When we're talking about counter-terrorism in this part of the world or anywhere, we really have to ask ourselves the question, "What are we trying to do?" Are we trying to prevent attacks against the United States? Is this a defensive mission exclusively? And if so, are we prepared to be in a defensive posture with occasional reactive sortie against these groups, or are we trying to defeat these groups? And if we're trying to defeat these groups, what does that actually mean?

We're certainly not going to defeat their ideology in any short term. And it is an ideology within Islam. It's the heretical ideology within Islam that has roots in the years immediately following the death of the prophet Mohammad. Goes back a long way. It will always be there in some form to be used by someone.

And of course if you look at the history of the Cold War, did we defeat the communist ideology? Well, we tarnished it very badly by defeating its reification in the world. And that's something that is important to keep in mind. Al-Qaeda has embodied this particular vision of this heretical ideology. And each success or failure is tied to a considerable extent to the value that other extremists are likely to put on this particular ideology.

And so I think that we do need to understand that there's a broader issue here than simply preventing this particular bunch of thugs from attacking us. There is also the question of trying to make it clear that this ideology is a loser and it leads to defeat. And it leads to calamity for the people who pursue it. And it does not lead to success or anything positive, because we want to deter future generations of extremists from using this particularly noxious ideology to justify what they're doing.

And in that context, it's very important to understand that al Qaeda does not define itself as a terrorist group. al Qaeda defines itself as an insurgent group. It is an insurgency within the Muslim world. Its objective is to seize power within the Muslim world, and then transform the Muslim world in accord with its ideology.

And the reason why that's very important to understand is, first of all, that explains why wherever al Qaeda goes--wherever an al Qaeda franchise goes--it plants a flag. It establishes the Islamic Emirates of wherever the heck. And it declares itself the only legitimate sovereign government of the four kilometers of land that it probably controls at any given moment.

There were about five different capitals of the Islamic Emirates of Iraq. Some of them tiny little villages out in the middle of nowhere, but it was by god the capital of the Islamic Emirates of Iraq. And they tend to set up rather elaborate governance structures. Even if they're sort of, in many cases, fictitious.

So in Iraq I was delighted to discover that al Qaeda in Iraq had an emir of administration. I think if only we can get them to do their planning on Power Point we would be a long way toward success in this effort. But that kind of bureaucratization is not the sort of thing that you saw from terrorist groups that really see themselves as terrorist groups, such as the IRA fighting the British, such as ETA Fighting the Spanish.

They define themselves politically sort of as insurgencies, but they don't have the same elaborated political superstructure that they intend to impose. And the reason why that matters is because terrain actually matters to these guys. Where they plant the flag, they intend to stay. And if you take it away from them, it is a blow to them. And all of their rhetoric during and after the Iraq surge demonstrated that they saw that as a defeat. They did not just see it as an, "Aw, but oh, well. That didn't work out. We'll go somewhere else." They saw that as a defeat.

They saw what the Lebanese military did to a burgeoning al Qaeda cell within Palestinian camps in Lebanon as defeat. They saw the fact that the Saudi government drove al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula largely out of Saudi Arabia into Yemen as a defeat. And so this is not a group that will with any joy pick up and leave from this particular area, which makes this particular area important. And it's one of the reasons why recapturing Afghanistan is an important objective for these guys.

Now, Mr. Chairman, you raised the excellent question of, "How are these groups intertwined?" And I think that has also been blurred in the discussion somewhat. There is no meaningful difference in the ideology that the the Afghan Taliban pursues, the ideology that the Pakistani Taliban pursues, and the ideology that al Qaeda pursues. They all agree that temporal secular states are evidence of apostasy, and in fact of polytheism.

They all agree on the basics of how the Muslim community should be ruled. The Afghan Taliban, the Quetta Shura Taliban sees itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Its the franchise that will control that part of the territory. I think the Taliban in Pakistan sees itself as a franchise that will control Pakistan.

But all of that is under the umbrella of an Al-Qaeda effort to reestablish the fate of the entire Islamic world. So there is a differentiation in the sense of the Taliban group saying, "This is our front. That's your front. This is somebody else's front." But there's not a differentiation in terms of the objective.

And I think it's very important to understand that as well. Because if you ask the question, "Is the Afghan Taliban now plotting to attack the United States here?" The answer is "no." If you ask the question, "Is there any basis to believe that over the long term, if you allowed the Taliban to persist in Afghanistan, it would not develop in the direction of pursuing global jihadism?" The answer is "no." There's no reason particularly to think that, except that it hasn't had the opportunity to do that.

