The War on Terrorism -- America's War and Israel's War, April 21, 2002

The War on Terrorism -- America's War and Israel's War, April 21, 2002: "The War on Terrorism -- America's War and Israel's War
Speech By Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, To American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, April 21, 2002



It's good to have the opportunity once again to address an AIPAC annual conference.

I'd like to talk with you about the war on terrorism -- America's war and Israel's war. I'll take my lead from the current headlines and start with the Middle East.

Day after day, we read of attacks targeted at Israeli civilians.

The suicide bombers -- or, homicide bombers, as President Bush calls them -- have a political cause. But the systematic killing of ordinary people going about their lives with their children in shopping malls, on buses, at restaurants -- is not politics. It's not even war. It's deranged ideology in action. At stake is not just the fate of a particular country, but the fate of all open societies.

The intentional mass murder of civilians, including children, forces us to speak in moral terms about basic ideas -- about good and evil.

President Bush states the case starkly: Terrorism is evil.

The suicide bombers who kill Israelis, like those who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon last September 11th, are enemies of the idea of humanity. They may claim to represent a good people or a worthy cause, but they taint the political platforms they embrace. It's immoral to seek excuses for terrorism and harmful to reward it. So the message of responsible governments should be unwavering: terrorists do not advance their causes; rather, they lose ground.

The Palestinian people are long suffering. They have profound grievances against many who have done them harm and served them ill throughout the Middle East, and not just in Israel.

The Palestinians have been damaged severely for a century or so by leaders who have time and again made disastrous strategic choices -- from siding with the Nazis in World War II to siding with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to siding with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. The question now is: What side are they on in the current global war against terrorism? People always pay a price when their leaders fail them. The Palestinian people have paid, and continue to pay, such a price. It is a tragedy.

Referring to Yasir Arafat, President Bush has said, "He's missed his opportunities, and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he's supposed to lead. Given his failure, the Israeli government feels it must strike at terrorist networks that are killing its citizens".

President Bush then added, "Yet, Israel must understand that its response to these recent attacks is only a temporary measure. All parties have their own responsibilities. And all parties owe it to their own people to act".

Despite the current fighting, the President still envisions Israel and the Palestinians achieving a peace by mutual consent. He stresses that this will require compromises and "hard choices" regarding territorial and other claims and desires of Israelis and Palestinians. The achievement of a negotiated peace settlement would bring an end to the issues of legitimacy, borders, settlements and occupation.

The President has declared, "We have no illusions about the difficulty of the issues that lie ahead. Yet, our nation's resolve is strong. America is committed to ending this conflict and beginning an era of peace".

Many Palestinians say that their aim is to live dignified lives, in freedom, in peace and prosperity in their own state. That goal could be achieved. The U.S. government supports it. Israeli leaders have for years acknowledged that a Palestinian state will be the ultimate outcome of any negotiated peace. As President Bush noted on April 4th, "Israel has recognized the goal of a Palestinian state. The outlines of a just settlement are clear: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, in peace and security".

But that goal grows increasingly remote as terrorism belies and precludes diplomacy -- and darkens the Palestinian people's future.

President Bush has called on Israelis to show"a respect for and concern about the dignity of the Palestinian people who are and will be their neighbors. It is crucial [the President noted] to distinguish between the terrorists and ordinary Palestinians seeking to provide for their own families".

The Palestinians could help themselves by acknowledging that their worst enemies are those who inspire, finance, equip, excuse and otherwise encourage children to commit homicide bombings.

The major state supporters of terrorism -- Iraq, Syria and Iran -- offer incentives to encourage such bombings, host terrorist headquarters and supply the arms and explosives. Clerics, who should be faithful trustees of God's word, violate their trust by legitimating suicide and calling murderers "martyrs."

The cult of suicide and murder is sustained through the education of children to hate and to aspire to become suicide bombers. That cult is fostered by those who praise terrorists as "heroes" and those who rationalize terrorism as the understandable act of the politically frustrated. This includes prominent statesmen from many countries who should know better.

The sad reality is that there are politically frustrated people throughout the Middle East and the broader world. Political, religious and other leaders who craft excuses for terrorism are sowing the wind. It is deadly recklessness.

The United States is fighting terrorism, using the full range of tools at our disposal, military and non-military. We'll continue to confront terrorism on the military battlefield, but equally importantly on the battlefield of ideas.

Winning the war requires us to help change the way people think. This can be done. Worldwide moral battles can be fought and won. For example, no decent person any more -- no one who hopes to be recognized as respectable in the wider world -- supports or excuses slave trading, piracy or genocide. No decent person should support or excuse terrorism either.

Our initial victory in Afghanistan deprived al Qaeda of its safe haven and infrastructure there. We daily learn more about that infrastructure -- its administrative apparatus, training facilities and laboratories in which al Qaeda worked to develop biological and other weapons of mass destruction.

For now, at least, the al Qaeda leadership is on the defensive -- some are in captivity; the rest are on the run.

With a few exceptions, such as Iraq, most countries now wish -- at least they now profess to wish -- to be associated with our global war against terrorism. But at the same time, we see this upsurge in terrorism directed against Israel and brazen public support for anti-Israel terrorism, especially suicide bombings, even from seasoned, sophisticated officials.

Which brings us to the dangers of intellectual as well as military passivity in the face of terrorism.

For three decades or so, the world grew tolerant of terrorism. Many belittled the problem: Recall the famous phrase that commonly passed for sophisticated discourse: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Some countries supported terrorism -- perhaps not openly, but often without even bothering to cover their tracks. As terrorists racked up a large civilian death toll in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, they and their causes often flourished diplomatically and politically.

The forces of civilized humanity did not take the offensive against terrorism; rarely went after terrorist groups root and branch; failed to coerce the state sponsors of terrorism to stop; never overthrew a regime because it supported terrorism.

But September 11th was a turning point. That attack made it clear that the United States and other open societies required a new approach: We recognized that our countries are too big, too open, too full of high-value targets for us to defend them against terrorists. We had to take the offensive.

The action of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan has already altered the intellectual atmosphere favorably. Some states that had winked at or even supported terrorism are modifying their policies. In some countries, the policy changes don't necessarily reflect a change of heart. But in others, such as Pakistan, the changes have been dramatic and appear to signify a true strategic redirection.

The United States will stay on the offensive against terrorism -- targeting the terrorists themselves and, where necessary, coercing the states that support or tolerate them. Much of our work in this war is less dramatic than the liberation of Afghanistan. While other actions may once again involve larger-scale US military operations, our current work around the world, including in the Middle East, involves foreign military anti-terrorism training and international law enforcement, the freezing of bank accounts, intelligence and diplomatic activity and so forth.

Our ultimate goal is to change the international environment regarding terrorism-- instead of tolerance, an international norm of renunciation and repudiation of terrorism. As I said, we want the world to view terrorism as it views piracy, slave trading or genocide -- activities universally repudiated by respectable people. This is not an abstract, philosophical, academic point, but a strategic purpose of great practical significance.

As we continue the US offensive against terrorism, we have in mind not only the more familiar kinds of terrorism.

As horrifying as September 11th was, the anthrax attacks that occurred later --though small in scale -- warned us that terrorists using weapons of mass destruction -- biological agents, or chemical, nuclear or radiological weapons -- are an even greater threat.

When he spoke of state supporters of terrorism that are developing weapons of mass destruction, President Bush said in his State of the Union message that, "they could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic".

Our goal therefore must be, as the President stated, "to prevent regimes that sponsor terrorism from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction".

Also in that speech, President Bush declared, "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons".

So far, I've focused on terrorism as a political tool and the danger that terrorists could acquire weapons of mass destruction.

I'd like to conclude with some thoughts about the sources of terrorism.

It's often argued that the phenomenon of suicide bombers -- terrorists who perform attacks that they know they cannot survive -- demonstrates that we aren't dealing with people who calculate the benefits and costs of their actions.

In this vein, we frequently hear that suicide bombing is the product of the combination of poverty and hopelessness.

Westerners -- we whom Usama bin Laden has sneeringly referred to as "lovers of life" -- cannot easily understand how a young man (or woman) straps on several pounds of high explosive and then blows himself up in a crowd of civilians. We assume that only a person ensnared in deep despair could do such a thing.

This diagnosis implies its own solution -- that the world should address what is called the "root causes of terrorism," the poverty and political hopelessness that many people imagine are the traits and motives of the suicide bombers. This diagnosis, however, doesn't jibe with actual experience. And it blinds us to opportunities we have to confront terrorism strategically.

When we look at the records of the suicide bombers, we see that many aren't drawn from the poor. Mohammed Atta, for instance -- a key figure in executing the September 11 attack -- was a middle-class Egyptian whose parents were able to send him to study abroad. And his education meant that he could look forward to a relatively privileged life in Egypt -- hardly grounds for extreme despair.

Indeed, as we learn from a recent New York Times interview with Hamas leaders in Gaza, what characterizes the suicide bombers -- and especially the old men who send them off on their missions -- is rather hope than despair:

First of all, the bombers cherish a perverse form of religious hope. The promise of eternity in paradise is a tenet of many faiths, a noble incentive and consolation to millions of people. It's as cynical as it is sinister that leaders of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups convince young people that eternity in paradise is available as a reward for the murder of innocents.

Second, there is the bomber's hope of earthly glory and reward -- praise as a hero from political leaders and honor for one's parents and a $25,000 check to the bomber's family from Saddam Hussein. President Bush has condemned, "[t]hose governments, like Iraq, that reward parents for the sacrifice of their children "....

Those who encourage homicide bombing, as the President said, "are guilty of soliciting murder of the worst kind".

Third, there is the homicide bomber's political hope. As that New York Times interview makes clear, Palestinian extremists think they have finally discovered a winning strategy.

The recent outpouring of open support in the Arab world for homicide bombers -- from Mrs. Arafat, from a senior Arab diplomat, from clerics associated with prestigious universities -- reflects excitement at the thought that bombings are producing success. It is the kind of triumphalism characteristic of a mentality that believes in "the worse the better."

This suggests a strategic course for us: attack the sources of these malignant hopes.

Regarding the religious hope: Many Islamic religious leaders seem uncomfortable with suicide bombing -- but many of them have been silenced or intimidated to voice support for the terrorists. The civilized world should exert itself to support moderate clerics, defend them and provide them with platforms to protect their religion from extremists who want to distort and hijack it.

The civilized world should also deal with political leaders who heap honor (and money) on the suicide bombers and their families. President Bush, speaking of suicide bombers, said: "They are not martyrs. They are murderers." Other world leaders have the responsibility to reinforce this message.

Finally, as to the suicide bombers' political hopes, we must ensure that terrorism is not seen as a winning strategy. This is today's immediate challenge: For example, we have to make it understood that the Palestinian homicide bombers are harming, not helping, their political cause.

Peace can be achieved when the conditions are right: and the most important condition is the state of peoples' minds. Thus, we must take seriously the incitement to hatred that creates the intellectual atmosphere in which terrorism can flourish. If we seek the "root cause" of terrorism, this is where we'll find it.

