[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE RISE OF ISIL: IRAQ AND BEYOND
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JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 15, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-215
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia GRACE MENG, New York
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
TED S. YOHO, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
CURT CLAWSON, Florida
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
TED POE, Texas, Chairman
JOE WILSON, South Carolina BRAD SHERMAN, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TOM COTTON, Arkansas JUAN VARGAS, California
PAUL COOK, California BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
TED S. YOHO, Florida Massachusetts
------
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida JUAN VARGAS, California
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
TED S. YOHO, Florida Massachusetts
SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin GRACE MENG, New York
CURT CLAWSON, Florida LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable James Jeffrey, Philip Solondz Distinguished
Visiting Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
(former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq)............................... 10
General Jack Keane, USA, Retired, chairman of the board,
Institute for the Study of War................................. 18
Mr. Doug Bandow, senior fellow, Cato Institute................... 27
Mr. Michael Eisenstadt, senior fellow and director of the
Military and Security Studies Program, The Washington Institute
for Near East Policy........................................... 36
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable James Jeffrey: Prepared statement.................. 12
General Jack Keane, USA, Retired: Prepared statement............. 20
Mr. Doug Bandow: Prepared statement.............................. 29
Mr. Michael Eisenstadt: Prepared statement....................... 38
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 60
Hearing minutes.................................................. 61
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 62
Questions submitted for the record to General Jack Keane, USA,
Retired, by the Honorable Joseph P. Kennedy III, a
Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.................................................. 64
THE RISE OF ISIL: IRAQ AND BEYOND
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TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
and
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ted Poe
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Poe. The subcommittee will come to order.
Without objection, all members may have 5 days to submit
statements, questions, extraneous materials for the record,
subject to the length limitation in the rules.
The rise of ISIL and its rapid expansion across Syria and
Iraq is a great threat to the security of the Middle East, even
to the U.S. Just focusing on Iraq, it is not a pleasant
picture. Iraq is one of the world's top oil exporters, to the
tune of 2.7 million barrels a day. If ISIL continues to march
across Iraq, we could see most of Iraq's exports dry up.
The result would be a spike in oil prices. More countries
would want to buy oil, then, from Iran, threatening our
sanctions regime. The U.S. economy would also be affected and
Americans could lose their jobs.
As Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki looks to a supreme leader in
Iran for help, Iranian influence in Iraq is growing day by day.
This is disturbing. Also, to me, corruption seems to be a
problem in the Maliki regime.
Iranians are bringing in planeloads of weapons and even
conducting air strikes. Increased Iranian involvement plays
into the worst fears of Iraq's Sunni neighbors like Saudi
Arabia. The fear is that the crisis could turn into a regional
sectarian war. If this happens, the oil market could spike like
never before. Plus, our ally, Israel, would be caught in the
middle of a Middle East war.
ISIL may be regionally focused for now, but it has said it
has sights on the United States. Today ISIL controls more
territory than core al-Qaeda did before 9/11. Planning attacks
on the United States costs money, but ISIL has millions of
dollars in the bank and seems to be getting more every day.
An attack also takes fighters, and ISIL has thousands of
highly trained fighters who are much more capable than those
who were fighting in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Some of these
fighters have European passports. This means they can travel to
the United States without a visa. Planning attacks takes
willingness, and in July 2012 al-Baghdadi warned the U.S.
leaders that ``The war with you has just begun.'' In January
2014 he said again about the United States, ``Soon you will be
in direct conflict, God permitting, against your will.''
This didn't have to happen. The rise of ISIL was not a
surprise. It was just ignored by many in the U.S. It seems to
me the White House did not push Maliki hard enough to make the
kind of reforms necessary to prevent the crisis in his own
government or the army. Mosul fell in 3 hours because Maliki
had spent the last 5 years purging the army of all of its
effective commanders. And when the Iraqi army came into
conflict with ISIL, many soldiers cut and ran, dropping U.S.
equipment into the hands of ISIL. Isn't that lovely?
So Maliki has continued to turn Iraq into his own personal
fiefdom. Within hours of the withdrawal of U.S. forces in
December 2011, Maliki sought the arrest of Vice President and a
longtime Sunni rival and sentenced him to death in abstentia.
Three years later, Maliki has not learned his lesson.
Just last week he fired his Kurdish Foreign Minister,
accused Kurdistan of harboring ISIL terrorists, even though it
is the Kurds who have been the best fighters against ISIL. In
fact, the last time I was in Iraq with other Members of
Congress we asked Maliki some tough questions. And when we got
through meeting with him, he ordered us out of his country. He
evicted us, in other words.
However, we did stick around and visited with the Kurds,
who are very receptive to the United States and support the
United States. The Kurds are tired of Maliki's bullying. The
Kurds have been long-time friends of the U.S., and if they want
independence my opinion is we should support that.
The question is: What does the United States do with
Maliki, his incompetence in the rise of ISIL? Like 2010, we are
now at another crucial juncture. Maliki and his State of Law
Coalition are in the process of trying to form a new
government. He is trying to run for a third term. In my
opinion, he needs to go. And like what we did in 2010, the U.S.
must work with our friends and allies in the region to
encourage new leadership.
In the next week, hundreds of American military advisors
currently in Iraq are expected to report their findings of Iraq
military capability and the strength of ISIL. Congress should
be able to see this finished assessment, and I hope my
colleagues will join me in this request.
The crisis in ISIL is not really a surprise, but now that
it is a reality, what is the U.S. plan to address this
aggression?
I will now turn to my ranking member, Mr. Brad Sherman from
California, for his 5-minute opening statement.
Mr. Sherman. We have seen a Mr. Baghdadi with incredible
ego declare himself caliph. We have seen attacks on Mosul,
where the Iraqi army was so panicked they didn't even take the
money out of the vaults for themselves, their government, or
even burn it. We see battles in Tikrit now as that Iraqi army
shows a little sign of strength.
In Syria, we have the reasonable Sunni elements comprising
by far the least powerful of the three elements fighting for
that country, although I guess you could say that the IS,
formerly ISIS or ISIL, is not fighting for the country of Syria
but for a worldwide caliphate that just happens to include
Syria.
The Maliki and the politicians of Baghdad are less than
inspiring, but they have just in the last 24 hours agreed on a
Sunni to serve as speaker, who achieved that with Shi'ite and
Kurdish support, meaning it is the first tripartisan decision
or tri-ethnic/religious decision made in Baghdad in recent
memory.
The Iraqi goverment--military is not just incapable, but as
The New York Times cited yesterday, it is so deeply
infiltrated, either with Sunni extremists in some units or
Shi'ite personnel backed by Iran in others, that to assign an
American advisor is to put that American advisor at risk from
the people they are supposedly advising.
Iran, I think, continues to be the greatest threat to us in
the Middle East. There is the economics of 2.7 million barrels
a day of oil exported chiefly from the Shi'ite areas of
southern Iraq. That is 7 percent of global exports, but well
less than that in terms of total world production. And I don't
think that that oil is likely to be disrupted, because I don't
think that the new caliph, as he styles himself, is going to be
able to get that far south.
We are faced with a Middle East based on really three
divisions. We have got the Sunni extremists, al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State, with Hamas, aided to some degree by Qatar, which
sometimes pretends to be our ally and friend. We have got a
Shi'ite alliance headed by Iran, Assad, Hezbollah, and elements
of the Iraqi Government. Perhaps you would classify Maliki as
fitting into that group.
And, finally, you have the moderate Shi'ites, including the
weakest elements of Syria, that many on this committee thought
we should have been supporting long ago. Now it is hard to find
credible Sunni moderates to support in the region. Also,
including in this group Saudi Araba, the Emirates, Jordan,
perhaps Turkey, and the Kurdish non-sovereigns, non-state.
The Sunni extremists pose the greatest threat of a moderate
attack against the United States. They have been trying to in
effect down one of our planes ever since 9/11. But it is the
Shi'ite alliance headed by Iran that poses the threat of a
great history-altering catastrophe.
And so as we focus on Baghdad, we shouldn't just say,
``Well, Maliki deserves our help because we were stupid enough
to install him in that position,'' nor can we say, ``Well,
Maliki would be behaving better if only the American President
had a different personality.'' We must recognize that Maliki is
part of an Iranian-led alliance, first and foremost, though
perhaps the element in that alliance more subject to reason
that the others.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about a
Middle East that has become more complex every year I serve on
this committee. And I yield back.
Mr. Poe. I want to recognize the chairman of the
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. I want you to
know, first of all, that all of these people here today are
here to wish you a happy birthday.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thirty-nine and holding, Mr. Chairman.
That is my story----
Mr. Poe. So congratulations on your birthday.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen [continuing]. And I am sticking to it.
Mr. Poe. And now you may give your opening statement.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Well, thank you so much, Judge Poe. I
would like to recognize, first of all, the several Iraqi
veterans that we have serving on our committee. We thank you
for your service and for your efforts in fighting the
extremists and terrorists in Iraq.
The chaos that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
ISIL, is creating in the region must concern us all. I would
point out that though the administration seems to have been
surprised by the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Iraq through ISIL,
our two subcommittees have been following this issue closely
for quite some time, and have been raising the warning flags
that can no longer be ignored.
So it isn't as if this was a new problem that came out of
nowhere. In our hearing in November, we had Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Iraq and Iran, Brett McGurk, testifying and he
said that the Iraqis didn't even believe that they, in
cooperation with the Sunni coalition groups, the Sons of Iraq,
could fend off ISIL, and he said, ``They don't think they are
going to win because the al-Qaeda groups have better weapons
and better resources.''
And we know what happened in Mosul and other cities in
Iraq. And because they had nowhere else to run, many of the
Sons of Iraq turned to join their foes and became members of
ISIL. This Iraq crisis has been exacerbated by our failure to
act early on in Syria, and also our inability to confront
Iran's influence over Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.
Maliki's marginalization of Iraq's Sunni groups and other
non-Shi'a Iraqis is a large reason why Iraq is seeing so much
sectarian violence. And for the sake of Iraq and regional
security, Maliki must either find a way to make the government
more inclusive of all parties or he must step aside. Yet now
the administration has said on numerous occasions that it is
considering cooperation with Iran and Syria in Iraq to fight
ISIL, the very same Iran that has been supporting Assad in
Syria, fueling the conflict there, giving ISIL terrorists safe
haven to spread their fight in Iraq.
