[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-6]
ADDRESSING U.S. STRATEGY IN IRAQ
AND AFGHANISTAN: BALANCING
INTERESTS AND RESOURCES
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
FEBRUARY 12, 2009
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii California
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ADAM SMITH, Washington W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey ROB BISHOP, Utah
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
RICK LARSEN, Washington MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM COOPER, Tennessee TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut DUNCAN HUNTER, California
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
GLENN NYE, Virginia
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland
ERIC J.J. MASSA, New York
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
Erin C. Conaton, Staff Director
Mike Casey, Professional Staff Member
Aileen Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Caterina Dutto, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, February 12, 2009, Addressing U.S. Strategy in Iraq and
Afghanistan: Balancing Interests and Resources................. 1
Appendix:
Thursday, February 12, 2009...................................... 39
----------
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2009
ADDRESSING U.S. STRATEGY IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: BALANCING INTERESTS
AND RESOURCES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Biddle, Dr. Stephen, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy, Council on
Foreign Relations.............................................. 6
Cordesman, Dr. Anthony, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy,
Center for Strategic and International Studies................. 4
Keane, Gen. John M., USA (Ret.), Former Vice Chief of Staff, U.S.
Army........................................................... 9
St. Laurent, Janet, Managing Director, Defense Capabilities and
Management, Government Accountability Office................... 13
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Biddle, Dr. Stephen.......................................... 63
Cordesman, Dr. Anthony....................................... 43
Keane, Gen. John M........................................... 80
St. Laurent, Janet........................................... 91
Documents Submitted for the Record:
``Iraq's Winning Vote,'' a Washington Post editorial,
February 4, 2009........................................... 121
``The Promise In Iraq's Rebirth'' by Samir Sumaida'ie,The
Washington Post, February 7, 2009.......................... 119
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Abercrombie.............................................. 125
Mr. Heinrich................................................. 125
ADDRESSING U.S. STRATEGY IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: BALANCING INTERESTS
AND RESOURCES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, February 12, 2009.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:33 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The Chairman. Good morning. Today the House Armed Services
Committee meets to receive testimony on assessing U.S. strategy
in Iraq and Afghanistan, balancing interests and resources.
Our witnesses for today's hearings: Dr. Anthony Cordesman
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Stephen
Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations; General Jack Keane,
former Vice Chief of Staff, United States Army; and Janet St.
Laurent from the Government Accountability Office, GAO.
So we welcome all of you, and without any objection, any
written statements you might have will be entered into the
record.
The new Administration has made it clear that they are
renewing the focus on America's other war in Afghanistan. Of
course, I think it is about time. For too long our country has
not paid sufficient attention to the war in Afghanistan, and it
doesn't appear we are winning there. Casualties are on the
rise. The Taliban is conducting more widespread attacks,
including those this week on government buildings in Kabul,
which cost at least 20 lives.
A new strategy was clearly articulated, and achievable
goals are desperately needed. And I am pleased the
Administration is undertaking that review.
At the same time, Iraq, which has been our major focus for
the last five years, seems to be trending in the right
direction. Violence is down significantly, and provincial
elections have been conducted. This, of course, is a welcome
change. But our commanders there tell us we are not over the
hurdles yet, and the situation in Iraq remains potentially
unstable and dangerous.
With the input from those commanders, the President is also
considering the future of the U.S. presence in Iraq and how
fast we can draw down our troop presence. This is the context
from the hearing today. The President will hopefully in the
near future announce new strategies for both Iraq and
Afghanistan, and we on the House Armed Services Committee,
together with some of our other colleagues, will be charged
with evaluating those strategies. Today's hearing is intended
to raise those questions and issues that will help us do that
job.
We must remember neither strategy can be taken in
isolation. Troops in Iraq are not available for service in
Afghanistan. Enablers like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or
combat engineers are desperately needed in both theaters, but
we don't have enough to fully resource both, at least in the
near future. The Administration and the Congress are going to
have to balance our interests and risks in each theater and try
their best to figure out how to spread these limited resources.
It is my hope that the witnesses here today will suggest
questions and raise issues that will help us accomplish this
task.
I turn to my colleague and good friend, the Ranking Member,
John McHugh for comments.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW
YORK, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If there is any
greater signal as to the bipartisanship of this committee, it
is your opening statement. Mine sounds much as yours does, so I
will forego reading it formally and ask that it be submitted in
its entirety in the record.
But let me say I certainly join you, Mr. Chairman, in
welcoming our very distinguished panelists. And at the risk of
stating the obvious, this is a critically important hearing.
Balancing, it is a buzzword of late; it is in the title of the
hearing today, as you noted, Mr. Chairman. It was also in the
headline of Secretary Gates' recently published article in
Foreign Affairs that we discussed here in his appearance just a
while back, and it fairly characterizes the Pentagon's national
defense strategy.
I would suggest the word ``balancing'' is easy, at least to
say. And what I hope we can come away with here today, Mr.
Chairman, is the opportunity to pierce the definition in the
textbook of the word ``balancing'' and begin to cut through the
ambiguity of the term and try to get through the tough
strategic choices and trade-offs that come with that effort.
On Monday, as you and I discussed, Mr. Chairman, I returned
from my tenth visit to Iraq, my fourth to Afghanistan. Let me
state our men and women in uniform continue to demonstrate that
they are the world's premier fighting force, but I left the two
theaters with any number of concerns and questions.
In Iraq the violence, and the recent successful provincial
elections, and the relatively smooth implementation of the so-
called SOFA, the Status of Forces Agreement, have caused many
to announce that the war, in their mind, is over.
Two weeks ago Secretary Gates testified that the successful
Iraqi elections in June and those of 2009 substantially
enhanced the prospects for what he called enduring domestic
peace in Iraq. Virtually every military leader, including
Ambassador Crocker, cautioned us about what they termed as
``precipitous withdrawal.'' Their advice, I think, is
important. It sounds to me like a prudent wait-and-see approach
before we say the phrase ``mission accomplished.''
And I would note, too, Mr. Chairman, a host of accompanying
questions need to be answered, including under what conditions
can we reasonably reduce our footprint in Iraq? What type of
residual presence will we need in Iraq after 2011 as the Status
of Forces Agreement (SOFA) calls for our withdrawal? And how do
we prevent al Qaeda from again making that nation a central
focus on the war on terror? And lastly and most critically, how
do we prevent Iran and the special groups from becoming a
spoiler? We need answers to those variables and more as we
attempt to balance, balance the interests in resources with
Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan I saw firsthand the need for increased U.S.
commitment, particularly in the south where we visited. Our
forces, in my judgment, lack adequate capabilities, as you
said, Mr. Chairman, such as Special Operations Forces;
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets;
and Medical Evacuation (Medevac) resources.
In the coming year it is expected our commanders on the
ground will finally have the capability to implement a
counterinsurgency strategy that is tailored for that theater.
Even if the key strategic questions are answered adequately,
logistical issues are paramount in this discussion. Surging in
Afghanistan from Iraq as we redeploy is fraught with
challenges. Plans for an increased U.S. commitment in
Afghanistan have already revealed its limited capacity to host
added enablers and boots on the ground. These variables need to
be understood as we adjust our strategic posture towards
Afghanistan.
In my judgment, the message to Congress is clear. The
pressures of an economic crisis and the need to find dollars
for domestic spending should not come at a cost of our gains in
Iraq or compromise our objectives in Afghanistan.
In closing, let me say, Mr. Chairman, I returned from Iraq
and Afghanistan with five key lessons in hand. While the Iraqi
war is going down in many ways, the fight in Afghanistan is
just beginning. In my opinion, the scheduling of troop
withdrawals in Iraq must be done on conditions on the ground,
not political consideration. And with all due respect to then-
Senator Obama, he was dramatically wrong on his opinion with
respect to surge, and I would urge President Obama not to build
on that mistake. And by that I mean very simply the surge, in
the military definition of the term, is not the simple answer.
We have to use the broadest range of tools available to us.
Lastly, the President should remember, as he rightfully
acknowledged earlier this week, one of the key answers to the
solution of the problem in Afghanistan is not found in
Afghanistan, but rather in Pakistan. The Administration has
been handed a list of tools, some known, some not, some on the
record, some classified, that will allow him to more
effectively deal with this challenge. In my opinion, he must
deal and use every tool available to him.
Lastly, a final word of caution: Uncertainty does not breed
security.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back, and I certainly
look forward to our panelists' testimony.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman and appreciate your
remarks this morning.
We are truly blessed to have with us the witnesses that we
have addressing American strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. We
couldn't have a better panel, and we appreciate your being here
so very, very much. And, Tony Cordesman, we lead off with you,
sir.
Dr. Cordesman. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. I have already announced any written
statements are already in the record, without objection.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANTHONY CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE CHAIR IN
STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Dr. Cordesman. I would like to take the few minutes I have
from my oral statement----
The Chairman. Get a little closer, would you, to the
microphone.
Dr. Cordesman. Surely, sir.
The Chairman. The acoustics are not all that good in here,
at least up here, so get as close as you can.
Dr. Cordesman. I would like to take the few minutes I have
for my oral statement to concentrate on Afghanistan. The point
I would like to make is this war is winnable, and that we are
losing largely because of the failures of the previous
administration, the U.S. Congress, and indeed, to some extent,
the lack of activity by the committees dealing with armed
services to concentrate on providing the kind of resources that
are necessary to win it.
I fully recognize these failures are scarcely ours alone.
They are driven by the failures of the Afghan Government, the
Pakistani military junta, and the divisions in Pakistan that
exist today. They are driven by the failures of our North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)/International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) allies to remove the kinds of caveats
that often make their forces and their aid personnel
ineffective. They are driven by an incompetent and corrupt mix
of national and international economic aid organizations which
do not meet real-world needs, which do not have adequate
measurements or management, and which do not really test their
effectiveness. They are driven by duplicative and ineffective
command structure and by a mix of coordinating committees in
aid and other activities that undermine both efforts.
Let me bring responsibility home. We wouldn't be where we
are in Afghanistan if we had accepted the fact that this is
primarily our war, we had reacted to the growth of the threat,
and we had provided the resources and leadership we need to win
it.
We wouldn't be where we are if we had transparency in
reporting on this war that described the build-up of the
threat, the failures that were taking place, the problems in
the way we have run this war, and how that has evolved over the
last seven years. We wouldn't be where we are if commanders and
ambassadors in Afghanistan had been given the resources that
they requested when they requested them, and we were not
constantly having to react to the growth of the threat rather
than provide the forces that are needed. We wouldn't be where
we are today if we had treated this as a war, rather than an
exercise in postconflict reconstruction, and if we had
recognized the fact we have to win that war before we can move
forward toward any longer-term future for Afghanistan. We
wouldn't be where we are if we had recognized the center of
gravity for al Qaeda and Islamic extremism and terrorism has
been in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not in Iraq.
And that said, where do we go from here? I think one of the
key messages for everyone here is if we cannot salvage this
situation in 2009 and 2010, there isn't going to be a mid or
long term in Afghanistan.
How do we do this? I think first you have to have
transparency and honesty. You have to tell the American people
what is really required and what is going on. You can't take a
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and bury it, to have it
leak in the New York Times. You can't delay a Department of
Defense report that has negative descriptions of what is
happening in the war that is ready in October and issue it in
January because you have a campaign season. You can't create a
Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction and then
not fund the office so at best the office will begin to
function at the end of this calendar year.