Peace diplomacy in the Middle East has been an intense activity for decades. It's now clear that we have not focused enough attention on the relationship between peace and education. We spend a great deal of attention on what diplomats say to each other. We need to pay closer attention to what teachers instill in their students. Therein lies the key to peace.

Changing the intellectual fashions in the world regarding terrorism -- and ultimately de-legitimating it altogether, without regard to the various causes espoused by the terrorists -- won't be easy. But its importance as a strategic requirement is right up there with the destruction and disruption of terrorist operational infrastructure.

The Bush administration appreciates the complexity of its tasks -- in the war on terrorism and in Middle East diplomacy. The President approaches these tasks with the steadiness and energy appropriate to the magnitude of the stakes.

We have our nation and its liberties to protect, our friends to assist, and our adversaries to deter and defeat. This is a rare period of flux in world affairs. We have opportunities to do good for ourselves and for others -- in the Middle East and other regions of the world -- by enhancing security, suppressing terrorism, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, promoting freedom and prosperity and opening paths to peace. The American people expect this administration to rise to the occasion. We shall do our best.

Thank you."

Fighting Terrorism, May 8, 2002

Fighting Terrorism, May 8, 2002: "Fighting Terrorism
Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, To the American Jewish Committee Washington, D.C., May 8, 2002.

Fighting Terrorism
Good morning. Nice to be here. I have a number of friends in this American Jewish Committee audience.

I’d like to talk with you about the war on terrorism – to discuss the progress of the war and share some thoughts about its nature, our objectives and our strategy.

Our enemy in the war on terrorism is not a state or a group of states. Our enemy is not organized as a conventional military force. We cannot define victory as the conquering and subduing of a particular piece of territory or a people. We cannot expect that our own territory will be spared major damage so long as our armed forces remain undefeated. This is indeed a most unusual war – different from any that we fought in the past.

We’re fighting not a nation but a terrorist network – one might even say a network of networks, an amorphous structure present in many countries, including those of our allies, and in the United States itself.

So it’s a complicated struggle on multiple fronts. And we can’t rely on conventional armed power to the extent we relied on such means in past wars. That’s why administration officials so often stress that we must bring to bear the full range of instruments of US national power, including intelligence, financial, diplomatic and, not least, moral, as well as military tools.

Fundamental to our strategy is the recognition that we can't just defend ourselves at our own borders. We have no choice but to take the offensive.

Our country is too big, too vulnerable too full of tall building for us to do otherwise.

We’re vulnerable because of the kind of country we are:

We’re open to the world for commerce, travel and communications.
We welcome people from all over and let them live their lives as they wish, building their own institutions, practicing their own religion, living according to their own lights.
We respect people as individuals and afford them a large degree of privacy.
Accordingly, we have constraints against the surveillance of domestic groups.
That is the kind of country we are and that is the kind of country we want to be. If we’re to preserve our freedom and our way of life, we must play offense, not defense against terrorism. We must destroy terrorism at its sources:

First of all, we have to deny terrorists a secure base of operations – a safe haven where they can recruit and train more terrorists, plan operations, acquire equipment and supplies, where they can rest and regroup after terrorist attacks.

In some cases, this means the United States will cooperate with friendly governments, helping them make their authority effective over their entire territory. Examples are the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia.

In other cases, it means forcing regimes to stop supporting terrorists or providing safe haven to them.

We demanded that the Taliban stop supporting the al Qaida terrorist organization.
When they refused, we took decisive action to rid Afghanistan of the terrorists and those who supported them.
Our action in Afghanistan has already constructively perturbed the atmosphere of toleration of terrorism.

Many states that had been tolerant of terrorism, or not at all active in fighting it, have changed their policy.

In some cases, the change in behavior does not bespeak a change of heart. Some regimes may simply fear that they could become the next Taliban – they may believe that, for now at least, it’s prudent at least to appear to be cooperating in the war on terrorism.

But in other countries, such as Pakistan, the change has been dramatic and, we think, reflects a genuine desire to take a new and better path.
But, as I said, we’re fighting a widespread network – one present even in countries where the governments oppose terrorism.

Pressing our offensive, therefore, now involves many actions that are less dramatic than the war in Afghanistan has been:

For example, law enforcement activities, the freezing of bank accounts, interception of the movement of terrorists from one country to another or the interception of shipments of weapons or money.
But we don’t rule out additional military actions, directed against unrelenting state sponsors of terrorism.

As President Bush said in his State of the Union speech, we must pay particular attention to states that have supported terrorism and are developing weapons of mass destruction.

These states, the President said,
could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic…

So, as the President stated:

The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.

Ultimately, our goal is to change the international environment concerning terrorism.

We should confront an unpleasant fact: During the past three decades or so, there developed in the world an atmosphere of tolerance for terrorism.

Many excused it: in one famous phrase that often passed for sophisticated discourse: "one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter"
Some countries supported it – perhaps not openly, but often without even bothering to cover their tracks.
There were important failings in this regard all around the world, including in the United States.
In place of this atmosphere of tolerance, the United States aims now to establish an international norm of intolerance of terrorism.

In short, we want the international community to view terrorism as it now views piracy, slave-trading or genocide – activities that no-one who aspires to respectability can tolerate, let alone support.

This takes us into the realm of ideas.

It’s important that we state our case clearly, even bluntly.

As President Bush has declared: "Terrorism is evil."
However much the language of morality elicits sniffs from some of our sophisticated critics abroad and at home, we don’t flinch from using it. Moral clarity is a strategic asset.
It’ll take time to reverse the pernicious effects of the last several decades – but we’ll be steadfast in making our case.

It bears noting that military victory – while not exactly a logical argument – does have its uses in the battle of ideas.
After all, in the 1930s, fascism, despite (perhaps because of) its inhumanity, had a strong intellectual following. It was in vogue and its influence spread throughout Europe years before Nazi military conquests began. It wasn’t defeated solely – or even primarily – by arguments, but by Allied tanks and bombers. Nothing fails like failure. Ideas associated with catastrophe for their adherents tend eventually, if not suddenly, to lose influence.
But there’s a second aspect of the war of ideas that I want to address – and I think it’s more significant:

An important ideological source of global terrorism is an extremist interpretation of Islam that emphasizes intolerance and brutality in religious matters and hatred of the West in political matters.
This extremist school perverts the humane ideals of Islam.

But unfortunately, it has much resonance in the Islamic world.
There’s a struggle going on within Islam. Non-Moslems are not parties as such in this struggle. But the whole civilized world has an interest in helping those in the Moslem world who reject extremism and espouse the more moderate, tolerant, peaceful kind of Islam.

The moderate kind of Islam flourishes in many Islamic countries.
Two especially significant examples are Turkey, which stands out as a predominantly Moslem country that has a democratic form of government and is a longstanding and valuable ally of the United States,
And Indonesia, the country whose Muslim majority is the largest in the world.
The Western world has a large stake in the prosperity and stability and overall success of such countries.

Unfortunately, extremist Islam has been making inroads around the world lately. It has large financial resources, which its adherents use

to finance, and hence control, Islamic institutions, especially schools, throughout the world
to propagate hatred of the West and the notion of inevitable warfare between Islam and the West, and
to support terrorism – that is, to legitimate violence against innocent people.
The Western world has an interest in helping the moderate voices of Islam to be heard, and to protect them against retaliation.

I would like to close with a few words concerning the campaign of suicide bombing which has been waged against Israel in recent weeks – the most salient problem on the anti-terrorism agenda at present.

It's often argued that the phenomenon of suicide bombers -- terrorists who perform attacks that they know they cannot survive -- demonstrates that we aren't dealing with people who calculate the benefits and costs of their actions.

In this vein, we frequently hear that suicide bombing is the product of the combination of poverty and hopelessness.

Westerners -- we whom Usama bin Laden has sneeringly referred to as "lovers of life" -- cannot easily understand how a young man (or woman) straps on several pounds of high explosive and then blows himself up in a crowd of civilians. We assume that only a person ensnared by deep despair could do such a thing.

This diagnosis implies its own solution -- that the world should address what is called the "root causes of terrorism," the poverty and political hopelessness that many people imagine are the traits and motives of the suicide bombers.
This diagnosis, however, doesn't jibe with actual experience. And it misleads us about the wisest strategy.
When we look at the records of the suicide bombers, we see that many aren't drawn from the poor.

Mohammed Atta, for instance -- a key figure in executing the September 11 attack -- was a middle-class Egyptian whose parents were able to send him to study abroad. And his education meant that he could look forward to a relatively privileged life in Egypt -- hardly grounds for extreme despair.
Indeed, as we learn from a recent New York Times interview with Hamas leaders in Gaza, what characterizes the suicide bombers -- and especially the old men who send them off on their missions -- is rather hope than despair:

First of all, the bombers cherish a perverse form of religious hope. The promise of eternity in paradise is a tenet of many faiths, a noble incentive and consolation to millions of people. It's as cynical as it is sinister that leaders of al Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups convince young people that eternity in paradise is available as a reward for the murder of innocents.

Second, there is the bomber's hope of earthly glory and reward -- praise as a hero from political leaders and honor for one's parents and a $25,000 check to the bomber's family from Saddam Hussein. President Bush has condemned

[t]hose governments, like Iraq, that reward parents for the sacrifice of their children ....

Those who encourage homicide bombing, as the President said,

are guilty of soliciting murder of the worst kind.

Third, there is the homicide bomber's political hope. As that New York Times interview makes clear, Palestinian extremists think they have finally discovered a winning strategy.

The recent outpouring of open support in the Arab world for homicide bombers -- from Mrs. Arafat, from a senior Arab diplomat, from clerics associated with prestigious universities -- reflects excitement at the thought that bombings are producing success. It is the kind of triumphalism characteristic of a mentality that believes in "the worse the better."

This suggests a strategic course for us: attack the sources of these malignant hopes.

Regarding the religious hope: Many Islamic religious leaders seem uncomfortable with suicide bombing -- but many of them have been silenced or intimidated to voice support for the terrorists. As I have mentioned, the civilized world should exert itself to support moderate clerics, defend them and provide them with platforms to protect their religion from extremists who want to distort and hijack it.

The civilized world should also deal with political leaders who heap honor (and money) on the suicide bombers and their families. President Bush, speaking of suicide bombers, said: "They are not martyrs. They are murderers." Other world leaders have the responsibility to reinforce this message.

Finally, as to the suicide bombers' political hopes, we must ensure that terrorism is not seen as a winning strategy. This is today's immediate challenge: For example, we have to make it understood that the Palestinian homicide bombers are harming, not helping, their political cause.

Arab-Israeli peace is a goal craved by all decent people. The Bush administration is engaged in the pursuit of this goal.

We recognize that peace can be achieved only when the conditions are right: and the most important condition is the state of peoples' minds. Thus, we must take seriously the incitement to hatred that creates the intellectual atmosphere in which terrorism can flourish. If we seek the "root cause" of terrorism, this is where we'll find it.

Peace diplomacy in the Middle East has been an intense activity for decades. It's now clear that we have not focused enough attention on the relationship between peace and education. We spend a great deal of attention on what diplomats say to each other. We need to pay closer attention to what teachers instill in their students. Therein lies the key to peace.