And this is the same Iran that is the world's foremost
state sponsor of terrorism that actively, even while the
administration negotiates on Iran's nuclear program, targets
U.S. national security interests and those of our allies like
the democratic Jewish state of Israel. Under no circumstances
should the administration seek cooperation with Iran over Iraq
or anywhere else. To do so would be folly, and it would be
against everything that we in the United States stand for.
The instability that ISIL has created threatens the entire
region, but, more importantly, it is also a very real step, a
real danger at the doorstep of our ally, the Kingdom of Jordan.
Just 2 weeks ago, Congressman Ted Deutch and I went to Jordan
to discuss ISIL, the Syrian conflict, other regional issues.
And when speaking with the King of Jordan, he was unambiguous
when he told us that ISIL poses a grave risk, not just because
of the violence but because of the form of radical Islam that
it is spreading.
The administration must formalize a decisive policy that
outlines our strategic goals and objectives that can help
Jordan and other nations counter this militant Islamic threat.
We need actions from this administration. We needed them months
ago. ISIL is only getting more threatening and large while the
administration is still pondering its policy.
It has large financial assets that help keep it afloat,
much of which is gained from seizing cash from banks and
selling oil in the black market. And last week it claimed to
have seized nuclear materials. These terrorists must be stopped
or else we risk serious implications for our future security.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing.
Mr. Poe. I will now turn to the ranking member of the
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, Mr. Ted
Deutch from Florida, for his 5-minute opening statement.
Mr. Deutch. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Ranking
Member, and to my chairman, birthday greetings to you as well.
When violence in Syria broke out nearly 3\1/2\ years ago,
we were troubled by the reports of how rapidly extremist forces
seemed to be taking hold. Groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and other
loosely affiliated al-Qaeda groups employed grisly tactics and
seemed bent on turning Syria into a terrorist safe haven. Fast
forward, however, to this past February when al-Qaeda
leadership disavowed a group that it deemed too extreme, the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now commonly known as ISIS or
ISIL.
ISIL, which formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has recently
renamed itself the Islamic State and has been expanding its
stronghold in Syria before returning to Iraq. With the world
still focused on the Syrian conflict, ISIS domination in Iraq
may have seemed to come out of nowhere, but the political and
security conditions on the ground in Iraq have been breeding an
environment ripe for jihadist takeover.
Since the last United States soldier left Iraq, the
situation has been rapidly deteriorating. In February, the full
Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on al-Qaeda in Iraq,
where we assessed that violence this past year in Iraq had
reached levels not seen since 2006. The Iraqi security forces,
which the U.S. spent billions of dollars training and
equipping, preferred to abandon their posts rather than fight a
brutal militant group.
Prime Minister Maliki's inability over 8 years to nurture
an inclusive political system has marginalized Sunnis in
Baghdad and tribal leaders throughout the country. Unlike in
years past where Sunni tribal leaders united to help fight
extremist threats, Maliki's attempts to consolidate power
created space between his government and Sunni constituencies
just wide enough for ISIL to fill. In fact, just days ago, The
Washington Post ran a story entitled, ``In Baghdad Middle Class
Sunnis Say They Prefer Militants to Maliki.''
Who can play mediator with the Sunni leaders to convince
that it is within their interest to disassociate from and
disavow ISIL? Certainly, we are not going to fight for a Maliki
government that refuses to engage in any political
reconciliation.
Conflict in the region has given way to a myriad of strange
bedfellows. Let me be clear: We are not in partnership with
Iran and Iraq. And as Mr. Eisenstadt has pointed out, continued
suggestions to the contrary will only threaten U.S. interests.
It is clear that the Iranians have an interest in saving
Maliki, and they have a long history of training and arming
Shi'ite militias.
With many of the resources committed to keeping Assad
afloat, and sustaining his violence front with Syria, how
involved are the Iranians prepared to get? Will they shift
Hezbollah fighters to Iraq or encourage their other terrorist
beneficiaries to join the fight? And with ISIL's newly found
financial independence, is there any foreign actor that can
influence the organization?
More powerfully, the question for the panel is: Can ISIL be
stopped? Many are already talking as if a breakup states and
rejittering of borders is inevitable. The most recent scenario
emerging from many experts for Iraq appears to be some sort of
loose confederation of Kurdistan, a Shi'ite area, and a Sunni
area under a weak central government. What would that mean for
the region? What effect would this have on U.S. interests?
As Chairman Ros-Lehtinen pointed out, we were recently in
Jordan where much attention has been focused on the ISIL
threat. ``Is Jordan the next target?'' I ask our panel. Can
Jordanian forces hold its border with Iraq? The United States
and our reigonal partners have to do everything we can to
support Jordan. The Kingdom has been a stable voice of
moderation and has kept its borders open to those seeking
refuge from the Syrian crisis, despite its already strained
economy and resources.
It remains to be seen how far ISIL's reach will extend, as
it appears momentum has slowed the closer fighting gets to
Baghdad, a Shi'ite stronghold. Shi'ite militias and the Iraqi
army appear to be bent on preventing Baghdad from falling,
though this does not preclude the possibility of a series of
deadly attacks by ISIL as they attempt to weaken Baghdad.
So far President Obama has responded to this very real
threat by deploying Marines for Embassy security. With 1,700
personnel still on the ground, the United States must remain
extremely vigilant if the security situation around Baghdad
deteriorates. There are fears that an attack or attempted
attack on the Embassy or U.S. persons might drive the United
States into the conflict.
While we can continue to provide some support to various
Iraqi elements in this fight, the United States should not
inject itself into this sectarian war. We lost too many brave
American soldiers to a misguided war in Iraq, and the American
people deserve a thoughtful U.S. response with serious
consideration of our national security interests, both at home
and in the region.
I remain deeply concerned that ISIL's pronouncement of a
new caliphate could attract hundreds or thousands of new
fighters coming to train with this group of terrorists. What
happens when they return home to North Africa or Europe or
elsewhere?
I would like to thank our very distinguished panel for
being here, and I look forward to the discussion.
Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman. Just so everyone knows, we
are in the midst of votes. It is the hope of the Chair that we
get through the opening statements and then we will have
testimony. At 3 o'clock we will start testimony.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Chabot,
for 1 minute.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen also for holding this hearing, along with
yourself. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has become
one of the greatest threats to the Middle Eastern region.
As ISIL continues to gain control over more territory
throughout Syria and Iraq, U.S. strategic interests will
inevitably be at even greater risk. There are reports that ISIL
now maintains training camps in Iraq and Syria. And although
they may not yet have the capability to carry out operations
here in the United States, that may change as the group
continues to recruit Western passport holders with the intent
of returning them back to their home countries, including the
United States, to commit acts of terrorism.
The U.S. lost thousands of American lives and spent well
over $1 trillion in Iraq. It is extremely disheartening to see
a hard-won victory quickly slipping away for short-term
political gain, rather than strengthening U.S. long-term
strategic interests.
I want to thank you again for calling this hearing, and I
yield back.
Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back his time. The Chair
recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Higgins.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let us just
establish that this is not about freedom and democracy, and it
never was. It was always about control and manipulation. And
what we have going on in Iraq is really not isolated to Iraq;
it is the entire region.
And this dates back to, you know, who the rightful
successor to the Prophet Muhammad is. When you look at, you
know, an extreme group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,
and the leader of that group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, you know,
he takes his name from the historic successor to the Prophet
Muhammad as viewed by Sunnis. And, you know, Nouri al-Maliki,
as a Shi'a, failed to recognize and embrace the Sunni, you
know, community, to be part of that society. So, obviously,
they have risen up in opposition to this.
So unless and until there is a recognition of pluralism, of
minority rights, not only in Iraq and Syria, but throughout the
Middle East, you will never have peace there. So I look forward
to the testimony by our expert witnesses, and I yield back.
Mr. Poe. Thank the gentleman for his comments. The Chair
recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, for 1
minute.
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And to the great
panel, thank you all for being here. It is good to have you.
As a veteran of Iraq, and somebody that was there during
the surge, it is extremely disheartening for me to see this
absolutely predictable scenario unfolding in front of our eyes.
It is sad, and it is, frankly, the worst-case scenario. So we
talk about, do we need to preserve the Iraqi standard, or do we
let this fight out until there is a political solution in Iraq?
Let me just say that what is happening right now is the
worst-case scenario. So any option we have--and I have
advocated for pushing ISIS back both in Iraq and in Syria with
air strikes--is a better option than what we are seeing unfold
before us.
We are going to hear a lot, I am sure--hear from both
Members of Congress and maybe some panelists about the idea of
war fatigue. And while it is very real and very understandable,
I would just like to remind everybody that thankfully President
Truman, at the end of World War II, didn't come back and say,
``We are fatigued of war,'' and bring all the troops home from
Europe, or we would see a Soviet Union twice the size as today.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman. The Chair recognizes the
gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Cicilline, for 1 minute.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to the
ranking members for holding this important joint hearing today
on this very critical issue.
The threat that ISIL poses to our national stability is of
paramount concern to the United States and our allies, and
addressing that threat and working toward a political solution
to the instability in Iraq must remain a top priority of U.S.
foreign policy. And as we continue to monitor ISIL's insurgency
and expansion in Iraq and Syria, we must remain aware of the
destabilizing effects of the so-called Islamic State on the
entire region, as my colleague from New York just mentioned.
We have to be determined to better understand the violence
that currently permeates the Middle East and how the United
States can predict, identify, and prevent insurgency and
terrorism, and ultimately support peaceful democracy in the
region. We must make sure that going forward we promote
stability and unity in the region.
I look forward to hearing these very distinguished
witnesses today, and thank you for being here, and I yield
back.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, for 1 minute.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin by
saying that I reject categorically the comments from my
colleague, Mr. Higgins. With that, the crisis created by the
Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, or whatever it is called,
continues unabated in Iraq, is now on the precipice of full-
blown civil war.
