild the local economy of Diyala

Province. We are not there to kid them into picking up their own

garbage. I do not understand the strategic sense behind it. It is

35

hard to live out there with a contract security force and a tiny

group of Americans. What are we thinking of? You know, I think

I am probably one out from several other people at the table, but

I think the PRT is a failed effort already.

Dr. SNYDER. Gentlemen, we appreciate you and your being patient with us. You did double duty here today. All four of you are

very well respected, as is General Keane, and we appreciate you

being here. And Members may have some questions for the record,

but you have been all through that before.

But thank you so much. We appreciate you. The committee is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

JULY 31, 2007

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

JULY 31, 2007

(41)

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

Æ