[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 101 (Thursday, June 26, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4119-S4124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TERRORIST THREATS
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, Senator McCain and I have decided to
come down before the Fourth of July break to talk about two issues that
are very important to our national security.
The first issue I would like to discuss is the threat we face as a
nation from terrorist safe havens in Syria and now Iraq.
The President has indicated in recent days that it is unacceptable to
allow terrorist organizations such as ISIS to have safe havens from
which to launch attacks against our country.
Mr. President, we agree. What are you doing about it? I understand
Iraq is complicated. I understand you would need a new government in
Iraq that Sunnis could buy into to probably turn Iraq around. That is a
problem, but that is a separate problem from safe havens that can be
used to launch attacks against the United States. Please do not turn
over to the Iraqi politicians the timeline as to whether we will act to
protect ourselves.
This is the FBI Director: ``My concern is that people can go to
Syria, develop new relationships, learn new techniques and become far
more dangerous, and then flow back.''
Americans are now in Syria. Some 7,500 foreign fighters from 50
countries have gone to Syria. They are now in Iraq. The Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria was kicked out by Al Qaeda. These are the most
extreme people on the planet. They have now gone into Iraq and taken
large territories and up to $500 million in resources. They had a $30
million-a-year budget. They have more money than they ever dreamed of.
Their desire to hit the homeland is growing. Last week the leader of
this group said: We will be coming to America next.
Mr. President, do not use the political problems in Baghdad as an
excuse not to act when it comes to denying safe havens to terrorists
who have espoused attacking our country. Where is your plan to dislodge
these people in Syria and Iraq? Where is your plan to deal with the
safe haven issue? Where is your plan to hit a terrorist organization
that is desirous of hitting us?
Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot alert us as a
nation that we are threatened by a safe haven in Iraq and Syria and do
nothing about it. I understand the political complexities that exist in
Iraq, but I also understand the need to deal with the safe haven issue.
What do you envision as a solution to the safe haven problem in Syria
and Iraq? When are we going to act? Is there no military component
available to the United States to hit a terrorist organization that is
operating out in the open in Syria and Iraq, that represents a direct
threat to our homeland?
Mr. President, now is the time for you to come up with a plan to deal
with the safe havens. That issue is separate and apart from dealing
with the political complications and the meltdown in Iraq. You have
said and the Director of National Security Mr. Clapper has said that
Syria is an apocalyptic state; it is in a very bad way; that the
jihadists in Syria represent a direct threat to our homeland.
The same jihadists in Syria have moved now into Iraq. Three years ago
when Senator McCain was urging airstrikes and that a safe zone be
established, there were fewer than 1,000 foreign fighters in Syria.
Today we think there are up to 26,000 ISIS types in Syria. Now they are
moving to Iraq at lightning speed, taking town after town, amassing
resources in terms of military hardware and money that will make them
not just a terrorist organization but a terrorist army.
Mr. President, there is a terrorist army on the march in Iraq and
Syria. They have indicated they want to hit our Nation. They want to
strike us in the region, throughout the world, and here at home. You
seem to have no plan. We want to help you. We understand this is
complicated, but you, as Commander in Chief above all others, have a
duty to come up with a solution to this problem. You have defined the
problem well, but you have done nothing to solve the problem. We stand
ready to help you solve that problem.
Now, as we try to figure out where to go in Iraq and what is the
right strategy, the one thing that is important to me is not to rewrite
history. I do not want to dwell on the past, but I am not going to sit
on the sidelines and let this administration--which, as Senator Obama,
Senator Clinton, and Senator Kerry, was all over the Bush
administration for the mistakes they made. That is the way the
political process works.
When the Iraq war was going poorly on President Bush's watch, Senator
McCain called for the Republican-appointed Secretary of Defense to
resign. I would argue that Senator McCain above all others has been
consistent when it comes to Iraq. It does not matter who is making the
mistake; if he believes one is being made, he will speak up.
The line that there were just a few dead-enders in Iraq was not true.
The reason we knew it was not true is that Senator McCain and I went to
Iraq numerous times. The first time we went, we were in an SUV with a
three-car convoy. We went down to Baghdad, had dinner, and went
shopping. Every time thereafter, the security was tighter, our ability
to leave the base was restricted, and the people on the ground who were
fighting the war were telling us: This thing is not going well. Every
time we would hear from the Bush administration that the media was
misrepresenting the truth and that this was just a few dead-enders, we
knew better. We spoke up.
Abu Ghraib was a direct result of being overwhelmed by circumstances
on the ground. We thought that once the Iraqi Army disbanded and Saddam
Hussein was displaced, we would be able to handle Iraq with a few
thousand troops. The Bush administration was wrong in that calculation.
Senator McCain spoke up, and the surge did work.
To President Bush's undying credit: You corrected the mistakes that
happened on your watch. You kept an open mind. You changed strategy
because the strategy you originally pursued had failed.