As U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, however, President Obama's
administration failed to negotiate an agreement with Iraq that
would have allowed a limited U.S. presence to help the Iraqis
keep al-Qaeda and its affiliates from filling the power vacuum
created by withdrawal. Instead, America quickly abandoned Iraq,
and in the process allowed ISIS to hold transnational territory
from which it has launched terrorist operations.
Both Congress and the Pentagon warned the White House about
the worsening situation in Iraq, to no avail. In January,
President Obama referred to ISIS as the ``JV team.'' I do
wonder if he would like to play the JV team.
This type of what seems to be willful misinformed
assessment of our enemy is just another instance of the
administration's out-of-touch Iraq, Russia, Iran, Syria, you-
name-it policy.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back. The Chair recognizes
the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider, for 1 minute.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is clear that we
are living through an inflection point in history. In
particular, the current situation in Iraq lies at the
confluence of four seams of conflict. The first two sources of
conflict date back more than a millennium, and they reflect the
divide between Sunnis and Shi'a on the one hand and between
Persians and Arabs on the other.
The third source of conflict arises from the collapse of
the artificial nation states created a century ago by the
Sykes-Picot agreement, in particular now in Syria and Iraq
where we see them declining. Finally, in recent decades, we
have seen the emergence of radical Islam merge with the threat
of global jihad and international terrorism.
In the chaos of Syria and Iraq, forces of global jihad and
international terrorism such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and now
ISIS, have found fertile breeding ground for the culture of
death and destruction. It is clear, whether we like it or not,
that the United States must remain engaged in the region to
deny radical Islamic militants a training ground to target our
allies in the region and the U.S. homeland.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how we can
achieve our national security goals in Iraq while working to
address the long-term root causes of unrest in the region.
And with that, I yield back.
Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back. The Chair recognizes
the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, for 1 minute.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair. And I wish Mr. Perry was
still here, because I disagree with him. You know, we have the
distingushed General Jack Keane as one of our witnesses today,
and he wrote an op-ed in which he uses the phrase ``setting
aside for the moment the question of whether the administration
has the will to intervene again in Iraq.''
With all due respect, I don't think that is the question at
all, nor is it one to be set-aside. The American people do not
want this intervention. You know, 63 percent to 29 percent
oppose sending U.S. ground troops back into Iraq. When asked
about air strikes, a plurality of 39 percent would prefer the
U.S. not conduct air stikes.
This is the second-longest war in our history, and it does
limit our options. And I might add, no matter what some of my
friends on the other side of the aisle want to say, ISIS is not
the creation of this administration, nor is the unsettlement in
Iraq the responsibility of this administration. To say
otherwise is to ignore history.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back.
The subcommittee will be in recess until 3 o'clock. We will
reconvene at that time, 3 o'clock.
[Recess.]
Mr. Poe. This subcommittees will come to order.
Without objection, all of the witnesses' prepared
statements will be made part of the record. I ask that each
witness please keep your presentation to no more than 5
minutes. I will introduce the witnesses and then give time for
opening statements.
The Honorable James Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz
Distiniguished Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy. Ambassador Jeffrey previously served in the
United States Army and was Ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to
2012.
General Jack Keane is the chairman of the board at the
Institute for the Study of War. General Keane is a retired
four-star General and the former Vice Chief of Staff for the
United States Army.
Mr. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute
where he specializes in foreign policy and civil liberties.
Previously, Mr. Bandow was a visiting fellow at the Heritage
Foundation and served as Special Assistant to President Ronald
Reagan.
And Mr. Michael Eisenstadt is a senior fellow and the
director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mr. Eisenstadt has
been on active duty in Iraq twice as part of his service in the
United States Army Reserve, once in 2008 and then again in
2010.
First of all, thank you, gentlemen, for your service. And,
Ambassador Jeffrey, we will start with you. And you have 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES JEFFREY, PHILIP SOLONDZ
DISTINGUISHED VISITING FELLOW, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR
NEAR EAST POLICY (FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ)
Ambassador Jeffrey. Thank you very much. Chairman Poe,
Ranking Member Sherman, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, it is an honor
to be here today on such an important issue.
As we heard from the statements from members of the two
subcommittees, the turn of events in Iraq over the last month
leading to the establishment of the so-called Islamic State is
a stunning blow to U.S. policy and goals in the Middle East.
The creation of an extremist quasi-state analogous to
Afghanistan under the Taliban exposes many of our key interests
globally as well as in the region. Simultaneously, we are
facing a militant Iran on the march, allied with Syria's Assad,
Hezbollah, and some in Iraq.
This is an emergency, not an everyday crisis. At this
point--and this has already been suggested--the cost of doing
nothing significant now is greater than the risks of most
actions short of actually committing ground troops.
The question was asked a bit earlier, can ISIS be stopped?
I think it can. The policy laid down by President Obama on June
19, which is focused on mobilizing intelligence, military
resources, while trying to get an inclusive government based on
the idea that we need an inclusive government for any retaking
of these areas that ISIS has seized, primarily in the Sunni
Arab areas of Iraq, in principle is a good way forward.
The problem is, this policy was announced almost a month
ago. We have seen almost nothing happen on the ground since
then, other than some of the assets have been moved forward and
an assessment has been done. The only good piece of news that
has come out of this so far is just today that the Iraqi
Parliament has elected, by a significant majority, a speaker,
Salim al-Jabari. I know him. He is a good choice. He is from
the Sunni Arab population. But the Parliament then fell into
rangling over which Shi'a deputy would be selected, suggesting
that the whole issue of Mr. Maliki has not been decided yet.
To achieve our goals, to carry out the policy that the
President laid out, several things must happen very quickly.
First of all, we do need a new government, and this government
cannot include Prime Minister Maliki at the helm. He has lost
all credibility with the Kurds and with the Sunni Arab
population, and his own performance as Commander-in-Chief is
one of the reasons why the military did so badly.
For many reasons, Iraq needs a new Prime Minister. That is
the most important thing for turning this situation around, but
it has to be done quickly. The Kurds must be brought back into
the Iraqi camp. They are toying with the idea of independence
right now. There are offerings that can be made to them,
particularly in the banking and oil areas, that would entice
back I think, assuming Maliki goes, but that has to be done
quickly.
The Sunni Arab regions and the specific provinces have to
be offered the kind of deal that some of the oil provinces--I
am thinking of Basra, Kirkuk, the Kurdish region, and Najaf,
which receives a lot of tourists--have gotten from the central
government. Thye have been able to share in the central
government's oil wells, and they have been able to develop
their own economies and have some control over local
governance. This is a good model that could be applied very
quickly.
Finally, we need a Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi forces
that is not the Prime Minister. That position has to be split.
With those three concrete actions, we could bring back most of
the people, most of the political forces, behind a new
government and a new Prime Minister and a new President very
quickly.
At the same time, the U.S. should begin conducting limited
strikes as this process goes on to deter ISIS from pushing
forward and providing support not just for the Iraqi army and
Maliki's forces but for Sunni tribes and others who are
fighting on the Euphrates Valley and to the Kurds as well. We
do need to limit these strikes until such time as we can get an
inclusive government, because the retaking of these Sunni areas
will be a very long-term operation.
Finally, we need to provide support to the Syrian rebels, a
$500,000 program that the President has proposed. Failing this,
we will very quickly, as also was mentioned earlier, be facing
three separate states all posing problems to us--the Iraqi, the
Islamic State, a threat to the entire world including the
homeland; a rump Shi'a state in the south controlling Iraq's
oil wealth and dominated by Iran; and a Kurdistan, whose role
in the region will be very, very complicated. We need to avoid
this if at all possible. We should move forward.
Finally, we should not be coordinating beyond the bare
minimum with Iran. They may share some goals with us, but they
do not share our interests.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Jeffrey follows:]
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Mr. Poe. Thank you, Ambassador.
General Keane, you have 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL JACK KEANE, USA, RETIRED, CHAIRMAN OF THE
BOARD, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR
General Keane. Chairman, Ranking Members, and members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me. You know, ISIL is the
new face of the al-Qaeda and the much larger radical Islamic
movement. ISIL has accomplished what the 9/11 al-Qaeda only
dreamt about but truly forfeited when they overreached and
attacked the American people.
As we know, ISIL in 3 years has managed to take control of
a vast swath of territory in Syria and Iraq. They declared an
Islamist State, they have got somebody in charge of it--al-
Baghdadi--designated him as a caliph. How did all of this
happen? And was it a surprise? Absolutely not.
The United States Intelligence Agency had been quite aware
of this threat for a time and have been reporting it. This is a
failure of policymakers who essentially ignored it. ISIL
systematically took control of territory in Syria, preferring
this territorial control and imposing its own harsh form of
governance to actually fighting the Assad regime.
Two years ago ISIL began a concentrated terrorist campaign
in Mosul, Anbar province, and Baghdad. These terrorist
activities were a prelude to the army-like conventional attack
that ISIL made to seize Fallujah, eventually Mosul, and much of
northern Iraq.
ISIL represents the most menacing threat to the Middle East
stability that I have observed, with stated objectives to
expand to Jordan and beyond. Obviously, ISIL is a threat to
U.S. national security objectives in the Middle East, and
eventually a threat to the American people as it becomes a vast
breeding ground for foreign fighters, to include Americans,
some of which has already occurred as reported by Mr. Clapper,
the Director of National Intelligence. In my view, this will
only get worse.
ISIL must be stopped. It should be our top priority. And it
only will be accomplished with the United States in the lead,
with cooperation with our allies in the region. This is not an
impenetrable force. It is relatively small, under 10,000, and
because of their harsh rule they are very unpopular. ISIL's
rapid success is due to its army-like conventional tactics,
which is also its major vulnerability.
ISIL can be effectively attacked in Syria and Iraq using
airpower to destroy known sanctuary staging bases, lines of
communication, and command and control facilities. Special
operation forces should be clandestinely employed to attack
high value targets, particularly in Iraq but eventually
expanded into Syria.
The President's decision to assist the Free Syrian Army is
a step in the right direction. Before the recent Iraq invasion,
the Free Syrian Army was the only force in Syria that fought
ISIL. Iraq needs our help, certainly. There is much we can do
to assist Iraq diplomatically, politically, and militarily.