Changing the intellectual fashions in the world regarding terrorism -- and ultimately de-legitimating it altogether, without regard to the various causes espoused by the terrorists -- won't be easy. But its importance as a strategic requirement is right up there with the destruction and disruption of terrorist operational infrastructure.

The Bush administration appreciates the complexity of its tasks -- in the war on terrorism and in Middle East diplomacy. The President approaches these tasks with the steadiness and energy appropriate to the magnitude of the stakes.

We have our nation and its liberties to protect, our friends to assist, and our adversaries to deter and defeat. This is a rare period of flux in world affairs. We have opportunities to do good for ourselves and for others -- in the Middle East and other regions of the world -- by enhancing security, suppressing terrorism, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, promoting freedom and prosperity and opening paths to peace. The American people expect this administration to rise to the occasion. We shall do our best.

Thank you"

Post-War Planning, February 11, 2003

Post-War Planning, February 11, 2003: "Post-War Planning
Statement by Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 11, 2003


Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you today about efforts underway in the Defense Department and the U.S. Government to plan for Iraq in the post-conflict period, should war become necessary.

If U.S. and other coalition forces take military action in Iraq, they will, after victory, have contributions to make to the country’s temporary administration and the welfare of the Iraqi people. It will be necessary to provide humanitarian relief, organize basic services and work to establish security for the liberated Iraqis.

Our work will aim to achieve the objectives outlined by my colleague, Under Secretary of State Grossman:

First, demonstrate to the Iraqi people and the world that the United States aspires to liberate, not occupy or control them or their economic resources.

Second, eliminate Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, its nuclear program, the related delivery systems, and the related research and production facilities. This will be a complex, dangerous and expensive task.

Third, eliminate likewise Iraq’s terrorist infrastructure. A key element of U.S. strategy in the global war on terrorism is exploiting the information about terrorist networks that the coalition acquires through our military and law enforcement actions.

Fourth, safeguard the territorial unity of Iraq. The United States does not support Iraq’s disintegration or dismemberment.

Fifth, begin the process of economic and political reconstruction, working to put Iraq on a path to become a prosperous and free country. The U.S. government shares with many Iraqis the hope that their country will enjoy the rule of law and other institutions of democracy under a broad-based government that represents the various parts of Iraqi society.
If there is a war, the United States would approach its post-war work with a two-part resolve: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave.

That is, a commitment to stay as long as required to achieve the objectives I have just listed. The coalition cannot take military action in Iraq – to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi tyranny’s threats to the world as an aggressor and supporter of terrorism – and then leave a mess behind for the Iraqi people to clean up without a helping hand. That would ill serve the Iraqis, ourselves and the world.

But it is important to stress also that the United States would have a commitment to leave as soon as possible, for Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. Iraq does not and will not belong to the United States, the coalition or to anyone else.
As Iraqi officials are able to shoulder their country’s responsibilities, and they have in place the necessary political and other structures to provide food, security and the other necessities, the United States and its coalition partners will want them to run their own affairs. We all have an interest in hastening the day when Iraq can become a proud, independent and respected member of the community of the world’s free countries.

U.S. post-war responsibilities will not be easy to fulfill and the United States by no means wishes to tackle them alone. We shall encourage contributions and participation from coalition partners, non-governmental organizations, the UN and other international organizations and others. And our goal is to transfer as much authority as possible, as soon as possible, to the Iraqis themselves. But the United States will not try to foist burdens onto those who are not in a position to carry them.

Security and Reconstruction

Administration officials are thinking through the lessons of Afghanistan and other recent history. We have learned that post-conflict reconstruction requires a balance of efforts in the military sphere and the civil sphere. Security is promoted by progress toward economic reconstruction. But economic reconstruction is hardly possible if local business people, foreign investors and international aid workers do not feel secure in their persons and property.

To encourage the coordinated, balanced progress of economic and security reconstruction in a post-conflict Iraq, President Bush has directed his administration to begin planning now.

The faster the necessary reconstruction tasks are accomplished, the sooner the coalition will be able to withdraw its forces from Iraq, and the sooner the Iraqis will assume complete control of their country. Accordingly, the coalition officials responsible for post-conflict administration of Iraq – whether military or civilian, from the various agencies of the governments – will report to the President through General Tom Franks, the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, and the Secretary of Defense.

The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance

To prepare for all this, the President directed on January 20 the creation of a post-war planning office. Although located within the Policy organization in the Department of Defense, this office is staffed by officials detailed from departments and agencies throughout the government. Its job is detailed planning and implementation. The intention is not to theorize but to do practical work – to prepare for action on the ground, if and when the time comes for such work. In the event of war, most of the people in the office will deploy to Iraq. We have named it the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and we describe it as an “expeditionary” office.

The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is charged with establishing links with the United Nations specialized agencies and with non-governmental organizations that will play a role in post-war Iraq. It will reach out also to the counterpart offices in the governments of coalition countries, and, in coordination with the President’s Special Envoy to the Free Iraqis, to the various Free Iraqi groups.

The immediate responsibility for administering post-war Iraq will fall upon the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, as the commander of the U.S. and coalition forces in the field. The purpose of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is to develop the detailed plans that he and his subordinates will draw on in meeting these responsibilities.

Various parts of the government have done a great deal of work on aspects of post-war planning for months now. Several planning efforts are underway.

An interagency working group led by the NSC staff and the Office of Management and Budget has undertaken detailed contingency planning for humanitarian relief in case of conflict with Iraq. The group also includes members from the State Department, USAID, the Office of the Vice-President, Treasury, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the CIA. The group is linked to US Central Command. It has also established links with the UN specialized agencies and NGOs involved in humanitarian relief efforts.

This group has developed a concept of operations that would:

facilitate UN/NGO provision of aid,

establish Civil-Military Operations Centers by means of which US forces would coordinate provision of relief and

restart the UN ration distribution system using U.S. supplies until UN/NGOs arrive.
Other interagency groups are planning for:

the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq,

vetting current Iraqi officials to determine with whom we should work, and

post-war elimination of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The new planning office’s function is to integrate all these efforts and make them operational. It is building on the work done, not reinventing it.

Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Detailed planning is underway for the task of securing, assessing and dismantling Iraqi WMD capabilities, facilities and stockpiles. This will be a huge undertaking. The Defense Department is building the necessary capabilities.

This will be a new mission for the Department and for our nation. It is complex and will take place as part of military operations, continuing into the post-conflict period.

We must first locate Iraq’s widespread WMD sites. We must then be prepared to secure the relevant weapons or facilities, or rapidly and safely disable them, so they are no longer a threat to coalition forces. This will have to be done in many places and as quickly as possible.

But the mission does not end there. After hostilities, we will have to dismantle, destroy or dispose of nuclear, chemical, biological and missile capabilities and infrastructure.

Equally important will be plans to re-direct some of Iraq’s dual-use capability and its scientific and managerial talent to legitimate, civilian activities in a new Iraq.

Clearly, this will not be a mission that falls entirely to the U.S. military forces. Other U.S. government personnel, including those within the DoD, the Department of Energy’s laboratory system, and in other government agencies can contribute.

Coalition partners, including many NATO Allies, have nuclear, chemical and biological defense-related capabilities and expertise that can play an important role. The UN, IAEA and other international organizations should be in a position to contribute valuably to the elimination effort and perhaps to ongoing monitoring afterward.

The task of eliminating all nuclear, chemical and biological stockpiles, facilities and infrastructure will take time. We cannot now even venture a sensible guess as to the amount. The new Iraqi government will also have an important role to play.

Oil Infrastructure

The U.S. and its coalition allies may face the necessity of repairing Iraq’s oil infrastructure, if Saddam Hussein decides to damage it, as he put the torch to Kuwait’s oil fields in 1991. Indeed, we have reason to believe that Saddam’s regime is planning to sabotage Iraq’s oil fields. But even if there is no sabotage and there is no injury from combat operations, some repair work will likely be necessary to allow the safe resumption of operations at oil facilities after any war-related stoppage.

Detailed planning is underway for resumption of oil production as quickly as possible to help meet the Iraqi people’s basic needs. The oil sector is Iraq’s primary source of funding. As noted, the United States is committed to preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity. So we are intent on ensuring that Iraq’s oil resources remain under national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country. No one ethnic or religious group would be allowed to claim exclusive rights to any part of the oil resources or infrastructure. In other words, all of Iraq’s oil belongs to all the people of Iraq.

The Administration has decided that, in the event of war, the U.S.-led coalition would:

protect Iraq’s oil fields from acts of sabotage and preserve them as a national asset of the Iraqi people, and

rapidly start reconstruction and operation of the sector, so that its proceeds, together with humanitarian aid from the United States and other countries, can help support the Iraqi people’s needs.
The Administration has not yet decided on the organizational mechanisms by which this sector should be operated. We shall be consulting on this important matter with many parties in various countries, including Iraqi experts and groups.

“No War for Oil”

This is a good point at which to address head-on the accusation that, in this confrontation with the Iraqi regime, the Administration’s motive is to steal or control Iraq’s oil. The accusation is common, reflected in the slogan “No War for Oil.” But it is false and malign.

If there is a war, the world will see that the United States will fulfill its administrative responsibilities, including regarding oil, transparently and honestly, respecting the property and other rights of the Iraqi state and people. The record of the United States in military conflicts is open to the world and well known.

The United States became a major world power in World War II. In that war and since, the United States has demonstrated repeatedly and consistently that we covet no other country’s property. The United States does not steal from other nations. We did not pillage Germany or Japan; on the contrary, we helped rebuild them after World War II. After Desert Storm, we did not use our military power to take or establish control over the oil resources of Iraq or any other country in the Gulf region. The United States pays for whatever we want to import. Rather than exploit its power to beggar its neighbors, the United States has been a source of large amounts of financial aid and other types of assistance for many countries for decades.

If U.S. motives were in essence financial or commercial, we would not be confronting Saddam Hussein over his weapons of mass destruction. If our motive were cold cash, we would instead downplay the Iraqi regime’s weapons of mass destruction and pander to Saddam in hopes of winning contracts for U.S. companies.

The major costs of any confrontation with the Iraqi regime would of course be the human ones. But the financial costs would not be small, either. This confrontation is not, and cannot possibly be, a money-maker for the United States. Only someone ignorant of the easy-to-ascertain realities could think that the United States could profit from such a war, even if we were willing to steal Iraq’s oil, which we emphatically are not going to do.

The Structure and Funding of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance

Returning now to the new Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance: There are three substantive operations within the Office, each under a civilian coordinator: Humanitarian Relief, Reconstruction, and Civil Administration. A fourth coordinator is responsible for communications, logistics and budgetary support. These operations are under the overall leadership of Jay Garner, a retired Lieutenant General who held a senior military position in the 1991 humanitarian relief operation in northern Iraq. He is responsible for organizing and integrating the work of the three substantive operations and ensuring that the office can travel to the region when necessary and plug in smoothly to CENTCOM’s operations. His staff consists of representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, Energy, and Agriculture, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance has only just begun the task of estimating the cost of post-war humanitarian assistance. In addition, it is working to identify the projected post-conflict costs of dealing with the Iraqi armed forces, including the costs of disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating Iraqi troops into civilian society.