President Obama, your strategy has failed. The idea of abandoning
Iraq, disengaging politically and militarily, has come home to haunt us
as a nation.
Senator McCain and I said back in 2011: If we do not leave a residual
force behind as an insurance policy for our own national security
interests, we will regret it.
Madam President, 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers, well placed, would have
given the capacity to the Iraqi Army to allow them to be more
effective, and what we see on the ground today would have never
happened. I am convinced that ISIS would never be in Iraq the way they
are today if there had been an American military component--10,000 to
15,000--providing capacity and expertise to an Iraqi army that is
literally falling apart.
I am convinced today that if we had continued to push the Iraqi
political system to reconcile, we would not be where we are today. Dave
Petraeus and Ryan Crocker--one general and one diplomat--spent hours
every day of the week practically pushing the Sunnis, the Shias, and
the Kurds to solve their problems with the political process. It was
working.
In 2010 we made a fateful mistake. We allowed Syria to go bad. Syria
became the supply center for Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was on its back.
In 2010 the surge had worked. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was the
predecessor to ISIS, was completely devastated. They are back in the
game for three reasons: Syria became a failed state. We had a chance to
stop that and did not. They were being resupplied from Syria with
equipment and fighters. We decided to disengage from Iraq politically.
We had a hands-off approach to the political problems in Baghdad. We
withdrew our troops all from 2010 to 2011. Those three things became a
perfect storm to lead us to where we are today.
We do want to look forward because looking backward does not solve
the problem. But here is what we will not accept. We will not accept a
rewriting of history. When this administration says the reason we have
no troops in Iraq today is because of the Iraqis, that is an absolutely
false statement.
In May of 2011 Senator McCain and I, at the request of Secretary
Clinton,
[[Page S4120]]
went to Iraq to talk about a follow-on agreement, a strategic
partnership agreement that had in its making a military component that
would give legal protections to our troops who were left behind.
I remember this as if it were yesterday. We were in a meeting with
Prime Minister Malaki. We were talking about leaving troops behind and
whether the Iraqis would give us the legal protections we needed
because I told Prime Minister Malaki: No American politician is going
to allow soldiers to be left behind in a foreign country without legal
protection.
If a person was charged with a crime in Iraq, given the inventory in
their legal system, I did not feel comfortable allowing that soldier to
go into the Iraqi legal system. We would deal with disciplinary
problems.
He turned to me and said: How many soldiers are you talking about?
I turned to Ambassador Jeffrey, the U.S. Ambassador, General Austin,
the commander, and said: What is the answer?
They replied to me: We are still working on that.
The Prime Minister of Iraq laughed. This was in May of 2011. We could
not tell the Prime Minister of Iraq how many troops we were talking
about.
We went to the Kurdish portion of Iraq and talked to President
Barzani. He would have accepted any amount of troops we wanted to leave
behind. He was openly embracing the follow-on force.
We met with Mr. Allawi, one of the leaders of the Iraqiya Sunni bloc,
who was very open minded to a follow-on force.
The day after we left Iraq, Prime Minister Malaki issued a statement
saying that if the other parties would agree, he would agree to a
follow-on force.
On November 15, 2011, we had a hearing with General Dempsey and
Secretary Panetta in the Armed Services Committee. We asked the
following question: Was it the Iraqis who rejected a follow-on force,
originally envisioned to be 18,000 or 19,000?
The bottom-line number from the Pentagon was 10,000.
I asked the question. Was it the Iraqis who said: No, we do not want
18,000. That is too many.
The numbers kept going down to finally 3,000.
Senator McCain asked the question.
The answer was: The reduction in numbers that we will be willing to
offer to the Iraqis did not come from a rejection by Iraq but by a
reduction of the numbers by the White House.
In other words, the cascading effect of the numbers from 18,000 to
3,000 was not because Iraq said no; it was because the White House kept
changing the numbers to the point that the force envisioned would be
ineffective and fail.
Those are the facts.
Senator McCain will address the statements by the President before,
during, and after, but I am here to tell you, without any doubt in my
mind, the reason we don't have troops in Iraq after 2011 is because the
Obama administration wanted to get to zero. They wanted to honor our
campaign promise to get us out of Iraq.
They did so, and now they are trying to blame the Iraqis. They are
trying to rewrite history. I can understand why they don't want to own
what happened in Iraq. I can't understand why we would let them get
away with it, and I am not going to let them get away with it.
Going forward, we have a mess on our hands, and I want to help the
President where I can.
But, Mr. President, you were very good at questioning the policies of
the Bush administration, and you held nothing back. I am here to tell
you I know what you are saying about Iraq is not true.
On October 21, during a conference call with staff, Denis McDonough
and Tony Blinken--former National Security Adviser to Biden and now
National Security Council--briefing staff members about the problems
with legal immunity was asked a question by Senator McCain's staff
person: If you could get a legal agreement that we felt was solid,
would you leave any troops behind, and they said no.