I associate myself with Ambassador Jeffrey's comments. And
I would just add that I also think diplomatically Secretary
Kerry should lead an effort to work with Sunni leaders in the
region--Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar--who have relationships
with Iraq Sunni politicians and Sunni tribal leaders, to move
them away from ISIL
Politically, disptach to Iraq, a team led by Ambassador
Crocker and General David Petraeus, to work with the Iraq
political and military leadership to move them toward a unity
government who reconciles with the Sunni tribes and brings back
the Kurds.
On the military side, the rapid collapse of the Iraq army
was a major surprise. Maliki systematically purged military
leaders, many who distinguished themselves during the surge in
2007. He replaced them with cronies and hacks who, over time,
drove down the morale of the units, and some of those units
that fled in the face of the ISIL advance were only at 50
percent strength.
U.S. advisors can assist with the reconstruction of Iraqi
army units that disintegrated along with establishing and
overseeing a necessary training program. Advisors can also help
with the defense of Baghdad, planning it, and also executing
it, and also with the planning and execution of a counter-
offensive to retake lost territory.
Special forces, air-ground controllers, and airpower can
certainly assist in doing all of that. To do nothing more,
diplomatically, politically, and militarily, however, almost
guarantees with certainty that Iraq, as the world knew it, it
will be gone--some believe it is already--with the prospect of
ISIL dominating most of the country.
The fact of the matter is that Iran and Russia see this
upheaval as an opportunity to advance their national interest
in the region, and they are all in. Let me conclude by simply
saying that this is a time for less hand wringing and about
what--or less hand wringing about how we got here and who is at
fault, although I am prepared to talk about it, and more focus
on U.S. resolve to lead a determined effort to push back and
eventually defeat ISIL, which should be a part of a larger
comprehensive strategy to assist our partners in the region to
stop the rise of radical Islam.
Iraq needs capable, sophisticated U.S. assistance to
reconcile its damaging political differences by moving toward a
unity government.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Keane follows:]
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----------
Mr. Poe. Thank you, General.
Mr. Bandow, you have 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MR. DOUG BANDOW, SENIOR FELLOW, CATO INSTITUTE
Mr. Bandow. Well, thank you, Chairman Poe, Ranking Member
Sherman, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, and Ranking Member Deutch, and
other members. I appreciate the opportunity to partipcate in
this hearing.
Without doubt, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and
Levant represents a significant failure for U.S. policy.
Although a matter of great concern and quite serious, it does
not pose the sort of threat that requires immediate military
action, however. The Sunni group ISIL appears to lack the
strength necessary to capture Baghdad or take control of the
majority Shi'a state, and Syria's ISIL faces multiple political
and military challenges as well. It is one thing to declare a
caliphate; it is quite another to actually rule.
I think there are a number of lessons to bear in mind as we
think about the future. One is that intervention brings
unintended consequences, which often are unpredictable and
uncontrollable. We certainly found that our policy toward Iraq
has always been challenged by the unexpected. That has not
changed. Even had a new government in Baghdad been amenable to
a continued U.S. military presence, I doubt that would have
offered a remedy to the sectarian hostilities that have
exploded full force today. We have to bear those kinds of
unintended consequences in mind.
America's interest varies depending upon the character of
the groups that we are dealing with. In general, a restrained
U.S. response emphasizing retaliation with allies taking
principal, direct responsiblility is the best approach, I
believe.
The question in this case is: What is ISIL? Very different
from a guerrilla operation or a militia in a civil war,
obviously, or transnational groups such as al-Qaeda, but ISIL's
character so far, while not immutable, appears to be more like
a party in a traditional civil war, and to the extent that it
succeeds in creating a geographic territory, opens itself up to
retaliation, and, therefore, has a different incentive
structure in terms of how it approaches the United States.
That, I would argue, gives the United States an opportunity for
a thoughtful and measured response as opposed to a precipitous
response.
Indeed, the organization's success so far has depended much
on Ba'athist loyalists and tribal leaders more interested in
winning regional autonomy or a fair distribution of national
spoils than returning to the 7th century. I think that division
is one that needs to be exploited, particularly in Baghdad, and
that is a particular problem that we have with the current
government.
I believe that another lesson we should bear in mind is
that U.S. military action almost certainly would result in
costs as well as benefits. We have learned so far the limits of
American power, especially when imposed from afar with little
public support in America for long-term involvement that
potentially looks like social engineering.
I believe that airpower, while helpful, is not going to
liberate captured cities or turn territory back over to the
Sunni--the Shi'a government. And the danger of targeting Sunni
areas is killing those who, in fact, worked with the United
States back during the surge in opposing al-Qaeda.
The U.S. I believe loses by giving a blank check to
Baghdad. The Maliki government is perhaps the primary
instrument responsible for the current disaster with the Prime
Minister misgoverning, exacerbating sectarian tensions and
weakening his own government's governing institutions,
particularly the military.
To support that government rewards his strategy. A new
government would be best. It is not clear, however, if it is in
our power to impose it. He must understand, however, that the
reason his country faces crisis is the way that he has
governed. But there is a danger for the United States tying
itself to his government, particularly if military action is
involved, because if we get involved in what is effectively a
sectarian war, taking sides there, we may make more enemies
than friends.
Moreover, back in Baghdad, we must be careful not to
foreclose potential solutions, including some form of
federalism or even partition. The Kurds clearly are moving
toward a vote toward independence. They are interested in that
option. They long have been. The willingness of mainstream
Sunnis to back ISIL demonstrates the depth of their alienation
there.
It would certainly be best, I believe, to keep Iraq
together, but that's not clearly the only option. The U.S.
should be discussing with other parties in the region,
countries like Jordan, which clearly face serious threats here,
and Turkey and others, of how to diffuse the potential
sectarian explosion.
I realize the support for the Syrian opposition. However, I
fear that backing the Syrian resistance further undermines
ultimately the Iraqi Government. And that while the Damascus
Government is odious, it is not as obviously inimical to
American interests as an ISIL caliphate stretching across the
region. To some degree, I believe we have to set priorities
here, and I fear that backing the opposition is likely to lead
to worse results in terms of ISIL.
Finally, it is critical to involve America's friends and
allies. Countries like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and others have
an extraordinary amount at stake. The question, then, is how we
can involve their potential and their abilities. They vary
dramatically, obviously. Nevertheless, they have the most at
stake. They are closest to the region. And to the extent they
are Muslim nations, they are better positioned than the United
States for involvement in what risks being a sectarian
conflict.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bandow follows:]
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Mr. Poe. Thank you.
Mr. Eisenstadt, 5 minutes, please, sir.
STATEMENT OF MR. MICHAEL EISENSTADT, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR
OF THE MILITARY AND SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, THE WASHINGTON
INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY
Mr. Eisenstadt. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman,
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, and Ranking Member Deutch, and other
members, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify
before your committee about this pressing issue.
The rapid capture of large swaths of northern Iraq last
month by ISIL has altered the strategic landscape of the Middle
East. Given the amounts of blood and treasury the United States
has already invested in Iraq, why should Americans care? Simply
because the United States still has vital security interests
that are affected greatly by developments in Iraq and the
region. And these interests are: One, combating terrorism and
the potential threat this poses to the American homeland; two,
oil; three, nonproliferation; and, four, continuous Iranian
influence.
Iraq is where nearly all of these issues converge. Iraq is
now a potential springboard for ISIL subversion directed
against Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and for ISIL terrorist attacks
outside the region. It is an oil producer that was, at least
until recently, expected to account for 45 percent of all
future growth in world oil supplies in the coming years. And
Iraq is the land bridge that enables Iran to more easily
project influence in the Levant.
First, developments in Iraq have the potential to shape
vital U.S. security interests in the Middle East and perhaps
even the security of the homeland in the coming years. And the
experience of the past decade teaches us that for this reason
it is vitally important for the U.S. to try to influence the
course and outcome of developments in that still-important
region. Experience shows that if you don't visit the Middle
East, the Middle East will visit you.
So what is next? ISIL is not likely to replicate its
spectacular military achievements in the Baghdad area, yet the
Iraqi security forces were seen by many locals in northern Iraq
as an army of occupation. In Baghdad, they are defending home
turf and can rely on the support of thousands of shared
militiamen mobilized to fight ISIL. Indeed, the latter's
efforts to move on Baghdad, at least for now, have stalled.
The conflict has effectively settled into what is likely to
be a prolonged and bloody war of attrition. There will be no
more easy victories for ISIL, though its ability to wreak havoc
in the capital and elsewhere, through suicide bombings and
sectarian killings, remains undiminished. That said, we must
not be complacent because it appears that the momentum of the
ISIL advance has been broken. That could change very quickly.
Neither will it be easy for the Iraqi security forces to
reclaim many of the areas that were lost to ISIL. The ISF has
been trying to do so in Fallujah for months now without
success, even though that city is a mere 25 or so miles west of
Baghdad. For the ISF to succeed, it will need to find allies
among the Sunnis in order to reprise the tribal uprising that
helped defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.
But having been used and abandoned once before, and
targeted by both government forces and al-Qaeda since, the
Sunni tribes won't come around so easily this time. ISIL also
faces challenges. It is spread thin throughout northern Iraq.
If it is to hang on to its territorial gains, it will have to
hold together the loose military coalition that it leads, which
includes Ba'athist insurgent groups and tribal militias whose
interests diverge from those of ISIL.
It will have to avoid the tendency to alienate the very
Sunni constituency it claims to represent by its harsh
application of Islamic law. And it will face the challenge of
having been transformed virtually overnight from perhaps the
world's wealthiest terrorist group to one of the world's
poorest de facto states. These dynamics will create
opportunities for the al-Maliki government, or its successor,
if it is wise enough to seize upon them.
So what should the U.S. do? First, don't intervene directly
in Iraq civil war, at least not yet. Instead, the U.S. should
continue quietly providing intelligence, advice, and munitions
to the Iraqi security forces, but it should slow roll the
delivery of large advanced systems such as Apache helicopters
and F-16 fighters, which Iraq currently lacks the pilots to fly
anyhow.