The tools and instruments necessary to win require honesty,
transparency and communication. The next thing is to focus on
real-world war goals, not the theory of reconstruction or aid.
We aren't going to be able to get to those goals unless we can
provide the assets to really have a clear, hold and build
strategy in the field and in the course of the next two years.
If we can't stop a growth of the insurgency, which our map
shows has been expanding 30 to 50 percent in area coverage per
year since 2005, to talk about the Afghan compact is an
exercise in theory.
We need to accept the fact that if the resources are going
to come, they are going to be ours. We recruited our allies for
a peacekeeping mission and postconflict reconstruction. They
are not going to suddenly join us in a serious war at the
levels we might like but we can't get.
And let me say by any standard asking for 30,000 more
troops for all the tensions and problems that creates within
the U.S. military and in dealing with Iraq is almost an
absolute minimum of what it might take to provide any ability
to deal with the threat in this area.
We need to make a serious, sustained, well-funded effort to
create Afghan security forces, not have massive swings in
funding. We need to stop trying to create a conventional police
force in midwar and concentrate on creating forces that can
actually win. We need to actually provide the kind of strength
that is required in terms of U.S. advisors.
The latest reports indicate we will go through 2010 with
less than 40 percent of the U.S. military trainers that are
needed and less than 40 percent of the allied trainers. And the
training situation for the police force will be substantially
worse. We need to understand that we can't fix this through the
Afghan central government. As in Iraq, we need to have people
in Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) or Embedded
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (EPRTs) who can deal with the
local government that can deal with the provincial government
in the absence of Afghan capabilities.
We need to address the fact that one of our key tools, the
foreign aid program, has become corrupt and ineffective. No one
has precise figures, because there are no audits, no measures
of effectiveness, no numbers anyone can trust. Afghans estimate
that as much as 40 percent of the aid money does not really
move into the Afghan economy. The U.N. effort is divided; it is
repeating a pattern of ineffectiveness and corruption. I think
this committee could obtain from the World Bank studies that
show that none of the implementing U.N. agencies has performed
a proper audit in its funds, much less measured its
effectiveness.
There are far too many allied and NGO efforts which start
things they can't finish. And when we look at our own effort,
the key here are the PRTs. The latest Department of Defense
report shows we have over 1,000 U.S. military in our PRTs and
less than 40 qualified civilians. As long as that happens, to
talk about smart or soft power is an exercise in theory for
which there can't be substance.
We will have to use U.S. military as aid personnel, because
they are the only people we can bring to the task and the only
people who can protect themselves. And for many of our allies,
it will be the same.
As you have already suggested, this war has to involve
Pakistan; it has to involve pressure on the Pakistani
Government. We have to, if we can, find ways to bring this
Special Forces training teams into some kind of working
relationship with the Pakistani military, something we have now
been waiting on for three to four years.
Legislation that is pending to provide aid to Pakistan for
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchi
areas is potentially very rewarding, but if anyone can explain
to me where the people are coming who can ensure that aid is
used honestly, and who will provide the aid in the field, I
will be much more reassured than I am at the present.
We need to treat counternarcotics in war terms. This is a
noble goal after we have reversed the military situation. So
far our counternarcotics efforts has done a superb job of
moving narcotics south and funding the Taliban. The net result
is to have no impact on street price and demand, and a major
impact in aiding the enemy.
So let me close with these points. In my full testimony I
make the point that one of the iron laws of governments is
there are no good intentions, there are only successful
actions. We have seven years of history of not taking those
actions at the level we need to take them. I understand that
the argument can be this is too hard in a Washington
environment. Some of you who have been in Afghanistan may see
it differently. Too hard here can be too dead in the field. And
quite frankly, if the choice is one between bureaucracy and
body bags, I would hope that we understand. You either provide
the resources, or you don't. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cordesman can be found in
the Appendix on page 43.]
The Chairman. Stephen Biddle.
STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN BIDDLE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR DEFENSE
POLICY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Dr. Biddle. I would like to start by thanking the committee
for the chance to speak to you on probably what is the single
most important issue in U.S. strategy today, which is how we
interrelate two ongoing wartime theaters. My sense is that
there is pretty widespread agreement that in the broad,
withdrawals from Iraq and reinforcements for Afghanistan are
the right way to go, but the relative pace of that movement,
however, strikes me as much less a matter of agreement.
It seems to me this is probably the most important
unresolved issue of the moment. I am going to spend my initial
statement addressing mostly that. The written submission deals
with a wider range of issues.
It seems to me that from the standpoint of stability and
U.S. interests in both Iraq and in Afghanistan, slower may very
well be better in terms of the pace of the transfer out of the
Iraq and into Afghanistan. We have very important U.S. national
strategic interests in both of these theaters, there were
important and continuing challenges to our interests in both of
those theaters, and both of these theaters have very important
requirements for U.S. resources, and especially troops which
cannot simultaneously be in both of these theaters.
What that taken together means is that something has to
give. We cannot simultaneously get everything we want. We are
going to have to sacrifice something that is important and
something that is valuable. And it seems to me that the way to
think about where, if we have to sacrifice something, is the
least dangerous place to sacrifice, the issue is not just
security trends in each of those theaters at the moment. I
think there is general agreement that the trend is flat or up
in Iraq, but clearly down and importantly so in Afghanistan. It
seems to me that the key question that one has to resolve in
assessing the relative pace of pulling troops out of Iraq and
into Afghanistan is, in fact, the question of where the point
of no return lies.
If we are going to have to give something up, in which of
these two theaters for which pace of withdrawals do we give up
something that we cannot recover from as opposed to giving up
something that hurts us, but at the end of the day isn't fatal,
or is less fatal relative to the risk posed in the other
theater?
Now, I posed this question to the ISAF Command in
Afghanistan in a recent trip there in November. I asked
repeatedly, if the reinforcements don't come or come too
slowly, what is the downside risk? What would happen? Not are
they desirable. Of course they are. Not are they necessary in
order to succeed. Of course they are. But if, because of
demands in another theater, they were slower than we like, what
would be the consequence? And the answer I got was stalemate.
The assessment in the theater command was we would fail to make
progress at the rate that we could. There are actually some
people in the headquarters who believed that some rate of
progress was possible through reforms, in several of the
things, for example, that Dr. Cordesman was talking about, if
reinforcements were slower than they would prefer.
Stalemate is not a good outcome. Many have suggested that
insurgents win by not losing, which is another way of saying
that stalemate hurts the government, and it hurts our side of
the war, which clearly it does. Stalemate, on the other hand,
is a different thing from defeat in the near term. And my sense
is that the view in the theater is that the prospect of defeat
in the near term is not as great as it might be. It can't be
ruled out. The risk is not as great as it might be, not because
we are doing brilliantly well and, Heaven knows, because the
Karzai government is doing brilliantly well, but because we are
blessed by the fact of a very flawed enemy; that the Afghan
population at large knows the Taliban pretty well at this
point, and they don't like what they saw. Therefore, the
Taliban is fighting, in a sense, uphill against the degree of
drag from a public that doesn't want that form of government if
they think there is a meaningful alternative available to them.
The Taliban is also not a unified military actor. They are
a coalition that in some ways has equal or greater problems
with divisiveness and lack of unity of command as those we
encounter. They have a great deal of difficulty coordinating
military activities, given the lack of unity of command among
factions, warlords and other components of their alliance, that
we do.
This combination of difficulties on the other side in the
view of the theater limits their ability to exploit an opening
that has been handed to them by misgovernance, especially on
the part of the Karzai government and by an underresourced
troop count in the theater at the moment. And what we have been
seeing is a response in which frustration and in many cases
anger with the corruption, the ineptitude, and the inability to
deliver basic governmental services on the part of Karzai
government is catalyzed by perceptions of reducing security to
create an opening that the Taliban has managed to exploit, but
that there are limits on how rapidly they can exploit it.
Perhaps more importantly what this suggests, however, is an
opportunity for what David Kilcullen has called a political
surge. We have serious constraints in our troop count global in
our ability to transfer them from Iraq to Afghanistan without
incurring costs in Iraq in the process. There are a variety of
important things that we can do in the nearer term, however, in
trying to reform governance within Afghanistan that do not
necessarily impose the same opportunity costs on the resources
we have committed and continue to require in Iraq.
If we convey to the Karzai government that our assistance
is conditional, and if we insist on things like the removal and
prosecution of corrupt government officials, it may be possible
to, at least to a degree, address in the near term some of the
causes for the precipitous decline in support for the Afghan
Government that we have seen over the last year at a relatively
modest cost in the prospects in Iraq.
Let me say just a brief word or two about the prospects in
Iraq to set this situation in Afghanistan in context, and then
I will stop. The situation we face in Iraq at the moment is, in
an important sense, the early stages of a negotiated settlement
to a very intense ethnosectarian civil war as had essentially
set in in Iraq by 2006. The early stages of negotiated
settlements to wars of this kind are notoriously unstable.
Sometimes the peace holds, sometimes the peace does not. And in
many cases the difference between holding and failing is the
presence of an outside party; not one of the indigenous former
combatants who tend to fear one another's intentions, bordering
on the genocidal, but a party who may not be loved, but at
least not suspected of genocidal intent, that can stabilize an
initially unstable cease-fire relationship among former
combatants while their expectations of one another gradually
begin to shift, and thus the situation comes to be less on a
hair triggering than it is in the immediate aftermath of the
cease fires that end the violence.
As expectations change, this outside presence can very
often be thinned out and reduced without a return to violence.
If it happens too quickly, on the other hand, the risk of a
return to violence in Iraq on a 2006 scale or greater is quite
significant. And for now the only outside party in any
plausible position to perform this function is the United
States. Although we may not be loved by Iraqis, we are
generally not suspected to be a threat of genocide, as many of
their internal rivals are seen to be.
That is the heart of the conflict between Iraq and
Afghanistan with respect to resource levels. The importance to
U.S. national security interests of having Iraq not lapse back
into violence and create in the process the risk of
destabilizing the Persian Gulf, a region terribly important to
vital U.S. national security interests, inheres in our ability
to maintain the stability of a cease-fire under conditions
which in other places elsewhere have often proved to be hard to
maintain. The presence of U.S. troops to act as peacekeepers is
an important contribution to that. That is what poses the key
trade-off with respect to Afghanistan.
My sense is that other things being equal, although we need
to transfer resources, maintaining them in Iraq as long as we
can, doing what we can in the near term politically in
Afghanistan, in addition to relatively modest near-term
reinforcement may be a better way to go than the alternative.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Biddle.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Biddle can be found in the
Appendix on page 63.]
The Chairman. General Jack Keane.
STATEMENT OF GEN. JOHN M. KEANE, USA (RET.), FORMER VICE CHIEF
OF STAFF, U.S. ARMY
General Keane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Minority
Member and members of the committee, for inviting me to
testify. I have had an enduring relationship with the
committee, and I always value the opportunity to share
viewpoints on issues vital to the national security.
I am honored to be here with my distinguished colleagues,
and I associate myself with much of what Steve Biddle just had
to say. And I harken back to two-and-a-half years ago when the
both of us were in the White House presenting an alternative
strategy to the President of the United States on Iraq, and we
both agreed then. So it is good to see you back talking the
same language again.
Let me begin by discussing the key issues on achieving the
right balance as we shift our priorities from Iraq to
Afghanistan. And in doing so, I would like to focus my remarks
around the following issues: sustaining the gains in Iraq, and
what is needed to win in Afghanistan.