So we are going to write them a letter. There are several of our
staff who were on that phone call and we are going to ask Mr. McDonough
and Mr. Blinken: Did you say that, and they can say whatever they want
to, but I have people I know and I trust who were on that phone call
and they know what was said.
With that, I will turn it over to Senator McCain.
Mr. McCAIN. I would ask my colleague one question before we go on;
that is, in addition to this overwhelming information in which the
Senator and I were deeply involved that proves conclusively that the
President of the United States did not want to leave a single troop
member behind in Iraq and succeeded in doing so, did the Senator from
South Carolina ever hear the President of the United States, either
before the decision was made, during or after--did the Senator ever
hear any record of him saying he wanted to leave a residual force
behind?
Mr. GRAHAM. Quite the opposite. If we go back and look at the tape
around this debate, the President basically said: We left Iraq and we
are not going to be bogged down by Iraq.
There was no regret that I am so sorry we couldn't convince the
Iraqis to leave a residual force behind because that would have been
the best outcome for Iraq and the United States, and I regret that we
could not get there and they will regret their decision.
None of that happened. It was all about the last combat soldier is
out. We are done with Iraq. We have given them all the help we can give
them. We are going to move on, and we are not going to be bogged down.
Now the place is going to hell. It is a direct threat to the United
States, and they are trying to rewrite history--and I think it was
October.
Mr. McCAIN. The President of the United States, in the last couple of
days--please correct me--it was the first time he said it was Iraqis
who did not want to leave a force behind.
Mr. GRAHAM. The Iraqis did not want to leave a force behind.
Mr. McCAIN. Yes; he was saying they did not.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the
Record the following quotes, including October 2012.
I quote the President of the United States:
What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq
[as Candidate Romney proposed], that would tie us down. That
certainly would not help us in the Middle East.
Jay Carney said on October 1, 2012:
When President Obama took office, the Iraq War had been
going on for years and he had campaigned with a promise to
end that war, and he has done that.
One of my favorites is December 2011:
In the coming days the last American soldiers will cross
the border out of Iraq. . . . with honor and with their heads
held high. After nearly nine years, our war in Iraq ends this
month.
Anyway, the list goes on. In fact, the President campaigned for
reelection in 2012 on the premise that he had gotten us out of Iraq.
The Senator from South Carolina and I predicted this would happen if
we didn't leave a residual force behind. I say to my colleagues again,
if we repeat this same total pullout of Afghanistan, we are going to
see this same movie in Afghanistan.
So I plead with the President of the United States, please revisit
your decision that every American troop be pulled out.
The Afghans do not have the capability, whether air assets, intel or
other capabilities, to defend themselves against an enemy that has a
sanctuary in Pakistan.
I plead with the President of the United States, do not make the same
mistake in Afghanistan.
I point out again, at the end of the surge we had won the conflict in
Iraq. The conflict was won, and instead obviously we blew it.
I would like to talk for a few minutes with my colleague from South
Carolina because we need to understand what is happening in Iraq. In
the last 3 to 4 weeks, this whole part of Iraq has been taken over by
the forces of ISIS.
The second largest city in all of Iraq, Mosul, has been taken over,
which triggered 500,000 refugees--500,000 refugees left Mosul.
Tal Afar--a major city, Kirkuk, where the Kurdish forces came in and
took over Kirkuk and made it now part of the Kurdish part of Iraq.
What is most concerning, I say to my colleagues--and I know the
Senator
[[Page S4121]]
from South Carolina and I have been focusing on this--is the Jordanian-
Iraq border. The border crossings from Iraq into Jordan have been taken
over by ISIS.
As we know, Jordan is a small country. It is overburdened now with
hundreds of thousands of refugees. It has significant problems on the
Syrian side of its border. This can be a terribly destabilizing factor
to our--probably outside of Israel--strongest and best ally in the
entire Middle East.
Ramadi, Fallujah, every Iraq veteran will remember Ramadi and
Fallujah. Every Iraq veteran will remember the second battle of
Fallujah where we lost 96 brave soldiers and marines and over 600
wounded. Now the black flags of Al Qaeda fly over Ramadi and Fallujah.
The border to Syria no longer exists, my friends.
If we look at Syria, all the way to Aleppo, all the way around, a
part of the Middle East that is larger than the State of Indiana is now
overtaken by the richest and most powerful terrorist organization in
history; that is, ISIS.
We cannot address Iraq, if we do, without addressing Syria, as well
as the movement of men and equipment back and forth. By the way, the
Sunni don't like these people. They are the most radical form of Islam.
They don't like them, but they prefer them to the government--the
Shiite-run government by Maliki--which has been systematically
discriminating against them.
So what do we need to do? As the Senator from South Carolina said,
what we want is Maliki to be in a transition government that
transitions him out of power, but we cannot wait until that happens.