Just thinking about more significant support, to include
U.S. joining air strikes, will come only if the Prime Minister
takes a different politic tack toward the country's Sunni Arabs
and Kurds. This will maximize U.S. leverage at this crucial
time in the government formation process, in order to achieve a
political outcome that could pave the way for a truly effective
military campaign against ISIL, one that reprises the Sunni
Arab tribal uprisings of 2006 and 2007.
Right now, politics in Baghdad do not permit such campaign.
Except to defend Baghdad, the U.S. should, therefore, issue
kinetic action until the Iraqis get the politics piece right.
Two, we should start to talk about working with Iran
against ISIL. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our
friend. The U.S. and Iran have a common enemy in ISIL, but the
interests of the two are not aligned, whether regarding U.S.
influence in Iraq, the nature of Iraqi politics, on the issue
of Prime Minister Maliki, and the role of sectarian militias in
combating ISIL. And such talk only feeds speculation that
Washington and Tehran are conspiring at the expense of the
Sunnis, and that the United States believes that the way to
fight Sunni jihadists is by allying with Shi'ite jihadists.
Finally, train and equip the moderate Syrian opposition to
pressure ISIL and Iraq. ISIL has a major presence in eastern
Syria, and it is important to put pressure on it there,
especially in light of its recent gains in Iraq. Revitalizing
the moderate opposition will constitute a challenge to ISIL,
but it could force the latter to redeploy at least some of its
forces from Iraq to secure its Syrian sanctuary, thereby
relieving some of the pressure on the Maliki government and
perhaps loosening its hold on the newly taken ground in Iraq.
This will take time, however, and the hour is late. We must
move quickly.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Eisenstadt follows:]
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Mr. Poe. Thank you, gentlemen, and thank you all once again
for your service, especially your military service.
I agree with you, General Keane, that it is futile to try
to blame someone or someones for the situation that we find
ourselves in today. That is not the issue. We are in a
situation. Now, what does the United States do, if anything?
I agree with my friend from New York that this is a bigger
event than a small civil war. It has been waged for centuries
between Sunnis and Shi'as, and I see this as just more of the
same that historically has had conflict in the region.
Assuming the United States backs off and watches what takes
place, how is it going to play out? General, what do you think
would play out? We just back off and we watch.
General Keane. Yes. Well, first of all, you have to--it is
convenient to characterize this as sectarian conflict a civil
war. Shi'a and Sunni have been fighting each other for hundreds
of years, and ISIL would love you to do that.
The fact of the matter is, the radical Islamist, the al-
Qaeda movement, and now the ISIL movement, clearly wants to
dominate all Arab lands--most of those are run by Sunnis--even
though they are a Sunni-based terrorist organization.
So the fact is, if we sit back and do nothing, ISIL will
continue to pursue its goals. I would agree about Iraq itself
and Baghdad, it is likely they cannot succeed there, but it is
not certain. They are skilled and crafty at what they do. They
wouldn't launch an all-out attack on Baghdad. They go into
Sunni neighborhoods, do what they did in 2006, conduct
terrorist activities, and from there, own those neighborhoods
and begin to mortar and rocket the Green Zone, et cetera,
breaking will, suicide bombs going off, et cetera, making a run
at the Green Zone as a limited attack to break will.
So ISIL, I don't think, is giving up. They are working
around the periphery of Baghdad right now. We have been
tracking it every single day. There are multiple attacks north,
west, and south. So, clearly, they have a mind to go into
Baghdad and be successful. I don't think they can be, but
certainly I am telling you that is their objective.
The fact of the matter is, ISIL sitting there is very
exposed to us. And if we accept the fact that they are a threat
to the Middle East stability--and that seems blatantly obvious
right now--and we have a 350 kilometer border with Syria that
ISIL now owns, and there is a 175 kilometer border with Iraq
that ISIL now owns, clearly, Jordan is next. They have stated
it; it is next.
They are not going to go down the road to Jordan, like they
did to Mosul. The Jordanian Air Force will blow them right off
the road. But they will unite with the Salafists, bring foreign
fighters in there, begin a major terrorist movement, use both
borders with Jordan, that they own, and begin major
infiltration. That is next. That is what is in front of us if
we do nothing.
We have known sanctuary station bases, command and control
facilities that are available to us to strike now. This is not
about Sunni tribes. Sunni tribes are not in Syria. Sunni tribes
are not up north where they are facilitating these operations
from. They only are--they began to pick them up when they got
into Mosul. There are plenty of targets that we have that we
can start to do some damage to them.
Mr. Poe. So you recommend air strikes?
General Keane. Oh, yes. Sure. Absolutely.
Mr. Poe. And what else?
General Keane. Well, I would bring in our clandestine
Special Operations Forces, let them pick the place they need to
conduct operations, and start taking down ISIL leaders, high
value targets, critical nodes that they can do. Those targets,
believe me, after we have been applying all of our intelligence
resources, just on what is going on in Mosul alone, are
available to us now.
Mr. Poe. All right. Thank you.
Just a couple more questions. Mr. Bandow, let me ask you
two questions. What if it plays out to a three-state solution?
As the Ambassador talked about earlier, the Kurds in the north
and the two other provinces in the south, three states, is that
such a bad idea?
Mr. Bandow. A lot depends on specifically how it plays out.
I don't think an independent Kurdistan is a bad idea. I think
Turkey has come around with a willingness to deal, and I think
that is very important. Until recently, that would have been
quite problematic with Turkey.
The issue for the Sunni areas, of course, is oil and access
to resources. Concern about Shi'a would be a Shi'a-dominated
republic, would be under greater domination presumably of Iran.
I think we are facing a situation of, compared to what? Can you
hold the place together? Can you get a division that works out
where you have some overall national government that is quite
limited, and you have people at least willing, by separation,
to live in peace.
I think nothing is going to come out of this easy, and
nothing is going to come out of it without bloodshed. The
question is, does a separation process like that give us a
better chance to have a long-term peaceful solution as opposed
to trying to hold it together. And my fear is we may have
passed the point. Given the alienation of the Sunnis, can we
hold it together at this point?
Mr. Poe. All right. Thank you.
I will yield 5 minutes to the ranking member, Mr. Sherman
from California.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. At some point there will be peace.
When that peace arrives, we may see an Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon
that looks like Lebanon. That is to say, in Lebanon, you look
at it on the map, it looks like one country. You go there and
you have militias from the Druze, the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and
the Christians. We may go Syria and Iraq and see different
areas controlled by the Alawites, Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites.
One rhetorical question is: What if somebody in the Middle
East threw a war and invited us and we didn't come? It wouldn't
be necessarily the worst thing. I join with the chairman in
thinking we need to look at our future policies rather than
evaluate the past. I fear that--and I want to correct the
record on this--that some of the opening statements seemed to
be blinded by invective for the President that if we go down
that road we are not going to reach good policy for the future.
And I think the gentleman from Arkansas, if I heard him
correctly, said that the policy we have now is the worst
possible policy we could possibly have. I would simply say that
no American died in Iraq or Syria today, and there are many
policies available to us which will cost us substantially in
blood and treasure and will be counterproductive to our
national security objectives.
We can perhaps improve the policy, but it starts not by
claiming that the existing policy is the worst we could
possibly have. Likewise, there were some who said that we had
this great victory in Iraq that was recently squandered. We
have Maliki. We had Iran domination or extreme influence. We
had signed an agreement with Maliki to leave Iraq without a
residual force, and we had an al-Maliki that was dead-set
against signing any status of forces agreements that would have
allowed us to leave a residual force.
And yet there are those who seem to think that only if the
President had a different personality Maliki would be the
Thomas Jefferson of Mesopotamia. I don't think that is the
case.
As to oil, which is important in Iraq, the Sunnis are used
to sharing more or less--they would argue less--their per
capita share of substantial oil production. Now they have
created a new state, or at least ISIS has, that leaves them
with no--none of the Iraqi oil, and they do seem to control the
Syrian oil.
Is anyone here able to tell me what this decline in--how
great this decline in per capita oil revenues are and whether
Sunnis can view themselves as having a future with so little
per capita oil--or oil per capita?
General Keane. The production in Syria is about 100,000
barrels at the most.
Mr. Sherman. So basically of the forces that control
territory in the area--Kurd, Alawite, Sunni, and Shi'ite--it is
the Islamic State that has by far the least oil per capita.
That being the case, is this a future that Iraqi Shi'a and
Sunnis can endorse?
General Keane. They will start moving toward the other oil
areas, I believe, Mr. Congressman, and that is part of their
goal, to seize additional oil, for example, in the Kirkuk area,
the Baiji refinery, and other things.
Mr. Sherman. Well, the refinery doesn't give you oil. Do
you think that the Islamic State can defeat the Kurds in your
Kirkuk?
General Keane. They can't today, but they are going to be
working on that.
Mr. Sherman. Anybody else have a different opinion? Mr.
Eisenstadt?
Mr. Eisenstadt. If I could just add, basically, ISIL today
is a parasitic and predatory organization. They don't have--as
I mentioned in my testimony, maybe they were the richest
terrorist group in the world; now they have to run the state,
or at least they are claiming to run the state. And you need a
lot more money to run a state than you do to run a terrorist
organization.
It comes down to the government--their monthly budget or
the annual budget is about $12 billion. So they don't have
anywhere near that. So in order to get the money, they are
going to have to find a way, you know, beyond, you know,
preying on their own people, expanding their boundaries. And as
a result, inherently their situation, first of all, creates
opportunities for us, but it also creates dangers, because I
think the logic of their situation will force them to expand
vis-a-vis their neighbors in order to get oil.
Mr. Sherman. Let me ask one other question. I don't know if
any of you has an answer. Iraq ran up $20 billion, $30 billion-
plus of debt under Saddam Hussein, borrowing money to finance
its war of aggression against Iran. Have they renounced that
debt? Are they paying it, Ambassador Jeffrey?
Ambassador Jeffrey. Essentially, all of that debt was
either paid off or forgiven, and they are in pretty good shape.
They still have residual debts that pass through the U.N. to be
paid to a compensation commission for Kuwait. But by and large,
they are out of the red in that regard.