Sustaining the gains in Iraq. We just observed at the end
of last month a seminal event, provincial elections in Iraq,
which will forever change the political landscape of Iraq and,
as a result, will have profound impact on the future stability
of the region.
After having won a hard-fought victory over two foreign
interventions in Iraq, the al Qaeda, who, in my mind, have been
operationally defeated for the last 12 months, and the
Iranians, who suffered a major setback in March of 2008, and
having defeated the mainstream Sunni insurgency, political
reconciliation is unfolding right before our eyes.
After three years of a failed strategy in Iraq, from 2003
to 2006, we as a Nation finally recognized an undeniable fact:
That security was a necessary precondition for political
progress and economic development. As such, a counteroffensive
was launched in 2007, which in 18 months stabilized the nation
sufficiently to permit 17 of the 18 legislative benchmarks to
pass the Iraqi Council of Representatives; amnesty to be
granted the Sunni insurgents; an historic strategic framework
to be achieved between the Government of Iraq and the United
States Government; and a framework for district, provincial and
national elections.
While the United States and Iraqi troops were critical to
achieve the stability, they are as critical to maintain it.
What is not understood very well is what a large role our
forces play in assisting with not only security, but political
stability and economic development. Our brigade combat teams
are the glue that has held the political reconciliation process
together, and they are needed in sufficient numbers to assist
with the following in 2009: district and subdistrict elections,
the disputed boundary issue regarding Kirkuk, a referendum on
the Status of Forces Agreement, and national elections in
December 2009. This is a very full plate in the political
developments of Iraq.
Many of our commanders believe we can draw down troop
brigades in 2009 from 14 to 12, with the possibility of a third
if this momentum continues, followed by a more dramatic
reduction in 2010, and then completing our reduction in 2011.
It is our success in Iraq which is permitting units who were
destined for Iraq to deploy to Afghanistan in 2009. It will
take to 2011, in my view, to complete the shift in our
priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Can we shift our priorities to Afghanistan and win without
squandering the gains we have made in Iraq? The answer is a
resounding yes, if we have the patience to succeed in Iraq and
the courage and wisdom to transition properly to Afghanistan.
What is needed to win in Afghanistan? I am not going to
redefine the problems that we have in Afghanistan and which you
are familiar with and why we have those problems. The essential
reason is certainly that it has always been a secondary effort
for the United States government. The primary effort has been
Iraq. There are other reasons that have contributed to it, and
Tony certainly outlined those, and I agree with those. I am not
going to discuss regional issues here; I will focus right in on
what we need to do to help turn this around.
First and foremost, and what caused us more setbacks in
Iraq than any single thing, is to formulate the right strategy.
This strategy for Afghanistan defines our objectives and end
states, understands the nature and character of the war we are
fighting, and sets the stage for the application of resources.
Remember, we threw resources at the problem for three years in
Iraq with the wrong strategy, and we nearly lost. Our strategy
is informed by our national interest in Afghanistan and the
region, and it can run the full spectrum from total democratic
nation building on one end to simply denying a terrorist
sanctuary on the other.
Regardless of how comprehensive or limited our overall
strategy is, we must recognize that we cannot limit proven
counterinsurgency practices in our attempt to defeat the
insurgency. We should not confuse the political and economic
end state for Afghanistan, particularly if it is limited in
scope with what is needed to defeat a complicated, entrenched
insurgency.
Secondly, we need a campaign plan, which we do not
currently have, to provide a much-needed unity of effort. This
took many weeks to develop in Iraq, and I am certain with the
added complexity of a NATO Command, it will take longer. This
is very hard work because it must be comprehensive, and it
involves tough choices which have profound consequences. The
plan can only be formulated by General McKiernan's
headquarters, which is significantly undermanned, to write the
plan and to drive the execution. The staff should be augmented
quickly.
The centerpiece of the campaign plan will be a
counterinsurgency effort to defeat the insurgency. As we know,
while the military effort receives most of the attention, the
plan is largely nonmilitary, focusing on political and economic
development as security begins to be achieved. Therefore, our
civilian capacity is needed to match the military increase,
particularly in provincial reconstruction teams, economic
development and governance. Equally important, and I agree with
what Tony Cordesman said, is that necessary financial support
to sustain the efforts already mentioned.
An important point to be made is we should avoid the appeal
of a shortcut solution by simply focusing on counterterrorist
operations; that is, killing and capturing terrorist leaders
and targeting terrorist networks, which we do. Failure to use
counterinsurgency operations to protect the population will
doom our efforts in Afghanistan. We tried the former in Iraq
through 2006 with our Special Operations Forces in the lead
against al Qaeda and 150,000 conventional troops in support,
and despite killing Saddam Hussein's two sons, capturing Saddam
Hussein, killing Zarqawi and hundreds of other leaders, and
literally capturing thousands, we nearly lost. Finally, after
applying counterinsurgency practices, we succeeded. This is the
key to breaking the will of the insurgency.
Now, I am not suggesting that Afghanistan is Iraq. It is
not. The insurgencies are quite different. But proven
counterinsurgency practices applied to the uniqueness of
Afghanistan is the answer. As we develop counterinsurgency
practices, the obvious issue is we are fighting a rural
insurgency versus the urban insurgency we had in Iraq, with
less tolerance in Afghanistan for physical presence or
occupation of towns, villages and cities. Nevertheless, we must
protect the population by securing and serving the people. As
General Petraeus phrases it, we become ``good neighbors.''
Once the population knows that allied Afghan forces are
staying, it opens up the opportunity for more success against
the insurgence, and as such, we pursue the enemy relentlessly,
never giving them an opportunity to reset. Some will lose their
will and want to reconcile, and we must not only be open to it,
but encouraging it.
Critical to the unity of effort of the counterinsurgency
plan is an operational headquarters to coordinate and supervise
the tactical operational fight. What is needed is a three-star
operational headquarters, either a Corps headquarters from the
Army or a three-star Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEF)
headquarters from the Marines. This frees up General
McKiernan's headquarters to focus on the nonmilitary line of
operation so critical to success, as well as the training of
the Afghan National Security Forces.
Of course, we must not only rely on our allies in
Afghanistan, but particularly on the Afghan National Army,
which should grow beyond the 130,000 planned, which I believe
the command is considering, in my mind, to some 300,000. This
requires more trainers; more embedded training teams; more
military enablers to assist them, such as intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, more military
police, more engineers, logistics, and more Special Operations
Forces and civil affairs units to defeat the insurgency.
I pause here as a reminder. In 2007 alone, we put 125,000
Iraqi soldiers on the streets adequately trained to deal with
the counteroffensive that we were in the middle of. So when
people say it is too hard, not true. We can do this with the
trainers and also with the financial resources to assist.
We know the Karzai government is ineffective, deeply
corrupt, and losing the support of the Afghan people. Elections
will be held in August. It may be in our interest to encourage
some significant alternative candidates, or, at a minimum, if
we are reluctant to do that, in exchange for our continued
support to insist that Karzai makes the necessary changes with
our assistance. The status quo with this government is
unacceptable. The thought of five more years with this
government is intimidating.
The key is to develop local solutions that are connected to
the central government, but not necessarily completely
controlled by it. As I see it, we should spend 2009 getting our
strategy right in Afghanistan, which must be vetted with our
allies, then formulating a campaign plan based on that
strategy, and then setting the conditions for a military
counteroffensive in 2010 based on the above. I recognize that
we are rushing some forces to Afghanistan in 2009, and I
believe we will continue to put forces there in 2010 and in
2011, but we need to use the time now to set the proper
conditions for the introduction of our forces, which will grow
in size over the next two to three years.
A large part of our success depends on convincing the enemy
and all of our stakeholders that we are dead serious about
winning and are committed to see it through. Anything less
encourages the enemy, weakens the resolve of our allies, to
include Pakistan, and undermines the support of the American
people.
Public support for our effort cannot be overstated, and
protracted counterinsurgencies test the resolve of the most
committed nations. As such, it is crucial that the President
and national leaders communicate our strategy, why it is
important, and in general what are our plans, and do that to
the American people. We must educate and inform them on the
nature of the war and why thousands of insurgents who are
lightly armed can challenge a larger, much better armed and
trained force, and as such, why it takes as much time as it
does to win.
Most insurgencies are, in fact, defeated, but almost all
take considerable time. Steady progress, despite occasional
setbacks, with forthright and frank assessments is key to our
public support.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you so much.
[The prepared statement of General Keane can be found in
the Appendix on page 80.]
The Chairman. Janet St. Laurent.
STATEMENT OF JANET ST. LAURENT, MANAGING DIRECTOR, DEFENSE
CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. St. Laurent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity.
Mr. Chairman. Get a little closer.
Ms. St. Laurent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to be here today to talk about the Government
Accountability Office's (GAO's) perspective on a number of
operational considerations that will have to be factored into
the development and execution of strategy for Iraq and
Afghanistan.
As you know, GAO has done considerable work looking at the
military operation in Iraq, and also Iraq reconstruction as
well as Afghanistan reconstruction, and based on this work I
would like to provide a few observations on strategy issues,
but also then discuss several of the nuts-and-bolts operations
issues that need to be considered in terms of the pace and
timing of reposturing.
First, from our perspective, it is very important that
improvements are needed to ensure that U.S. strategy for Iraq
and Afghanistan is developed using a governmentwide approach
that supports ongoing coordination. Our work in both countries
continues to highlight situations in which the Department of
Defense (DOD), the U.S. Department of State (State), and the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have not
fully coordinated their efforts. For example, we have reported
that DOD had not fully coordinated its effort to reconstruct
roads in Afghanistan with USAID. Also, DOD and State have not
developed a unified, comprehensive plan to guide U.S. efforts
to develop the capacity of Afghan National Security Forces.
Those are just a couple of examples from our work.
Second, revised strategies will need to balance the
specific goals, measures and time frames with the available
resources. This means that DOD will need to carefully consider
the availability of forces, equipment and transportation assets
when developing plans for Afghanistan, given the stress on the
force during the past several years and DOD's large footprint
in Iraq.
Third, attention will be needed to ensure that U.S. efforts
are executed in a manner that places priority on using
resources effectively and efficiently in order to minimize
waste and mismanagement. Congress has appropriated over $800
billion for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation
Enduring Freedom (OEF) to date, and billions more will be
required to support a new strategy.
It will be especially important in light of competing
demands on the Federal budget that DOD make a concerted effort
to avoid numerous problems with contractors that have occurred
in Iraq, and carefully screen urgent requirements for procuring
new types of equipment that might be needed in Afghanistan
given the different nature of the terrain.
Regarding Iraq, one major issue confronting the new
Administration will be to determine whether the pace of the
drawdown should be calendar driven in light of the terms of the
new SOFA agreement, or based on achieving certain goals and
conditions. Until now, the planning the DOD has done for a
drawdown has been based on a conditions-based approach.
However, until the new Administration unveils a new strategy,
the way ahead is somewhat uncertain.
Second, developing plans to manage a potential drawdown of
up to 140,000 military personnel, numerous contractors and vast
stocks of equipment will be a daunting task. For example,
closing up to 300 facilities in Iraq will be a complex, time-
consuming and costly process, especially at places like Balad
Air Force Base, which has over 24,000 people. Army officials
estimate that a facility of that size might take about 18
months to turn over to the Iraqis or close.
DOD will also need to coordinate the movement and
retrograde of hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment and
establish a clear chain of command to manage that effort. The
pace of the drawdown will also be affected by the capacity of
facilities in neighboring countries such as Kuwait, as well as
by the limited availability of certain equipment such as heavy
transports.