Except for the Defense Department, the USG is currently operating under a FY 2003 continuing resolution. This has affected the level of funding that can be made available now, as agencies have access only to limited amounts of money.

In any case, the overall Iraq reconstruction and relief budget would require a FY 2003 supplemental appropriation. Timing of a FY 2003 supplemental is important. Delays would hinder relief and reconstruction programs.

As part of our post-war planning, CENTCOM has also established a Combined Joint Task Force that will be responsible for U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of a conflict. The task force will work closely with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to facilitate relief and reconstruction activities.

The Responsibilities of Free Iraqis

Because the Commander of the U.S. Central Command will have a key role in administration in Iraq, many have thought that our plans for Iraq are based on what the Allies did in Germany after World War II. But that is not the case. Our intention, in case of war, would be to liberate Iraq, not to occupy it.

Our administration would involve Iraqis as soon as possible, and we would transfer responsibility to Iraqi entities as soon as possible. Following the initial period of U.S./coalition military government, we envisage a transitional phase in which responsibility is gradually transferred to Iraqi institutions, leading to the eventual establishment of a new Iraqi government in accordance with a new constitution.

The following are examples of the ways in which Iraqis might play a progressively greater role in administering the country. While final decisions have not been made, and, in the nature of the case, cannot be made until the actual circumstances are known, these examples illustrate various mechanisms under consideration:


An Iraqi consultative council could be formed to advise the U.S./coalition authorities.

A judicial council could undertake to advise the authorities on the necessary revisions to Iraq’s legal structure and statutes to institute the rule of law and to protect individual rights.

A constitutional commission could be created to draft a new constitution and submit it to the Iraqi people for ratification.

Major Iraqi governmental institutions – such as the central government ministries – could remain in place and perform the key functions of government after the vetting of the top personnel to remove any who might be tainted with the crimes and excesses of the current regime.

Town and district elections could be held soon after liberation to involve Iraqis in governing at the local level.
Regarding post-war planning, much preparatory work has been done, but much more remains. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance will serve as the US Government's nerve center for this effort.

We look forward to consulting with this Committee and with the Congress generally as we develop our ideas and plans for post-conflict Iraqi reconstruction. War is not inevitable, but failing to make contingency plans for its aftermath would be inexcusable."

Post-War Reconstruction, May 15, 2003

Post-War Reconstruction, May 15, 2003: "Post-War Reconstruction
Testimony on Post-War Iraq by Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense For Policy,
Before the Committee on International Relations U.S. House of Representatives 15 May 2003

Post-War Reconstruction

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you about the work of the Defense Department and the U.S. Government to put a free Iraq on its feet and headed toward stable, democratic government.

Combat operations to liberate Iraq moved speedily. From their start to the fall of Baghdad was a period of three weeks. Less than five weeks have elapsed since Baghdad fell. Stability operations are underway throughout Iraq. Much work remains to be done before the coalition’s military victory can be confirmed as a strategic victory.

As President Bush has announced, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. The Coalition continues to encounter attacks from scattered, small elements that remain loyal to the former regime. Coalition forces are proceeding with so-called Sensitive Site Exploitation, working their way down a list of hundreds of locations that may contain materiel or information relating to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Our forces are rounding up, more or less daily, regime leadership figures on our most-wanted list and are collecting information on the Saddam Hussein regime's ties to terrorist activity.

Meanwhile, the Coalition has the responsibility for the time being to administer Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi people. The Coalition is providing humanitarian relief, organizing basic services, working to establish security and creating the conditions for the liberated Iraqis to organize a new government for themselves.

Some Reflections on the War

Before entering more deeply into the post-war issues, I’d like to spend a moment on the war itself. As Secretary Rumsfeld has said, military commanders and historians will study this war with care for many years. I think they will find much in the planning and execution that was innovative, courageous and successful.

Some noteworthy points:

Coalition forces began the ground war before the major air campaign. This gave us a degree of tactical surprise under circumstances in which strategic surprise was clearly impossible.
Our forces demonstrated flexibility. They were able to adjust to bad news – for example, General Franks re-routed the Fourth Infantry Division after the Turkish Parliament refused to allow it to stage from Turkey.
We used special operations forces to forestall particularly worrisome Iraqi options, such as missile attacks on Israel and sabotage of the southern oil fields and oil terminals.
Our forces advanced rapidly into Baghdad to take advantage of – indeed to accelerate – the quick-paced collapse of Saddam’s regime.
And we used time-sensitive intelligence to attack high-value targets virtually instantly.
All in all, General Franks and his team developed a plan that was careful and detailed with scope for daring, adjustment and improvisation. It was a plan that reflected the essence of our new defense strategy, the acknowledgement that our intelligence is always and inevitably imperfect, that the future is uncertain and that we must plan to be surprised. General Franks’ plan allowed coalition forces to exploit opportunities rapidly, as they presented themselves.

I expect that historians will long debate the extent to which the plan helped us avoid many of the "horribles" that we foresaw with concern (for example, large-scale refugee flows across Iraq’s borders and Iraqi use of chemical or biological weapons). Whatever the historians’ conclusions on these difficult questions of cause and effect, however, we can be confident that they will judge the thought and action of General Franks and of the Central Command as a favorable reflection on the brains, skill and character of the U.S. armed forces.

Post-war Objectives in Iraq

Now that major combat operations in Iraq are over, our policy goals remain:

First, continue to demonstrate to the Iraqi people and the world that the United States and its coalition partners aspire to liberate the Iraqis and not to occupy or control them or their economic resources.
Second, eliminate Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, its nuclear program, the related delivery systems, and the related research and production facilities.
Third, eliminate Iraq’s terrorist infrastructure. A key element of U.S. strategy in the global war on terrorism is exploiting the information about terrorist networks that the coalition acquires through our military and law enforcement actions.
Fourth, safeguard Iraq’s territorial unity.
Fifth, reconstruct the economic and political systems, putting Iraq on a path to become a prosperous and free country. The U.S. and its coalition partners share with many Iraqis the hope that their country will enjoy the rule of law and other institutions of democracy under a broad-based government that represents the various parts of Iraqi society.
We are pursuing these goals with a two-part determination: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave.

That is, a commitment to stay as long as required to achieve these objectives. We did not take military action in Iraq just to leave a mess behind for the Iraqi people to clean up without our lending a helping hand. That would ill serve the Iraqis, the world and ourselves.
But the United States and our coalition partners have a commitment to leave as soon as possible, for Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people.
When Iraqi officials are in a position to shoulder their country’s responsibilities, when they have in place the necessary political and other structures to provide food, security and the other necessities, the coalition will have a strong interest in seeing them run their own affairs. It is our interest to hasten the day when Iraq can become a proud, independent and respected member of the community of the world’s free countries.

We are encouraging contributions and participation from around the world – from coalition partners, non-governmental organizations, the UN and other international organizations and others. We aim to transfer as much authority as possible, as soon as possible, to the Iraqis themselves. But the United States will not try to foist burdens onto those who are not in a position to carry them.

The Coalition Provisional Authority

When he declared Iraq’s liberation, General Franks, as Commander of the Coalition Forces, announced the creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA serves, in effect, as a government pending the Iraqi people’s creation of a new government. General Franks was initially the head of the CPA.

Last week, the President named Ambassador L. Paul Bremer to be his Envoy to Iraq and put him in charge of all civilian U.S. personnel in Iraq, including the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA). On Tuesday, May 13th, Secretary Rumsfeld appointed Mr. Bremer as the head of the CPA, with the title of Administrator.

It is distressing to see news reports to the effect that Mr. Bremer’s appointment reflects dissatisfaction with the work of Jay Garner, the director of ORHA. These reports are false. Starting in late January, Jay Garner created ORHA from scratch, staffed it from a dozen or so offices of the US Government, from our coalition partners and from the private sector and got it deployed first to Kuwait and then, within weeks, to Baghdad, had ORHA manage the distribution of humanitarian assistance and began the process of building the new Iraq both physically and politically. The job was immense, the conditions difficult in the extreme, the time short and the achievements, as I shall discuss in some detail, have been substantial. Jay Garner has done superb work and deserves admiration and gratitude.

I would like to help set the record straight here: Secretary Rumsfeld decided in January to ask Jay Garner to organize the post-war planning office in the Pentagon. I made the first call to Jay to ask if he would undertake the assignment. In that call, I explained that the director of that office would build on the various post-war planning efforts that had been underway for months throughout the U.S. government. We conceived of the office as "expeditionary" in nature – the idea was that it would comprise the people who would, in the event of war, deploy to Iraq as soon as possible to form the nucleus of the staff of the coalition’s post-conflict administration.

In that first call, I explained to Jay Garner that the director of the post-war planning office might or might not deploy to Iraq and, in any case, the intention was that a senior civilian administrator would be appointed in Iraq after the major combat phase and that the post-war planning office (which became known as ORHA) would report to that administrator. Mr. Bremer’s appointment fulfilled that original intention. People unfamiliar with this background have unfortunately misinterpreted events in a way that is unjust to a fine man.

The Challenges Facing the Coalition Provisional Authority: Humanitarian Assistance and Reconstruction

Now I would like to turn to the work the Coalition Provisional Authority has just begun, as Iraq emerges from its long period of tyranny.

Humanitarian problems exist, primarily in the areas of electricity and water supply, but the overall situation is not desperate. The war caused much less damage than many expected – the major problems derive from the sad state of the pre-war infrastructure, and from post-war violence by Baathists and ordinary criminals. The Coalition has managed to avert the humanitarian crisis through a combination of unprecedented interagency planning and preparation and the skill of our combat forces. In recent press remarks, ICRC President Kellenberger, just back from Iraq, confirmed that there is not now a humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

It is useful to put our recovery efforts in Iraq in perspective. Iraq is a country that had been run into the ground by decades of systematic oppression and misrule. Even before the war:

Only 60% of Iraqis had reliable access to safe drinking water
10 of Al Basrah’s 21 potable water treatment facilities were not functional.
70% of sewage treatment plants were in urgent need of repair and 500,000 metric tons of raw or partially treated sewage was discharged into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – Iraq’s water supply.
23% of children under 5 suffered from malnutrition.
Iraq’s electrical power system (critical to its water system) was operating at half of its capacity.
80% of 25,000 schools were in poor condition – with an average of one book per six students.
60% of the population is wholly dependent on the UN oil-for-food program for subsistence.
The Coalition and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance are working to return all sectors of Iraqi life to the pre-war baseline, and then to put Iraq on a trajectory toward sustained improvement.

Security is the sine qua non for relief and recovery efforts. It is the Coalition’s highest priority. There has already been progress. Over half of Iraq’s provinces, including Baghdad, have been declared "permissive." Throughout Iraq, the Coalition is screening and paying local police officers and often participating in joint patrols to address security concerns. We are bringing in international police advisors to do retraining and are reopening courts. We are also working with the Iraqi governmental ministries and local leadership to reestablish a degree of Iraqi oversight and supervision of security.