Mr. Sherman. And, finally, is there support for this
Islamic State, substantial support, in either Jordan or Saudi
Arabia, among the peoples there?
Mr. Eisenstadt. I have to--there was--the Saudis did
announce I think in May that they arrested a cell of I think 52
people that they said was associated with ISIL. So there will
be people throughout the region. They already have a presence
in Lebanon. There are signs of sympathy in Jordan. So their
message will resonate in certain sectors throughout the region,
and that is why they are so dangerous.
General Keane. Can I jump in on that? The Saudis and the
Jordanians, as a state, believe that ISIL is a threat. Inside
Saudi Arabia, as we have known for generations, there are
sheikhs and other leaders who support Salafist movements and
radical Islamist movements.
On the oil question that you asked, if you look at ISIL's
objectives, they have no objectives to take the southern oil
fields, nor even to attempt it. They leave that part of Iraq to
Shi'a. It appears that they would have some interest in the
northern oil fields. Just looking at their stated objectives,
whether they can achieve that in the near term, I don't think
so, but in the long term it is certainly a threat.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you.
Mr. Poe. The Chair yields to the gentlelady from Florida,
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for excellent testimony. Constituents
ask, what are our strategic goals and objectives in Iraq at the
moment? Do you believe that the administration has formulated a
rationale and a concrete policy for Iraq, or is it more of an
ad hoc wait-and-see approach? That is my first question.
And President Obama said that the administration wouldn't
fall into the trap of Whac-a-Mole foreign policy, and that ISIL
is just one of a number of organizations that we have to stay
focused on.
In his speech announcing that he was sending up to 300
advisors to Iraq, the President said that Iraqi leaders must
come together around a political plan for Iraq's future, and
that a Parliament should convene as soon as possible, yet we
haven't really felt a sense of urgency from the administration
to deal with ISIL or the political situation in Iraq yet.
Today, as we know, the Iraqi Government finally agreed on a
new Sunni speaker, and they have 30 days to select a President,
who will then task the majority party to form a government, so
they can finally select a Prime Minister. How important do you
think it is for Iraq to form a new inclusive government? And
will that be enough to bring the people together? Or is it a
case of too little too late and the damage has already been
done by ISIL? And do you believe that Maliki needs to step
aside in order to have any changes happen?
Ambassador, I will start with you.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Madam Chairman, first of all, last
September at the U.N. the President laid out four goals that he
would use all elements of national power to support in the
Middle East--going after terrorist groups; supporting our
partners an allies in the region, such as Jordan, such as
Turkey, such as Iraq; working against weapons of mass
destruction; and ensuring the free flow of oil.
Right now, three of those four are under pressure because
of this development of ISIL--terrorist movement; friends and
allies being threatened today and tomorrow, as my colleagues
have talked about, with Jordan and Saudi Arabia; and, of
course, eventually the free flow of oil, not because, as
General Keane said, ISIL can move into the south.
What they can do is create enough chaos to put a damper on
international engagement in the oil industry in the south. They
can open the door for Iran to come in, and it is not in Iran's
interest to have Iraq pumping more oil than Iran does, which--
--
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
Let me just go to the rest of the panel.
General Keane. In reference to goals and objectives,
certainly in the Middle East we want a stable and secure Middle
East, and certainly we desired that for Iraq. And we wanted
Iraq to be able to defend itself and not be a threat to its
neighbors.
You know, the comment about the Whac-a-Mole, I think that
is a really misguided comment, because the fact of the matter
is radical Islam is on the rise in the Middle East. Obviously,
we are focused on ISIL because of what they have accomplished,
but it is on the rise in the Middle East and in Africa. And we
have no comprehensive strategy to truly deal with that.
So it is not about whacking a mole. It is about using the
region in a common strategy to work against this movement. It
is an ideological movement, and we should come together, much
as we did against Communist ideology, and unite together to do
that, share in intelligence training partnerships, et cetera,
and formalize those relationships. We are not doing that.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Bandow.
Mr. Bandow. Well, it would certainly appear to me that the
administration desires both stability and unity when it comes
to Iraq. The question of its policy and whether it is wait-and-
see, it strikes me there is a certain prudential value in
waiting and seeing in this case. That is, it is easier in, it
is harder out once you are in, and especially without resolving
the political situation in Baghdad.
It is hard for me to see a solution without getting a more
inclusive government, and I have a hard time seeing that with
Maliki. Whether that would be enough, I think it is going to be
hard. It is going to require hard bargaining and showing the
Sunnis, Shi'ites, and their interest to share. That is, it is a
tough road ahead.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
Mr. Eisenstadt?
Mr. Eisenstadt. Two very quick points. The politics are key
to the military's success. Politics got us to where we are, and
in order to get ourselves out of this situation, the politics
in Baghdad have to be right. So, yes, a broader, more
representative government, is key.
Secondly, in terms of the administration's approach, I
share their desire not to be sucked into a major military
commitment in the region again. But if I was to critique on it,
I would say that they tend to focus on solutionism. And they
say we can't solve this problem with military means. And I
would just say, yes, we can solve the region's problems, but
that shouldn't be the criteria for assessing our intervention,
because that still doesn't stop us from finding ways to shape
region's dynamics in ways that advance our interests or stop
worse things from happening.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. Thank you,
gentlemen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Poe. The Chair yields 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida, Mr. Deutch.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been a lot
of talk about what ISIL is doing. I would just like to spend a
minute talking about how they are doing it. There is a report
that they gained some $400 million from the Mosul bank robbery.
There were others who have suggested it might be closer to $60
million. How does that compare to the war chest of other
terrorist groups? And what other entities and/or countries
continue to support them financially? Any of you?
Mr. Eisenstadt. Yes. I mentioned before that they are
predatory, and what I meant to say is that, although people
focus on these spectacular bank heists, and the like, a lot of
the money over the years has been as a result of extortion,
shaking down people, both individuals and businesses, forcing
people to pay taxes. The Christian communities have to pay a
tax. They engage in smuggling of oil and weapons and
antiquities. So a lot of this is pretty lucrative, but it is
small change when you are talking about running a state.
Mr. Deutch. So there is any foreign entity that has any
influence over that?
Mr. Eisenstadt. Well, there has been privately--been
private investments from--excuse me, contributions from the
Gulf, although that is probably--the Gulf States have been
trying to clamp down on that as of late. But compared to what
they earned domestically, they are self-sustaining as an entity
based on what they are able to get from the Iraqis as well as
from the oil transit trade, and stuff like that, and from the
banks that they have been able to rob.
Mr. Deutch. All right. Thank you.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr.
Weber, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Weber. Mr. Chairman, pass me up for the time being.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen. Getting into I guess the finances
and the structure of ISIS as a form of government--and I guess
it is in some way across that territory governing the land it
has taken--my curiosity is in the oil and the oil revenues and
the transportation and the flow of the commodity itself. And I
don't know which one of you is best to answer the question.
Maybe everybody wants to weigh in.
But how is it that the transactions are taking place? First
of all, how is the oil moving? Is it moving--is it being
conducted through currently existing pipelines? And is it going
to the coast? Is it going to other nation states?
Go ahead, Ambassador.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Again, ISIS has control over the fields
in Syria that previously had up to 100,000 barrels a day. Not a
huge amount, but still at $100 a barrel, even at smuggled
prices, $50 or $25 a barrel, it generates a lot of money.
There are a number of fields in Iraq, small fields.
Roughly, I have seen 10,000, 15,000 barrels that they are also
getting back into operation, and that is yielding oil. There is
a lot of stocked oil in Baiji that they could get their hands
on. And, of course, if they can get the refinery, they can
refine it, and it is a higher value.
There is no pipe--they have control of pipelines, but they
can't use them. They are just blocking other people's use of
them, including the central government or the Kurds. But what
they are doing is participating in smuggling operations.
In my experience, many years in Turkey and in Iraq trying
to track all of that is you have people involved in oil
smuggling over the entire Middle East. It is a huge business.
All kinds of people are involved. And once you get that kind of
money flowing, literally, what you find is even enemies
negotiate with each other on local deals to move oil and to
move refined product around. It is extremely hard to stop, and
we have seen this for, as I said, decades.
Mr. Perry. So, Ambassador, is it moving by truck? It is not
moving by rail.
Ambassador Jeffrey. No. Truck. Truck.
Mr. Perry. All truck. So we are talking crude oil moved by
truck.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Crude and refined products to the
extent--because there are a lot of small refineries and quasi-
refineries that people have developed along those areas.
Mr. Perry. And what are they trading in? If they are
selling it--it is my understanding in one report, selling it to
Turkey. Syrian oil is sold to Turkey worth $800 million, and I
am just curious about why Turkey would be buying oil from these
folks.
Also, the Assad government potentially, but none of that
makes sense to me, and it is essentially selling oil to the
people that you are trying to depose.
Ambassador Jeffrey. It makes a lot of sense from my
experience in the Middle East, Congressman, because people will
sell oil to their enemies to get deals back. The Turkish
Government isn't buying this oil, but middlemen, smugglers,
gosh knows who in Turkey may be buying this.
I saw the $800 and $1,000 figure, and I thought it was a
little bit high. But nothing would surprise me when it comes to
truck smuggling in the Middle East, because every time I
dismissed it or played it down I have been proven wrong.
Mr. Perry. And what currency? Do they use one--do they use
an Iraqi currency, or what currency are they using as a vehicle
for fiduciary vehicle?
Ambassador Jeffrey. Everybody's favorite is dollars,
Congressman, but people will use Iraqi, they will use Turkish,
they will use Syrian.
Mr. Perry. And is there any way to--I mean, that is
financed through the operation, obviously. I mean, are they
hoping to finance the operation? Is there any way from a
financial standpoint--I imagine not based on--it sounds like
the size of the operation, it is diverse enough and it is small
enough that it would be pretty difficult to track it down. And
it is not--probably doesn't have bank accounts associated with
it. I am curious as to what our efforts are, if you know, and
what they should be.
Ambassador Jeffrey. If we want to stop it, bomb the oil
fields.