Finally, DOD will need a well-thought-out plan to manage
the drawdown of up to 150,000 contractors. While DOD planners
have begun to develop these plans, much work remains to be
done, and some initial planing assumptions may need to be
revisited depending on the new strategy.
In Afghanistan, U.S. strategists and DOD planners will need
to consider a more wide-ranging set of factors given the
austere state of Afghanistan's infrastructure and mountainous
terrain. Regarding military forces' demands, certain types of
skill sets and ranks, such as civil affairs, transportation,
engineers, trainers, which require large numbers of midgrade
officers and senior noncommissioned officers, will be
challenging to fill given the already high pace of operations
for these skills and ranks.
Equipment needs may also be difficult to fill quickly,
given that DOD has the equivalent of 47 brigades' worth of
equipment in Iraq as of last year and has already drawn on some
prepositioned equipment. Unlike in Iraq, the Afghanistan
theater of operation lacks large stocks of theater-provided
equipment. This will make it more difficult to fully equip and
transport new units deploying from the United States, many of
which have significant equipment shortages. These issues can be
addressed over time, but it is a matter of the pacing and
considering the operation tempo of personnel.
Transportation using both air/land and overland supply
routes, airlift and overland supply routes are also likely to
pose a number of challenges with regard to both security
issues, distance and access to neighboring countries.
Finally, DOD may also have to manage and build up a
contract workforce in Afghanistan to help support a growing
military presence and will need to adequately train military
commanders to do effective contractor oversight.
So, in conclusion, planners will need to consider
Afghanistan's unique nature, but apply lessons learned over the
years from Iraq when appropriate. Also, U.S. strategies for
both countries will need to be integrated and synchronized to
ensure competing resources are prioritized effectively, and
that DOD retains the residual capability to meet the needs of
other combatant commanders. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. St. Laurent can be found in
the Appendix on page 91.]
The Chairman. General Keane, in your statement you say the
public support for our effort cannot be overstated, and
projected counterinsurgencies test the resolve of most
committed nations.
If we look back to 9/11, at that time we fully realized
that the genesis of our problems stemmed from the al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. You stressed the fact we need the support of the
American people in this insurgency in Afghanistan.
Let us lay Iraq aside right now. How do we at this stage of
the game, after these years, obviously with no successful
strategic thought being given to that effort, how do we at this
stage of the game get the full support of the American people
that is needed?
General Keane. I think that is a great question because it
is so essential for success. There are many strategic reviews
that are taking place right now. The White House, the National
Security Council is involved in one, and certainly General
Petraeus in the theater, and I'm sure special envoy Ambassador
Richard Holbrooke is making an assessment.
I think what will come out of that is a strategy and
decisions associated with that. And then I would hope that we
will craft a campaign plan in support of that. But then once we
decide on what the way ahead is in Afghanistan, with a new
President here, it is an opportunity, a dramatic transition of
power like this--it gives this President the opportunity to
connect with the American people on this issue. And I think you
communicate very directly to the American people about what the
strategy is, what we are trying to accomplish, and the general
sense of--without getting into specifics of our plans--but what
the character of our operations are going to be like.
And I think this is the beginning of an education process
that the President and other national leaders like yourselves
stay in contact with the American people on this. We will have
our setbacks. I think if you sort of report out to the American
people on a regular basis, three or four times a year on the
war and what is working and what is not working, and they get a
sense of it, our credibility stays intact with the American
people as national leaders. Because it is not always going to
work. The enemy has a vote all the time in war. They will do
some things and will have opportunities to expose some of our
vulnerabilities, as they always do. And when that happens, we
are just very forthright about it. We will miscalculate at
times, and when it happens, let us be honest about it, but stay
focused on what we are trying to achieve. At times we will have
to rheostat the mission a little bit. We will change because
the enemy is changing and adjust and keep the American people
informed.
I think continuous discussion about what the strategy is,
what the results of it are in terms of our performance, what is
working and not working, the adjustments we are making. We are
not insulting the American people; the collective wisdom is
extraordinary. And I think there is an opportunity for them to
stay connected with us as a result as national leaders go
forward and our forces and our effort goes forward.
The Chairman. Thank you, General.
Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Editorial content, as I said, we just came back on Monday
with respect to what General Keane said. The thing our
commanders seem somewhat concerned about, understandably from
their perspective, is that the American people had best be
advised that when we add troops, and we go in, particularly in
the south into the poppy-growing regions, there is going to be
a damn tough war, and there will be casualties, and there will
be losses. So I think it really underscores what General Keane
said is that it is the responsibility of those of us across the
spectrum, including here in Congress, to ensure that the
American people understand the urgency of this fight. Editorial
content to the questions.
I would like to read a passage from Dr. Cordesman's
testimony that I had the opportunity to read last evening. And
he is talking about some of the evaluation data that we are
looking at with respect to Afghanistan, about increases in
military clashes, direct fire incidences, et cetera. And in
commenting on those data, he said, ``Second''--second of a
point he made--``they,'' the data, ``show that...`post-conflict
reconstruction' is little more than a sick joke. To get to the
mid and long term, we have to survive and dominate the present.
If we succeed, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan will
be so different by 2011 that we will have to reshape almost
every aspect of our aid and development plans to set far more
realistic and modest goals based on the art of the possible and
Afghan and Pakistani desires, rather than our efforts to design
model countries in our own image. If we fail, there will be no
mid and long term in any sense that makes current plans even
mildly relevant.''
That is a pretty profound paragraph. Interestingly, it
plays off what General McKiernan said to us when we talked
about sustainability of the Afghan Government over the longer
term. He said, ``Well, to get to that point you have got to win
the fight.''
I would ask all four of you, how would you define winning
in Afghanistan? And if you would like to contrast that to Iraq,
of course please feel free to do so.
But I think that is the key challenge right now. What does
success in Afghanistan look like, or hopefully what will it
look like? And Dr. Cordesman, because I quoted you, I would ask
you to kind of lead that off.
Dr. Cordesman. I think in Iraq the phrase is, ``Is Iraq
good enough?'' And in Afghanistan and Pakistan it is, ``Is
Afghanistan and Pakistan good enough?''
We are not going to create model democratic governments. We
are not going to move them toward sustained economic
development. We are not going to restructure all of the
cultural, tribal and--values that some people once saw as a
goal. And I think Secretary Gates made this point quite validly
for Afghanistan.
But what you do have to do is move toward a level of
stability where you can begin to honestly talk about post-
conflict reconstruction. You need to create successful Afghan
and Pakistani forces which can take over the mission. You need
to have aid that meets what people need, a country that is 70
percent agricultural and is getting about 14 percent of the aid
flow into agricultural areas.
These are the kinds of things which we might be able to
achieve over the next few years. But to get there, the real
issue right now is to have stability and to reverse the trends.
And here I have to frankly disagree very flatly with Dr.
Biddle and to some extent with General Keane. I haven't seen
any of these trends that indicate we are headed toward a
stalemate. What I have seen is just the reverse. In the NATO/
ISAF data, the U.N. data, the data that I see come out of other
groups assessing this is that we suffered major reversals
throughout this year both in the rise in violence and in the
loss of areas which are under Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin
(HIG), and Haqqani influence.
Now, one answer to your question is, whatever happens, we
cannot emerge from this and call it victory if there are still
al Qaeda, Taliban and extremist sanctuaries inside Pakistan.
And we can't emerge out of this and call it ``victory'' if we
win the kinetic events, as we tend to, but we see the area
under Taliban and other influence increase by 30 to 50 percent
a year, as we have continuously since 2005.
And if I may just briefly close, Mr. Chairman, it is
interesting to talk about the Taliban being unpopular. There
has been a major shift towards acceptance of the Taliban. And,
in contrast, in a recent ABC poll--and I think it is borne out
by U.N. and U.S. polls--the number of people who feel the
United States has performed well in Afghanistan in Afghanistan
has been cut in half in the last 3 years.
It has gone from 68 percent in 2005 to 32 percent now. The
number of supporters of the NATO/ISAF mission in Afghanistan
fell from 67 percent in 2006 to 37 percent this year. The
number of people who justify attacks on NATO/ISAF forces in
Afghanistan rose from 13 percent to 25 percent over that same
period of time.
And when you look at the reaction to NATO's current force
structure in Afghanistan, you see that because of the need to
rely so much on air power, we can almost map by district where
NATO is actually present and using air power in the
unpopularity of NATO forces and NATO capabilities in the
region.
The other last point I guess I should make: I am not sure
we disagree that much about troop levels. But where I think we
do need to focus much more is not on what General McKiernan is
being given by way of total troops, but the fact that we don't
have advisers; we are not having civilians put in the field,
you have stopped funding for many aspects of aid in the course
of this year, and you have massively cut the amount of money
going for Afghan force development. That isn't a matter of
balance in troop levels; it is a matter of funding what you
need to do in Afghanistan.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Doctor.
Dr. Biddle.
Dr. Biddle. Let me begin by responding to your question,
and then if I may, I will respond briefly to Dr. Cordesman as
well.
Mr. McHugh. I would appreciate that.
Dr. Biddle. Ultimately, war is about political aims. So
defining whether or not you win or lose is in reference to the
aims for which you are fighting. And I think there is some
degree of consensus that there are two really central U.S. aims
in Afghanistan: that Afghanistan not become a haven for al
Qaeda, as it was prior to 2001; but also--and I would argue,
more importantly--that Afghanistan not become a haven for
destabilizing Pakistan. Because the objective threat to U.S.
national interests in Pakistan is in many ways much greater
than it is in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda has many potential havens. Afghanistan is one. It
is not necessarily even the best. In many ways, Pakistan is a
much more serious problem, but it is a problem over which we
have very limited leverage. If we have a serious problem which
there are limited things we can do to improve--there are some
and we should do them and we haven't been, but at the end of
the day, our leverage in Pakistan is not what it is in some
other places.
Arguably, we should at least obey the Hippocratic Oath and
do no harm. And should Afghanistan collapse into chaos or
return to Taliban rule, it would then become an important haven
for destabilizing Pakistan. Those are our two primary
interests.
Given that, the way that I would define ``victory'' is, we
have secured those two interests. At the end of the process,
Afghanistan is not a plausible terrorist haven for attacks on
the continental United States, and it is not a plausible threat
to the stability of its neighbor across the border.
The kind of government domestically in Kabul that achieves
those two ends I am quite agnostic with respect to. Other
things being equal, I would prefer for Afghanistan the things I
would prefer for any Nation in the world: a degree of
representative government, prosperity, liberty, many, many
other things; and surely at some level we should seek those for
Afghanistan. I am not willing to wage war for all of the things
that I would like to see in Afghanistan.
In terms of the waging of war and the U.S. vital national
interests at stake that should guide the definition of victory
and defeat in the conduct of a war, I would limit those to the
presence of base camps and the threat to its neighbor.
I suspect at the end of the day that some degree of
legitimacy in Kabul or somewhere within the Government of
Pakistan will be necessary in order to achieve those ends. But
I tend to view the question of how Afghanistan should be
governed as a means and not an end. Any form of government in
Afghanistan that at the end of the day is sufficient to deny
its use as a haven I am prepared to settle for. And I suspect
that something a good deal less Jeffersonian in Kabul will
probably suffice to that end.
Let me now turn briefly to the question of prognosis, if
you will, in Afghanistan. And heaven knows, I would have no
disagreement with the gravity of the situation and the negative
nature of current trends. I think there is universal agreement
that the war has not been going well. The question is not what
the current trend is and what has happened over the last year.