By the way, they have also taken a place just north of Baghdad where
the largest oil refinery is, Baiji, that provides energy to the 7
million people in Baghdad, and they have also come to a place called
Haditha, where a dam is that holds a water supply. If they get hold of
both of those places, they basically have a stranglehold on Baghdad
itself.
This is serious.
So what has the President of the United States and the administration
decided to do? Send 90, 200 or 250 people over to Iraq and with the
stated purpose of ``assessing the situation.''
Those of my friends and colleagues who have been to Iraq know it is a
flat desert area, including very hot now. These people, these ISIS
forces, are moving in convoys of 100, 200, 300 vehicles.
They can be taken out by air power. Right now the President of the
United States has refused to do that, but they can be taken out by air
power.
Air power does not determine conflicts, but air power has a profound
psychological effect on your adversary. We have drones, and we have the
air capability to take out a lot of these forces.
Remember, they are probably at a maximum of about 10,000, and as the
Senator from South Carolina said, they started out with about 1,000,
but don't forget they are moving back and forth between Syria and Iraq
in this now huge area. They are moving on Baghdad.
I don't know exactly what is going on. I don't believe they can take
Baghdad with a frontal assault. I do believe it is possible that they
could cause assassinations, bombings, breakdowns in electricity, and
breakdown in law and order. In other words, this place where we
sacrificed roughly 4,450 American lives is now in the hands of the
largest terrorist organization in history.
I say to the President of the United States: We can't wait. If the
next 2 weeks that the administration says they are going to use to
assess this situation is wasted in assessment, I don't know what is
going to happen in Iraq. I don't know what is going to happen to
Jordan. I don't know what is going to happen as far as the continued
increasing influence of the Iranians.
Published reports today indicate there are Iranian forces, Iranian
assistance all through Iran.
An article from the New York Times, ``Iran Secretly Sending Drones
and Supplies into Iraq, U.S. Officials Say,'' states:
Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran's paramilitary Quds
Force, has visited Iraq at least twice to help Iraqi military
advisers plot strategy. And Iran has deployed about a dozen
other Quds Force officers to advise Iraqi commanders, and
help mobilize more than 2,000 Shiite militiamen from southern
Iraq, American officials said.
Iranian transport planes have also been making two daily
flights of military equipment and supplies to Baghdad--70
tons per flight--for Iraqi security forces.
While the United States is assessing, Iranians are exercising more
and more influence.
I have also been told--and I cannot verify it--that the Russians are
now offering to provide assistance to Maliki.
There has to be a transition government. There has to be a transition
of Maliki out of government, but to wait until that happens, it may be
too late.
I would ask my colleague from South Carolina, are you concerned about
the Iranian influence and what do you believe is the situation that
could evolve on the Jordanian border?
Mr. GRAHAM. If you listen to the people who are launching these
attacks, they say they are going to Jordan. What are they trying to
accomplish? Bizarre as it may sound to the average American, they have
a very specific plan and it sort of goes like this: They want to purify
their religion. They are Sunnis. They have a version of Islam, Sunni
Islam that is beyond horrific, that is a woman's worst nightmare.
If you want to find a world of women, go to Syria, Iraq, and
eventually Afghanistan, I am afraid. You would not believe what these
people are capable of doing, what they will do to a person who smokes.
They will chop your finger off. I mean, they will kill children in
front of their parents.
These people represent the worst in humanity. My fear is, the
President's fear, that the stronger they get over there the more
exposed we are over here.
So, Mr. President, if you believe it is not in our national security
interests to allow these folks to have a safe haven in Syria and now in
Iraq, what are you doing about it? You have political problems in Iraq,
I have got that, but why does that prevent us from attacking these
people in Syria where their leadership resides and where their supply
depots are? There has to come a time when this country is going to
commit to defending itself.
My goal is to keep the war over there so it doesn't come back here.
Senator McCain, 3 years ago now almost, urged us to act in a way that
would have allowed the moderate forces of the opposition to be
empowered and to avoid where we are today. We chose not to act, at our
own peril.
So I make this crystal clear, this area Senator McCain has described
in Iraq represents a terrorist safe haven in the hands of people who
want to attack us here at home.
I am not making that up. The Director of National Intelligence, the
FBI Director, and Jeh Johnson, the head of Homeland Security, have all
said Syria represents a threat to the homeland.
Well, if a Syrian enclave and safe haven represents a threat to the
homeland, an Iraqi enclave bigger and richer surely represents a threat
to the homeland, and the President admitted as much. So I don't want to
hear any more discussions about we have to wait until Iraq gets its
house in order until we protect American national security interests.
As to Jordan, now is the time in a bipartisan fashion for the
Congress to speak with one voice and tell the world and everyone in the
region that we will defend Jordan. The King of Jordan is the last
moderate voice in the Middle East surrounding Israel. The King of
Jordan has been the most faithful ally to America. The King of Jordan
has been effectively engaged with Israel. The King of Jordan represents
the best hope in the Middle East.