There is no food crisis in Iraq. This happy fact is to the credit of the US Government, Coalition and international donations and the resumption of the oil-for-food distribution system. The Coalition and ORHA are working with the UN World Food Program to reestablish nationwide food basket distributions. Over one million MT of food is enroute to Iraq and is to arrive in the next month.

The water system in Baghdad is operating at 60% of pre-war levels and efforts continue to improve on this. Much of the rest of Iraq is at or near pre-war conditions. Increasing attention is being paid to sanitation issues in order to prevent disease outbreaks. Serious illness (even cholera) was common before this war.

The electrical power system throughout Iraq was dilapidated and unreliable before the war. Coalition experts have done heroic work getting the system back on line. The North and South have more reliable electric service than before the war; and in Baghdad progress is being made every day. In Baghdad we reached 50% electricity coverage on 24 April and are closing in on repair of the 400KV ring around Baghdad, expected to be complete by 15 May.

There is no health crisis in Iraq. The concern is security of hospital facilities and reestablishment of the Ministry of Health and civil administration. Coalition partners initially provided support through field hospitals; we are now moving toward an ‘adopt-a-hospital’ approach. ORHA is working to reestablish the Ministry of Health and there is active trilateral cooperation on health issues among ORHA, the World Health Organization and the reemerging Iraqi Ministry of Health.

The Coalition and ORHA are working to identify appropriate persons to reestablish key ministries and providing ministry advisors and logistical support. Over 550,000 civil servants have received emergency payments, this should double by next week. ORHA is researching appropriate salary payments, which will follow in due course.

There have been no widespread human rights abuses since the war. There have been some property disputes and forced evictions in the North. The Coalition and ORHA are addressing this issue with Kurdish leadership, local leadership, and through reverse evictions where appropriate. There is an international fact-finding team in the region to investigate this issue and to develop a process for property dispute resolution. The Coalition and ORHA are also working out policies and procedures regarding mass graves.

In summary, we have averted a humanitarian crisis in Iraq and are now working to improve Iraqi life in all sectors. ORHA has grown into an interagency coalition team. It has accomplished much good, transforming itself, in the midst of a war, from a bright idea into an organization of hundreds of people doing practical work throughout Iraq, with impressive professionalism. Much however, remains to be done.

The Iraqi Political Situation

Ultimately, strategic success in Iraq requires that we lay the political groundwork for a free and representative government that will establish the rule of law and respect the rights of the members of all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups. Given Iraq’s long history of tyranny, one must expect that the political situation will remain volatile for some time and that the first steps toward representative government will be unsteady. But there are grounds for hope.

Although many feared that, without a strongman, Iraq would tend to disintegrate, we have not seen any such tendency. Among all Iraqis – Kurds and Arabs, Sunni and Shi’a, as well as the members of the smaller minorities – there has been an acceptance of the idea of a unified Iraq. To head off ethnic conflict in areas where the Saddam Hussein regime had imposed a forced "Arabization," we are preparing to adjudicate property claims in an orderly manner.

Some Iranian-influenced groups have called for a theocracy on the Teheran model. But it appears that popular support for clerical rule is narrow, even among the Shi’a population. The Shi’a tradition does not favor clerical rule – the Khomeini’ites in Iran were innovators in this regard. And their experiment has not produced widespread prosperity, freedom or happiness in Iran. The Iranian model’s appeal in Iraq is further reduced by the cultural divide between Persians and Arabs.

In restarting Iraqi government operations, we have faced the question of the extent to which we should keep in power former officials who know how to run the administrative machinery. Some have suggested that we must be willing to deal with the former Baathist power structure to obtain the technical competence needed to keep the wheels of government turning.

We have rejected such advice. Our policy is "De-Baathification" – that is, the disestablishment of the Baath party, the elimination of its structures, and the removal of its high-ranking members from positions of authority in Iraq. This process is now underway, and, as it proceeds, the people of Iraq will be assured that their way forward will not be blocked by the remnants of the Baathist apparatus that tyrannized them for decades.

Iraqi Interim Authority

We are working towards the establishment of an Iraqi Interim Authority, which will assume increasingly great responsibility for the administration of the country. This Interim Authority will draw from all of Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups and will provide a way for Iraqis to begin immediately to participate in their country’s economic and political reconstruction. We expect the Authority will include not only the members of the Free Iraqi groups that have fought Saddam’s rule and the independents among the expatriate community, but will also draw from local leaders who have been working on the creation of a new, free Iraq. As more Iraqis feel free to express their views, more will emerge who can be a part of this leadership.

Over time, the Interim Authority is to take control of an increasing number of administrative functions. But it’s most important responsibility will be to design the process for creating a new Iraqi government, for example, by setting up local elections and drafting a new constitution and new laws. This is a process that foreigners cannot direct; it must be a process "owned" by Iraqis. Our task is to create the conditions, including the security conditions, in which they can formulate a process and then pick their leaders freely. An Interim Authority will be a bridge from the initial administration of basic services to an eventual government that represents the Iraqi people.

Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction

As noted, coalition forces have operations underway to identify, secure, exploit and dismantle Iraqi WMD capabilities, facilities and stockpiles. This is a huge undertaking and we are in the early stages of this effort.

We have found evidence of the WMD programs, but we have a long way to go before we can gain a complete understanding of them. As we noted in connection with the UN inspection process, there is no way that we can find WMD materials that have been hidden unless those involved in the program tell us where to look.

We have detained many major figures involved in the WMD programs, including Mrs. Ammash (Mrs. Anthrax) from the biological warfare program and Dr. Taha (Dr. Germ) from the chemical warfare program. We are beginning to question them. Daily we round up more individuals who held high positions in Saddam’s regime, and we are confident we will find many other key scientists and technical personnel.

Of the roughly 600 WMD sites we currently know about, we have only searched about 20%. And we are learning about new sites every day.

I am confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq’s WMD programs – but the process will take months and perhaps years.

It is important that we succeed in re-directing some of Iraq’s dual-use capability and its scientific and managerial talent to legitimate, civilian activities in a new Iraq.

Clearly, this will not be a mission that falls entirely to the U.S. military forces. Other U.S. government personnel, including those within the DoD, the Department of Energy’s laboratory system, and in other government agencies can contribute.

Coalition partners, including many NATO Allies, have nuclear, chemical and biological defense-related capabilities and expertise that are playing a role. So too will the new Iraqi government. It bears stressing: The task of accounting for and eliminating all nuclear, chemical and biological stockpiles, facilities and infrastructure will take time.

Oil Infrastructure

The United States and its coalition partners face the necessity of repairing Iraq’s oil infrastructure. Saddam Hussein’s regime allowed the oil infrastructure to decay while building lavish palaces with Iraq’s revenue. A great deal of repair work is underway to ensure the safe resumption of operations at oil facilities after war-related stoppage.

The oil sector is Iraq’s primary source of funding. The United States is committed to ensuring that Iraq’s oil resources remain under national control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country. No one ethnic or religious group will be allowed to claim exclusive rights to any part of the oil resources or infrastructure. In other words, all of Iraq’s oil belongs to all the people of Iraq.

Iraqi oil operations are being run by an Interim Management Team headed by Thamir Ghadban, who was a senior Oil Ministry official under the former regime. Other Iraqis are assisting Ghadban. And Ghadban is being advised in his efforts by Phillip Carroll, a former American oil executive, and Fadhil Othman, the former head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), the chairman and vice chairman of an advisory team that will be filled out soon with other Iraqi and non-Iraqi experts. We are helping as we can, but the Iraqis have in the past demonstrated skill in operating their energy infrastructure in the face of adversity, and that record continues up to today.

In fact, the main oil problem we are facing now is different from what we feared before the war. Then, we anticipated destruction of Iraqi’s energy facilities and a long-time loss of Iraq’s oil production. But coalition force seized key Iraq’s petroleum and gas facilities in the south at the war’s outset and prevented Saddam’s regime from destroying them. Some oil wells were set on fire, and we found substantial explosives in the southern oil facilities that Saddam’s forces did not manage to use. We also captured the oil fields in the north largely in tact.

We now face the challenges of success. With oil production at only 125,000 barrels/day, out of a prewar production of 2.5 million barrels/day, there already is a dearth of spare capacity to store crude oil and fuel oil (a byproduct of the refining process). With the current ‘constipation’ of the system, as it is, Iraq cannot produce much more oil or refine much more gasoline without approaching its maximum limit of storage. This has led to shortages of both gasoline and propane, and we have been forced to import both products into a country that, as you know, is rich in natural gas and petroleum.

The resolution that Britain, Spain and the U.S. have introduced in the UN Security Council would relieve this problem. It envisions the resumption of oil exports, and provides that the revenues be deposited in a new fund in the Iraqi Central Bank, with transparency provided to the world by independent auditors and international advisory board. The revenues could then be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people at the direction of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Funding of the Reconstruction

The ultimate costs of reconstruction in Iraq are difficult to estimate. As I have said, many of the problems that we face there are the result of 30 years of tyranny, corruption and mismanagement. War damage was relatively small-scale.

There are a number of funding sources to help Iraq. There is $1.7 billion in formerly frozen Iraqi government assets in the US that the U.S Government vested by Presidential order. In addition, about $700 million in state or regime owned cash has so far been seized and brought under U.S. control in accordance with the laws of war. This money is also available to be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

Once Iraqi oil exports resume, the proceeds will be available.

Under the terms of the UN Security Council resolution proposed by the U.S., the UK and Spain, assets from two additional sources would be placed in the Iraqi Assistance Fund:

-- The proposed resolution calls on other countries to place in the Fund any Iraqi government assets, or assets that have been removed from Iraq by Saddam Hussein or other senior officials of the former regime, held in their countries.

-- The proposed resolution also provides that the uncommitted balance in the UN’s "Oil For Food" escrow account (amounting to approximately $3 billion) be turned over to the Fund.

There have been public pledges from the international community of over $1.2 billion. The donations are for the food, health, agriculture, and security sectors. We anticipate additional contributions as well.

Finally, Congress has also appropriated approximately $2.5 billion for reconstruction efforts. There are also additional authorities that we can draw from if needed, such as the Natural Resources Risk Remediation Fund, which can be used for repairing damage to the oil facilities in Iraq.

The Coalition to Win the Peace

We have won the war in Iraq. We are committed to winning the peace.

The United States is not acting alone. We have worked with a coalition in prosecuting the war and we have a broad coalition that is contributing to stability operations and reconstruction. We are working also with the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations. And, of paramount importance, we are working with Iraqis who are eager to create for themselves a government that will secure their freedom, build democratic institutions and threaten neither the Iraqi people, their neighbors or others with tyranny, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or aggression."

On the Global War on Terrorism, November 13, 2003

On the Global War on Terrorism, November 13, 2003: "On the Global War on Terrorism
Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense For Policy
Speech to Council of Foreign Relations
Thursday, November 13, 2003

Speaker: Douglas Feith

Moderator: Robert Gallucci

Feith: Good Evening. Thank you, Bob, I appreciate the introduction and I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to address the council.