The question is the projection forward from that trend; and
this is a much, much dicier business on which available
evidence gives us a weaker basis.
If we had the ability to devote now the entirety of the
resources that will ultimately be required to secure those two
strategic interests I mentioned a moment ago, of course we
should, and we take risks by not doing that. The problem is, of
course we can't. We have other demands for the same resources.
And given that, you have to make a choice not about what you
would like to do, but about how much disadvantage, in which of
these two theaters you think you can survive.
And especially given another point of agreement that I have
with Dr. Cordesman, which is the importance of nontroop
contributions to both the decline in our fortunes in
Afghanistan recently and the requirements there to improve,
many of which we have less requirement for in Iraq, I would
like to see a political surge, a more well-coordinated, all-of-
government approach to dealing with the problem in Afghanistan,
a more systematic integration of our aid effort with a
political strategy with a military strategy that I agree needs
substantial development. All of that can be done much more
quickly and can help reduce the odds--it can never eliminate
them, but can help reduce the odds--that we get so deeply into
failure and lack of progress in Afghanistan that we cannot then
dig ourselves out, once we develop the ability to transfer the
troops to add the military piece of the puzzle that is
stabilizing the country.
Mr. McHugh. General.
General Keane. Yes. I also agree that our number one
national interest in the region is Pakistan. And the
relationship of Afghanistan to Pakistan is significant, so what
we are trying to do in Afghanistan is very important to the
future stability of Pakistan.
That said, in my own mind our strategy and goals should be
somewhat limited in terms of an end state in Afghanistan. And
by that I mean, we clearly--to win and what does it look like,
we have to defeat the insurgency.
Now, when is an insurgency defeated? Well, it leaves the
battlefield and chooses not to engage is one form of defeat.
Or, as in Iraq, which is the best of all answers, it comes into
the political process because it has some desire and some
expectation that this political process will reward them,
though they will not be able to seek those rewards using guns,
because that failed.
So that is the way that would manifest itself. And I would
think it would be the latter in Afghanistan, as it is in Iraq.
Reconcilables will come into the political process;
irreconcilables will not, and they will go away.
Secondly, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National
Security Forces themselves must have the capacity to provide
for their own internal security. And we can measure that, as we
are measuring it in Iraq. So that is another indicator of what
is taking place. And some form of representative government
that has to connect to the people at the local level with some
form of control, but not completely control in those outcomes.
And I don't think we need to be prescriptive about this. I
think we should try to guide it so the--and guide away from the
significant amount of corruption we now have with this very
weak, inept central government.
But some of the things on the margin here, just trying to
be honest about this: It is a relatively uneducated class in
Afghanistan and high illiteracy rates. It is a significantly
impoverished nation that depends on an opium trade to help it
survive. Twenty years from now most of those conditions will
still be there; we have to be honest about this. And how far,
how far do we extend American lives to change those major
challenges?
I don't think we extend them to that distance. I think we
do what we said: We take the threat away, the insurgency. And
we have the means to do that; we know how to do this. And we
can stand up a military that is capable of protecting its
people. And I think we can influence a government to be better
than what it currently is. This will take resources, and most
importantly, this will take time. And, of course, it will take
the blood of our troops as well to achieve this.
Another point, and I said this in the statement, and it is
an important point for me because I think we fall prey to this.
If we are going to have a limited strategic objective, say
close to something Steve and I have discussed, that doesn't
mean that you limit the resources that you are applying to
achieve that limited objective. Quite the contrary, if we are
going to defeat the insurgency, it has to be all in with
political resources, with governance resources, and with
economic resources in addition to the obvious, a sufficient
amount of troops to be able to do that.
So I think this will have an appeal to some if we are going
to limit the strategy and outcomes; therefore, we don't have to
pay as much of a price even to get a limited outcome. And we
should be very careful about that because defeating an
insurgency does require a significant price.
Mr. McHugh. Ms. St. Laurent.
Ms. St. Laurent. Our work speaks generally to the kinds of
key elements that will need to be included in a broad,
comprehensive strategy, that being an integrated approach that
does reflect the contributions of civilians and AID and State,
as well as DOD, and the identification of the kinds of
resources that are going to be required and, also, measures to
assess progress along the way.
Having said that, I think clearly elements of those plans
that are likely to be developed by the new Administration will
need to focus on ways to improve security--certainly, an
additional emphasis on training up of Afghan security forces,
and then an emphasis on an absence of terrorist safe havens in
the region.
But one key thing, as we continue to do work in
Afghanistan, that we will be focusing on and looking at is
whether or not, again, these resources are being applied
effectively. And to date, we have seen a number of problems in
those areas. For example, in terms of control over weapons, we
have a report that will be coming out this morning that focuses
on weapons being given to Afghan security forces that DOD has
not maintained adequate control and accounting for those
weapons. And we certainly don't want to create conditions in
which problems could emerge by the failure to sort of
administer any additional assistance that we are providing
effectively.
And also, with regard to the Afghan security forces, I
think a key issue for DOD is going to be how to come up with
the additional forces to do that training and assistance to
develop those units. DOD does not have the existing force
structure where we have these training units. We put them
together for Iraq, and now the demands to do that in
Afghanistan are most likely going to increase.
So I think it is an issue that perhaps will need to be
examined in the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, and as the
Administration again develops its strategy for Afghanistan.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I started on an editorial comment; let me
please end with one. And I apologize for taking so much time.
Let me first say that I couldn't agree with General Keane
more. Because we redefine success in Afghanistan in somewhat a
more modest way, a different way than Iraq, that doesn't mean
we can do it in a way that is less taxing, less expensive, and
less burdensome across the spectrum.
The second thing I would say is a word of caution. And with
respect to Ms. St. Laurent's comments, we can't do this alone.
This is a NATO mission. This is not officially a U.S. mission,
and we have to rely upon our NATO partners, whether it is the
carabiniere or whoever, who did a very admirable job in Iraq
training up the national police and stepping forward. And I
think the American people must be advised as well.
In my judgment, at the end of the day, after we create a
sufficient Afghan National Police, a sufficient Afghan National
Army, and security forces across the board that can do the
things we want to have done in that theater, it is unlikely the
Afghan national economy can support that.
We are going to have to make a very long-term commitment to
this. There is no way to do it on the cheap. And I just think
in the spirit of what several of you said of being open and
honest to the American people, it should be said here as well.
Thank you all for being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
We are now under the five-minute rule. Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. I want to thank our panel for being here.
I think it is accurate to say that the surge worked. It is
also accurate to say that simultaneous to the surge, the
Marines in Anbar came to the conclusion that they could pay the
Sheiks to pay their tribesmen to not only stop shooting at
Americans, but to start protecting Americans.
In the beginning it was American money that made this
accommodation work. Now I am told that Iraqi oil money, through
a power-sharing agreement that looks, in my opinion, more like
the Magna Carta than a Jeffersonian democracy, is taking place,
but at least it appears that some sort of a power-sharing
agreement with the Sheiks has been made, and they are shooting
at a lot fewer Americans. I consider that a good thing.
Using that model and using what General Keane just said
about--I am told the Afghans refer to Karzai as ``The American
Bull,'' mockingly--that really is a tribal society.
General, is it your opinion that our military is now trying
to focus more on an accommodation with the different tribal
warlords than trying to create some sort of a central
government?
I am not of the opinion that there ever was a strong
central government in Kabul, and I really don't see how the
American presence can create something that has never really
existed in that country. Maybe our goals, as you said, we ought
to be shooting for a little bit higher standard. But I am
just--again, I am hearing--I am in agreement with what I am
hearing from you. I am just curious if the American military is
going to step to, which is a direct accommodation with the
different tribal leaders around that country.
General Keane. Yes. I think one of the things that should
inform us, and some things that happened in Iraq, you know, at
least can help educate us where there are some similarities.
And there are some similarities here.
But one of the things I learned in being intimately
involved in the situation in Iraq is, to change behavior, you
have to break the will of your opponent. And--Sun Tzu always
said this, and it reminded me of what we did in Iraq again.
I can remember one of the Sheiks who was also an insurgent
leader. We talked to many of them. He said, You know, after
America occupied Baghdad--and I never thought of it in that
way, but from his perspective it is true--we knew we couldn't
win. So what he was doing then is negotiating with us for the
best deal he could get. Initially it started out to be
financial for the Sons of Iraq program, but then he is in the
political process now, which is fascinating.
So we have to deal with that issue first. You can't sit
down with the Taliban now and reconcile. Why would they
reconcile? They are winning.
Mr. Taylor. General, if I may, it is my understanding
that--I am separating the tribal warlords from the Taliban. I
don't think they are one and the same.
General Keane. I understand.
Mr. Taylor. Correct me if I am wrong.
General Keane. Tribal leaders and Taliban, particularly in
the south, a lot of that is one and the same, much as it was in
Iraq. You are talking to a Sheik, an insurgent leader in Iraq,
you are also--they are one and the same.
In the south, it is not unanimous, but you are dealing with
the same kinds of people. So we have to change that behavior.
Many of them, I think, are reconcilable, but that takes time
for them to recognize they cannot achieve their goals in the
manner that they are currently trying to achieve them and that
there are opportunities for them.
But that is not going to be done overnight, and certainly
it is not the power of persuasion that does that at all. It is
the harsh realities on the ground that do that.
But the people are a major factor in this as well. I mean,
they really do have influence. It is not just the leaders
themselves.
Mr. Taylor. How do you fund it? In Iraq you had oil to fund
everything. How do you fund it in Afghanistan?
General Keane. In Afghanistan it will have to be largely
our resources and NATO resources. I mean, that is one of the
problems we are dealing with here. There is no wealth to speak
of. And the funding, as Congressman--the ranking minority
mentioned, Congressman McHugh--one of the reluctances, one of
the reasons why we are sitting at 80,000 Afghan National
Security Forces now, and going to 130,000 when we should be at
least twice all of that, is because of the sustainment costs
for that.
We would have to provide the sustainment costs, which is
not true in Iraq. They are paying for it themselves. And that
is why we are at the numbers we are at now. And out of the
80,000, probably 40-, 50,000 is what is really effective. So we
have to get over this in terms of resources or we are going to
protract our stay, and then eventually we will walk away; and
that is not the answer.
But to get back to your point, I am convinced in my own
mind that there is much that could be done with the tribal
leaders, less so with these warlords that are well known. I do
think we will continue to have a weak central government even
if we have a new leader. But the important thing is some
representation at the local level that is connected to the
people and understands their needs, at least so that resources
can be funneled to them and there is a connection there. I
think we can assist with some of this.
We can't remake their whole governance issue in
Afghanistan, nor should we try, as I have said before. But I
think we can make some reasonable progress here.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
I hope that you can help me frame an answer to a question
for which I do not have a good answer.
I understand that when the Soviets were going into
Afghanistan they were asked if they had seen all those rocks in
Afghanistan. Yes. Well, have you noticed all the British blood
on those rocks in Afghanistan? If you would like Soviet blood
on those rocks in Afghanistan, just try to do what the British
could not do.
I know that one may argue that this is different because
now we are not fighting against the central government, we are
fighting with the central government. But then the response is,
Gee, the central government is just terribly weak. The areas
where the bad guys are the federal government has very little
control. And if, in fact, we are able to do, they ask me, what
the Soviets and the British could not do, and stabilize
Afghanistan so that the bad guys are no longer there, they will
just have gone across the border into Pakistan, where they are
not unwelcomed.