Mr. Perry. Fair enough. Anybody else wish to comment? Is
it--let me ask you this, with the world price of oil always in
jeopardy and always of concern, at what point does it become
important enough to do that? Because if we don't, they raise
enough money to continue to grow what is not an Islamic group
but an Islamic army, and fund it--at what point? Do we know?
Mr. Bandow. I mean, that is obviously one way to try to
defund them. Their biggest potential source of money would be
oil as opposed to the other things that they do. And oil
smuggling has always been big in the Middle East, and it is
just very hard to stop.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois,
Mr. Kinzinger.
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nothing like walking
in and going right to questions.
Nice to see you all, and, again, thank you for all of your
very hard work and your time spending with us and dealing with
votes and everything.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, I think what we are
seeing in Iraq right now is the worst-case scenario. Again, as
somebody that was involved in fighting there, and somebody that
saw firsthand the progress of the surge--I flew ISR aircraft,
an RC-26--and watching the progress of the surge occur, when I
went in 2008 and, you know, seeing a lot of attacks, and then
in 2009 seeing people out playing on the streets and a
relatively peaceful Iraq, to watch this fall apart has been
very disheartening.
In fact, I think that--and I think we have to be very clear
about the fact that a status of forces agreement was never
really intended by this administration. If you want to see what
the intention of a status of forces agreement is, look at what
has happened in Afghanistan. The U.S. has not had that signed
yet, but yet we continue to try to get that signed by the
Afghan Government. Whereas, in Iraq we say, ``Well, we tried
and we just had to leave.'' And, again, what we are seeing is
entirely predictable.
I hear a lot of people when we talk about Iraq say a couple
of the following things. And this one offends me the most, but
I hear some folks say, ``Well, just let them all fight it out
over there. Just let them deal with it over there.'' I also
hear people say, ``Well, if Iran and Russia are getting
involved in Iraq, good; now they are going to get myred down in
the problems we have seen in Iraq,'' which I would remind
people that say that in fact Iran and Russia don't see being
myred down quite like we do.
We see losing some troops, and every one we take very
seriously and we hold precious, but we see that as being myred
down. Whereas, Iran specifically does not see the loss of
soldiers as any kind of being myred down. This is just what
they do. They get involved in other countries' areas.
The other thing I have heard people say is that if a
caliphate is established, well, the good news is at least now
they are going to learn how hard it is to govern there. And I
would also remind anybody that would say something like that
that in fact they don't consider governing like we do.
Governing to them is not building water towers and building
roads and schools. Governing to them is ensuring that a guy is
not walking down the street holding his girlfriend's hand, lest
he lose his head. That is a very different way of doing things.
So what we are seeing there is the worst-case scenario.
What I would like to do is just--I will start with the
Ambassador and then go to the General, and if we have time work
our way down. On some of the things I have mentioned about what
people are saying for the reasons not to get involved--too
complicated, you know, let them fight it out over there--what
would be your reaction to that? Mr. Ambassador first.
Ambassador Jeffrey. First of all, I draw the line with
live-scale combat troops on the ground. I want to make that
clear, because I often advocate military force. But spending 4
years in Iraq and Vietnam, I am usually opposed to that unless
I am very, very sure of the rationale.
But using other means of power, including everything that
General Keane laid out in such great detail, I would be 100
percent in favor of that. The timing versus Maliki is
important. But, no, we are not going to just sit back and watch
these people just bash each other, because huge interests--the
survival of Israel, the NATO borders in Turkey, the 20 percent
of oil that flows out of the Gulf or global markets--all of
these things are in play, and we need to be engaged or the
situation is going to go even worse.
Who likes the situation we have seen now? As you pointed
out, it is perhaps not the worst situation, because I could see
it getting even worse, but this is about as bad as I think many
of us have seen in the Middle East in a long, long time, and we
need to act.
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. And, General, I will go to you in
a second, but I do want to point out that we do want to see
political solutions in Iraq. I would remind people that we had
an Articles of Confederation in the United States, which we
later threw out and adopted the Constitution of the United
States to get it even more right.
But I don't think we can wait for this massive--this
amazing political solution when Iraq, from a year ago, made
multiple requests of the United States Government to take out
these terrorist camps, and they were largely ignored.
General, what do you have to say to some of that?
General Keane. Well, I have disagreed with the policy,
because I--and I have had discussions with key administration
officials about this. My own view is is that I do think we have
to act, and I do think by acting it actually strengthens the
political solution that we want as opposed to the reverse. And
it gives us a much better seat at the table to have the kind of
influence that we have had in the past.
And we absolutely have to bring our allies into the region
here. They are eventually going to be threatened by this
directly. They are now indirectly, and we should work with
them. We should formulate a strategy together. But we are going
to have to be the quarterback here. That is the reality.
Mr. Kinzinger. That is right. And let me--as I yield back,
let me just say I get the politics of it. I believe, frankly,
that the President withdrew from Iraq for political
convenience. It would be much more politically convenient for
me as a congressman that has to get elected to go back and say
we are tired of every war in the Middle East and we just need
to leave, but that is not what leadership is. And in 10 and 20
years, history is going to judge what we did with this moment.
And I believe at this rate it is going to judge us very
harshly.
And I yield back.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida,
Mr. DeSantis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeSantis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank the witnesses for your comments. I was really alarmed
when the Iraqi army just melted in the face of ISIL. I mean, to
say that they folded like a cheap suit is really an insult to
cheap suits. It was pathetic. And I knew that there were
problems when our forces left. I know it wasn't going to be
easy. But we have invested a lot of time, money, and resources
into training those individuals.
So, General Keane, I take from your testimony you think the
reason or part of the reason that they folded like that was
because of the politics coming out of the regime. Is that
accurate?
General Keane. Yes. He did much the same with the military
as he did with his political opponents. You know, he sees this
in the same rubric. You know, anybody that has done any time
with Maliki, he is paranoid to a fault, insecure to a fault,
and he is--you know, the art of politics for him is more about
revenge than it is compromise. So that----
Mr. DeSantis. Where does that leave us, though? I mean, it
seems like you need to have a political solution in order to
hope that we have an army there that can secure the country,
which seems to me--I mean, it seems like that is going to be
tough to ask for, at least in the near term.
General Keane. Well, that is why I would like to get
Ambassador Crocker and Petraeus over there to help,
particularly on the military side. We know a lot of the leaders
there, and the fact of the matter is they can be brought back.
He pushed out the very distinguished leaders, battalion and
brigade, and some extraordinary division commanders who
distinguished themselves during the surge period in '07 and
'08, and they were purged.
And these cronies came in, who none of the troops
respected, and they were there long enough to truly break the
cohesion in those organizations. And it is certainly sad for
anybody that gave so much of their time to help grow an
acceptable military, and I think that is what we had when we
left. I mean, look at--they are not in our--we don't look at it
through our prism or through a European military.
You have to look at it through the prism of what they are
fighting, and they certainly met that, as far as we were
concerned, in terms of meeting an acceptable challenge. But
they are a mere shadow of their former self. It will be
challenging to reconstruct it, as I said in my comments.
Mr. DeSantis. How do you--with respect to that, how do you
see the role of Iran's Quds force? I know there have been
reports that one of their leaders is in Baghdad participating
or advising on operations. So is that just separate with, like,
Shi'ite militia groups? Or is that Quds force now exercising
control or influence with the actual remnants of the Iraqi
army?
General Keane. The Quds forces are providing advisors.
There is no doubt about that. They are also very focused on the
shrines in Samarra and also in Najaf and Karbala. I think they
have probably received some pretty direct instructions not to
let those shrines fall into ISIL's hands.
But the fact of the matter is, Iran has an influence here.
And I think, as we sit on our hands and not do much about
anything, that influence will grow. Their seat at the table
will grow in stature, because Maliki is making a case right
now. You can just hear him saying it, ``Look at, I have got
international support. I have got the--I have got Iran here,
and I have got the Russians here.'' Both of them want him to
stay in power.
And, really, everybody at this table, and anyone who knows
anything about this situation, knows that he has to go or we
are never going to get to some kind of a coalition government.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot let that influence
continue to grow and fester, or we will never be able to get to
a better government solution than what we have.
Mr. DeSantis. In terms of--and this is any--and I would
like to get everyone's thought on this. I think you made a good
point, General, when you said that it is not just sectarian.
There are sectarian conflicts, but ISIS's goal is to topple
Sunni regimes in the region. As I look at it, it seems to me
that Jordan would be maybe one of the first ones that would be
in their line of sight.
So what is the panelists' view on which regimes
specifically that we are allied with would be the most
vulnerable? Is it the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan? And we will
start with the Ambassador and go down the line.
Ambassador Jeffrey. It is Iraq itself. It is the Kurdish
areas of the north. Eventually, if these guys build up more
steam, then it is Jordan. But eventually it is the Gulf States.
That is their target is to move into that area with its
incredible riches.
General Keane. I agree with that.
Mr. Bandow. Yes. Certainly, Jordan is very vulnerable. I
mean, it has a competent military, but its social
circumstances--refugees, economic position, kind of the impact
of the Arab Spring and discontent that it has--all of that
makes it very vulnerable.
Mr. Eisenstadt. All I will just say is that it may depend
on circumstances and where they perceive an opportunity, but
this is all the more reason why we need to put pressure on them
in Syria and Iraq, so that they don't feel that they have the
luxury of being able to engage in adventurism, you know, that
they have to focus on just defending their position in Syria
and Iraq, so they can't engage in that.
Mr. DeSantis. Great. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding
this hearing. And I am concerned, and I know the chair is,
about people with Western passports, Americans who are now
fighting over there. They cannot be allowed, obviously, to come
back in the United States and wage war against us here.
And I yield back.
Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
General Keane, some of the reading that I read said that
the ISL really did not have easily discernible targets. So you
are talking about doing air strikes and knocking out much of
their capability. That seems contradictory.
Are we able to go after them if the President--and let me
just say, first, it seems like the President all of a sudden is
against the withdrawal. Now, before he was for the withdrawal,
before he was against the withdrawal. Are you all getting that
sense out of the White House? He might wish he had left some
forces in there?
General Keane. I can't speak for the White House, Mr.
