<html><body><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p> American Enterprise Institute<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> The Future of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>: <o:p></o:p> Fighting an <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Insurgency</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">While</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Building</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> a Nation<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> July 27, 2005<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I m your moderator and MC for today.  I m Tom Donnelly, I do defense studies here at AEI.  I think we ve got a really special event for you here today.  We re going to start out with about half an hour s worth of Lieutenant General John Sattler, who s the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.  His experience in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region></st1:place> and the Horn of Africa probably is as great or greater than any other man in uniform at the moment.  I first met John when he was the Marine liaison to the House of Representatives and I was a wet-behind-the-ears Armed Services Committee staffer.  Unfortunately John was going out as I was coming in, probably for John s betterment.  Unlike many other legislative liaison officers of other services, he s gone on to a distinguished post-congressional career, commanding not only the MEF but division command and a regimental command as well.  Again, no more experienced warrior in the so-called Global War on Terrorism than John Sattler.<o:p></o:p> With that real brief introduction, and I m sure you can find his bio in your packets or on the Marine Corps website, I just want to turn the microphone over to John for his opening remarks.  Then we ll have about ten or fifteen minutes of questions, but we need to wrap up by about ten o clock.  John, the floor is yours and the microphone is yours.<o:p></o:p> John Sattler:  We have twenty minutes, so if I take all twenty I won t have to take the [inaudible] questions from the floor here.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  We ll extend it.<o:p></o:p> John Sattler:  All right.  First of all, it s great to be here.  It s a tremendous opportunity to come forward and talk a little bit about what is going on inside of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, possibly a little bit about <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  As Tom indicated, I had the opportunity to stand up the Combined Joint Task Force out in the Horn of Africa in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Djibouti</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  Wasn t initially in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Djibouti</st1:place></st1:country-region>, it was on Navy ships to begin with and we transitioned that ashore.  Each of those parts all plays in the global war on terror and plays a part in holding it at bay or helping the other countries.  <o:p></o:p> In the case of the Horn of Africa, helping the countries out there extend their capability by teaching, training, mentoring and providing intelligence, providing other indicators to those countries to go and solve their own problem.  Because they have the will and they have a capability and they want that capability to be better.  Us and some of our allies are able to go and work with them.  <o:p></o:p> So in other words, the Horn of Africa and this is all I ll say about that is an area where through engagement, through training, mentoring and assisting our allies out in the Horn of Africa, they are capable to go ahead and hunt down, snuff out, suppress, take away safe havens in that part of the world.  So that s worked very well over the past three years.  It s on its fourth commander now, just keeps getting better.  I look where it was when we left it and I look where it is now, that s the way things should it should go in a very positive direction and it has.<o:p></o:p> I had the opportunity to work for General Abizaid as his director of operations for about eleven months before I left to go back to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  I came home, moved my wife and then went back over again for seven months.  Got into <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> in September of last year and then the MEF (the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force) pulled out at the end of March and we were replaced by a highly capable 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force coming out of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Camp Lejeune</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">North Carolina</st1:State></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p> Very quickly, I would say that from my time as the operations officer with General Abizaid, the one thing the game plan has always been to give the Iraqis to train and mentor an Iraqi security capability.  The line of operation called security is the critical line because you can t have economics, you can t have governance, unless you have security.  Security is the only thing that can eliminate the intimidator.  The intimidation factor is all.  It s the only thing that the thugs, the murderers, the intimidators have to try to keep the Iraqi government from moving on, to keep the economy stagnant, to go ahead and deprive the Iraqi people of essential services that would enhance the quality of life and give them a reason to be excited every day when they get up, as they see progress moving along.<o:p></o:p> There is a lot of progress happening but some of the key areas where we really are trying to get it moving happen to be the same epicenters where the insurgents have decided that s where they re going to make sure it doesn t happen, because it gets publicity and it gets world acclaim.  They re attempting to show that the Iraqi government will never be able to rule, to enforce the rule of law over the insurgents.<o:p></o:p> So our job at that point was we were trying to train the Iraqi security forces.  At the same time, we were fighting the counterinsurgency, a heavy counterinsurgency.  If you go back to August of last year when Moqtada Sadr that was the first big challenge.  Sadr jumped up and started to raise Cain down there in the Najaf area.  At that point the decision was made that they had to be stopped and the only way to do it was through kinetic power.  You couldn t do it through psychological operations.  We couldn t do it through education.  At that point the Iraqi security forces did not have the capability to do it on their own.  <o:p></o:p> So a combination force of Marines two Army battalions came in and worked under the Marine colonel down there in Najaf to go and do the attack, to retake the Ali mosque and the Kufa mosque.  Those were the two that was probably the center of the fighting.  Right before it came to the combination point I know everyone s aware that Ayatollah Sistani came in and brokered a deal and he shot that down.  But since that point on, Moqtada Sadr has been marginalized.  He lost the fight.  <o:p></o:p> If you go into Najaf now, you ll see a thriving city where it was oppressed before.  Once the oppressive blanket was moved off and the people were able to rise up and the Iraqi security forces were able to get at least their feet on the ground and start to grow and move forward, had very positive results in Najaf and the <st1:City w:st="on">Karbala</st1:City> area, that throat leading up toward <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:place></st1:City>.  It s <st1:City w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:City> and then there s a province called Babil, and then you hit <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Karbala</st1:City></st1:place> and Najaf.  <o:p></o:p> These two down south are about as benign as a province can be inside of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  Hardly any attacks, hardly any disruption along the main supply routes, et cetera.  The people -- commerce is booming, durable goods are being sold, buildings are being repaired, schools are open, soccer games are being played.  If you went down through there you would see this is where a country ought to be moving along.<o:p></o:p> So that wrapped up in August.  Since then the tactical victory wrapped up in August, the strategic victory continues, because the strategic victory is the reconstruction phase and getting life back to normalcy.  <o:p></o:p> So you move on forward to the September timeframe when Fallujah Fallujah has now become the safe haven inside of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  We can t even drive around the city.  On the road around the city, if military vehicles got up on that road, they came under fire from the city from snipers, from gangs that would be along the outlying buildings on the outside.  We actually had to construct a road below the normal road for military convoys, because you don t take unnecessary risk.  It would just be stupidity to try to run a shooting gallery.<o:p></o:p> Still negotiating, still working the Fallujah remember the Fallujah brigade that was stood up after the first Fallujah fight to give the citizens of Fallujah an Iraqi solution to their problem.  It turned out that the brigade could not enforce the rule of law.  <o:p></o:p> As we talked over breakfast this morning, it became quite obvious that in al-Anbar Province in the west, the rule of law, which is critical if you don t have the rule of law you have chaos, and if you have chaos the biggest thug rules and all those that live legitimate lives have to live them under some form of intimidation.  So we found out in the west that the family came first, the tribe came second, the cronies came third, and the rule of law came fourth.  <o:p></o:p> So if you sent somebody off to be trained to be a soldier, to be a policeman, when they came back home, regardless of they may have been the honor grad, but whatever school you sent them to, when they came back home it was a fact of life in the west if I was born there and I live there, I was going to be subjected to that pecking order when I came back. <o:p></o:p> So the decision was, well, you can t expect an al-Anbaran to fight an al-Anbaran or to enforce laws against an al-Anbaran.  So you kind of put that off to the side.  That was what we learned after we stood up the Fallujah brigade, after they stopped the first Fallujah fight.<o:p></o:p> So we came to the second fight.  We knew we had to bring soldiers in from the outside.  So every lesson that was learned on the first Fallujah fight and was learned in Najaf was put into play as we prepared to go in and fight Fallujah.  Prime Minister Allawi was going to make the call if we thought it and when we thought it.  Had to be the prime minister s this was an Iraqi fight, not a Coalition fight.  Prime Minister Allawi was convinced that the epicenter of the insurgency at that point for training, for outfitting, for arming, was being exported out of the town of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fallujah</st1:place></st1:City>.  We had plenty of intelligence that told us that.  We had lots of targets that we had picked up that we were sure were in fact safe haven houses, that they were improvised explosive device-making factories.  They were making vehicle-borne bombs there and they were also just bringing anyone who came in.  You could show up in just the clothes on your back and go inside Fallujah and be trained, be outfitted and be given your mission, and come out the other side as a terrorist ready to go ahead and perform some nefarious act somewhere around the country.<o:p></o:p> So when that all came together, we started to shape Fallujah.  When I say we, I mean everybody the Special Operations Forces, Marines, soldiers, airmen, sailors.  We started to shape the Fallujah fight probably in the September/October timeframe, by striking selective targets at night or in daytime, based on intelligence that was collected across all the agencies of the government.  Happened to be a Marine battle space.  I want to make this clear.  <o:p></o:p> The Fallujah fight was as joint as a fight will ever be.  We were up to about 45,000 in the west, 45,000 warriors counting the Iraqis 8,000 of those were <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> soldiers.  The two leading battalions in the attack down from the north through Fallujah were two Army mechanized battalions, one out of the 1st Cav and one out of the Big Red One, that came to fight under two Marine regimental commanders.  The two battalions on either side of them were Marines, six battalions coming down.  Intermingled there were six Iraqi battalions that fought beside and in some cases moved up ahead and in some cases fought the back action when they got in behind us.  <o:p></o:p> There were 2,500 sailors in the fight Seabees, corpsmen, doctors they were there on the ground in the fight.  There were probably 500 airmen operating as joint air tactical controllers, et cetera.  That does not count the carrier battle group in the north <st1:place w:st="on">Arabian Gulf</st1:place> that would launch aircraft, and they would come up and tank and they would drop on designated targets or controlled.  You d have a Navy F-14 coming off the carrier battle group that would check in with a Marine or a soldier or an airman that would do the tactical control.  It wasn t like, I m sorry, I ll pass you off to a Navy controller, I ll find a SEAL team to give you to.  <o:p></o:p> The joint training that has happened since the 1980s when Goldwater-Nichols came out, from my opinion, it all came to fruition in that one big fight.  It was as joint and purple as you re ever going to get.  F-15s, F-16s would launch out of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Qatar</st1:place></st1:country-region>, come on up, they report in to a Marine, a JTAC or a soldier on the ground.  There was no problem with communication, no problem of knowing that s the building we want to hit, and by the way no problem hitting that exact building.  Unbelievable.  