So the question is, why are we not engaged in an exercise
in futility?
Dr. Cordesman. If I may make a first stab at this,
Congressman, I think that if we were to repeat the Russian or
the British experience, we would have an exercise in futility.
But I think, as there is some agreement in this panel, if the
focus is to create successful Afghan security forces, if it is
to move from what has been sort of tactical clashes to a,
``clear, hold, build,'' strategy where you are also developing
capabilities for local governance and stability in the fields
which are Afghan rather than ours, then I think it isn't an
exercise in futility. And I think we would be much further
along in demonstrating that, much less dependent on U.S.
troops, if we had recognized this and funded it early on.
Right now, we have 1,000 of the 3,000 U.S. advisers, all of
whom are not trained, necessary to deal with the Afghan Army.
NATO has less than a third of its teams. When it comes down to
the Afghan police, which is a critical aspect of substituting
for us, we have all of 800 of the 2,400 people to deal with the
current force. And where the Congress once peaked this effort
at $7.3 billion in fiscal 2007, you are funding it at two
billion this year; and you have just nearly doubled the goal
for the Afghan Army.
So it isn't an exercise in futility if you provide the
resources. But this is not just troop levels. And one thing we
have to do is start talking numbers and hard facts and real
options, not concepts.
Mr. Bartlett. Sir, but then they tell me, So what? Even if
we are able to accomplish this, and the bad guys have simply
gone across the border into Pakistan, where they are not
unwelcome, what have we accomplished with the enormous
investment of American blood and treasure?
Dr. Cordesman. I think if you are talking the bad guys in
very limited numbers pushed across the border, if you are
talking the kind of programs I have seen to provide aid to
Pakistan, if we were able to implement--and it is hard to get
into details here--options for using Special Operations Forces
to help train the Pakistanis, who ultimately are not going to
allow these bad guys to stay there indefinitely because they
threaten Pakistan, not just Afghanistan, you have options.
Can anybody promise success? I don't think anybody can.
Mr. Bartlett. Does Pakistan have any more control over
these border areas or have much more control than Afghanistan
does? They are fairly autonomous, are they not?
Dr. Cordesman. Well, the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas are not autonomous at all. What they are is under control
of the Pakistani military, because they have never been fully
integrated into the Pakistani Government structure. If the
Pakistani military chooses to deal with that region, it is
completely different from having an episodic Pakistani
presence, where often you have divisions within the Pakistani
military.
We have not pressured them hard. In the Baluchi area we
have the same problem.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Dr. Snyder, please.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I
appreciate this discussion today. The phrase ``exercise in
futility,'' I would say our discussion today is an exercise in
realism. And I appreciate you-all's contribution to that kind
of discussion as we look forward.
I have two questions, one for you, General Keane, and then
one for Dr. Cordesman, which means you have got to answer in
about two minutes, General Keane, so I can get on to my second
question with Dr. Cordesman.
On page five of your written statement you say the
following, quote, ``Can we shift our priorities to Afghanistan
and win without squandering the gains we have made in Iraq? The
answer is a resounding `yes,' if we have the patience to
succeed in Iraq and the courage and wisdom to transition
properly to Afghanistan.'' That is a quote from your written
statement.
You retired in December of 2003. If we go back to mid-2002
and I phrased that question differently and said, ``Now,'' mid-
2002, in the run-up to the invasion in Iraq, ``can we shift our
priorities to Iraq and win without squandering the gains we
have made in Afghanistan?'' I think today we would conclude--
this is no longer your quote--that the answer turns out to have
been a resounding ``no,'' that as we shifted our focus and
priorities and personnel, we did squander the gains we had made
in Afghanistan.
How can you so solidly say today that the answer is a
resounding ``yes''? And also did that kind of discussion occur
in 2002? Was that question you asked so well, eloquently there
today, was that question discussed in 2002?
General Keane. That is hard to answer in two minutes. But I
was there when this issue arose. There were some of us who
expressed concern about moving away from Afghanistan and
putting the priority on Iraq, particularly at this time. The
first time that issue arose was around Thanksgiving, December
of 2001, so weeks after we toppled the Taliban.
Dr. Snyder. You mean the first time the issue----
General Keane. The issue of Iraq arose as an objective.
And our concerns were, at that time, Why, why would we do
that now, given the fact that we have just brought the Taliban
down, we have the al Qaeda on the run, we have got to stay
after these guys?
After all, we went there for two reasons. One is the host,
the Taliban, for the sanctuary, we had to take the host away,
and we also had to eliminate the sanctuary, which was al Qaeda.
So now we were after the sanctuary, and we were running after
them. And we had Special Operations doing it, and we had lots
of platforms doing it, and we had a limited amount of forces
doing it. We should have had a lot more doing it. We lost that
argument as well. So--yes, that is true.
And clearly, the priorities in Iraq enabled the
resurgence--we did eliminate the sanctuary. It did go away. But
it did permit the reemergence of the Taliban. And I also think
it caused the Pakistanis--and this is crucial. It caused
Musharraf himself--I believe when we made the overture to NATO
and asked them to come in and take over in Afghanistan, I think
Musharraf believed at that moment the U.S. was not committed to
Afghanistan, and he started working both sides of this issue as
a hedge against the possible return of the Taliban in the
future. And it is the reason why those sanctuaries are still
there today. And I am talking about the Afghan sanctuary in
Pakistan.
Dr. Snyder. I am going to interrupt you, General Keane, but
I appreciate what you have outlined, because what you are
saying is, we are older and wiser now, and we have learned from
that experience and what can happen.
Dr. Cordesman, I want to read a statement from your written
statement. I don't understand the sentence very well. I think
there is a whole lot on page 13.
You say, quote, ``The State Department, AID, and Department
of Defense have failed to develop an integrated aid plan,
budget request, and provide the personnel and funding needed
for urgent warfighting needs.'' Then you say, ``This needs to
be forced upon the executive branch, and the senior officials
involved need to be held personally accountable on a regular
basis.''
I am not sure what you are saying there. Are you saying, I
take it the State Department needs to provide the personnel and
funding needed for urgent warfighting needs? I don't think the
State Department sees that as their goal. Are you saying they
need an integrated budget request, that we should just have one
glob of money, the State Department, Department of Defense
together?
I just don't understand that sentence or what you are
trying to get at there.
Dr. Cordesman. First, we have a vast amount of U.S. money
going in there that never gets into the field, into the
districts, where it is vital to providing governance, economic
stability, the ``build'' side of ``clear and hold.'' And that
basically is the function, that there is no one really in
charge of the various aid programs that tie together things
like Commanders' Emergency Response Program (CERP), what comes
out of the PRTs, and the overall aid program.
AID is not in charge of aid, the State Department doesn't
provide a coherent plan, the Department of Defense doesn't
integrate its aid activities; and as a result, the money flows
in very interesting ways, but doesn't get out into the field.
It is also, I think, very clear when we talk about one
basic metric. It is nice to call for civilians for the aid
program, but after seven years, you have got over 1,000 U.S.
military in the PRTs, and 40, less than 40, U.S. civilians,
according to a Department of Defense report issued this month.
So when you talk about the sheer lack of any coherent
effort, it is critical.
Dr. Snyder. I agree. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Randy Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank
the chairman and ranking member for having this hearing, and
thank all of you for being here.
In the five minutes I have, General Keane, I would like to
ask you a question. It is based on the testimony that I have
heard today.
You have indicated that it is important that we sustain the
gains that we have in Iraq and that we win in Afghanistan. I
heard Dr. Cordesman talk about one of the reasons that we are
not winning is because this committee and Congress and previous
administration has not put the resources forward that we needed
to win. I heard Dr. Biddle talk about the need to move in
transferring assets slower rather than more rapidly from Iraq
to Afghanistan. And I also heard the words from Dr. Cordesman
about transparency.
Sometimes actions that we take have ripple effects that
keep us from taking actions down the road. In about 24 hours,
we are going to vote on this stimulus package that many of us
have not had an opportunity to fully read and look at--not a
lot of transparency.
But assuming it is fine, assuming it is the direction we
are going to go, in my estimation, voting for that stimulus
package is just as surely voting to reduce defense expenditures
down the road as the vote we will take when that comes around
for this reason. Just the interest carry on the bailouts that
we have done so far and this stimulus package, just the
interest carry alone would cover the full budgets for NASA, the
National Science Foundation, Homeland Security, the Department
of Justice, including the FBI, the Army Corps of Engineers, all
the operations of the White House, all the operations of
Congress, and the Department of Transportation combined.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, when we
go to do those budgets and we have lost expenditures on all
these budgets, we are going to have to cut costs somewhere. And
my question to you is, do you think that a reduced defense
budget will support what we need to do in Afghanistan and Iraq?
And can we achieve victory if we have significant reductions to
defense spending?
General Keane. Well, having spent a lot of time with that
budget as the vice chief of staff and all the vagaries in it, I
think the answer for us is, I don't believe--it is not so much
the Defense budget as--what we have tried to lay out here is
what are our goals and objectives and the strategy and support
of that, and then apply the resources that are necessary.
If you set a goal and an objective to have a positive
outcome--I like to use the words that are important, like
``win,'' words that American people can understand, and what
does that mean--then the resources have to go with that. That
mission then is given to the Department of Defense, and they
have choices that they have to make with the amount of money
that is going to be available to them.
And having been involved in a lot of that myself, I think
the resources for the operational requirements where troops are
on the line, those resources will be met, particularly with the
energy of a new President behind the strategy and goals he
wants to achieve, assuming that is there.
The choices will be this. They will not--I don't believe
operational dollars will get cut, what we call ``operational
maintenance''; and I think the money in the supplement to
support those activities, I would believe would be funded.
Where the rub will come from for Secretary Gates is, and
where he has discretion--he has discretion in operational
accounts, as we are describing; I don't think he would cut
them, because we are fighting two wars. The other discretion he
has is in his investment capital accounts, which is where all
the programs are for the new equipment and the modernization
programs; and I believe that is where they will go to live
within the budget that is assigned, given the economic crisis
that we are in. And then they will make the choices within
there and make the best possible choices they can.
It would make no sense to set a goal to win in Afghanistan
with a new strategy in support of it, even if it is a limited
one, and then not provide the resources to accomplish that
goal. I mean, that would be obvious to any of the execution
people that those resources aren't there for them.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Mr. Chairman, I have two documents that the
gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, asked, without
objection, be placed in the record.
The Chairman. Without objection, they are.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 119.]
The Chairman. Mr. Andrews.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses
very much.
General Keane, I think you made an incredibly penetrating
point a few minutes ago. Correct me if I misphrase it. One of
the proximate causes of the resurgence of the Taliban in the
FATA and in Afghanistan was that General Musharraf hedged his
bets as a result of his perception that we might be
deemphasizing our emphasis on Afghanistan in the 2002-2003
window. Did I state your point correctly?
If that is the case--I agree with it completely--what
signal could we send to the Pakistani leadership today that
would tell them that we are reaffirming an unshakeable
commitment to victory in Afghanistan over the radical elements
who attacked us on 9/11? What would be the remedy that would
say to the present Pakistani leadership, we are lethally
serious about being successful here?
General Keane. It is a critical point, as I tried to say in
the statement, that our commitment is truly an issue here if we
are going to have a favorable outcome. And it is sort of an
``all-in'' proposition in terms of commitment.