If we allow a terrorist army--not an organization, now, an army of
committed jihadists--to invade that country and put the King at risk,
that will be one of the great tragedies in modern history. I think it
is now time to let the terrorist army know: You are not going into
Jordan, and say it in such a fashion as to not give Iraq away. But if
we don't reinforce Jordan quickly, it would be a mistake.
I have high confidence in the Jordanian military, but let me say
this: It is in our interests for the King to survive; it is in our
interests for Jordan to flourish; it is in our interests for ISIS to be
stopped in their tracks in Iraq; it is in our interests for them to be
wiped off the face of the Earth to the extent possible; it is in our
interests to go on the offensive before it is too late.
[[Page S4122]]
One thing I can say I have learned from 9/11 is thinking and
believing if we ignore them they will ignore us is a very bad mistake.
On September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11, we didn't have one soldier
in Afghanistan, we didn't even have an ambassador, and we sent no money
in terms of assistance to the Taliban. We were completely disengaged
from Afghanistan. How well did that work?
Anytime you disengage from people that bloodthirsty and you believe
it will not come back to haunt you, you are making a mistake. Anytime a
group will kill women in a soccer stadium for sport and we think we are
safe if we ignore them, we are making the mistake for the ages.
These people, the ISIS, represent a depraved form of humanity in the
category of the Nazis. And what are we doing about it?
I am tired of ceding city after city, country after country to
radical Islam. Now is the time to fight back--fight back as if it meant
fighting for your home and your family, because it does--fight back
over there so we don't have to fight them here. And they are coming
here. If you don't believe me, ask them.
The best way to keep them from coming here is to align ourselves with
people over there who do not want their agenda for their family and are
willing to fight along our side. Right now, who feels comfortable
fighting with America? Right now, our enemies are emboldened, our
friends are afraid.
Now is the time to turn this around, Mr. President. You are waiting
and waiting and thinking and thinking, and they are on the march. I
know this is complicated, but the one thing that is not complicated is
that the terrorist organization you said could not have safe haven has
the largest safe haven in the history of the world. They are richer
than they have ever been, they are more powerful than they have ever
been, and you are doing nothing about it. You need to do something
about it before it is too late, and we stand ready to help you.
Mr. McCAIN. I wish to emphasize with my colleague from South
Carolina, continuously we hear from the President of the United States
that those of us who are in strong disagreement with his strategy--
well, there is none. The fact is there is no strategy.
We keep being accused of wanting to send ``thousands of troops'' on
the ground in Syria or in Iraq. That is patently false. I know of no
one who shares our concern who wants to send ground combat troops into
Iraq. So I wish the President of the United States would stop saying
that.
Second of all, what we do want is we want some people who can be
forward air controllers, some of our special forces people, to direct
these air strikes against what is movement of these hundreds of
vehicles in convoy across open desert. It can be done.
The next thing I wish to emphasize is how dangerous it is becoming,
particularly at the most holy Shiite shrines of Samarra and Karbala.
Those two are the holiest shrines of the Shia. If ISIS comes into those
holy sites and destroys them, we are going to see this thing explode
even more.
There are many other things I would like to say, but I don't want to
continue too much longer on this, but to point out again, this is not
just an Iraq problem. This is the border which runs along between Syria
and Iraq. We cannot address just the Iraqi side.
Lately, interestingly, Bashar Assad has been using his air power to
attack ISIS. If the United States does not become involved, then people
such as Bashar al-Assad, people such as the Iranians will fill that
vacuum. It is time for us to act.
What do I mean by that?
First of all, why don't we send Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus back
to Baghdad. They are the smartest people I have ever known, and
everybody agrees with that: Send them back to Baghdad and sit down with
Maliki. Also, send some military planning teams that can assess the
situation and address the needs of the Iraqi military, those that can
still function effectively. Go ahead and orchestrate the air strikes,
and understand that the problem in Syria is going to have to be
addressed as well. So there are concrete steps that every military
leader I know advocates as a way of turning this around.
There is no good option. Because of the situation we are in, there is
no good option. But the worst option is what the administration is
doing today, which is nothing, except sending a few advisers over to
give some assessment of the situation.
No one wants to get back into any conflict. No American wants to do
that. I am the last one who wants to do that. But we have to understand
what our Director of National Intelligence has told us, what our
Secretary of Homeland Security has told us, what our common sense and
eyes will tell us: If you have a terrorist organization that has
hundreds of millions of dollars, that has control of an area the size
of the State of Indiana where they are consolidating power and they
have promised they will attack us--the United States can't afford
another 9/11. We can't afford to see these jihadists pouring out of
Syria and Iraq into Europe and into the United States of America,
because these extremists have flowed in from all of these countries.