Same with helicopters.  Apaches, Akiva [phonetic] Warriors, Cobras, didn t matter.  You showed up, you had ordnance, somebody knew how to use it and you were going to use it for them.  <o:p></o:p> So everybody I like to explain it that what we did and what General Metz [phonetic], Tom Metz [phonetic] did my boss, three-star Army and General Casey as the big boss, and General Abizaid sanctioned all this, there was never any question.  If you needed a capability I walked in and said, hey boss, we have a lot of Marine battalions have 800 or 900 infantry in them.  They re very heavy, manpower-intensive, we call boots on the ground.  But each battalion was supported by four M1-A1 tanks because that s just the we re not big heavy armory.  <o:p></o:p> So we went up and said we need to have these Army Marines want Army battalions with us.  We need at least two mech plus an entire brigade the Blackjack Brigade came out of the 1st Cav, sealed the south and sealed the east.  So all the Marines had to do with the other two Army battalions is worry about fighting the fight through the town, because anybody who tried to get out, they were crushed by an Army brigade.  An Army MP battalion sealed the roads.  They didn t come in like, we re Army and this is what we ll do for you.  It was, what do you need?  We said, here s what we need to have done.  They go, we got it, sir.  We got it.  I m not being Pollyanna about it.  It was just the spirit of the fight.  That was set by General Tom Metz [phonetic].  That was, we re all in this together.<o:p></o:p> So we took all the decks of cards.  Use the analogy of a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:place></st1:City> big stack of cards Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Special Operations, other government agencies.  We took all those decks and shuffled them all up and dealt the hands out.  Every commander opened his hand up and went, Wow.  You looked at the back of the cards, if you were in that poker game, you d be firing right now.  Wait a minute, there s different cards out of different decks here.  But by virtue of playing everyone to their strength, when you dealt them out every hand was a pat hand.  The name of the game was whoop-ass and there was no second place.  We knew that.  Everybody went in with that thought and that mentality.<o:p></o:p> Anyway, very vicious mano-a-mano fight, everybody in it.  The town s only three miles by three miles.  If you can imagine F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, F-14s, Harriers, Cobra gunships, Akiva [phonetic] Warriors, Apaches, medevac helicopters, Black Hawks, CH-46s, logistics trains moving back and forth, all in a three mile by three mile 4,000 rounds of artillery fired during the fight none of it just shoot over there, every round controlled by a forward observer.  Every bomb dropped was controlled by a forward air controller.  No indiscriminate bombing, no destruction done that didn t have to be done.  This force just rolled on through there.  Joint, joint force.  Great fight.<o:p></o:p> Reconstruction.  We opened the town up on the 23rd of December.  Started to bring the folks back.  A trickle at first, because they weren t really sure what they were getting into.  Sealed the town off.  We had control points at every major entry.  You had to go through a control point to get back into the town.  Very painstakingly slow, we got better and more efficient as time moved along.  <o:p></o:p> Bottom line now is there s 150,000 there were about 400 people in the town by the end of the fighting.  They had left the town on their own to go live with relatives as they saw it coming.  We helped them see it coming through information operations and psychological campaign that let them know that this is coming.  We didn t bring it, it s got to be cleaned up.  This is something that must be done.  So they all left the town.  <o:p></o:p> So when we fought the fight, the collateral damage piece for civilian casualties was helped out immensely by virtue of education on the front side, where the Fallujan citizens moved out.  The thugs and intimidators, some of the big fish skirted out of the town before the fighting started.  Some of the bravado talk by some of the insurgent leaders, they found their way out of the town before.  They left the others back to go ahead and fight to the death, which some of them did.  A very tenacious enemy, some very up-close violent fighting to go through that town.<o:p></o:p> About 20,000 buildings, every building cleared at least three times.  Went through it on the first sweep, went back to it a second time and went back through it a third time, as we found over 500 caches of weapons and ordnance, torture chambers, VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device) factories, IED factories, training camps with syllabuses, film crews where they would make the films of beheadings and torture events.  Just some really sick stuff in there.  <o:p></o:p> But that was all cleaned up during the sweep.  Now 150,000 people back, reconstructing the town.  Went from not one store open, no markets, to by the time we left the town circle was up, fish hanging up, fresh fruit and vegetables, durable goods being sold.  Each day you went in, you would see a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.  Now they have police on the town, they have an elected mayor, they have their own governance that meets at the community center there.  They did it themselves, they being the citizens of Fallujah.<o:p></o:p> I m only honing in on Fallujah as a microcosm.  There s a whole lot of other things in Ramadi that are going on, all the way out to the Syrian border and al-Qaim and Husaybah, all the way up into Baghdad, down to the south, Basra, up in Baqubah, up in Mosul.  Great things being done by soldiers and Marines and our Coalition partners all over the country, and sailors and airmen.  But I thought since it s limited time I would just hone in a little bit on the Fallujah fight.  <o:p></o:p> Did we break the back of the insurgency?  I made that statement early on.  I know we did there.  I ve got some metrics of attacks that went down, indirect fire that ceased to happen.  The amount of weapons and ordnance we took out of the equation and also the amount of thugs and some of the high-level instructors that we were able to take out.<o:p></o:p> With that being said I get a little emotional about it.  But I ll take any questions for the next three minutes.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Or we can extend for thirty seconds or something like that.  General, that s a wonderful piece of clarity that back here in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> is hard to come by, so we appreciate it.<o:p></o:p> We ll go quickly to questions.  Remember the AEI rule: ask a question, wait for the microphone, and state your name for the transcript.  <o:p></o:p> Mike:  Good morning, sir.  My name is Mike [indiscernible], I work for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.  I was in LIF I with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.  All due respect sir, I think we ll see much more of Moqtada al-Sadr in the future.  I think he is far from done.  That s not my question.  Any lessons learned <o:p></o:p> John Sattler:  We can disagree on that one.  I think <o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Let s get to the question part.<o:p></o:p> Mike:  Yes, sir.  Any lessons from both the tactical and the strategic level from the mistakes we made in terms of planning for Phase IV-B?<o:p></o:p> John Sattler:  First of all, I think we will see more of Moqtada al-Sadr, but if you notice he s taking the political approach and not the I m a thug, I have more weapons, I can get more people.   Now he s legitimized himself getting into the political process.  So if he s elected, that s what a democracy is.  You don t get to pick who gets elected, all you do is make it a fair election.<o:p></o:p> What kind of tactical and strategic lessons have we learned?  The tactical lessons are being learned constantly.  Even in the fight for Fallujah, Day Three was different than Day One because of the way we utilized Bradleys and tanks and the Marines and the soldiers on the ground, the young non-commissioned officers and the young officers, the lieutenants, the captains.  The battalion commanders were right in the fight.  You would go out there in the town and try to make it out almost every day, work my way up to the front lines.  There were no real front lines because guys were getting in behind them and there was just fighting constantly.<o:p></o:p> But the adaptability of the young warrior was phenomenal, how they would just say, Listen, we used this on Tuesday; this is Thursday, we don t do that.  Those are old tactics, sir.  That s two days ago.  Well, yeah, those are old tactics.  This is the way we re doing it now.  This is the new corps.  If you were out of the fight for two days, you were already behind because they would change, they would see how the enemy would react and our men and women would just change their tactics almost on the spot to go in and get the advantage.  It was adapt and win.  It wasn t adapt and survive.  This was adapt and win.  We constantly kept them on the horns of a dilemma.<o:p></o:p> We ve taken those lessons learned before the units go back now.  The Army s done it, so have the Marines done it.  We train units to get them ready to go back.  We have this very malleable training.  It s not a program of instruction that s been approved by the board of directors that takes two years to change.  It is, we just got a phone call or this guy just checked in and he was there this is what they did and look at this, how well it worked.  And changed, right there.  Next unit coming through gets the benefit of the latest tactic, technique and procedure that s been developed.  There s a vetting process, you just can t come in with a wild idea that doesn t pass the little board of directors on the ground there.  But we have learned a lot tactically.<o:p></o:p> Strategically, my biggest lesson is don t tell people you re going to rebuild their town because somebody told you you ll have the money, and then you don t get the money.  Because every time you go out they go, that was you, you tell us you are honest, you told us you will rebuild our town, I want my house rebuilt, you destroyed my house in the fight.   Yes, the money s coming, I know it s coming.  <o:p></o:p> What happens there is a tactical victory which is fought tremendously and well-fought by the young warriors can turn into a strategic loss by virtue of promising something that I thought was going to happen we thought was going to happen and we thought we d have the capability to do, but we didn t control the resources.  The resources had to come.<o:p></o:p> Bottom line, it finally did happen.  The money came, over $100 million for the first installment to go in and adjudicate claims.  Every house, an adjuster went out and looked at it.  You showed proof of the house, they paid you the money.  You could either move or pay somebody to repair it or you could go buy 2 X 4s, concrete blocks, et cetera, and repair it yourself.<o:p></o:p> So I think the bottom line is make sure if you re going to write a check that you re going to be able to cash it.  But on the other hand, don t be so safe that you don t lean forward and tell people what you re going to do for them, because you got to find that proper balance.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Alas, I m afraid all time for debate has come to an end.  We ll take a brief recess while we seat the next panel but please join me in a round of thanks for John Sattler.<o:p></o:p> [break]<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Okay, to reconvene our discussion of The Future of Iraq: Fighting an Insurgency and Nation-Building at the Same Time walking and chewing gun we ll continue with the military theme.  I ll just quickly introduce the panelists.<o:p></o:p> On my far left is my colleague here at AEI, Fred Kagan.  Fred will be followed by Colonel Joe Anderson, who also is one of the most experienced soldiers with a lot of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> time, known fondly to journalists and myself as the Mayor of Mosul.  He ll be followed by Mr. Joost Hiltermann from the International Crisis Group.  Batting cleanup will be my other AEI colleague, Michael Rubin.  So we ve got the outsiders fully bracketed by AEI guys for complete safety and fire for effect.  So Fred, if you ll lead off, we ll get right to it.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  Thanks, Tom.  I think in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, here s a trite statement: there s good news and bad news.  The good news is worth focusing on a little bit before we talk about the problems that we re likely to face.  <o:p></o:p> For years people have been comparing <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>, alternately with glee or with dismay, depending on which side of the political fence you were sitting on.  I think it s worth pointing out that <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> now is absolutely nothing like <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> except in the sense that both were insurgencies.  But that s really not very meaningful.<o:p></o:p> We are in a very excellent military position in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in the sense that with very few exceptions the insurgents are not capable of launching militarily significant attacks against our soldiers.  What they are doing is conducting a large-scale, widespread terrorism campaign.  In that sense, a far better analogy than <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> is <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place> and the sort of terrorism campaign that the IRA carried out in that region.  <o:p></o:p> I think it s very important to keep this in mind.  We do not have conventional force-on-force fights in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, with very few exceptions, for the simple reason that the Iraqi resistance, the Iraqi insurgency, is incapable of carrying on such fights.  