But it would be fully consonant with its ideology to pursue that objective. But Teriki Taliban in Pakistan has already indicated that it had the objective of attacking the United States. Baitullah Mehsud said that he would attack the White House. Now, there's not a lot of teeth behind that, but you do have the stated intention.

So when you're talking about defeating al Qaeda, I don't believe that you can separate that from the problem of defeating Esalye, and its local proxy. And that's how we get to counterinsurgency. And that's why I think that a counter-terrorism strategy has to be embedded within a counterinsurgency strategy, or at least has to be married to a counterinsurgency, but doesn't have to necessarily be subordinate to it. Because I don't think that we can succeed with a counter-terrorism strategy that actually aims at what I think we need to aim at, which is defeating these organizations without defeating the insurgent groups.

And I'd like to just make a couple of quick points, and then I'll stop. First of all, there's a straw man argument that is sometimes put out that some of us has been religiously converted to the ideology of counterinsurgency. And wherever there is a conflict, we'd be an insurgency, and we want to use a counterinsurgency approach. I certainly don't feel that way. I know that General McChrystal doesn't feel that way. It's weird to make that comment about General McChrystal. This subcommittee probably knows General McChrystal better than any collection of congressmen that there are.

This guy knows all about counter-terrorism. If he's coming to tell you that you need to do counterinsurgency, that's not because he drunk that particular Kool-Aid. I just look at this and say, "Look, you have this alliance of groups with similar objectives. We have to defeat them all, though on our side of the border, the ones we're facing are primarily insurgent. The way that you fight insurgents is with counterinsurgency doctrine." If they weren't insurgent groups I wouldn't be advocating that. And I think that's an important straw man.

And lastly, I'll tee this up so that my colleagues can defend their propositions. I'll show my cards in advance instead of ambushing them. I want first of all to correct what I'm sure was an unintentional misstatement in Bob Pape's recent op-ed. General McChrystal's own report explains that, "American and NATO forces are a major cause of the deteriorating situation, because they have been viewed as foreign occupiers."

The assessment does not say that. I don't believe that General McChrystal anywhere says that he believes that American forces are seen as occupiers. And in fact the assessment has prominently a quotation from the Afghan defense minister who says, "Afghans have never seen you as occupiers even though this has been the major focus of the enemy's propaganda campaign."

And I think it's an important point, because I don't agree with the assertion that we are generating this problem by our presence in Afghanistan. And I think that there's also a problem with the statistical correlation of rise in violence as resulting from increased troop presence. In fact, the increased troop presence has lagged behind the rise of violence generally.

For example, in FY 2005 there were about 19,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. In FY 2007 there were about 23,700 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Pretty constant. By the way, a tiny footprint. If that's an occupation, then one soldier is an occupation. With 19,000 American troops in a country of thirty some million people--1.5 times the size of Iraq--virtually no Afghan ever sees an American soldier.

So what you're talking about is enemy propaganda. And I would submit to you that the minimum required number of American troops in order to be occupiers is one. But in that period, the number of suicide attacks, as Bob points out, went from nine to 142. Was that a response to the increase by 4,500 American soldiers? I don't think so. That's not what that was about.

What was going on was that in the period between 2002 and 2005, the Taliban, which had been eliminated from power in 2001 in Afghanistan was reconstituting. It was redeveloping its capability. It was reestablishing its networks within Afghanistan. It was reestablishing its leadership structure and preparing for an insurgency. It began to launch that insurgency in 2005, which is why violence began to rise.

We very slowly and cautiously--too slowly and cautiously in my view--started to increase our forces in response to that. Naturally that created more military targets for the Taliban to go after, which is one of the reasons why IEDs went up. In other words, I dispute the causal relationship between the presence of U.S. forces and the increase of violence here.

This was an insurgency that had, as its objective, retaking Afghanistan. Not because we were there, but because they had been the government. That's what they were trying to do. And they would have done that whether we were there or not. The question we have to decide is, do we think it's OK if they do? Or do we think that if we add a counter-terrorism strategy, with the civil war that will ensue if we abandon the effort to establish counterinsurgency? Yes. Civil war may ensue anyway. We can fail. This is war. There are no guarantees.

But I am as confident as I can be that if we adopt a remote approach to counter-terrorism here, not only will we have a completely failed state in Afghanistan with a lot of regional consequences that are very troubling. But I also believe we'll fail on the counter-terrorism mission.

Thank you.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.