My talk is on the global war on terrorism and I'd like to start with a personal story. On September 11, 2001, I was in Moscow with my colleague J.D. Crouch, discussing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an ancient text. As we were leaving the defense ministry in the late afternoon, the world entered a new era, for that was when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

We asked the U.S.-European command for the means to get back to Washington despite the general shutdown of U.S. air traffic, and EUCOM provided us a with a KC-135 tanker, which met us in Germany. And we collected there a handful of stray Defense Department officials who were also stranded by the suspension of the commercial air traffic and these included Under Secretary Dov Zakheim, Assistant Secretary Peter Rodman and his deputy Bill Luti and General John Abizaid, then on the joint staff, and now as you know Tommy Frank's successor as the commander of the Central Command. All of us were frustrated to be away at such a moment and grateful to be getting back to the Pentagon fast, which was of course still smoldering.

In the KC-135, we conferred and wrote papers about how to comprehend the September 11th attack as a matter of national security policy. President Bush's statements even then showed that he thought of the attack, in essence, as an act of war rather than a law enforcement matter.

Now, this point may seem unremarkable, but think back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to the attacks on Khobar Towers in 1996, on the U.S. East African embassies in '98, on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. When such attacks occurred over the last decades, U.S. officials avoided the term "war." The primary response was to dispatch the FBI to identify individuals for prosecution. Recognizing the September 11th attack as war was a departure from the established practice. It was President Bush's seminal insight the wisdom of which I would say is attested by the fact that it looks so obvious in retrospect.

We in the KC-135 chewed over such questions as what it means to be at war not with a conventional enemy, but with a network of terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. We talked about how to formulate our war aims, how to define victory, what should be our strategy.

And as we were mulling all of this, the airplane's crew invited us to the cockpit to look down on the southern tip of Manhattan, and we saw smoke rising from the ruins of the twin towers. Aside from sadness and anger, the smoke engendered an enduring sense of duty to prevent the next big attack.

When we landed in Washington on September 12th, we were primed to join the work the President had already gotten underway to develop a strategy for the war.

That work has held up well since September 2001.

The President and his advisors considered the nature of the threat. If terrorists exploited the open nature of our society to attack us repeatedly, the American people might feel compelled to change that nature, to close it, to defend ourselves. Many defensive measures come at a high price. That is, interference with our freedom of movement, intrusions on our privacy, inspections, and an undesirable, however necessary, rebalancing of civil liberties against the interests of public safety. In other words, at stake in the war in terrorism are not just the lives and limbs of potential victims, but our country's freedom.

It isn't possible to prevent all terrorist attacks. There are simply too many targets in the United States - too many tall buildings. It's possible, however, to fight terrorism in a way that preserves our freedom and culture. So the conclusion was that our war aim should be to eliminate terrorism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society.

Because the United States can't count on preserving our way of life by means of a defensive strategy, there was and is no practical alternative to a strategy of offense. We have to reach out and hit the terrorists where they reside, plan and train, and not wait to try to defeat their plans while they are executing them on U.S. soil. To deal with the threat from the terrorists we have to change the way we live or change the way they live.

Accordingly, the President's strategy in the war on terrorism has three parts. One is disrupting and destroying terrorists and their infrastructure. This involves direct military action, but also intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory activity. The list of senior members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups who’ve been killed or captured since 9-11 is impressive, and includes such figures as Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah, Hambali, Mohammad Atef.

These and other successes against the terrorists demonstrate that international cooperation is alive, well and effective. We've worked jointly with the Philippines, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain, France, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt among others. From our interrogations of detainees, we know that the absence of large-scale attacks on the United States since 9-11 has not been for want of bad intentions and efforts on the terrorists' part. We have been disrupting their plans and operations. Our strategy of offense, which is to say forcing the terrorists to play defense, is sound.

The second part of our strategy targets the recruitment and indoctrination of terrorists. The objective is to create a global intelligence and moral environment hostile to terrorism. We refer to this part as “the battle of ideas.” As the President's national strategy for combating terrorism puts it, “We want terrorism viewed in the same light as slavery, piracy or genocide - behavior that no respectable government can condone or support, and all must oppose.”

This requires a sustained effort to de-legitimate terrorism and to promote the success of those forces, especially within the Muslim world, that are working to build and preserve modern, moderate and democratic political and educational institutions.

And the third part of the strategy of course is securing the homeland. The Bush Administration has created the Department of Homeland Security, while the Defense Department has organized a new Northern Command in which for the first time a combatant commander has the entire continental United States within his area of responsibility. By the way, it's a matter of some pride that the U.S. Northern Command managed to achieve full operational capability - quite appropriately on September 11th, 2003 - in less than a year. And we are in the process also for the first time of fielding defenses against ballistic missiles of all ranges. Our strategy envisions international cooperation. The war is global. We have forged formidable, adaptable partnerships - a rolling set, because some coalition partners are comfortable helping in some areas but not in others.

After 9-11, nearly 100 nations joined us in one or more aspects of the war on terrorism, in military operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in maritime interdiction operations, in financial crackdowns against terrorist funding, and in law enforcement actions, as well as intelligence sharing and diplomatic efforts. In Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan, there are 71 members of the coalition, including contributors to the International Security Assistance Force; 37 have contributed military assets. In Iraq, 32 countries are now contributing forces.

As President Bush noted early on, the war's greatest strategic danger remains the possibility that terrorists will obtain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The list of states that sponsor terrorism correlates obviously and ominously with the list of those that have programs to produce such weapons of mass destruction.

The nexus of terrorist groups, state sponsors of terrorism and WMD is the security nightmare of the 21st century. It remains our focus. We are treating this threat as a compelling danger in the near term. We are not waiting for it to become imminent, for we cannot expect to receive unambiguous warning of, for example, a terrorist group's acquisition of biological weapons agents. We know the list of terrorist-sponsoring states with WMD programs - Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea. Iraq used to be in that category but no longer is.

Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a sadistic tyranny that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, launched aggressive attacks and wars against Iran, Kuwait, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and supported terrorists by providing them with safe harbor, funds, training and other help. It had defied a long list of legally binding U.N. Security Council resolutions. It undid the U.N. inspection regime of the 1990s. It eviscerated the economic sanctions regime and it shot virtually daily at the U.S. and British aircraft patrolling Iraq's northern and southern no-fly zones. In sum, containment of Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a hollow hope. The best information available from intelligence sources said that, one, Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons; and, two, if Saddam Hussein obtained fissile material from outside Iraq as opposed to producing it indigenously, he could have had a nuclear weapons within a year.

Those assessments, and most of the underlying information, were not recent products of the intelligence community. They were consistent with the intelligence that predated the administration of George W. Bush, and they were consistent with the intelligence from cooperative foreign services and with the United Nations' estimates of weapons unaccounted for.

It was reasonable - indeed necessary - for the U.S. government to rely on the best information it had available. And while we haven't yet found, and may not find, stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, David Kay reports that the Iraq survey group has obtained corroborative evidence of Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological programs, covert laboratories, advanced missile programs, and Iraq's program active right up to the start of the war to conceal WMD-related developments from the U.N. inspectors.

The Iraqi dictator posed a serious threat. Given the nature of that threat, seen in light of our experience with the 9-11 surprise attack, and the crumbling one after another of the pillars of containment, it would have been risky in the extreme to have allowed him to remain in power for the indefinite future. Intelligence is never perfect, but that's not grounds for inaction in the face of the kind of information the President had about Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Saddam's demise has freed Iraqis of a tyrant, deprived terrorists of a financier and supporter, eliminated a threat to regional stability, taken Iraq off the list of rogue states with WMD programs, and created a new opportunity for free political institutions to arise in the Arab world. All of this serves our cause in the global war on terrorism.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, democratization has begun. Success will strengthen the forces of moderation in the Muslim world. It could create a new era in the Middle East. Already since Iraq's liberation talk of reform and democracy is more common and more intense in the Arab world. It would be desirable if the Middle East reached a political turning point similar to the points in history when Asian democracy and Latin American democracy blossomed and spread rapidly.

As the President said last week at the National Endowment for Democracy, “It should be clear to all that Islam, the faith of one fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries. More than half of all Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically-constituted governments.”

Opposition to democratic rule motivates extremists in both Afghanistan and Iraq to try to tear down the newly formed institutions. They see the potential for modernization, democratization, and liberalization of the economy, and they oppose and fear what they see.

Extremism of the type that fuels terrorism is a political phenomenon. It's driven by ideology, and ideologies we know can be defeated. Like Soviet communism and Nazism, radical Islamism can be discredited by failure. When the Soviet system collapsed it helped demonstrate that our nation's positive message - individual liberty, the rule of law, tolerance and peace - has global appeal. Soviet communism was discredited, practically and morally, by its ultimately undeniable failures to deliver goodness or happiness. Radical Islamism, an ideological stew of historical resentments, political hatreds, religious intolerance and violence, can be expected to have a similar end. Like communism, it promises a Utopia that it can't deliver.

As the President noted, “Many Middle Eastern governments now understand that military dictatorships and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere. The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership. For too long many people in that region have been victims and subjects. They deserve to be active citizens.”

In Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as elsewhere in the region, this process has begun. Afghanistan has a way to go before it achieves a stable, permanent government. Taliban forces are working to regroup and attack, often from bases in the rough terrain of the tribal areas just across the Pakistan border. Afghanistan's central government needs more skilled administrators. It needs better control over the country's customs revenues. And important open question remain as to the right relationship between the central government and the local governors and military commanders.

But Afghanistan has come far since its liberation from the Taliban only two years ago. President Karzai is increasingly extending the government's authority across the country. He has replaced about one third of the provincial governors. Reform of the Defense Ministry is underway and producing greater ethnic balance. The government and the constitutional commission have just produced a draft constitution that the Loya Jirga may approve next month. National elections in Afghanistan are scheduled for next year. International assistance to the country is increasing. A modern ring road, a boon to commerce, security and national unity, is being built around the country. The Kabul-to-Kandahar portion is to be usable by December of this year, and NATO has taken over the U.N.- mandated International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, and is expanding its peacekeeping role outside the capital.

Afghanistan's courage and unity will continue to be tested, but it appears that Afghanistan is passing these tests. It's a country on the rise, and it's a country that is no longer affording terrorists the quiet enjoyment of bases of operation.

Iraq too is a story of difficulties, but also progress and promise. Iraqis, like Afghans, know that they have been liberated from tyranny. They recognize their stake in the coalition's success, even though a thick residue of fear inhibits many from contributing to that success.

Our strategic goal in Iraq is to give Iraq back to the Iraqi people well launched, on the road to freedom, security and prosperity. We can't build the new Iraq for them, but we can make sure that when we leave they are in a position to build it themselves. Our foremost objective now is to improve the security situation to make political and economic development possible. We recognize that security, freedom and prosperity are tightly interrelated. There's no solution to the security problem without progress on the economic and political fronts.

The enemies of our strategic goal are: One, former regime loyalists, Saddam's dead-enders; two, foreign fighters - jihadists; three, terrorist groups – al-Qaida and its allies; and, four, the scores of thousands of criminals that Saddam released from his prisons in the months before the war.