That s very promising.  That s a very good thing.  It s very important, I think, to keep that in mind.<o:p></o:p> I think it s also very important to keep in mind that, again unlike in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>, there is very little widespread support in the country for these sorts of attacks against the Iraqi government and even against the Americans.  It s become increasingly clear that we have a large number of foreign fighters who are infiltrating into the country and training and recruiting or as General Sattler pointed out this morning, simply duping Iraqis into carrying out suicide attacks.  <o:p></o:p> The insurgents have no positive political program to offer.  They are in the position of being fundamentally anarchists from the standpoint of the Iraqi political situation.  It s going to be very hard for them in that circumstance, unless we or the Iraqi government makes an enormous mistake, to turn the tide in their favor politically.  They may manage to turn the tide against us and they may manage to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi government.  That s what we need to worry about.  <o:p></o:p> But in the case of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>, that wasn t true.  We were dealing with an enemy who did have the support of a greater or lesser proportion of the population and did have what was seen to be a positive political program, not only anti-colonialism but also the Vietcong would actually go in and do things for a town.  They wouldn t necessarily go in and simply terrorize people.  The Iraqi insurgents are not in that situation.<o:p></o:p> All of which is to say that I think we are and of course we have a political process moving forward.  It is moving more slowly than one would like.  It is moving a lot faster than we have any right to expect considering what we re trying to do there.<o:p></o:p> So I think that there are a lot of very positive signs that we see in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, both militarily and politically.  The metrics, if you look at what s likely to be a successful counterinsurgency, I think the metrics on the whole are good.  <o:p></o:p> I think we have a number of significant problems, however.  I think it has been a problem all along that we have low-balled the number of ground forces that were going to be required to carry out the essential military tasks in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  I think this process is continuing.  I watch the continuation of this process with enormous dismay.<o:p></o:p> This sort of counterinsurgency, whether it is guerrilla warfare or a terrorist campaign, is very difficult to fight.  It imposes on the military a number of not mutually contradictory but mutually straining tasks.  It is essential to work for internal security.  It is essential to try to seal the borders as best you can.  It is essential to maintain security of road movement throughout the country.  At the same time, it s important actually to attack the insurgents and it s important to train the indigenous forces.  That s five major tasks which don t really complement each other that well, which are all essential to success.  And they are all manpower-intensive.  Virtually none of those tasks are things that technology will really help with to reduce the footprint very dramatically if you want to succeed at them.<o:p></o:p> It s become commonplace to point to General Shinseki s statement about how we would need a couple of hundred thousand troops to do <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> before OIF.  He was referring largely to the postwar situation and it s looking increasingly like he was right.  I think it will end up taking several hundred thousand troops to do this.<o:p></o:p> The good news is that we will end up with several hundred thousand troops doing this as the Iraqi forces come increasingly online.  The question is, as those forces come online, what will we do about it?  Here is a fork in the road, and I fear that the indications are that the Bush Administration has already decided to take what I think is the wrong path.  As the Iraqi forces come online, you have the opportunity to see them as reinforcements.  <o:p></o:p> We are soldier-strapped.  We do not have enough troops in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> to do all the things we need to do and commanders are forced to make choices about whether to do security, whether to attack insurgents or whether to do training.  Those are bad choices to make.  As you have more Iraqi troops come online, you can eliminate some of those choices.  Or instead you can say our priority is getting our forces out of the country as rapidly as possible.  That, I fear, is what the Bush Administration has already largely decided to do.  Unfortunately that means that we re going to be handing over the same set of bad choices and problems that we re facing to an Iraqi government that is going to be considerably less capable on the whole of making those choices well and dealing with it when things don t work out right.  That, I think, is a major problem.<o:p></o:p> The last point that I d like to make is that we are engaged in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> in a large number of missions and they are also not all complementary.  We are trying to build up a stable and democratic <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  That is, in a certain sense, our primary mission.  We are also engaged in a global war on terror.  That means preventing Iraq from becoming a safe haven for terrorism and identifying and killing or capturing as many of the terrorists who are now flooding into Iraq as possible.  <o:p></o:p> This is an opportunity for us.  These guys are coming into <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> and they are identifying themselves more or less clearly by launching attacks and becoming part of a network that we are working aggressively to track.  That gives us the opportunity that will not be found when we are not there, to identify these people and nail them.<o:p></o:p> The Iraqis are going to be relatively less interested in that task.  The Iraqis are trying to establish stability in their country.  To the extent that we leave and some of these terrorists stop flowing in, the Iraqis are not going to be pursuing the rest of them very aggressively.  That s not going to be their major problem.<o:p></o:p> We need to keep in mind that as we think about what our force levels are going to be, we may have an interest in maintaining forces in Iraq to track and kill these guys that goes beyond simply establishing stability in Iraq and leaving.  How is the Iraqi government going to feel about that?  <o:p></o:p> That s very complicated and of course I ll leave that to my colleagues to address in greater detail.  But we need to keep in mind here that the number one priority is not get our forces out of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> as quickly as possible.  In a certain sense, it s not even establish stability in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>.  It has to be establish stability in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> and pursue this campaign in the global war on terrorism as aggressively as possible, working so that those two things complement each other rather than harm each other, but keeping both of them in mind.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Thank you, Fred, for an excellent framing presentation.  I should have mentioned in introducing Joe that he s not only a guy with a lot of on-the-ground time in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> but is currently the military assistant to the Secretary of the Army.  So he s seen the problem as it were from both the micro angle and now from the macro angle, trying to help the Army meet the kind of challenges that Fred has outlined.  <o:p></o:p> Joe Anderson:  Good morning to you all.  You outlined those very well, as always.  He s very eloquent, you can tell he was a history Professor at <st1:place w:st="on">West Point</st1:place>.  The kind of guy I didn t like thirty or twenty years ago.<o:p></o:p> When I tell you from the Army side, obviously Fred dwelled on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> very heavy there.  Let me first, to frame it for me, obviously from the Army seat, the Army is waging war in multiple places.  <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> just happens to be one big part of it.  So is <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region></st1:place>, so the Balkans remain, and many other places that we still have forces.  All that while trying to transform and become the Army we need for the future and winning this war on terrorism.  So there are some huge challenges out there and we can talk about it later if you want, what the impacts are on the Army.<o:p></o:p> To frame it for me more specifically, now you re talking to a guy who was on the ground in the initial OIF I, who was in the war, who made the transition we talked about IV-B a little while ago, had a question, and what that meant to commanders on the ground.  So I ll tell you the perspective of a commander on the ground a little bit dated, but back there again in the spring, we ll go back in a couple more months.  We ve stayed very current on it, but the challenges you have out there.<o:p></o:p> One of those is as you talk about the stability and reconstruction, who calls the shots?  Who establishes priorities?  Who figures out what the objectives are to be accomplished?  The commander on the ground obviously has his hands strong on that process.  The issue has always been for the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> military and for the Army specifically, how do you provide security, law and order to allow people to get their way of life back, to allow the infrastructure to get rebuilt, and get all the processes back.  <o:p></o:p> The freedoms we enjoy, the benefits we enjoy as Americans how do you instill that in a culture that doesn t quite get that?  That s very difficult for a commander to deal with that based on the troops he may or may not have.  I happened to be lucky.  For the 101st, I had 6,000 troops working for me.  I had everything from helicopters to military police to anything you could ask for, which made a huge difference.  How do you get these folks to protect themselves, learn and develop and get a city running again a city of 2 million people, which is no small city, to get them back on their feet?  How do you determine what the priorities are in that process as you start to build a government, which is nothing different than what we see today?  <o:p></o:p> We kind of get in this do loop.   You watch what happened two OIFs ago, you watch what s happening this OIF, we ll see what s going to happen here as we transition again.  It s never seamless, it s never painless, because you cannot the knowledge, the experience and the path that you have traveled is very hard to articulate and explain to people who are following you.  They don t get it.  <o:p></o:p> Getting it means the culture.  Getting it means what your priorities are, and the priorities we re in a shifting priority.  We re in a priority now where we re saying we re going to build, train, resource, enable these Iraqi security forces no matter what flavor you want to call them.  When I was there, it was border guards, which I think we still have a need for.  When I was there it was police, which I think we still need police.  When I was there we had this thing called a force protection security force, which guarded static sites.  We had the new Iraqi army and all these elements we were trying to build and develop as you figured out who was going to take the lead.  <o:p></o:p> So a commander has to figure out, how do I resource all that while balancing the stability and reconstruction, this peace-keeping maybe this peace enforcement.  The problem we have, as Fred alluded to, it s pretty hard to put things together when people are trying to shoot at you and take it apart at the same time.  So back to that balance comment, how do you and I don t mean to use an old term, you ve all heard it, but I think it s still very relevant winning the hearts and minds of the people is still a critical task in terms of getting support.  <o:p></o:p> Ultimately, and I will tell you by and large they do support the effort.  The question becomes, whose face is on it?  But how you maintain that momentum, keep that momentum, while still being able to whack people and say if you cross this line, if you interfere with this of course if you are a threat to Coalition forces we re going to take you out.  <o:p></o:p> So it s a constant give and take, but of course knowing every time you conduct some kind of simultaneous operation be it a cordon and surge [phonetic], be it a cordon and knock [phonetic], be it a traffic control point you cannot gain more enemies than friends through that process.  You have to rebuild everything you have done to keep the momentum going.  That takes resources, that takes understanding, that takes knowledge of how you do that.  You have to gain and build from all the talents you have on your team to get from A to Z.  It s a constant assessment of where you are in that process that allows you to do that.  <o:p></o:p> What ways do you win that fight?  Through the information ops piece, through the civil affairs piece?  How do you gain, maintain and make sure the people understand what you re doing, why you re doing it?  They may not necessarily agree with how you re doing it but that s part of the buy-in where you have to continually seek their buy-in, where we started back two years ago with selections and now we ve gone through elections, as we try and get a constitution that frames the architecture of how this country is going to run in the future, as we get ready to go this coming winter for round number two.<o:p></o:p> But it s a continually evolving assessment.  As Fred talked about, the question becomes now how much independence can you give these Iraqi security forces versus supervision.  