The President of the United States can make the American people aware
of this threat, and that we have to take action, without sending ground
combat troops into the conflict. And I am confident--because the memory
of 9/11 has not faded in the memory of the people of this country. We
remember that tragedy graphically. All of us remember where we were
that day. But this is a clear and present danger, and it is long time
overdue for the United States to react as the strongest and most
powerful Nation in the world.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the
Record the article from the Atlantic by Peter Beinart entitled
``Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy.''
I further ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an op-
ed by Dennis Ross, one of the most respected individuals on the entire
Middle East, entitled ``Op-ed: To contain ISIS, think Iraq--but also
think Syria.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Atlantic, June 25, 2014]
Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy
(By Peter Beinart)
Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions.
Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly
slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their
own, far greater, failures is infuriating.
But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit
that Obama's Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the
president took office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
has grown ever more tyrannical and ever more sectarian,
driving his country's Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama took
office, Iraq watchers--including those within his own
administration--have warned that unless the United States
pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide
back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to
put Iraq in America's rearview mirror that, publicly at
least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass. Until now,
when it may be too late.
Obama inherited an Iraq where better security had created
an opportunity for better government. The Bush
administration's troop ``surge'' did not solve the country's
underlying divisions. But by retaking Sunni areas from
insurgents, it gave Iraq's politicians the chance to forge a
government inclusive enough to keep the country together.
The problem was that Maliki wasn't interested in such a
government. Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening
fighters who had helped subdue al-Qaeda into Iraq's army,
Maliki arrested them. In the run-up to his 2010 reelection
bid, Maliki's Electoral Commission disqualified more than
500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties
to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
For the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki
meant investing time and energy in Iraq, a country it
desperately wanted to pivot away from. A few months before
the 2010 elections, according to Dexter Filkins in The New
Yorker, ``American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting
cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its
combination of support and indifference, was encouraging
Maliki's authoritarian tendencies.''
When Iraqis went to the polls in March 2010, they gave a
narrow plurality to the Iraqiya List, an alliance of parties
that enjoyed significant Sunni support but was led by Ayad
Allawi, a secular Shiite. Under pressure from Maliki,
however, an Iraqi judge allowed the prime minister's Dawa
Party--which had finished a close second--to form a
government instead. According to Emma Sky, chief political
adviser to General Raymond Odierno, who commanded U.S. forces
in Iraq, American officials knew this violated Iraq's
constitution. But they never publicly challenged Maliki's
power grab, which was backed by Iran, perhaps because they
believed his claim that Iraq's Shiites
[[Page S4123]]
would never accept a Sunni-aligned government. ``The
message'' that America's acquiescence ``sent to Iraq's people
and politicians alike,'' wrote the Brookings Institution's
Kenneth Pollack, ``was that the United States under the new
Obama administration was no longer going to enforce the rules
of the democratic road . . . [This] undermined the reform of
Iraqi politics and resurrected the specter of the failed
state and the civil war.'' According to Filkins, one American
diplomat in Iraq resigned in disgust.
By that fall, to its credit, the U.S. had helped craft an
agreement in which Maliki remained prime minister but Iraqiya
controlled key ministries. Yet as Ned Parker, the Reuters
bureau chief in Baghdad, later detailed, ``Washington quickly
disengaged from actually ensuring that the provisions of the
deal were implemented.'' In his book, The Dispensable Nation,
Vali Nasr, who worked at the State Department at the time,
notes that the ``fragile power-sharing arrangement . . .
required close American management. But the Obama
administration had no time or energy for that. Instead it
anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out. It
stopped protecting the political process just when talk of
American withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-
simmering power struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and
Kurds against one another.''
Under an agreement signed by George W. Bush, the U.S. was
to withdraw forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. American
military officials, fearful that Iraq might unravel without
U.S. supervision, wanted to keep 20,000 to 25,000 troops in
the country after that. Obama now claims that maintaining any
residual force was impossible because Iraq's parliament would
not give U.S. soldiers immunity from prosecution. Given how
unpopular America's military presence was among ordinary
Iraqis, that may well be true. But we can't fully know
because Obama--eager to tout a full withdrawal from Iraq in
his reelection campaign--didn't push hard to keep troops in
the country. As a former senior White House official told
Peter Baker of The New York Times, ``We really didn't want to
be there and [Maliki] really didn't want us there . . . [Y]ou
had a president who was going to be running for re-election,
and getting out of Iraq was going to be a big statement.''
In recent days, Republicans have slammed Obama for
withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But the real problem with
America's military withdrawal was that it exacerbated a
diplomatic withdrawal that had been underway since Obama took
office.
The decline of U.S. leverage in Iraq simply reinforced the
attitude Obama had held since 2009: Let Maliki do whatever he
wants so long as he keeps Iraq off the front page.