We don't underestimate the task we face. We recognize the enemy has a number of strengths. For example, the country is awash in munitions. Our enemies have access to a lot of money and Saddam remains at large. It doesn't take an enormous effort to attack small numbers of soldiers every week, and the international jihad network has opted to support the fight against the coalition in Iraq, making Iraq the central battlefield now in the global war on terrorism.

But we also know that our enemies have vulnerabilities. For example, the former regime is not popular in the country, and it had and has a very narrow base of public support. Moreover, Iraqis resent the presence of foreign jihadists who have chosen Iraq as the battlefield on which to confront the U.S. Few Iraqis support the jihadists' ideology.

Another enemy of vulnerability is its relatively small geographic base. The vast majority of the attacks against coalition forces in recent months have occurred in Baghdad and in Saddam's former stronghold north and west of the capital. In large parts of the country, in the north and south, the population is well disposed to the coalition, and those areas are relatively free of such attacks, though there have been horrific bombings in Mosul, Najaf and yesterday in Nasariyah. And I'd like to just take the occasion to express condolences to the Italians who lost 18 of their Carabineri in the attack on Nasariyah yesterday. Our sympathies go to Italy and to the families of those who lost their lives in that attack.

We believe the enemy strategy is to: One, break the coalition's will through daily attacks on coalition forces; two, target embodiments of success through attacks on infrastructure and police, for example; three, divide and intimidate Iraqis through assassinations of civilians, including attacks on the Governing Council; four, portray the coalition, and especially the United States, as imperialist and exploitative; five, drive out international organizations and non-governmental organizations; and, six, slow down progress toward self-rule in the hope that the coalition will run out of patience and leave.

Coalition forces are taking the initiative to search out the enemy, defeat his efforts, and cut of his bases of support. We are doing this through direct action based on specific intelligence, such as the raid conducted against Uday and Qusay, and the recent raid by the 82nd Airborne, which netted two former Iraqi generals in Fallujah, who are suspected as being key financiers and organizers of anti- coalition activities in the city.

Our forces are innovating at the tactical level. They're using battlefield surveillance radars to locate mortar positions. They are developing and deploying technical means to deal with roadside bombs. And they are continually developing special convoy security measures. Coalition forces have stepped up efforts to guard the borders, to prevent the infiltration of foreign fighters and terrorists.

Although the coalition is doing a lot, the strategic solution to the security problem in Iraq is to enable Iraqis to provide for their own security. And so the coalition is organizing and equipping Iraqis and putting them in positions of responsibility for their own security. Having more Iraqis active in their security forces will yield several benefits in helping to reach our strategic objectives: Iraqis have more familiarity with the people and terrain; Iraqis can provide better intelligence on the location of terrorists; a leading role for Iraqi security forces will also show that Iraq is on a rapid course to self-rule, and reduce friction between the coalition troops and the population.

More than 100,000 Iraqis are already active in the five security forces - the Police, Border Police, Site Protection Service, Civil Defense Corps of the new Iraqi Army. This number has been growing rapidly. In early September it stood at 62,000. The Iraqi security forces have proven effective in a number of actions. They are taking on an increasing share of the security burden and are suffering casualties.

As I've said, we understand how tightly interrelated the governance, economic and security problems are. Therefore, a key element of our security strategy is improving the lives of the Iraqi people and building Iraqi political institutions. Regarding essential services, oil production now exceeds two million barrels a day, and provides revenues for Iraqi salaries and other governmental expenses. Electricity production has attained prewar levels. Iraq's educational system has been reestablished. There are record 97,000 university- level school applications. Levels of health care comparable to the prewar level have been achieved. As you know, the Congress has recently appropriated a large sum of money, approximately $20 billion, for Iraqi reconstruction, including the building up of the security forces. But the U.S. isn't bearing the whole burden. At the recent donor's conference in Madrid, other countries and international institutions pledged about $13 billion. The major donor countries, aside from the United States, were Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Spain, Italy, Canada, the UAE and South Korea.

As for the building of Iraqi political institutions, the Governing Council has been operating since July, and has appointed interim ministers to run the Iraqi ministries. The Governing Council has won international recognition in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1511, from the General Assembly and the Arab League. In addition to the national level Governing Council, there are more than 250 governing councils at the provincial and municipal levels. These represent important steps toward Iraqi self-rule. An Iraqi runs the central bank and an Iraqi council of judges has been established to supervise the prosecutorial and judicial systems.

As you are aware from recent press reports, we are continuing our efforts to build up the Iraqis' capability to run their own affairs, and we are working with the Governing Council to help them develop a timeline for drafting a new constitution and holding elections under it, as called for under Resolution 1511. Our guiding principle is that as much authority as possible should be transferred to the Iraqi institutions as soon as possible.

We understand how important it is to communicate effectively with the Iraqi people. Our basic message is two-fold. First, we intend to stay the course, to fulfill our responsibilities and ensure that Iraq is well launched on the path to freedom, security and prosperity. Second, we don't want to rule Iraq. Nor will we stay any longer than is necessary.

Now, we understand that there is some tension between these two messages, but we are conveying both of them, and neither is subordinated to the other. Although the major combat operations that toppled the Saddam regime were over by May 1, the war to determine the future of Iraq continues. The stakes are large. If Iraq can be launched on the path toward freedom, stability and prosperity, the terrorists will have suffered a major defeat and the people of the Middle East will have an alternative model to follow. Our enemies understand this, and we must expect them to throw all their resources into the fight. This struggle will take time - time to root out enemy fighters and supporters within Iraq, time to gain control of the borders, and most of all time to help the Iraqis rebuild their political and security institutions to the point that they'll be able to take over the main burden of the fight.

Visitors returning from Iraq commonly comment that what they saw there jibed not at all with the picture of the country that outsiders get from television and newspapers. This is hardly surprising. If all one knew about life in the United States was what one saw on local TV news broadcasts, one would imagine that life in America is nothing but murders, power outages, fires and the like. Because we live here we know that a lot else is going on - business and industrial work, cultural and educational life, politics, government, social activities. There's a lot going on in Iraq too that doesn't make the evening news.

From its inception in the days following 9-11, the President and his team have implemented their strategy for the war on terrorism with steadiness, prudence and good results. The plans for our combat and post-combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq get challenged from time to time, as is inevitable and good in a democracy. Though these plans have by and large worked well, we review and revise them continually, as Jerry Bremer's recent visit to Washington highlights. Those plans were and are the product of much cooperation across the U.S. government and with key allies. They helped us avert many ills. For example, Iraq has not found itself with masses of internally displaced persons and international refugees, starvation, a collapse of the currency, destruction of the oil fields, the firing of Scud missiles against Israel or Saudi Arabia, or widespread inter-communal violence. There's value in pausing and reflecting on the anticipated catastrophes that we were spared through a combination of foresight, military skill, and the kind of luck that tends to favor forces that plan and work hard and wisely.

The United States and its coalition partners are on sound courses in Afghanistan and Iraq, though much remains to be done in both places. As long as we are making progress in rebuilding the infrastructure, in allowing normal life to return, and most important in helping the Afghans and Iraqis develop political institutions for the future, we are on the path to success, despite the attacks of the terrorists and former regime supporters.

Staying the course won't be easy or cheap. We’re reminded of this every time we hear of another attack on U.S. or coalition forces. The President asked Congress to make available the necessary resources, and Congress has done so. To crown our military victories with strategic victories, we will have to succeed in both the civil and the military aspects of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the global war on terrorism we're succeeding in our goal. We are defeating terrorism as a threat to our way of life. Our coalitions are on the offensive. The terrorists are on the run. And the United States has preserved our freedom. The world is safer and better for what we have accomplished. Americans have much to be proud of. Thank you. {Applause).

Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, we have some time for questions. I am asked to encourage you when you do ask a question to please stand, state your name and your affiliation, and wait for a microphone.

I'm also encouraged to say that you should please keep your questions concise so that many people can ask a question. And it would be nice of course if you did indeed ask a question.

I am going to take a prerogative that I am allowed to ask Doug the first question, and this is sort of a do as a I say, not as I do, because I'm allowed to ask two questions, but will ask only one, and it may be slightly longer than it would be ideal.

But as I listened, Doug, to the presentation, I don't think at least I have any difficulty with the diagnosis of the problem that threat facing us is international terrorism. What I have a problem with is the prescription and your linkage of international terror to the war in Iraq. I was trying to think of a metaphor, and I was thinking of a correct diagnosis of the patient has cancer, life- threatening cancer, and you as a doctor find a broken bone, clearly a broken bone, and decide to focus on the bone. Nobody is going to argue here that - I don't think - that Iraq was broken. There's a serious problem - horrendous human rights problem, ignoring the United Nations - all the points you made.

But I think the key for a lot of us is do we feel as though your shot selection was good? Do we feel as though we are safer from international terrorism by devoting all these resources to Iraq, by not only devoting these resources but alienating other governments, even friendly governments, in the course of doing this that we clearly need against a systemic problem like Iraq? And then if you look at the case as you made it for weapons of mass destruction, it's there but it's strained. It's okay for chemical weapons it's okay for biological weapon at the toxin and bacteriological, but not the viral. And the nuclear issue I think is highly strained. There is no connection, I think as has been admitted, to 9/11, itself and the connection you made even now to terrorism could be said of any number of countries. So a question which I am now getting to – {Laughter} is: Can you say more about why, if you have gotten the diagnosis correct, why the application of resources, so massive and so massive yet to come, is to this problem rather than to a more frontal attack on international terrorism?

Feith: As I at least touched on in the remarks, when we looked at the 9/11 attack, and we saw that the terrorists were able to kill 3,000 people, one of the first thoughts that struck us was these are people who are willing, the terrorists, to kill as many people as they possibly can. And if they had access to biological weapons or nuclear weapons they would have been happy to kill 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times the number of people that they killed in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11th. And so we were focused, as I said on this connection among the terrorist groups, their state sponsors and weapons of mass destruction. And that is I think a proper strategic focus in the global war on terrorism. It is the principal and the largest danger that we face.

And in fighting terrorist organizations one of the most effective approaches is denying them bases of operation and denying them their state support. And we did that in Afghanistan, and we did that with one of the regimes in the world that was a prominent supporter of terrorist organizations and aspired to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And there is no question they had those programs. The debate right now is over did they actually have stockpiles as opposed to programs for chemical and biological weapons?

When it comes to chemical and biological weapons, if you have the program you have the knowledge, you have the production capability. One can produce militarily significant quantities in very short order. Furthermore, the Saddam Hussein regime had actually used chemical weapons. And so the danger that this regime, which advocated terrorism, supported it, rewarded it, had links with terrorist organizations and had these capabilities, that this regime might, if left alone, get to the point where it would be providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organization was a serious risk and went to what I said was the strategic heart of the problem. And so I think it was - that was the reason that it fitted in, that was I think the motive for taking this action and I think that it was justified. Now, it happens to be, as I explained in my remarks, there are a number of other aspects to the problem, including the fact that the Saddam Hussein regime was one of the worst scofflaw regimes in violating U.N. Security Council resolutions, and a tyranny and a threat to its neighbors, and all those other points I made, which are important. But specifically with regard to your question, I don't think there is any question that if one had one's eye on the ball the key strategic issue in the global war on terrorism, this connection that I discussed, that Iraq lived right at that connection.