How much you have to support them, tell them what to do, how to do it, and sustain their efforts versus your own.  The quicker that process can occur, the better off we re all going to be, because again, like I said a little while ago, ultimately the Iraqis want to see Iraqi faces on the street and not these things on the street.  They want their independence and they want to learn and grow from where they ve been.<o:p></o:p> So a very complicated, difficult process.  It goes through it ebbs and flows and it goes through a life cycle.  But as you continue to assess that, we continue to learn.  It s come a long way.  It s hard to understand unless you ve seen it from where it s been.  Who knows where it s going?  But as we take each step at a time, it is a very deliberate, painful, time-taking process that s not going to happen overnight.  <o:p></o:p> The question becomes, as these forces build, by what type?  What their function s going to be again, primarily internally focused, but the roles and missions of each of those forces and the roles and missions of what the central government will do versus the provincial governments will do versus the district town council governments will do.  And how you package that all together.  When are they able to run their own government?  When are they able to run health care, education, through all their ministries, et cetera?  When are they capable of doing that?  When can they secure their borders?  Again, the assessment process has to be a continual, ongoing process.  I think I ll cut there and we can talk about anything you want to talk about.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Thanks, Joe, for a sobering assessment.  We turn now to the civilian side of the piece, so to speak, which as both Joe and Fred said is where victory will be measured in this struggle.  Joost Hiltermann, the floor is yours.<o:p></o:p> Joost Hiltermann:  Thank you very much.  I represent the International Crisis Group, an independent nongovernmental organization.  Been working on <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> since 1991, off and on.  I really do want to focus on the political aspect of the matter.  Obviously there is a security aspect that is critically important, but I would argue that there are three essential ingredients for stabilizing <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, all of which are essential or necessary, none of which individually will be sufficient.<o:p></o:p> The first one clearly is to secure the situation in the country.  That can only be done in the long term not by foreign forces but by Iraqi security forces hence now the effort to train up Iraqi forces.  I think this is a critical effort.  Additionally to that, the focus ought to be especially on police forces rather than on military forces, even though the building up of military forces is also very important, because only police forces in the end and police intelligence can ferret out the insurgents and defeat them in the localities in which they operate.<o:p></o:p> In building up these forces it will be important to ensure that the composition of these forces will be based not on ethnic or sectarian lines, something we have seen to some extent already.  We ve seen a deployment, for example, of crack troops, Iraqi troops, in certain areas like Fallujah, Najaf, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mosul</st1:place></st1:City>, and these crack troops by default have been almost exclusively Kurdish forces because they simply have the best training, were battle-hardened and had good discipline.  I think that is very dangerous because the situation in Iraq is already veering toward civil war I m certainly not predicting it, but I think the signs are there that it may go in that direction.  The deployment of forces that are based on sectarian or ethnic logic would aggravate that.<o:p></o:p> A second necessary element is going to be economic reconstruction.  We re not seeing too much reconstruction at the moment simply because of the security situation, but everything should be tried to do two things.  One is to ensure that reconstruction projects are labor-intensive, that they actually employ Iraqis.  Secondly, that they address Iraqis most immediate needs.  That includes most importantly electricity, water, sanitation and those things.  It s a very tall order under the current circumstances but to neglect it would be more dangerous.<o:p></o:p> The third element has to be the existence of a legitimate political process at the center.  We have had elections in January.  These elections were a very positive development because Iraqis for the first time in their lives and in their memories were able to vote.  At the same time, the outcome of the elections was sectarian in nature, because the Sunni Arab community largely absented itself from the elections.  This was a very dangerous development.<o:p></o:p> Now we have to live with those consequences and seek to undo them.  At the moment, as you all know, Iraqis are in the process of drafting a permanent constitution for the country.  I would argue that this process will only succeed in helping to stabilize <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> if the process is at once inclusive, transparent and participatory.  Sunni Arabs, having excluded themselves from the elections, were a priori absent also from the drafting of the constitution.  Every effort has been made to bring them back in.  This is now happening.  Sunni Arabs are part of the drafting process.  This is a very important and positive development.  It may not be enough but it s at least something that has to be there.<o:p></o:p> The other two elements transparency is only partially addressed by the Iraqis.  The participatory nature of the process is very much in doubt.  I ll come back to that in a second.<o:p></o:p> What we have today is a constitutional process that is being rushed.  This is really the emphasis of my presentation today.  It is being rushed both because the Iraqi leadership wants to get it over with quickly and because the Bush Administration and the United Nations and the British government and everybody else involved in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> is pushing for it to be over with.  The rationale has been that by putting the feet to the fire, the Iraqis will get it done.  Otherwise they will not get it done, they will start haggling and whatnot for months and simply there will never be a constitution.  So the only way to get one is to have a very firm deadline and to say you have to make it by this or the whole thing is going to fall apart.<o:p></o:p> The second rationale really for rushing the deadline is that the timetable in itself is very important, the timetable of the political transition.  Elections were held on time so the constitution should be held on time.  If that does not happen then the insurgents will take heart from this clear act of feebleness on the part of the Iraqi government and its international sponsors, and increase their capabilities and their power.<o:p></o:p> I understand fully the rationales behind this approach and I have to say I understand them, I feel even sympathetic to them.  I think at the same time they are wrongheaded and wrong and they should be rejected.  I think it is critically important that the constitutional process not be rushed.  The principles that I mentioned the transparency question, the participation question and the inclusion question are being threatened by rushing the constitution.  <o:p></o:p> So far we have seen no tangible participation by Iraqis in the constitutional process.  The negotiations are taking place in the convention center, in the protected international zone (the Green Zone), with no access by anyone.  The drafters have an email address that Iraqis and in fact anybody can write to and make suggestions for the constitution.  Boxes have been placed in certain areas where people can drop pieces of paper with their ideas.  But there is in fact until now no effective way of transmitting the ideas of Iraqi society to the constitution drafters.<o:p></o:p> This is something that could happen though, as the South African experience and others have shown, if there is enough time.  But we re facing a deadline of August 15, which is only three weeks from now.  In fact we are facing a deadline of this coming Sunday where the National Assembly will have to decide whether to extend the deadline or not.  The deadline could be extended by six months under the terms of the interim constitution.<o:p></o:p> So my main fear is that if this constitution is rushed and does not reflect what it should be a social compact of the people of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> then the eventual document will lack credibility.  Even if Ayatollah Sistani and the two main Kurdish parties can mobilize the Iraqi public to vote yes in the referendum by October 15, then still I think there will be no significant popular buy-in to this document down the line.  That will undermine both the constitution and thereby the stability of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> in the long term.<o:p></o:p> There is a further casualty from rushing the constitution.  In the very little time that is left, both in terms of my presentation and in drafting the constitution, it is going to be <o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  You have a shorter deadline than they do.<o:p></o:p> Joost Hiltermann:  I m sorry.  We will end up not with a fully negotiated constitution but a much diminished version.  A national compact maybe, but one that threatens to be a skeletal national compact.  The danger of this is that all the hard decisions that have to be taken on the nature of the federal structure of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> and on religion and other questions may be postponed.  I think the last thing we need is for these questions to be postponed, because that again will give ammunition to the insurgents to say, We Sunni Arabs are on our own and we re being threatened by the others and they re not willing to settle with us.<o:p></o:p> In terms of recommendations: one, clearly do not rush the constitution but take the opportunity to extend the deadline by six months.  Two, encourage Iraqis to compromise on the key issues for example, Kirkuk and the role of religion and the nature of the federal system but don t actually fine-tune and micromanage these issues.  The product has to be seen as an Iraqi product.<o:p></o:p> Finally, I would say stay away from all these issues in detail but there s one question where the United States government has to draw a line because of its regional implications, and that s on the issue of Kirkuk.  I have no time to talk about <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kirkuk</st1:place></st1:City> but I m currently writing a report on it.  I think it s a critical issue for the future of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, but the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> should make very clear to the Kurdish leadership that <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kirkuk</st1:place></st1:City> cannot become part of the Kurdish region.  To incorporate it, I think, will most inevitably lead to civil war.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  That was an excellent presentation.  If you need another six months to complete it, that s okay.  Michael, the table has been set, the ducks are on the pond, swing for the fences.<o:p></o:p> Michael Rubin:  I get to play cleanup today because I woke up this morning and was feeling particularly ornery, so I m going to disagree with some of what was said.<o:p></o:p> The title of the panel is The Future of Iraq: Fighting an Insurgency while Building a Nation.   I ll first talk about fighting an insurgency and secondly make a couple comments about building the nation.<o:p></o:p> I would argue that while our military is doing a masterful job and most importantly the Iraqis themselves, both civilians and military, are doing a masterful job of fighting the insurgency it s ironic, we call it insurgency, Iraqis tend to call it terrorism that sometimes our macro strategies on the American or Coalition side can complicate matters a little bit.  Oftentimes, I would say, we re beset by a false conventional wisdom.  <o:p></o:p> One of the aspects of that false conventional wisdom has to do with the role of reconciliation.  I would argue that you can correlate violence in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> with the push and the willingness of the Americans to push reconciliation.  This comes specifically with regard to our emphasis downplaying de-Ba athification.  Perhaps many in the press say it was a mistake.  I would argue that whether it s with regard to the Fallujah brigade, whether it s in certain cities in Iraq, that the more we ve tolerated the presence of Ba athists, the more we ve had reconciliation without a truth component, the more violence has occurred.  <o:p></o:p> Ambassador Bremer got on Iraqi television in April 2004 and basically talked about re-Ba athification -- changing the implementation of the policy, he said, but the way most Iraqis read it was, if you re just changing the implementation there s no reason to get on television.  You re changing the policy.  With that, I would argue, a couple weeks following was a big spike in violence.<o:p></o:p> We ve also had issues with regard to this with an improper vetting, which has been in the press recently, and infiltration.  Not all of it is malicious, although much of it is.  When I talk to Iraqis and this goes into the greater sense of psychological mistrust of how long we re willing to stay and whether we are willing to fulfill our commitments to the Iraqis many Iraqis will openly admit to me, We ve put one son in the new forces being trained, we ve put another son with the insurgents.  Because that way if we get in trouble with the military we can use our son who s working with the military, if we get in trouble with the insurgents we have a contact there as well.   It s a dynamic which on one hand isn t necessarily the most malicious dynamic but on the other hand it signals a wider distrust of the staying power and commitment of the Americans.  <o:p></o:p> This is going to get worse if we go out there and say that we plan to withdraw our troops in 2006 or 2007.  It s going to play into the psychological impact of what Iraqis interpret as our abandonment of them in 1991.  When you talk to Iraqis on the ground -- we can quibble over what the reality of President George H.W. Bush s February 15, 1991, commitment or speech was with regard to the uprising, but perception in the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place> is 90 percent of reality.  Throughout 14 of the 18 governorates, and I would actually argue throughout 18 of the 18 governorates whichever side the Iraqis are on, Iraqis interpret the United States as having urged a rebellion and not followed through.  <o:p></o:p> Again, when you drive down through Najaf and Karbala and I ve said this before you can see this very visibly, when you have the stately date palms of Iraq which might be 16 meters high; hop in certain areas of the Sunni triangle and they re only 15 meters high in areas where Saddam Hussein took the bulldozer in 1991 and knocked it all down.  I would argue that this isn t just random think tank wonk interpretation.  If you look at Al-Chakalosat [phonetic] and some of the political cartoons, on June 28, just a couple weeks ago, when word leaked out that we were negotiating with the insurgents which in and of itself is an infringement, if our embassy is doing it, on Iraqi sovereignty what the cartoon in Al-Chakalosat [phonetic] showed was an American military officer surrounded by barbed wire and the only way out was with going through a desk that was manned by an insurgent.  The clear implication it had no caption but the clear implication of it was not that the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> was being magnanimous but that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> was weak.<o:p></o:p> Broad-based coalition-building I d like to talk a little bit about that because I might disagree a little bit with Joost on this.  There s always a trade-off.  I would argue that whatever happens, we don t want to give the impression that violence in any way will get rewarded or that there s another way to get political power other than through the ballot box.  Whether or not the constitution whether or not as many people participated in the elections as we would have liked or not, there will be a referendum on the constitution.  <o:p></o:p> I would also, talking about trade-offs, and this is something I ve heard increasingly from my contact with Iraqi women s groups, we can talk about the inclusiveness with the Sunnis and there s a conventional wisdom, especially among the American press and I would say the Middle Eastern press (including the Turkish press because I see the front row is lined with the Turkish press) that the Sunnis are the secular, liberal force inside Iraq.  <o:p></o:p> I would argue that s not true.  Many of the Sunni political parties are among the fiercest Islamists.  Within the United Iraqi Alliance, the predominantly Shi ite movement endorsed by Sistani, you have major Islamist components led by Hakim, led by Jafaari but you also have major secular components as well.  Iraqis don t like the term secular more liberal components as well.  What we ve had by forcing too many Sunnis in, the representatives of these Islamist Sunni political parties, what we ve done in effect is screw over the liberals who have wanted, for example, to separate the keep the family law out of the religious courts and so forth, which will be one of the fights down the road.  We re already starting to see that.<o:p></o:p> I would disagree with Joost I m sorry, one other thing not disagreeing with Joost.  A minor issue but it has major impact on Iraqi society, at least from my experience, and I m not sure we ve really picked up on it.  I don t spend much of my time in the Green Zone but I do visit it.  Once when I visited I was in the convention center and they cleared the floor because Prime Minister Allawi this was before the elections needed to come through with Hassan Al Shalon [phonetic], the defense minister.  They came through and they were surrounded by American security officers.  <o:p></o:p> The same thing happens a bit with Jafaari [phonetic].  I will say this directly: any Iraqi politician that uses American security officers is going to hemorrhage popular support.  If Ibrahim Jafaari is using American security officers, we may think that s what s necessary to protect his security perhaps that s true but he will lose the next election and therefore any political investment in him will be lost.  It is poor optics in a major sense and I think everyone here can understand that.  Even if people inside the international zone who don t get out of the international zone don t fully see that, if you talk to Iraqis in restaurants, in tea houses elsewhere in Baghdad, down in Mussaib [phonetic], down in Karbala, Najaf, up in Mosul, Kirkuk, what have you if you re an Iraqi politician and you re surrounded by American political officers, you re going to lose a base of your support.  Iraqi nationalism is extremely important.<o:p></o:p> Now getting to the part and wrapping up where I disagree with Joost a bit.  I would strongly argue against changing timelines, although Joost was very careful in his discussion because he didn t argue changing timelines outside the parameters we ve put down but within the six-month delay.  That, I ll concede.  But first of all, I m not sure whether more time will lead to more inclusiveness.  <o:p></o:p> Iraqi politics is about brinkmanship.  If you give Iraqis a deadline, I would argue that you ll have an agreement 48 hours after that deadline is reached and about 72 hours after they ve locked themselves in a smoke-filled room with tea, with coffee if it s in the Kurdish areas, with whiskey and so forth.  Iraqi politics is strongly about brinkmanship.  You re not going to get a compromise on the role of religion in society or on federalism three months before the deadline.  You re going to get it three hours after the deadline when they re all talking.<o:p></o:p> Likewise, I would push back a little.  I would argue that yes, the Green Zone is extremely isolated.  A lot of the Iraqi politicians don t get out.  Two issues here though.  First of all, the constitution isn t being drafted by the drafting committee.  Throughout Iraqi politics you have the major you can call them warlords, you can call them political masters, you can call them whatever you want, you can name them Hakim, perhaps to some extent Jafaari, Chalabi, Barzani, Talabani; when it comes to the Sunnis this continues to be a problem regardless, because there s no clear Arab Sunni leadership, nor is there a clear Turkmen leadership.  <o:p></o:p> They are the ones who are basically hashing these out in their houses.  They are consulting with people.  They re also choosing not to consult with other people.  But the fact of the matter is the drafting committee, whatever illusion we want to maintain, is basically a byproduct of the grand political masters who have developed not only in the two and a half years after liberation but also in the ten years of opposition politics before that.  That s not, I think, because we ve overestimated the division between exiles and internals, as we used to call them in CPA and State Department and Pentagon this isn t <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Taiwan</st1:place></st1:country-region> where there s an ethnic difference.  <o:p></o:p> Also, just as an aside, I d like to press those who complain about this so much to get up and write a story about how the Dalai Lama of Tibet has absolutely no legitimacy because he lives outside Tibet.  That s an aside.<o:p></o:p> Silent majority do support democracy but if we change the timeline we re going to fall into the trap of 1991, the Americans don t have staying power.  It s a slippery slope, they re changing the timeline now, they re doing what we did early on, which was how we squandered the honeymoon, at least on the civilian side, of having Jay Garner and ORHA having the selection with Bremer and then having the election with Bremer and constantly shifting parameters.  <o:p></o:p> When you do talk to Iraqis, generally the greatest complaint and I would argue this among former Ba athists and among new Iraqis is the Americans keep changing the parameters.  Among the former Ba athists it s because we don t know how best to co-opt and maintain power, because many former Ba athists were more interested in power necessarily than ultimately ideology.  Many of the more mature politicians, I would argue, say, Look, we keep trying to have long-term strategies and you keep shifting the goalposts.  That s just not fair.  Now, after June 28, it s also an infringement on sovereignty.  <o:p></o:p> Lastly, don t abet corruption.  This is especially a problem, and Joost alluded to this, in the Kurdish north, where when it comes to Kirkuk and some of the NGOs that are far from being NGOs also in areas where we re giving budgets and people are using that to portray patronage, and this has happened especially among the Kurdish parties, where you can go to some areas the Megosoar [phonetic] road, for example, to Barzan has been repaved three times, and up north of Sedahan [phonetic] there hasn t been any road replacement since the 1980s because those people aren t as favorable to Barzani.  Regardless, that s a problem.<o:p></o:p> But I do think that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, just to end on a positive note we are making a great deal of progress.  That s happening both because our military and the Iraqi military but especially our military has shown that this is not <st1:City w:st="on">Beirut</st1:City>, 1983; this is not <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mogadishu</st1:place></st1:City>, 1993.  We do have staying power.  We are committed.  The military much more than the civilians has shown the model as to how reconstruction should occur when it comes to the SIRP [phonetic] funding and being able to back up what is promised with what is delivered in a very quick succession.  That s important.<o:p></o:p> I would argue that if we really want to rebuild the nation and if we really want to fight the insurgency, while we ve had all these talks on Capitol Hill about whether we should be bringing troops back, how the timeline should work, one of the other questions wouldn t be whether we have too few or too many troops it s whether we have too many diplomats, especially because too many people, if you re sitting inside the Green Zone, if you re not getting out and meeting with ordinary Iraqis, you might as well be back here.  When it comes to the SIRP [phonetic] funding, if our matrix for success is how much money we ve spent, which is how it s done in USAID, rather than what s accomplished, then we re also going to lose hearts and minds.  I would argue with the SIRP [phonetic] model, which could be extended beyond the military by the way, when you do have real accountability, then you can actually deliver and that reassures.  <o:p></o:p> Part of winning the hearts and minds is winning back the trust.  This isn t a six-month, one-year, or eighteen-month issue.  This is an issue that in the case of us and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> has gone back at least to 1991.  If you talk to the Kurds, at least to 1975 and before.  Thank you.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Thank you, Michael.  Sure you got all your asides out?  Just teasing.<o:p></o:p> We ll throw it open to the floor in a sec but I m going to exercise the prerogative of the moderator to try to draw together some themes that I certainly heard in all four presentations and raise a couple of issues that are of concern to me.<o:p></o:p> Again, sort of stepping back from the presentations, it does seem to me that whatever we thought going into Iraq and whatever we ve learned since, that any way you look at it, Iraqi society and Iraqi politics whether it s measured by Ba ath Party membership or whatever your metric is that Iraqi society is more broken than we could possibly have anticipated and may be more broken still today than we anticipated.  Any time horizon that s measured in months rather than years, and arguably in years rather than decades, strikes me as being potentially a self-defeating strategy.<o:p></o:p> Finally, there still seems to be a fundamental tension about what the role of the United States is in Iraq after victory is declared, whatever we define victory to be constitution, subsequent election, whatever.  If it s still, to use Michael s term, bad optics for an Iraqi politician to be seen surrounded by a gaggle of Americans, that s a really bad metric.  It seems to me the object ought to be to make it safe for Americans to do that and safe for Iraqis to do that, to actually have that be a positive image in the mind of Iraqis.  <o:p></o:p> This underscores a theme that Fred brought out, that being potential divergence of strategic interests over the long term.  The <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> is thinking about <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> qua <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> but also <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> as a piece in a broader struggle for political reform and campaign against terrorism throughout the Islamic world.  Iraqis quite naturally are most immediately but I hope not exclusively concerned with the broader struggle.<o:p></o:p> Anybody can grab any piece of that they care to comment on, but it does seem to me that there s still a fundamental tension, an unresolved tension.  Yeah, we may have asserted that it s not <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> or <st1:country-region w:st="on">Somalia</st1:country-region>, but we have yet to define positively what we think a long-term, large-scale victory in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> ought to be.  Tell me I m wrong, tell me I m right, tell me how I m wrong.<o:p></o:p> Frederick Kagan:  Tom, I d like to pick up on a couple of those points.  