The enemy will look at this, and if we are not committed,
they will read weaknesses and they will be encouraged by it.
And all the stakeholders--the people in the region are
stakeholders in this, and the most serious stakeholder
certainly in the region is Pakistan. And they have to clearly
understand--and they will judge us by what we are doing and
less by what we are saying. I mean, we will have the rhetoric
to back it up, but what will they look at?
Mr. Andrews. Right. What are the actions?
General Keane. They are going to look at level of force
increase.
Mr. Andrews. What do you think that----
Mr. McKeon. Number of forces.
Mr. Andrews. What do you think it ought to be?
General Keane. I don't know what it should be because I
haven't done the detailed analysis to tell you that. But our
commanders will know what that is.
Mr. Andrews. What is the second element?
General Keane. So the level of that commitment is number
one.
And then the other is the resource package it takes to
sustain this effort. Some of that is largely financial.
Mr. Andrews. Right.
General Keane. Because we have to pay for the Afghan
National Army's growth, which must be significant.
Mr. Andrews. Right.
General Keane. Then they have to see the resources that
Tony has tried to point out that are so necessary. It is not
just money to grow an army.
Mr. Andrews. Right.
General Keane. We need the trainers to grow that army, and
we are not putting them in there.
They will look at all of that. And many of the people that
are advising that new government in Pakistan are military
professionals themselves. They will be able to make adequate
judgments about our level of commitment based on the resources
that we are providing, and also, you know, the rhetoric in
support of that and the political risk, I think, that national
leaders are taking associated with that decision.
Mr. Andrews. Let me ask a related question, which goes to
something you said, General, and Dr. Biddle said, and Dr.
Cordesman said also.
Are we dancing with the right partner in Afghanistan? I
think one of the reasons that Iraq had some success in Anbar
clearly was that we did business with the tribal leaders in
Anbar, as Mr. Taylor talked about earlier, not with the central
government in Baghdad. And the alliance that led to the victory
in Anbar was the alliance between the sheik leaders in Anbar
and us.
There is a range of options here. We could try to strike
similar regional accords with tribal leaders throughout
Afghanistan. We could reject such accords and deal only with
the central government. We could do something in between.
What should we do? Who should we be trying to ally with
here to create the kind of legitimacy and stability in
Afghanistan that is necessary?
Dr. Cordesman. Could I, Congressman?
There was an auxiliary Afghan National Police. It had about
100 percent desertion rate, and virtually all of its weapons
can't be accounted for.
What I think we are trying do in the field is create local
security forces tied to advisers--again, ``clear, hold and
build''--which can then be related to the provincial government
and related to the central government, but really are supported
and advised from the outside.
There aren't tribal confederations in Afghanistan. I have
seen some of the detailed mapping of tribal differences by
valley and area. You can work with them, but there is no solid
base, as you had for the Sons of Iraq. And so I think what we
are trying to do, and General McKiernan and others are trying
to do, is the right approach, but it still relies on the Afghan
National Army and the Afghan National Police.
Dr. Biddle. We have to get better performance out of the
government in Kabul, but I think the issue is less who the
person is than how we deal with them. The next person, if
Karzai is replaced with someone else, will face a lot of the
same structural incentives that Karzai does. My guess is those
incentives will shape similar behavior unless we change
behavior. And I think, centrally we have to think about using
leverage to get the change in behavior that we need; and one of
our central forms of leverage is conditionality.
We cannot write blank checks. We have to make it clear that
the assistance they need is conditioned on the behavior that we
need.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
It is a pleasure to call upon Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, panel.
First thing, Mr. Cordesman said that the approval rating of
the U.S., NATO mission is at 37 percent. And I would note that
that is higher than this Congress's approval rating. I don't
know what that says about them or us.
I am glad to hear you all concur that we have success in
Iraq. I think that is important. I served two tours over there
as a U.S. Marine, and I appreciate that. It is a tenuous
victory, but it is a victory; and if we can hold that, that is
important. And I hope that this Congress, this committee, and
you will let that be known, that we do have victory; and the
men and women that have served have achieved that for us.
Going on to Mr. McHugh's note that a rise in violence does
not necessarily mean that we are losing, is there conflict in
that in this panel, meaning, as we send in Marines, we are
going to see the violence go up? Because in RC-South we had had
ISAF there; they didn't do anything. We can all agree that ISAF
is relatively not--it is not worthless, but it is not going to
do that hard-hitting combat role that the Marines will do. And
as we send Marines in, we are going to see more violence, just
like we did in the Iraqi surge. Violence spiked and then went
down.
Dr. Cordesman. Well, Congressman, I think you can have
access to maps very similar to what I think you saw in Iraq,
which were maps not simply of kinetic violence, but areas of
influence for al Qaeda and for the threat from the Mahdi Army.
The problem you have is, if you look only at the NATO/ISAF
maps of kinetic events or violence, you see one pattern. If you
look at the areas of increased Taliban, Haqqani and HIG support
area--areas of influence and presence, those areas have
expanded much more quickly in Afghanistan than the NATO/ISAF
maps of the areas of violence, although the NATO/ISAF maps have
been revised rather strikingly upwards in terms of levels of
violence and location, in area of violence in the last 3
months.
General Keane. Congressman, I think you are absolutely
right. In military terms, the Taliban and their supporters have
offensive momentum, and we are on the defensive. And what the
command will do is put together a counteroffensive, much as
Normandy was a counteroffensive, the island-hopping campaign in
the Pacific during World War II, Inchon in Korea, and countless
others in Vietnam that no one remembers the numbers of, and
also the counteroffensive that just took place in Iraq.
In all of those cases, because of the nature of that, the
enemy is on the offense and you are trying to take it away from
them. And there is an offensive clash in doing that: casualties
go up, violence goes up. And that is what we have to be very
clear to the American people about, that these casualties will
go up for American forces, as they will for NATO forces who are
in the fight.
But--and we had this discussion with the President of the
United States over the counteroffensive in Iraq--if we have it
right, then the casualties can come down rather dramatically
and the net overall, in time, will be less casualties, not
more, despite the spike--that is, if it works according to our
plan in terms of what the commanders will put together.
Mr. Hunter. Okay. Thank you.
And switching now, we talked about Congress here--Dr.
Cordesman did--being partly responsible for what is going on
right now in Afghanistan. I would ask you if the warfighter is
asking for the right things and Congress is trying to provide
them with the right things. Is the choke point not in the
Department of Defense and Secretary Gates, not this Congress
and not the warfighter, but that choke point in between?
Dr. Cordesman. We have four major threats in this problem:
the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Hekmatyar, and the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB). And I think if you were to look at
requests made to OMB versus the flow out of OMB, you would see
that commanders have had two problems. They haven't gotten what
they wanted; neither have the ambassadors. And they have taken
the position that at least on the funding levels, their
requests have to be limited to what they think they can get.
General Keane. I think clearly most of this is largely due
to the priority of effort that Iraq required, not just in terms
of resources, but in terms of intellectual capital, in terms of
people's energy, their time.
The entire effort was focused on that reality, and now we
are shifting priorities. Right before our eyes it is taking
place where this is becoming the priority. And I think it will
get a spotlight, it will get examined, it will get looked at.
Let's get all the requirements on the table; there will be
leaders saying that. Let's make sure we get this right this
time. We know we have been half-stepping here for a number of
years because of the problems and challenges we had in Iraq.
Those requests will be made, and I am hopeful that the
requirements will get put on the table so that we can get after
this thing the way it should be.
Ms. St. Laurent. If I could just add a comment on that
point also.
My comment would be that the discussion has been largely
around the numbers of forces that might be required, whereas I
think there clearly needs to be a detailed examination and
discussion about the types of capabilities that are needed. I
mean, we have talked about some of those today--the trainers,
the specific civil affairs and other skills that might be
needed, and certainly some combat forces. But also, in talking
about numbers, you have to figure in the whole logistics tail
and additional support capabilities that you are going to need
there to manage a large, overall military presence.
The Chairman. Ms. Davis, please.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here. I am sure the chairman would
remember as well, I think we sat here with Admiral Mullen when
he said, ``In Afghanistan we do what we can, and in Iraq we do
what we must.'' And that was, I think, one of the first
statements, after a lot of prying from up here, about how this
is going.
I wonder if you could just switch talking about NATO and
NATO's role and how we can, I think, either articulate or reach
out better. I happened to return with a few colleagues
recently, just a few days ago, talking with folks in Brussels
about the Afghanistan mission. And it is clear that people talk
about a civilian surge there, but it is also not clear that we
have the coordination. We have tried to build that; it is
obviously not working.
What do you think it is going to take? And what is the
message that you would suggest to President Obama as he goes to
Munich and works and tries to bring more of the NATO countries
in? We understand their public opinion is worse than ours when
it comes to how we can engage this mission. What are your
thoughts?
Dr. Biddle. Well, I think a key underlying issue here is a
common understanding of the purpose of the undertaking. Many
Europeans do not believe that this is a war. And they also
believe that if it is a war, they don't want any part of it.
They don't see it as a war worth waging.
General McKiernan makes it a point regularly in his
interactions with NATO officials to use the word
``counterinsurgency,'' which had not until fairly recently been
part of the vocabulary of the conversation about this
undertaking in NATO.
If there are significant parts of the NATO alliance that
view this as essentially an armed humanitarian undertaking
rather than a war against a resourceful and violent enemy, even
if they provide more resources, they are going to be resources
that can't be integrated into the larger plan in a sensible
way. We end up with, you know, parts of the country doing
things that are at loggerheads with what we are trying to do
elsewhere and are very poorly coordinated.
So I think the underlying political requirement vis-a-vis
NATO is to forge some degree of common understanding about what
our purpose there is; and the heart of that, I think, has to be
making the point that this is indeed now, for better or worse,
a war.
Dr. Cordesman. I think if I may add a point, we need to
identify and perhaps make public the level of national caveats.
We keep using the word ``NATO,'' but most of the problems lie
with individual countries.
I will leave it to General Keane to talk about how many
three-stars we really need in the NATO chain of command and
whether they really at this point are effective. You will hear
a lot of reactions out there about them.
But I think the other key point is, in all honesty you are
not going to get that many more troops. You may lose some. And
you are not going to get that many more civilians.
One of the things you have to understand is, we will come
away from that meeting without getting anything like what we
want. What we might be able to do is free up forces from a few
countries to be more flexible. We might get PRTs from some of
those countries to stop staying in a narrow area of access,
where they are protected by troops doing demo projects, to
actually start functioning on a broader level.
But the honest answer, Congresswoman, is we are not going
to get much from here.
Mrs. Davis. General Keane.
General Keane. I echo that. We have a fundamental problem
with many of the NATO countries; and it lies on the fact that
many of their national leaders can no longer ask their people
to sacrifice.
And fortunately, here in the United States we can, because
of our global interests and the American people understand how
vital those are so those national leaders are very challenged.
But I also believe this, if NATO is going to live on, it has to
succeed in Afghanistan. It cannot fail this test, if there is
going to continue to be a NATO, maybe there is not. But I think
we have to be smart about how we can look for them to succeed
here within some of the limitations that they have.
Mrs. Davis. Do you believe that there is any risk in the
size of our footprint as we go into Afghanistan that sends a
different message to NATO that we are going to send in 30,000
troops and it is okay, we don't need any help anymore?