On December 12, 2011, just days before the final U.S.
troops departed Iraq, Maliki visited the White House.
According to Nasr, he told Obama that Vice President Tariq
al-Hashimi, an Iraqiya leader and the highest-ranking Sunni
in his government, supported terrorism. Maliki, argues Nasr,
was testing Obama, probing to see how the U.S. would react if
he began cleansing his government of Sunnis. Obama replied
that it was a domestic Iraqi affair. After the meeting, Nasr
claims, Maliki told aides, ``See! The Americans don't care.''
In public remarks after the meeting, Obama praised Maliki
for leading ``Iraq's most inclusive government yet.'' Iraq's
Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh al-Mutlaq, another Sunni, told
CNN he was ``shocked'' by the president's comments. ``There
will be a day,'' he predicted, ``whereby the Americans will
realize that they were deceived by al-Maliki . . . and they
will regret that.''
A week later, the Iraqi government issued a warrant for
Hashimi's arrest. Thirteen of his bodyguards were arrested
and tortured. Hashimi fled the country and, while in exile,
was sentenced to death.
``Over the next 18 months,'' writes Pollack, ``many Sunni
leaders were arrested or driven from politics, including some
of the most non-sectarian, non-violent, practical and
technocratic.'' Enraged by Maliki's behavior, and emboldened
by the prospect of a Sunni takeover in neighboring Syria,
Iraqi Sunnis began reconnecting with their old jihadist
allies. Yet, in public at least, the Obama administration
still acted as if all was well.
In March 2013, Maliki sent troops to arrest Rafi Issawi,
Iraq's former finance minister and a well-regarded Sunni
moderate who had criticized the prime minister's growing
authoritarianism. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed later that
month, Iraq expert Henri Barkey called the move ``another
nail in the coffin for a unified Iraq.'' Iraq, he warned,
``is on its way to dissolution, and the United States is
doing nothing to stop it'' because ``Washington seems
petrified about crossing Maliki.''
That fall, Maliki prepared to visit the White House again.
Three days before he arrived, Emma Sky, the former adviser to
General Odierno, co-authored a New York Times op-ed entitled
``Maliki's Democratic Farce,'' in which she argued that,
``Too often, Mr. Maliki has misinterpreted American backing
for his government as a carte blanche for uncompromising
behavior.'' The day before Maliki arrived, six senators--
including Democrats Carl Levin and Robert Menendez--sent the
White House a letter warning that, ``by too often pursuing a
sectarian and authoritarian agenda, Prime Minister Maliki and
his allies are disenfranchising Sunni Iraqis . . . This
failure of governance is driving many Sunni Iraqis into the
arms of Al-Qaeda.''
Still, in his public remarks, Obama didn't even hint that
Maliki was doing anything wrong. After meeting his Iraqi
counterpart on November 1, Obama told the press that, ``we
appreciate Prime Minister Maliki's commitment to . . .
ensuring a strong, prosperous, inclusive, and democratic
Iraq,'' and declared ``that we were encouraged by the work
that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure
that all people inside of Iraq--Sunni, Shia, and Kurd--feel
that they have a voice in their government.'' A former senior
administration official told me that, privately, the
administration pushed Maliki hard to be more inclusive. If
so, it did not work. In late December, less than two months
after Maliki's White House visit, Iraqi troops arrested yet
another prominent Sunni critic, Ahmed al-Alwani, chairman of
the Iraqi parliament's economics committee, killing five of
Alwani's guards in the process.
By this January, jihadist rebels from the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or ISIL) had taken control of much of
largely Sunni Anbar province. Vice President Biden--the
administration's point man on Iraq--was now talking to Maliki
frequently. But according to White House summaries of Biden's
calls, he still spent more time praising the Iraqi leader
than pressuring him. On January 8, the vice president
``encouraged the Prime Minister to continue the Iraqi
government's outreach to local, tribal, and national
leaders.'' On January 18, ``The two leaders agreed on the
importance of the Iraqi government's continued outreach to
local and tribal leaders in Anbar province.'' On January 26,
``The Vice President commended the Government of Iraq's
commitment to integrate tribal forces fighting AQI/ISIL into
Iraqi security forces.'' (The emphases are mine.) For his
part, Obama has not spoken to Maliki since their meeting last
November.
Finally, last Thursday, in what was widely interpreted as
an invitation for Iraqis to push Maliki aside, Obama
declared, ``that whether he is prime minister or any other
leader aspires to lead the country, that it has to be an
agenda in which Sunni, Shia and Kurd all feel that they have
the opportunity to advance their interest through the
political process.'' Obama also noted that, ``The government
in Baghdad has not sufficiently reached out to some of the
[Sunni] tribes and been able to bring them into a process
that, you know, gives them a sense of being part of--of a
unity government or a single nation-state.''