First of all, I think this is something you were getting at it s very important to divorce, in a certain sense, the struggle for a political system to develop in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> from the struggle against the terrorism campaign.  It is not the case that we are going to defeat the terrorism campaign or the Iraqis are going to defeat the terrorism campaign and then we re going to have the development of a stable democracy in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  Nor is it the case that the defeat of the terrorism will necessarily accompany immediately the establishment of a legitimate government in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>.  <o:p></o:p> I think it is very likely, especially if you look at the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region> model, that you will continue to have terrorist attacks for a very long time in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>, even if the development of the political process is successful.  I think one of the worst things that we can do is to identify the number of terrorist attacks per day as the primary metric for success in this struggle, because it is not necessarily correlated with what is in fact the most important activity, namely actually establishing a legitimate government in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>. <o:p></o:p>  Now, the more we can establish a legitimate government in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the easier it will be over time to attack the terrorism problem.  But we mustn t imagine that these things are very tightly coordinated.  Nor do I think it s the case that the continuation of terrorism will prevent us from establishing a stable and legitimate government in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>.  <o:p></o:p> I would only disagree with Tom about one thing, which is I think it s always a problem for a sovereign state if its leaders are visibly protected by the soldiers of another country.  I don t think there s anything around that.  I think your fundamental point is absolutely right, that it is essential that at the end of this American troops are not seen to be a threat and are not seen to be aliens who are intervening in Iraqi affairs.  I think that s absolutely right.  But it will never be good for the Iraqis to be protected by Americans.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Yeah, good point.  But between being viewed as puppet masters and occupiers, there s got to be some middle ground that allows for a long-term American presence, including a military presence, that s consistent with Iraqi sovereignty and national feelings.  I guess that s what I was trying to get at.  <o:p></o:p> Question:  My name is Jardo Makali [phonetic], I m from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Angola</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  I ve been here for forever.  My question is actually for Mr. Kagan.  He said that the Bush Administration had made the mistake of indicating the withdrawal I probably didn t get it exactly.  I just would like to see if you could be a little more clear on that.  Was there any statement or are you making inferences?  If there is some kind of a timetable that seems to come with that as well.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  I haven t seen any official statement and I don t think they re going to be so foolish as to announce officially a date when we re going to be doing this in the near future.  But there have been a number of public and private statements that have generated into rumors that seem to be pretty clear that the intention is to begin drawing down forces in 2006, if the situation makes that at all possible.  I ve seen that in the news, I think it was even in the Times this morning and a number of other places.<o:p></o:p> It s totally consistent with the policy that the administration has been following all along, where honestly, to be fair, it sometimes made you wonder whether the objective in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> was to establish something in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> or to get the armed forces out as quickly as possible.  So I see a total continuum here and statements and rumors just reinforce that.  But I don t think anyone has a formal timetable.  I certainly would hope not.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Actually I want to try to draw Joe out on that issue.  Not that he s going to know or spill the beans about any particular operational questions, but it is certainly true that the stresses particularly on the Army but also the Marine Corps, as General Sattler underscored, are significant.  We are now entering into OIF III without any real diminution in the overall size of the force.  The question of sustainability within the force as it currently exists, it s one of those things things that can t happen eventually don t happen, or whatever the right way to say that is.  But Joe, if you will sort of speak a bit about the Army s ability to sustain the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and broader <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place> commitment.<o:p></o:p> Joe Anderson:  The planning factor has to be the same level of force there now through this current, upcoming rotation and the one after it.  That has to be the planning assumption until told otherwise.  The good news in that is the Army can do it.  The question becomes I don t know what you ve heard about how the transformation process builds more brigades and how brigades become bigger, how brigades become more self-contained, and of course the reliance on the Reserves component.  <o:p></o:p> So there is not an easy answer here, but there is a model designed on how you deploy a unit, how you prepare to go, how you actually out-load it, how it goes through its deployment timeline and how it comes back and resets and recovers.  That, over time, there is pain associated with that.  The good news is the model supports it.  The force structure is there.  How long it will go at that level and how much reliance on Reserves or otherwise based on that model, it may not be as neatly packaged as one would like but again, we are a nation at war.  So you have to look at what s happened in the past and what we re trying to do in the future.  It may not be clean.  Other things out there may be lower, lesser, rotation times.  That s a possibility.  <o:p></o:p> But again, as we ve talked about, the whole key to success in Iraq if you look at Afghanistan, by the way, what s happening over there with the security forces is a very good story hopefully and hope is not a method but hopefully what you see in Iraq will become a more viable force.  I agree with the comment about the police.  There s one huge element there that s going to be a factor.  You can have your border dudes, you can have your army, you can have all these things going on, but there has to be a viable, dependable, respectable, legitimate, resourced, well-led, well-trained police force that can maintain the day-to-day security in the streets of -- pick your city just like happens outside the streets here.<o:p></o:p> So it s not an easy process but that s going to ultimately be the decision point, the assessment point that says when can the footprint be reduced.  But as we ve talked about, the footprint will probably not totally be reduced for quite some time, as we continue that process.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  I ll take that as Army-speak for we re in deep doo-doo.<o:p></o:p> Question:  Ionis Popescu [phonetic] from the Romanian Embassy.  Most of you agree that the <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> should stay longer in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> and bring more troops over there.  I d like to ask you, how do you think this will impede the <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> credible threat against other countries that are on the wrong side in the war on terror, like <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region> or <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>?  Especially to Mr. Anderson, if in the coming QDR, do you think the two theater wars model is going to be changed to make room for more action in that area?<o:p></o:p> Joe Anderson:  As we ve said before, nobody can put a mark on a wall, nobody can put a tick mark on a calendar and say January 2007, we re all going to go home and life s going to go on in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  Can we sustain it?  Yes.  Will we sustain it?  Yes.  <o:p></o:p> We talked about the differences of where we are today and some other places we ve been.  The commitment is there to take this to the end and get through it.  The question becomes, what force requirements exist in that particular country to endure throughout a new government, a new leadership within all their security forces?  No one knows the answer to that question.  I certainly don t.  But yes, we re prepared to wage it out.<o:p></o:p> The QDR is obviously a topic that s not public forum.  The question becomes, what do you prepare for?  Do you have to prepare for other contingencies?  Again, how do you define an MTW?  How do you define a small-scale contingency?  I don t know.  After going through a few of these, it s hard to define what that really means.  But the question is, do you have to have forces to go elsewhere?  The answer is yes.  <o:p></o:p> Of course, this is not just an Army issue, it s a joint DOD issue, the role of all services to do that.  That is certainly being discussed every week in that five-sided building over there, that talks about what do we prepare for the future.  The QDR will be the model that will determine what the force structure will look like to accommodate that, but we certainly have to be prepared to go other places, do other things, based on the reality in the world.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  I think it s really important to understand that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> does not now have a military that is capable of fighting two major theater wars.  It has not had a military that was capable of doing that since 1993 or so.  All of this business about we re going to abandon the two-war standard is meaningless.  It s code either for we re going to admit that we can t do this or we re going to use it to justify other kinds of changes that we re going to make.  <o:p></o:p> But it s absolutely disingenuous, and even in the 2001 QDR if you look at it, you ll find a more or less direct statement that we don t have the capability to fight I m sorry, it was in Rumsfeld s testimony around the 2001 QDR he said we don t have the capability to do this really.  Which is one of the reasons he advanced for abandoning the standard.<o:p></o:p> So this is almost a non-issue except that it s very worrisome that we re still maintaining in any way the myth that we actually have that capability.<o:p></o:p> Question:  Steve Solarz.  We are paying a much heavier price in blood and treasure as a result of our involvement in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> than we anticipated before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.  I don t think it s a secret that more and more Americans are beginning to question whether the price we re paying is justified.<o:p></o:p> It seems to me that if we re going to stay the course in Iraq, the American people will have to be persuaded that the benefits of success, as defined by the creation of a stable, democratic, legitimate government in Iraq, and the consequences of a premature withdrawal are such that it s worth paying the continuing price in blood and treasure that we ll have to pay if we re going to stay the course.<o:p></o:p> So my question to each of you is, from your perspective, from an American perspective, what do you see as the benefits to the United States and the American people of success as it s been defined?  What do you see as the consequences for the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place> and the American people if we were to withdraw without success under circumstances where you didn t have a broadly based, democratically elected, stable situation and a continuing of the insurgency and quite possibly civil war.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I d like to go last in response to that question, because I d like to turn the question around for Mr. Solarz.<o:p></o:p> Michael Rubin:  Let me take the second part of that first, what would happen if we withdrew.  I think you would see a massive spike in violence, not only in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> but all over the world.  We saw this 1983 ushered in a whole wave of terrorism; 1993 as well.  It would basically indicate that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> is weak and that terrorism works.  Terrorism is a tactic and terrorism is a tactic used by extremists because it works.<o:p></o:p> With regard to whether the blood and treasure is worth it, just one as a point of information.  In the pre-war planning, when people sincerely believed that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> had chemical and biological weapons and might use them, there was a belief that the cost in blood would be much higher by an order of magnitude than actually it is.  But I would also argue that the American people outside the Beltway and beyond the fourth estate tend to understand issues of freedom and liberty a little bit more than some of the mainstream press does.  <o:p></o:p> Regardless, this was always brought home to me when I would be with, for example, Shi ites down in Samawa and go with them when they this is soon after the war ended go with them when they would visit their family homes.  They disappeared twenty years ago in the middle of the night, never called their families because they knew the phones were tapped and didn t want to get their families in trouble.  Their families assumed they were dead.  