General Keane. Frankly, I believe they don't want to lose
in Afghanistan because they made a contribution whether it is a
training contribution or a combat contribution, I think they
will more than welcome the United States making a sizable
commitment to see this thing through to success. It is in their
interest. But I also think that we should not give up on these
NATO countries. We do have an opportunity here with the
transition of leadership to try to get more trainers, to try to
get more resources.
There is going to be limits on combat troops, that is for
sure. But there is plenty of our things that we need and I
think we should not give up fighting for those.
The Chairman. Before I ask Mr. Wittman, let me ask the
General again, in your opinion, unless there is success in
Afghanistan, NATO is in real trouble?
General Keane. Well, this is the first excursion of NATO
outside of Europe. I think they put a lot of their credibility
on the line here in doing this. There is a lot of discussion
right now about the weaknesses of NATO itself. And certainly,
any failure in Afghanistan would be partially attributed to
that organization, that is for sure, as it rightfully should
be. So I think it would certainly weaken it, rather
significantly, whether it actually is a catalyst for its change
in its role completely, I can't say. But I would say that it
would be detrimental to it for sure.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to members
of the panel for being here.
General Keane, in your testimony, you eloquently lay out
what you think it will take to win Afghanistan all the way from
making sure we have a clear strategy to a robust
counterinsurgency effort to make sure there is strong
governance there for public support.
Can you though drill down and talk about what you think
would be the goals of those eight elements that you outlined?
And then what you think the resources might be needed in order
to be successful along those lines?
General Keane. Well, the fundamental goal that I tried to
lay out deals with something we have already said and that is
we do not want a sanctuary in Afghanistan and we want to
contribute to the stability of Pakistan. And some form of a
representative government and that is connected to a people and
with an Afghan national Army that is capable or an Afghan
national security forces that is capable of providing internal
security to do that, to fundamentally do that we have to defeat
the insurgency.
Central to the campaign plan would be using
counterinsurgency doctrine and practices to do that. So some of
that is taking place now in the south on a limited scale. This
will take place on a much more dramatic scale as we are able to
put more combat troops in.
There is an interesting dimension in Afghanistan dealing
with the people themselves. While the Iraqis had very high
toleration for the war being fought in urban centers while they
are living there, in some cases had catastrophic affects to
them and their families, the Afghans do not. This pressure not
to occupy, not to be present and certainly not to fight in
those towns, villages and cities. All that said, they are still
the issue, those people. So we have to be very clever in terms
of how we deal with their concerns, but also, meet our military
concerns. The Afghan National Army and their security forces
are part of that solution. And it is not always the Afghan
National Army is the solution, because to be quite frank about
it, we can absorb the heat a little bit better, given who we
are as outsiders than that Army can.
I am just speaking about Afghanistan now, I am not trying
to compare it to Iraq. So the application of a
counterinsurgency on the ground in Afghanistan will be
dramatically different than what it was in Iraq for sure.
Nonetheless, the key issue protecting the people and isolating
the insurgents themselves or the Taliban who are not a
homogenous group, as you well know. And then we go after them
relentlessly and tenaciously to get them. And we know how to do
this. Those things have to be done simultaneously. And then we
must do something about the sanctuaries themselves in Pakistan.
We cannot continue to let them operate out of there with
impunity.
I can't tell you how many brigades that would take. I
haven't done the detailed analysis. I don't have a good sense
of the enemy situation. If I had a clarity on the enemy
situation better than I do, I would be able to do an analysis
similar to what we did in Iraq to determine what the forces
are. But look at--we have a completely different problem here
in Afghanistan. We don't have military leaders in Afghanistan
who are whetted to an old strategy. They are welcoming new
thinking, their minds are open. They want to succeed here. And
they have a wide aperture. So we don't have this inflexibility
and rigidness and whetted to the past policies. We have people
who are intellectually engaged.
Look, we have the preeminent counterinsurgency general in
the military overseeing this, Dave Petraeus. We have the best
guy in the world who does this kind of work. He has his head on
this and he is focused on this. I am absolutely confident that
they will come up with the necessary campaign plan. Not he, but
McKiernan, an assisted coach as delicately as we can say it
here, so that the necessary tools will be there.
Most of this, remember, is not just resources. We threw
lots of resources at the problem in Iraq. Our resources are
crucial, I am not diminishing them, but it is how we use the
resources and how we employ the troops. We had 150,000 troops
and we were employing them the wrong way in Iraq, that is why
for three years we were failing. So once we changed their
employment and gave them more resources, we got a completely
different result. I am convinced that will happen here and we
have the leaders here that understand that, they know what to
do. And they'll need some resources to do it that they do not
have.
But most importantly when they get a plan put together that
gives them unity of effort. Military people talk about this a
lot, because in any complex situation like fighting a war, you
cannot succeed unless you have the unity of effort. You have to
get everybody on the same page. What does that for you? A
campaign plan. And then you hold people accountable for their
portion of it. Everybody gets by and then you have oversight
and you assess performance and you get the whole team moving
together. We don't have that. We have got to get it and they
know they have got to get it and they are going to do it.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Rooney.
Mr. Rooney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the good news is I
am the low man on the totem pole as I sit down here at the
kids' table for Thanksgiving dinner. It is good to sit this
close, because I have been paying attention for a long time to
what you have been saying and somebody who got off active duty
four years ago, General, it is an honor to sit here and listen
to you speak. I really appreciate your leadership, especially
when it comes to your commitment and your optimism.
However, that being said, I recently read a book by a guy
named Marcus Luttrell, who was a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan,
called Lone Survivor. Had he a little advice for those of us
who work up here in D.C., this I don't think I will ever
forget. It was basically that we should never send our men and
women to fight in wars if we are not willing to do whenever it
takes to win.
And with regard to the funding issue, Dr. Cordesman, and
even General Keane, I am not getting sort of the sense that
right now we are willing to do whatever it takes to win, but
since we have heard that, I am just curious what Ms. St.
Laurent's opinion is on that after reading your testimony. In
your opinion, first of all, is Marcus Luttrell, right? And
second of all, in your opinion, do you think that we are going
to do whatever it takes to win with regard to resources in
Afghanistan?
Ms. St. Laurent. Thank you very much. First of all, I think
the point is we need to see when the key strategy is and what
the goals are. I think the key point of my statement is the
ends, ways and means have to be balanced. And certainly the
whole economic environment will be a factor that will determine
how well and whether both the Administration and Congress and
the amount of funds they will put forward toward the strategy.
The first piece really does depend on what the goals are
and the mix of those goals between the Department of Defense
and the other civilian agencies. We said almost a year ago now
we don't have an updated campaign plan for Iraq. We clearly
need one for Afghanistan as well. There will be, I think, costs
associated with the drawdown that are not been talked about
explicitly at this point just to manage that very significant
effort that will be associated with pulling all that equipment
and forces out there, as well as continuing to support
operations there.
We have been funding a lot of those costs through
supplemental budget requests that come up, and that may
continue to happen for a while and that may also be a way to
deal with some of the another term costs associated with the
strategy for Afghanistan. But I think the long-term pressure is
on the defense budget are going to be there. I agree with the
assessment that what may happen is putting more pressure on the
investment accounts. And hopefully, there will be the
appropriate funding that will much up with whenever the new
goals are that are going to be established.
General Keane. Just going down the line, first of all,
Congressman, thank you for your service and also thank you for
continuing to provide public service. It is nice to have
someone like you who has had some experience in the military
serving in this great institution.
These are difficult choices that are about to be made by
the President of the United States. He will be presented with a
range of options in front of him. And I am convinced when he
selects the strategy to move forward, he will believe in his
mind that he is selecting the strategy to win, just as
President Bush was selecting a strategy after the invasion,
when he was being briefed on it and told what we were going to
do. I am convinced for all those three years that we had the
wrong strategy, there is no doubt in my mind that President
Bush wanted to win. He thought he had the team in place to give
him that victory and he thought he had the plans in place to do
it. But we found out over time that that was not the case. Some
knew it almost immediately, I was not one of those by the way.
It took me a while to understand how wrong the strategy was.
So these choices that we make, and we are about to make
here in the next number of weeks about the strategy and what
going forward means and what is winning is crucial, make no
mistake about it. But out of that, I am convinced that the
President will make a decision that he believes is going to
give him that definition of win in terms of our goals and
objectives. But he may find out, as President Bush did, as we
go down the road that we have got to adjust this thing. When we
see it, we have to have that kind of institutional flexibility
to make adjustments if it is not right. Or if we miscalculated
the resources. And we need to do more of it. We may need to ask
more sacrifice to make that kind of adjustment.
I hope we have that kind of flexibility. The things that
drives that is very honest and objective oversight of what we
are doing. So we really have the granularity and truth of what
is taking place. I think it is crucial. So we don't let years
go by before we make the necessary adjustments. I make no
mistake about it, I think the President will make the decision
that he believes is going to give him his definition of win.
But it may turn out that that is not exactly working to the
degree that we want it to work. And then we have to make the
necessary adjustments to it. That is because we are dealing
with war. As much as we try to be predictable, organize it, the
enemy has a vote here. And they can still exploit our
weaknesses and we have them.
The Chairman. Anyone else? Anyone else care to answer Mr.
Rooney?
Thank you very, very much. To the panel, we express deep
appreciation. This has been an excellent hearing and it is
certainly good of you to share your thoughts with us. It is one
of the best hearings I believe we have had. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:47 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
February 12, 2009
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ABERCROMBIE
Mr. Abercrombie. I have seen recent initiatives by the Defense
Secretary to increase Afghan National Army forces to 122,000 troops and
the Afghan National Police to 82,000 troops for a total of 204,000
Afghan National Security Forces. The cost of this force will be
approximately $3.5 Billion dollars a year when Afghanistan has an
estimated revenue of about $670 Million dollars. If Afghanistan
experienced 9% real economic growth per year and revenue extraction
doubled to 12%, both completely unrealistic forecasts, it would take
ten years for the Afghan Government to take in $2.5 billion dollars; a
one billion dollar shortfall after a decade. Is the U.S. proposing an
unfeasible strategy for Afghan security?
Dr. Cordesman. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Abercrombie. Are the original wartime goals we have set for the
U.S. in Afghanistan too unrealistic and not achievable? If
unachievable, what should the new end state goals be?
Dr. Cordesman. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Abercrombie. 1st Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrum, a constituent of
mine, and eight other American Soldiers were killed at the battle of
Wanat battling over 200 Taliban Insurgents. A force of about 40
Americans were at that remote outpost. A shortage of engineers, Forward
Operating Base force protection, ISR assets and long flight times for
Attack and MEDEVAC helicopters to get to the scene exposed significant
risk to an isolated platoon. The reality is there will be significant
shortfalls in these enabling forces in both theatres. Isn't the new
strategy to surge 30,000 more troops only going to increase the risk to
many more of our Soldiers and Marines?
General Keane. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Abercrombie. What should be done to attempt to separate
Islamist movements like the Taliban from al Qaeda instead of casting
them in a monolithic framework?
General Keane. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. HEINRICH
Mr. Heinrich. Many observers believe that there is a critical
shortage of enablers, particularly ISR assets. In the short term, how
can we balance the need to increase ISR assets in Afghanistan while
maintaining a high level in Iraq?
Dr. Cordesman. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Heinrich. What shortfalls, in terms of soft power, are present
in Afghanistan and what specific, successful methods do you think can
be adopted from Iraq?
Dr. Cordesman. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Heinrich. Quick Reaction Funds have shown to have some success
for PRTs in Iraq; do you feel this strategy can be replicated in
Afghanistan to increase their effectiveness?
Dr. Cordesman. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
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