Congressman. But the fact of the matter is there are targets
available to us. If you are dealing around the highly populated
areas in Baghdad where we are having contested fights, our
ability to distinguish between Sunni tribes and ISIL is
probably next to nothing.
So that would be a challenge. The only way we would be able
to facilitate that use of airpower is where air-ground
controllers are in a fight and they know who they are in with
and they can target them.
But let us put that aside. The fact of the matter is, ISIL
began this movement out of sanctuaries and staging bases in
Syria. They are still there. They have lines of communication
that are vulnerable there. They are moving equipment back and
forth. Those are available targets to us.
Up north, where this is no longer a contested area, there
are staging bases and sanctuaries there that are available to
us. This is air interdiction. ISIL identifies the target, and
we strike----
Mr. Weber. Okay. So you are talking about going back to
their bases and working your way back towards----
General Keane. Listen, this wouldn't be like an air
campaign we did in Afghanistan and Iraq where we had hundreds
of sorties a day. It wouldn't even be anything like what the
Israelis are doing with Hamas at 80 sorties a day. This is
selected and limited use of air power.
Mr. Weber. Let me move on. Ambassador, if you could be
President for a day, would you go ahead and bomb those oil
fields?
Ambassador Jeffrey. I might do that eventually, but I would
have some better targets. As the General said, at this point,
before the political situation coalesces, I would pick a few
targets where we can definitely, through our drones and
intelligence, identify ISIS and basically show that this
administration is willing to use force against what is
essentially an al-Qaeda element in Iraq when we are striking
al-Qaeda all over the rest of the Middle East.
Mr. Weber. Is that a preclusion to becoming--I think the
General said the quarterback bringing in our allies, saying
that we are willing to do this?
Ambassador Jeffrey. At this point, limited military force
would be a leverage factor, a multiplier of our influence,
because right now this will make all the difference and people
are wondering whether we are going to do it.
Mr. Weber. You also said--let me ask you this, and I will
ask this of the whole panel. What are the chances of ISIS,
ISIL, call them whatever, once they establish this state,
assuming--and let us just say for argument's sake they are
successful--do they then turn on Syria?
Ambassador Jeffrey. Eventually, they turn on everybody.
That is what we have seen with al-Qaeda movements----
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Ambassador Jeffrey [continuing]. As they get real strong.
Mr. Weber. General Keane?
General Keane. Our analysts believe over at ISW and, you
know, what they are tracking, is clearly Jordan is next, but--
and then they would go west into Syria, toward Damascus would
be the----
Mr. Weber. Mr. Bandow?
General Keane. Right. Exactly.
Mr. Bandow. Yes. Their expressed ambitions are quite wide,
so I would expect Syria and Jordan to be on their list.
Mr. Weber. Mr. Eisenstadt, do you want to round out the
foursome?
Mr. Eisenstadt. Yes. I will just say that, again, it may be
that they will start off with a plan to do Jordan first, and
then move on to Lebanon. But, again, it depends where they have
the most opportunity I think.
Mr. Weber. Okay. And then, General Keane, you said Maliki
was paranoid to a fault. I think that was you. I mean, can you
blame him? Number one. But, number--I guess more appropriately,
who do you bring in in that situation that is not paranoid in
that situation? Who is his successor?
General Keane. Well, there is no doubt of the fact that
there was a leadership train in Iraq, and the choices were few.
And then, if you reflect back to that first election, it was a
question of, you know, who could people agree with? And
nobody's number one or two was even close to being selected.
So, by default, we got Maliki.
I think the tragedy of Maliki is when we had the
opportunity to get a different government, the second--in the
second election, when he actually lost by one vote, we had made
that decision then, the year before, to politically disengage
from the Maliki government.
This was an administration decision made in 2009, and by
that time we were well into our hands off of shaping the
political future of Iraq, which I have always thought was a
mistake because we did that to great success in Germany, Italy,
Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Bosnia-Herzegovina, doing that
very thing because of the stake in our own interest and the
sacrifices that had been made.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you.
Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back? I assume he does.
One question, General Keane. Saudi Arabia is in the middle
of this. Why aren't they doing something?
General Keane. Well, my experience with this is when they
feel the threat, their intelligence services are on it. They
are not as good as the Jordanian intelligence service, to be
sure, but they need to be led. And that would be first step for
me is meet with allies, let us share intelligence, let us
identify what this is, what is the approach to deal with this,
et cetera. And who can contribute to doing it.
And I think that is the only way to approach this problem,
that we should--but we need to lead it, to answer your
question, Mr. Chairman. They are not going to do anything
unilaterally unless their territory, their sovereignty is
violated. But they have much to offer here in taking a
collective response to what is taking place.
And I am not just speaking militarily. I am also speaking
diplomatically and politically in assisting what needs to take
place.
Mr. Poe. All right. Thank you.
The Chair yields 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois,
Mr. Schneider.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Chairman Poe.
And, again, thank you to the witnesses for your testimony
and your insights today. I think, General Keane, you may have
said something very poignant--it is the tragedy of Maliki. And
I think history may look on this as one of the key aspects of
where we are today.
But let me start with Ambassador Jeffrey. You talked in
your written testimony about Plan A, and the objective of a
unified Iraq. I will open this to the whole panel. Why is it so
crucial to maintain a unified Iraq?
Ambassador Jeffrey. First of all, if one of the states in
the Middle East starts to unravel, the risk is, as we saw in
the Balkans in the 1990s, that other states start unraveling or
other states start trying to pick up the pieces. And in the
Middle East there are five juicier pieces than in the Balkans
because of the oil, because of the history of weapons of mass
destruction, and the potential for countries to develop it
again.
Syria tried it a few years ago in a nuclear account. Iraq's
history, we all know, and we know the situation with Iran. So
you have got tremendous built-up tensions that would explode if
the place fell apart. Iran would gain power by dominating the
oil fields to the south. The al-Qaeda movement worldwide would
gain power. And America's role as the defender of states with
whom we have had very strong security relationships--in this
case the ex-state of Iraq--would be down the toilet. And I just
don't see that as a good scenario.
Mr. Schneider. I appreciate that. The distinction--one
distinction I see is that in the Balkans you had historic
geographic nation states. The nation states in this region
historically, you know, Iran with the Persian history, Turkey,
Ottoman, Egypt. But the others are a creation of 1916. How do
we keep that together?
Ambassador Jeffrey. I have spent almost as much of my
career in the Balkans as in the Middle East, and the two areas
in some respects are very similar. Once you start redrawing
boundaries, it never stops, Congressman.
Mr. Schneider. I understand.
Ambassador Jeffrey. It doesn't stop in Germany. It doesn't
stop anywhere.
Mr. Schneider. I understand. And you said later in your
testimony that the Kurds have to be brought in to the Iraqi
camp. You know, they have taken steps to pull further away. Is
it possible even to bring them back, even if Maliki is----
Ambassador Jeffrey. Oh, I think so. Their deal right now is
17 percent of all Iraqi oil exports. Under the right
arrangements when they were negotiated in December, that would
get them up to about $13 billion or $14 billion a year. You go
to the Kurdish areas, you go to Irville now, and you see a
booming area, the likes of which you would see nowhere else in
the Middle East other than along the Gulf and in Israel. And
that is thanks to the proceeds from the rest of--from the oil
pump basically in the south.
Mr. Schneider. Right.
Ambassador Jeffrey. They will have oil. They have oil in
their own areas, and they have some oil now in Kirkuk. They can
export that if they go independent, but they won't have the
same earnings and they are going to be in a militarily much
more difficult situation, because they will be on their own
facing ISIS. Thus, they have had to mobilize their reserves.
They have 100,000 reserves. Many of them are under arms
now. It is not a good economic financial situation, totally
apart from the fact Iran is violently opposed--and I underline
``violently opposed''--to them becoming independent for several
other reasons.
Under the right leadership in Baghdad--and that means no
Maliki--I think they could be brought back in.
Mr. Schneider. If Maliki stays, is that an option?
Ambassador Jeffrey. If Maliki goes.
Mr. Schneider. No. But what if he stays?
Ambassador Jeffrey. If he stays, they are never coming
back.
Mr. Schneider. Okay. Then, the thing starts.
General Keane, let me turn to you. You had talked about the
need to defeat ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State, whatever we are
calling it, as well as the need to defeat radical Islam. Can
there be a distinction drawn between successfully defeating
ISIL and defeating radical Islam in general?
General Keane. You are suggesting--is that a worthy goal?
Mr. Schneider. No, not as a worthy goal. Radical Islam is a
much--is much broader than strictly the geography that ISIS is
focused on. The need--clearly, we have to defeat ISIS. Can we
defeat ISIS now without defeating radical Islam now? Or is
there steps----
General Keane. Well, I have always believed that we have
needed a comprehensive strategy to deal with this ideology for
some time. And much as we formed political or military
alliances to deal with the Communist ideology, most of which
were successful, we should be pursuing those same kind of
alliances to share common political beliefs, intelligence
training, et cetera.
This is not about U.S. leading the efforts in African
countries. This is about a shared responsibility, and we assist
them so that they can function adequately themselves. And I
think one of the things that happened to us, after we got so
focused on the senior leadership in al-Qaeda, and which we have
truly done damage to them, we took away everything that they
really wanted, and we should feel good about that.
But being so possessed by that, we neglected the spread of
radical Islam which has really taken place. And we really don't
have much of a strategy to deal with it. In fact, it was
difficult for the administration at first even to admit it, and
now finally they are beginning to admit it, but we still need a
strategy to cope with it.
And ISIL--the speed of what they have achieved certainly
has now got our attention, and we are going to do something
about it. And I just keep raising my hand once in a while to--
even that is important to us. It is a top priority. But we need
a broader strategy than what ISIL----
Mr. Schneider. I agree. It has to be everything.
I know I am out of time. Mr. Eisenstadt, you looked like
you wanted to say something, but I--Mr. Chairman, thank you.
There are so many more questions. I appreciate the time you
have given us today, and I look forward to hearing more.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank all four of you for
being here today. The information has been very valuable.
The subcommittees are adjourned. Thank you once again.
[Whereupon, at 4:24 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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