When you follow them through the alleys, the dusty alleys of Samawa, Diwaniyah, wherever; you knock on the door, you find their house; you see their mother or father open the door and see that it s their son who they expected to collect from a mass grave, is alive and well that reinforces that what we did is real and valued.<o:p></o:p> Likewise, I ve given one of my little MCI phones that can call anywhere in the world to a Kurdish lady who knew that her daughter lived in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, hadn t called her for ages.  This is outside of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kirkuk</st1:place></st1:City>.  The first time you enable her to call and she finds out not only is she a grandmother but she s a grandmother four times over, that s worth it.<o:p></o:p> The people who are most negative about <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> are the people who have never talked to an Iraqi.  We allow I ve written an article on it, so I ll cite it Rashid Khalidi s book, for one, talking about I forget the name of it but talking about how the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> didn t understand Arab history.  What he did was he imposed an Arab nationalist discourse on Iraqis.  Even Iraqis that opposed the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place> presence have a sense over 35 years of dictatorship and war of a historical exceptionalism that sets them apart from the rest of the Iraqis.  <o:p></o:p> People who have been in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> -- including Iraqis first and foremost, our soldiers, servicemen; secondly our diplomats as well do see a lot more good.  I think we re doing a little bit of a disservice because people no longer get outside, but for some of the other specifics I ll turn the floor over to my colleagues on the panel.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  I think that, as Michael said, if you want to ask the question, is it worth it to continue, all you have to do is consider the consequences of failure.  In a certain sense although I m not actually this na�ve but in a certain sense it amazes me that people wonder whether we should continue and try to bring this to a conclusion in the aftermath of 9/11, which demonstrated about as conclusively as it s possible to demonstrate anything in this world that the most dangerous thing the United States can do is ignore the collapse of a Muslim country into complete chaos, anarchy and violence.  <o:p></o:p> Those conditions will create the preconditions for terrorist training camps, terrorist recruitment, terrorist funding, especially when you re talking about <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> which whatever it collapses into unlike <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> will continue to have significant oil wealth.  Someone will have control of that, and that can be used to fund a stable democratic <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> or it can be used to fund warlords and gangs who will support terrorists one way or another.<o:p></o:p> It is simply unacceptable from the standpoint of American national security in my opinion, you can say this and end the conversation not to succeed in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>.  The threat to American security at home, here in <st1:City w:st="on">Washington</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">D.C.</st1:State>, but also in <st1:City w:st="on">Duluth</st1:City> and <st1:City w:st="on">Peoria</st1:City> and anywhere else you want to think about in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region>, will be enormous at this point if we fail in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>.  It is time to get beyond the question of whether we should have done this in the first place, which has become entirely irrelevant.  What matters now is that we need to move forward and we can only move forward to success.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I guess I do get to go last.  I would just simply agree with Michael and Fred but add one further consideration.  That is, unlike <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> another reason <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> is unlike <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> ultimately we could withdraw from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> and still prevail in the larger Cold War.  I think withdrawing from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> will have a far greater world political impact on our ability to maintain and sustain the expansion, not only of American power but of American ideals and political principles throughout the world.  <o:p></o:p> It s notable that in places like <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Sudan</st1:country-region> and other similar swing states, they re not simply pursuing nuclear weapons to try to deter the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  They re pursuing great power sponsorship in the form of the People s Republic of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  This region of the world is just too important for us to walk away from, broadly speaking, and I think the impacts are genuinely global, as well as regional.<o:p></o:p> But the question I wanted to ask you, Mr. Solarz, is about the question of American domestic support.  It seems to me the hearts and minds that are being played for here at home are really the hearts and minds of Democrats.  It s really quite striking and possibly the most eloquent explication of why we have to stay there is a letter recently sent to fellow Democrats by Senator Bayh and other members of the House, explaining exactly what the stakes and what the costs of withdrawal were.<o:p></o:p> So what I would ask just as a factual question for you is to tell us how your fellow Democrats are wrestling, because ultimately there will be a change of party in the executive branch and if this can t be sustained in a bipartisan way over decades and decades, then I think the very fine work that s been done thus far will be tossed aside.  So if I can ask you to respond to that.<o:p></o:p> Steve Solarz:  I think you ve asked the critical question, because the center of political gravity in this conflict is in fact American public opinion and the extent to which the Democrats decide to capitalize on growing disenchantment with the war in order to make it a political issue.  Obviously whatever doubts there may be on the part of Republicans with the current policy, there s an obvious reluctance to come out against the administration.  But if this does become a partisan political issue, Republicans are going to put reelection ahead of displeasing the administration.  So your question is what can be done to sustain Democratic support for the war.<o:p></o:p> Let me just say parenthetically that I think one of the most remarkable aspects of the situation is that a significant anti-war movement has not yet emerged in the country, in spite of growing disenchantment and questions reflected in the various public opinion polls that have been taken.  My sense is that what the administration needs to do which it hasn t done and which based on its past performance I tend to doubt it will do is to bring Democrats much more visibly and actively into the shaping of our policy.  <o:p></o:p> During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt appointed Henry Stimson, a Republican, as Secretary of War, and Mr. Knox, a Republican, as Secretary of the Navy.  In the early years of our involvement in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>, Kennedy appointed Henry Cabot Lodge, former Republican senator and an opponent of his in <st1:State w:st="on">Massachusetts</st1:State>, as our ambassador to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and Bob McNamara, who at least was nominally a Republican, as Secretary of Defense.  I think for quite some time the sense that this was not a Democratic war but an American war helped sustain public opinion.  <o:p></o:p> I think the administration needs to do this.  It s already passed up some opportunities.  For example I mean no disrespect to Zal Khalilzad, whom I have a high regard for and I think did a fine job in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region>, but I think the administration would have been well advised to have appointed a prominent Democrat as our ambassador to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:place></st1:City>.  In the event Mr. Bolton doesn t get a recess appointment, I think the administration would be well advised to consider appointing a prominent Democrat there.  If Secretary Rumsfeld should decide to retire, that would be yet another opportunity.  <o:p></o:p> If none of those turn out to be possibilities, I think the administration should consider creating a high-level bipartisan congressional/executive branch working group on Iraq, in which senior Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate would meet, say, once a month or more with the president and his senior advisors, to give them a sense of involvement in the making of our policy.  To the extent that this can be done, I think it can help to diminish the prospects for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> becoming a partisan issue in the next campaign.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I ll just speak personally and say I would be delighted to see Joe Lieberman as the Secretary of Defense.<o:p></o:p> I m sorry to divert but I wanted to follow up.  Do you believe there s an executive branch/legislative branch that might also need to be addressed?  Wars are in some sense inherently executive branch functions, but particularly long wars again, I would call on you as a longstanding member of the House to address whether you think there s a need for the legislative branch to be more deeply involved in the policymaking process.<o:p></o:p> Steve Solarz:  The short answer is yes.  Obviously the president, as commander in chief, has certain responsibilities under the Constitution which he s not going to relinquish.  In American history there have been examples of where congressional involvement, such as the Committee on the Conduct of the War during the Civil War, proved to be anything but helpful.<o:p></o:p> But there are precedents for administrations reaching out to Congress on a kind of ad hoc basis to bring people in in a meaningful way to the discussion about how we proceed, without relinquishing the ultimate right of the president under the Constitution to determine policy.  So far I see little evidence that the administration has either conducted itself in that way with respect to this conflict or that it s thinking of doing so.  But it neglects to do so at its own peril, because unless Democrats can come away with a sense that this is an American war in which, for the reasons that have been mentioned, failure is unthinkable, there is a real risk that it could become a very significant partisan issue and that could potentially spell disaster.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I just wanted to comment that Ben Wade was the original neoconservative and therefore we could use some more people like that.  I m sorry for that diversion.  I probably should have invited Representative Solarz to come up and join the panel.  <o:p></o:p> Question:  Maurice Johad [phonetic] from Middle East Media Research Institute.  I ve a question to Colonel Anderson.  Was there any education for the new Iraqi army not to be involved in politics?  After all, if you look at <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> during the last fifty years, there was bloodshed and revolutions one after the other.  In the 1950s there was a democracy in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, a parliament.  One day when certain brigades, the 19th Brigade and 20th Brigade, were about to be sent to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Jordan</st1:country-region> to help King Hussein, they decided to control <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  How can the American presence in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> secure that future Iraqi army will not take over one day against the elected government?<o:p></o:p> Joe Anderson:  It goes back to the training base and getting the right people in the right jobs.  The vetting process is not easy, as you can see in the media what happens on the streets and who gets put in these jobs.  It kind of goes back to the de-Ba athification discussion we had a little while ago.  As you look at some of the decisions that were made at the strategic level at the beginning of the Phase IV-B where they said, okay, all FIRCA [phonetic] level and above can be nobody you really can t make an overarching statement like that considering what role they played in society in the professional arena educators, doctors, whatever. <o:p></o:p>  A lot of that permeates into the military and the question becomes the same thing happened in the military where the decision was made to disband a 400,000-man army and all of a sudden say you guys are now unemployed, not part of society.  You can talk about the renunciation policy, you can talk about a lot of things, but in the end a lot of those people it s really a matter of survival.  If you haven t traveled there, haven t lived there, I propose to you again: if being a member of the Party was your lifeline to feed your family, to put a roof over your head, to put clothes on your back, you re probably going to be a member of the Party.  <o:p></o:p> So the question of the day becomes, what does that mean for the future of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and what role are you going to play in the new <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>?  If you believe being a Ba athist entitles you to power, like it did, and that s going to be your source of income or whatever, then that s the kind of guys we can t afford to have in the military as we build this new military.  Is it possible to build an army without relying on any of the old former regime loyalists or elements?  I d say no.