That's certainly true. The problem is that it took Obama
five years to publicly say so--or do anything about it--
despite pleas from numerous Iraq experts, some close to his
own administration. This inaction was abetted by American
journalists. Many of us proved strikingly indifferent to a
country about which we once claimed to care deeply.
In recent days, many liberals have rushed to Obama's
defense simply because they are so galled to hear people like
Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol lecturing anyone on Iraq. That's
a mistake. While far less egregious than George W. Bush's
errors, Obama's have been egregious enough. By ignoring Iraq,
and refusing to defend democratic principles there, he has
helped spawn the disaster we see today. It's time people who
aren't Republican operatives began saying so.
____
[From the Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2014]
To Contain ISIS, Think Iraq--But Also Think Syria
(By Dennis Ross)
The conflict in Iraq will not be settled any time soon.
Although the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and
its Sunni allies may not be about to march on Baghdad, they
are continuing to expand their control over much of northern
and western Iraq. The military and diplomatic steps that
President Obama has ordered reflect the U.S. need to prevent
ISIS from embedding itself in more of Iraq. Whether they will
work, however, is another matter.
Iraq is a mess today. The president is right to expect the
Iraqi government to take the lead in its own defense He is
right to insist that Iraq's government must become more
inclusive and less sectarian. And he is right to be wary of
getting sucked into a sectarian conflict in which we take
sides.
The same calculus has guided the United States in Syria.
There, our fears of the costs of action--even limited
military support for the opposition--led us to ignore the
costs of inaction. We hoped that sanctions, a political
process and humanitarian assistance would make it possible to
affect the reality in Syria. It did not. Those who argued
that the price would go up in human and strategic terms--and
that we needed to affect the balance of power within the
opposition and between it and the regime of President Bashar
Assad--were right.
Today, the costs in terms of spillover in the region and
the consequences of radical Islamists, particularly ISIS,
coming to dominate the opposition are clear. Syria is a
disaster, there is no border between Syria and Iraq, and the
re-emergence of a terrible sectarian conflict in Iraq is
inextricably linked to Syria. There will be no effective or
enduring answer to the ISIS threat in Iraq without also
taking steps in Syria to deny it a sanctuary and a recruiting
base.
If nothing else, this should tell us that our response to
the current crisis in Iraq must be guided by a broader
strategy toward the region, one that has clear objectives in
Iraq and Syria and takes into account that resisting ISIS
cannot make it appear that we are
[[Page S4124]]
suddenly partners with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The
fact that the Iranians also have reason to fear ISIS means we
have converging but not identical interests.
The Iranians have used radical Shiite militias--Hezbollah,
Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al Haq--in Syria and Iraq. The
latter two--armed, trained and funded by the Iranians--were
responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers in
Iraq. We should be talking to Iraq's neighbors, including
Iran, about what we and they can do to help stabilize Iraq
and defeat ISIS.
But Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan will not be
responsive if they think fighting ISIS means the U.S. is
prepared to leave the Sunnis vulnerable to Iran and its
Shiite-backed militias. If Iran wants stability in Iraq and
not an ongoing sectarian war on its border, it will need to
accept that although the Shiites will hold many of the levers
of power, they must also be prepared to share them.
In Iraq, if the U.S. is to help blunt ISIS, the central
government must give Sunnis and Kurds a sense of inclusion
and a stake in working with Baghdad and the military. Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki's conspiratorial, authoritarian
approach has made that impossible. We should make any
coordinated military action with the Iraqi government
contingent on Maliki actually taking such steps, including
appointing a government of national unity, empowering a Sunni
defense minister and permitting the Kurds to export their
oil. Absent that, we may still choose to target ISIS forces
if there is a need, but without regard to what the Iraqi
government may seek.
As for Syria, though we must deny ISIS sanctuary there, the
U.S. cannot partner with the Assad regime. The simple fact is
that so long as Assad remains in power, he will be a magnet
for every jihadi worldwide to join the holy war against him.
No country in the region is immune from the fallout of the
conflict in Syria, and we all face the danger of those who go
to fight in Syria returning to their home countries to foment
violence.
Though President Obama has spoken about ramping up our
support for the opposition in Syria, we are late to that
effort. It is time for the United States to assume the
responsibility of quarterbacking the entire assistance effort
to ensure that more meaningful aid--lethal, training,
intelligence, money and humanitarian--not only gets to those
who are fighting both ISIS and the Assad regime but is fully
coordinated and complementary.
The broader point is that Washington's actions toward ISIS
now must be taken with both Iraq and Syria in mind and be
guided by a strategy geared toward weakening those forces
that threaten the U.S. and its regional friends. The more we
take this approach and highlight the costs to Iran of its
current posture, the more the Iranians may see that their
interests could be served by a political outcome of greater
balance in Syria and Iraq. There will be risks to acting, but
by now we have seen the costs of inaction, and they are only
likely to grow over time.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I appreciate my dear friend Senator Coons'
patience.
At this time I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
____________________