<o:p></o:p> So the question becomes and the training, legitimization of that force, how you get members of the former military and again new.  The question becomes, what s the blend, what s the mix of old and new as you recruit and go out there?  The good news is, and the bad news for the insurgents, is that every day a police station blows or recruit station blows, guess what?  The next day the line to join is just as long as the day before.  That s tough for the insurgents to beat.  That s a very good news story and that shows the strength and the resolve of the Iraqi people.<o:p></o:p> The issue goes back to what you just asked though how do you make sure they re not going to become a regime again?  That s going to be A) through their government; B) through their constitution; and C) through the building of this force to make sure we re putting the right guys in charge.  That s why this pulling the plug piece, no matter how big this force gets, no matter how fast it gets big, the quality of the force and the continual assessment of that to make sure they are independent, understand their role in society.  <o:p></o:p> Remember, as many of you have traveled and as you all know in history, look at how they ve lived and what most people s lives have experienced there under the regime of Saddam.  So it s going to take a while to figure out right from wrong, just like the police.  You look back, the police are resorting right back to bribery and things that they did before.  The question becomes, how do you continue to clean that up, police that up, enforce standards and codes of conduct which we made two years ago, to make sure they know right from wrong.<o:p></o:p> So it s an educational, cultural, leadership, supervision role which is not much easier said than done.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I wanted Joe to elaborate a bit and just ask him a question.  In your time in <st1:City w:st="on">Mosul</st1:City>, how many guys whether it s military leadership positions or like the dean of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Mosul</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> or whatever from start to finish, how many guys were really keepers?  Whether it was because they were politically corrupt, Ba ath Party members, or just incompetents or whatever.  Describe that sifting process and what it really entailed.<o:p></o:p> Joe Anderson:  It is truly a trial and error process.  I would say it s tough to put a number on it, Tom, but I d say about 25 percent of them are probably keepers.  So the deans of the schools and universities, of the eight of them this does not correlate with the percentage I just gave you two of them had to go.  Two of them were clearly rallying the students up, putting posters up, having anti-Coalition meetings at night on campus.  Two of the eight had to go.  <o:p></o:p> We went through three police chiefs.  The third one is the guy I kept all the way to my departure, who stayed quite past my departure.  Unfortunately the engagement of the follow-on force was not appropriate and he was swayed by the insurgents.  He was the top commando.  He was the first Iraqi commando into <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Kuwait</st1:country-region></st1:place> during Gulf I.  <o:p></o:p> So you look at him and go, wow, you re not the kind of guy we want to deal with.  He was a very good leader, he knew how to clean up the police force and we kept him.  The problem is because of the way we dealt with him over time, when you only had contact with him once a week, once every two weeks, the insurgents were more able to influence him than not.  So he went south and he was subsequently captured in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Irbil</st1:place></st1:City>. <o:p></o:p> The top fire guy was the best EOD guy.  He d been a FIRCA [phonetic] for 25 years.  He knew more about disabling bombs and explosives than any American by far, and to include the UN Mine Commission.  So he stayed.  Guess what happened to him?  The UN Mine Commission hired him because he was so good.  So off came his fire department, civil defense clothes, and he became an UNMIC rep because he was so good at what he did.<o:p></o:p> A couple examples, but it s all trial and error.  You have to keep going through that process.  Here s one of the faults we made in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mosul</st1:place></st1:City>.  When we put that council together that you talk about, building governance, you do have to say, if we make a mistake, if you prove otherwise just like in our political process if you prove to be a buffoon, immoral, unethical, whatever, untrustworthy, then you ve got to go.  <o:p></o:p> Well, you have to hold your guns.  It cannot be a matter of your pride getting in the way, saying I don t want to admit failure by putting so and so on the council and saying I m going to look the other way.  You have to be fair, consistent, and maintain standards.<o:p></o:p> But there are guys and gals who are very competent people, heavy in the professional arena, heavy in the doctor arena, that you couldn t afford to do without.<o:p></o:p> Fred Kagan:  Just briefly I want to add that if you want to develop an Iraqi military that is going to recognize the supremacy of the political system and not attempt to undermine it, one of the best things you can do is maximize contact at every level between that military and American soldiers.  Because the American military has not only imbibed this understanding of subordination to civilian authority but exudes it in everything that it does.  As it is increasingly clear that the Iraqis work very hard to model themselves on the excellent American soldiers that they see, one of the aspects of that model will inevitably be an understanding of the subordination of military power to political authority.  <o:p></o:p> That is one of the single most defining characteristics of the American military.  This argues for maintaining sufficient presence in-country so that we continue to have contact at every level, including the lowest levels, and being prepared to sustain it long enough so that we can actually have a chance of having this really rub off and soak into the Iraqi military that we re developing.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  I d like to ask Joost and Michael to comment on the civilian side.  Obviously having a professional civil service or just an ethos of politicians where loyalty to the nation or to the constitution is superior to family, tribal, sectarian loyalties, how are we doing on that front?<o:p></o:p> Joost Hiltermann:  I think this is a good occasion to disagree with Michael.  I think we really missed the boat on de-Ba athification.  The term is wrong.  The committee that was set up to implement it had the wrong mandate and the results have been disastrous.  I think what we should have had from the beginning was an effort at de-Saddamification that used the criterion of people s past conduct rather than their past membership in any party like the Ba ath Party.  Then we would have avoided some of the big problems we saw with getting rid of people who were perfectly competent, who were maybe even senior Ba ath members but who never did any harm to anyone of which there are many.  We might not have seen the dismissal of the entire army simply because we didn t trust their loyalty, when in fact the army was probably the least loyal to Saddam of all his security agencies and had many very good professional people who went home humiliated.  I spoke to several of them.  In many cases, probably joined the insurgency, partly because of a need to have some sort of income and partly because of wounded pride.<o:p></o:p> What should have been there from the very beginning, and I think it s one of the big lacunae of the rebuilding effort, is what you would call a vetting mechanism, a screening mechanism, or what the human rights community refers to as a transitional justice mechanism.  We ve had maybe on an ad hoc basis in certain institutions like the army and ministries, we ve had ad hoc efforts at screening out the bad from the good.  But there has been no systematic, standardized, independent, judiciary-based way of determining who are the bad apples of which there are also many and who are not, which there are many more.<o:p></o:p> I think this failure has given an opportunity to many people to settle personal scores, to advance themselves at the expense of others, et cetera, which has only increased the tensions in society rather than reduced them.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Michael, I m going to ask you to please let the de-Ba athification issue go and rather address the positive question of how to build the mechanisms of a decent Iraqi state and to give us a report card on how we are or are not doing on that front.<o:p></o:p> Michael Rubin:  I m also going to do my best to not replicate that old Saturday Night Live skit the Jane, you ignorant role.  At any rate.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  Ad hominem attacks mean dismissal from the panel.<o:p></o:p> Michael Rubin:  Exactly.  How to answer this without talking about de-Ba athification?  I would argue that in general, to put a positive spin on this, what needs to happen is not necessarily to look at the label and the rank within the pyramidal structure of the Ba ath Party but to follow the money.  This is something which frankly our intelligence assets and document retrieval people haven t been able to do with the speed with which we can implement it quickly enough on this particular angle. <o:p></o:p>  For example, if you have two fifth-grade teachers and they both have ten years experience, and one is getting paid $30 a month and the other is getting paid $300 a month, whether that person is a FIRCA [phonetic] or whether that person is a member of the intelligence agencies who s not a Ba ath Party member and that s what I would argue the mistake was they were doing something to become complicit and make ten times more money than their colleague with the same experience.  <o:p></o:p> I would argue that sometimes, and this goes into the broader issue of vetting, because many of the former regime officials who were charged with dealing with foreigners and this actually is a very important problem with regard to the press and press fixers that people substitute the ability of an interlocutor to be charming, and that usually means speaking English, with necessarily a clean past.  <o:p></o:p> I would argue that people for sheer that there s two sets of people.  Actually, three sets of people.  Some, as Colonel Anderson argued, are completely irredeemable and you work to get rid of them.  The two deans at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Mosul</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>.  Others are the complete opposite.  For whatever reason, they did not allow themselves to be corrupted by the former regime.  In some cases, these people thrived.  Other people who never let themselves be corrupted by the former regime in themselves took the opportunity to become corrupt.  So not everyone is perfect.<o:p></o:p> Then you have people in between.  Where I would disagree is that if someone can be tempted to join the insurgents, they re probably not someone our vetting has to be good enough so that those people don t get put in a position where they can be tempted in the first place and implement that tempted-ness.  Sorry, now I m inventing English.  I d never be a charming people.<o:p></o:p> The issue here and when I said our vetting, that s also part of the problem because we need to start to have a much better timeline as to how Iraqis are going to perform the vetting themselves -- Fred alluded to this when we do leave, if it s a political decision or not.  It s probably going to be faster when it s actually put into place than we expect.  If we haven t implemented the systems, then Iraqis are going to be less able to make sure that they can maintain the stability and you don t just have another army person, former military person, come in their place and try to take over.<o:p></o:p> One concrete example where this has happened recently is with regard to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">International</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Airport</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>.  In order to have consistency, the U.S. Embassy leaned hard on the interim Iraqi government, then run in the last days of Allawi, to extend the contract is it Global who s doing the airport security?  Global wasn t the most popular company because they had some problems with corruption and with treatment of people, and they were more expensive than other bidders.  We extended their contract but we didn t ensure that there was a mechanism in place that Iraqis would be along with them to get on-site training.  This goes beyond what Fred said.  Fred is absolutely right, at every layer of the military you need to have the contact.  That also goes true with the civilian authorities and that s something which is not happening now.  <o:p></o:p> The ministries you might have a senior advisor to show up but you don t have people at every layer of the ministry showing up to interact with interlocutors.  You might have the senior advisor for the ministry I m just throwing this out there of electricity go and meet with the minister of electricity, but you don t necessarily have people all the way down the line do the same thing.  It s unfortunate.<o:p></o:p> So I ll lay off all the things I would have rebutted as always, I would have rebutted everyone brilliantly and convinced the whole room of what I m saying.  But lacking that opportunity, I ll defer the floor.<o:p></o:p> Tom Donnelly:  That may be a good note to end on.  Michael is always substantively an important interlocutor but he was borderline charming during that last presentation, so to preserve his reputation I think we ll draw the proceedings to a conclusion.  This was a great session, thank you all very much for coming.  <o:p></o:p> Thanks to the panel.<o:p></o:p> [End of session] [End of this transcript]<o:p></o:p></body></html>