Moderator: Thank you, Doug. The floor is open. First hand, right there. Please wait for the mike.

Q: Sherman Katz, CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies): Regarding the stand-down of the Iraqi Army, I wondered if you would be kind enough to share with us what your thinking was about how that ought to be managed before the fact, and if indeed there are any distinctions what you are thinking is now about how it might have better been handled, if there is any distinction?

Feith: Before the war there was an idea, which Jay Garner talked about in press briefings that he did here in Washington. There was an idea that we could use the Iraqi Army for reconstruction. And the thought was that the Army had organized units, it had people who had various skills it had its own assets for mobility. I mean, there were a lot of reasons why one looking toward reconstruction would say we could make good use of the Army.

What we found however in the war was that the Army in effect disbanded itself and by the time Jerry Bremer was heading off to assume the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, there was no Army left as an organization. The people had dispersed the barracks had been destroyed and stripped of everything in them, the tile taken off the walls. The mobility assets were all gone. The Army was gone. It had, as I said, it had dissolved itself and the decision was made in essence to simply confirm the dissolution of the Army as part of the overall effort of de-Ba’athification, which Ambassador Bremer made as his theme when he arrived in Baghdad. And there are some drawbacks and there were some advantages in that situation. The drawback obviously was that the asset that we thought might be available for reconstruction didn't exist, so we didn't have it. The advantage though is that we now have the opportunity to create an Army that is not tainted by the various aspects of rottenness that characterized the old Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein - the corruption, the cruelty, the abuse by the senior officers of the junior people, the lack of professionalism, the politicization. I mean there were major cultural problems and other types of problems in the Iraqi Army. This is not to say that everybody in the Army as an individual was tainted and people in the Army are welcomed to come back and join - and have come back to join various other security forces once they are vetted and it's determined that they are not part of the previous regime's crimes. But I think that is the difference that accounts for why we had a certain thought before the war and why we proceeded differently since.

Moderator: Ann?

Q: Thank you. I'm Ann Kahn from American University. If the prewar intelligence on Iraq was so uniform and so consistent in its findings as you’ve stated in your prepared remarks, why was it necessary to set up a special office of strategic planning within the Defense Department, and does that office still exist? And if not, why not?

Feith: I'm delighted that you asked that question.

Moderator: I almost believe that. {Laughter}.

Feith: No, I am, because this is a subject of such thoroughgoing misinformation that it's nice to have a chance to say something true about it.

First of all, the Office of Special Plans that you referred to has nothing really whatsoever to do with intelligence it is one of the regional offices in the policy organization. We have regional offices for Latin America and Africa and Asia. We had - it is the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs. It was created in the fall of 2002 when we had to beef up our staff to handle all of the extra Iraq related work. We needed to increase it by something like 18 people. So we created a new office, and since there was an enormous amount of attention on the Pentagon, on what we were doing and are we planning for war and the creation of a new office that would have been called the Iraq office would have probably in and of itself created headlines. We chose the kind of name that the government gives to offices throughout the government that’s kind of nondescript - you know, "special plans," long-range plans" - that kind of thing and it's been grist for the conspiracy mongers ever since. But you referred to some intelligence unit, as many press reports did, confuse it with the special plans office. The so-called intelligence unit that was much discussed - it was two people, it was two people who did a project for about - it as not a unit, it was not an office. It was two people. And they did a project for about three months, and then another two people did a follow-on project for about 6 or 7 months.

It's rather amazing that there have been numerous stories that said this was the Pentagon's effort to replace the CIA and I can assure you that we do not hold the CIA in such low regard that we think we could replace them with two people. And in fact we think we - what those people did in that so-called intelligence unit that has been written about, was simply help me read and absorb the intelligence produced by the intelligence community, the CIA and other members of the intelligence community. So all I can say is there is, as I said, so much misinformation on this subject that I would urge everybody to treat with great skepticism what you read on that subject.

Moderator: Bob?

Q: Robert Gard. You mentioned in passing missile defense $9.1 billion in the '04 budget, over $60 billion over the next 7 years. We can detect missile launches with deployed technology. It would appear to me that deterrence ought to work pretty well in this regard.

I was pleased to see you agreed with the President the greatest threat is the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. Wouldn't it make sense to divert some of that missile defense money - as large as it is, to doing something about securing the nuclear weapons and materials in the Soviet Union, which could become a Home Depot for terrorists, and beefing up home security to try to prevent the terrorists from being able to smuggle in a weapon of mass destruction?

Feith: You have identified a number of threats. We need to be responsible; we need to address the range of threats that face our country. We don't have the luxury of simply picking one or two that happen to interest us and investing only in those. There is a problem of, as its called, loose nukes in the former Soviet empire. There is a problem of vulnerability to ballistic missiles there is a problem of terrorist access to chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, all of those things are problems and threats and they all have to be addressed.

Q: Barbara Slavin of USA Today. Yeah. My question is about the current political arrangements in Iraq. Are we willing to contemplate expanding the Governing Council, changing its nature, before a constitution is written? Is this what I've been given to understand? And why would any of these changes make any difference to Iraqis? Why would they regard an expanded council as more legitimate while we have tens of thousands of American soldiers there? Thank you.

Feith: This is a subject that is being discussed right now by Ambassador Bremer with the Iraqis. He was here in town the beginning of this week and brought a number of ideas that he had been discussing with the Governing Council and other Iraqis, and those ideas were kicked around over two days in sessions with the President and the National Security Council and Ambassador Bremer is now - I think he already may be back in Iraq or he is on his way - and he is going to be reviewing them with the Iraqis.

The goal of the political work that's being done in Iraq is creating political institutions that can assume real responsibility, growing responsibility. The Governing Council has accomplished certain things, it needs to accomplish a lot more, and it needs to be doing executive functions, it needs to be organizing the constitutional progress, it needs to be organizing the electoral process. And there are various ideas about how to do that and how to move that forward.

Now your question is to why should that matter for Iraqis? I think the answer is that it does matter for Iraqis. The Iraqis want to run their own country, and we want them to run it, and we want them to run it as soon as possible. Now we are not going to just drop our responsibilities and walk away and just leave a mess. On the other hand, we want to make it clear that we are not looking to stay there any longer than we need to. And our enemies in Iraq use as one of their information operations themes against the coalition the argument that we intend to stay, intend to colonize, intend to run Iraq. It's not true - and if we can have clear steps toward Iraqi self-rule in the near term, we are helping to negate, to contradict, that line of argument that is an asset for the terrorists and the former regime loyalists in their fight against us in the country. So it has important political and security implications.

Q: I want to follow-up on –

Moderator: - your name please?

Q: Walter Pincus. I'm at the Washington Post.

Moderator: Thank you.

Q: I want to follow up on Bob's original question about why Iraq? Because if you take all your definitions, and particularly your nexus there are two issues, I agree. One is there is no hint although he had plenty of time that he ever did contemplate giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. But the second part is you have North Korea and you have Iran and particularly Iran, which is openly supporting terrorists. I just imagine your nexus is there and why did you choose diplomacy with those two countries, when you had as you said a kind of containment which wasn't perfect, but it appeared to be working because he wasn't doing the thing you feared the most and because your own intelligence said he wouldn't do it unless he was attacked and his back was to the wall?

Feith: First of all, on the issues of Saddam's intentions. We knew that he had these programs - these weapons of mass destruction, we knew that he had used it. We knew that he had relationships with various terrorist organizations and supported them in various ways, including by the way, in some cases in connection with training and exercising regarding chemical weapons, we had information about that in exchanges between the Saddam Hussein regime and terrorist organizations in that area.

But our information is, as everybody knows, never complete about a subject like that - never perfect, and the idea that we didn't have, you know specific proof that he was planning to give a biological agent to a terrorist group doesn't really lead you to anything because you wouldn't expect to have that information even if it were true. I mean our intelligence is just not – it’s just not at the point where if Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it. What we knew were the things I said from which one could infer he had these connections, he supported the terrorist groups, the danger was there. So I think it was, as I said, reasonable to take that threat seriously.

Q: (Inaudible).

Feith: Well, there are other problems in the world. Each problem has its own unique circumstances. I mean, the argument that there are other problems in the world and that becomes an argument for not addressing a particular problem, I don't quite understand that logic.

Moderator: That's good. We don't want to discourage you from diplomacy in the other cases. {Laughter}. Right here.

Q: Katie Jennings, Council on Foreign Relations. Very quickly, I don't want to be flippant, but we've done Afghanistan, we've done Iraq, so what's the next stop on the war on terror and if you have any ideas how were going to pay for it, that would be good too?

Feith: The next steps in the war on terror are going to be continuations of steps that we've been taking.

Q: Stop.

Feith: Excuse me?

Q: The next stop, not step.

Feith: The next stop?

Moderator: You mean the next place we go? The stop as in the series of places you go. What's your next endeavor? {Laughter}.

Feith: You seriously expect an answer to that question? {Laughter}.

Moderator: I do.

Feith: The fact is we are operating in the war on terrorism in numerous countries right now, and we're going to continue to do so and the operations are in some cases military, in some cases intelligence, and some cases law enforcement. There's a lot going on in the war on terrorism and its in many countries around the world.

Moderator: The last question will be right there.

Q: Hi, Ira Stoll, from the New York Sun. Do you buy the argument that one of the reasons that the terrorist and people who aren't terrorists hate America is because of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and that America is allied with Israel in that conflict? And how great a part of the hatred of America do you think that accounts for, if any?

Feith: Don't know how to measure it, but it's clearly an element. There are a lot of people who are focused on that conflict and don't like our policy. But I think that the terrorist phenomenon is considerably bigger and more complex than just the Arab/Israeli conflict. And I think that a large part of what is going on in the world that underlies, that motivates; terrorism is really a clash within the world of Islam between people of a particularly extremist view and school and the people who oppose them. And al-Qaida's main enemy for years, as one gathered from their public pronouncements, was not Israel or even the United States, but Saudi Arabia and the government of Saudi Arabia.

There is a large fight going on within the world of Islam, and the war on terrorism should not be seen, as I believe, as a war between the United States and Islam. It is largely a war going on within Islam where the United States is allied with the opponents of this extremist view of Islam.

Moderator: Doug, I want to thank you on the behalf of the council and everyone here for not only a very intelligent presentation, solid one, but for being very frank and open in your comments and answers to questions. Thank you very much. {Applause}.

Feith: Thank you.

{Applause}.

- END -"

Strategy and the Idea of Freedom, November 24, 2003

Strategy and the Idea of Freedom, November 24, 2003: "Strategy and the Idea of Freedom


Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense For Policy
Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC
Monday, November 24, 2003

Speaker: Douglas Feith

My association with the Heritage Foundation goes back a ways, twenty-six years, to 1977, when you were still located on Stanton Park at 5th and C, Northeast.

That was a time when we neo-cons, of which I was a junior member, and the folks we called the paleo-cons, made common cause:

- To support beleaguered democracies,

- To beleaguer the Soviet empire, and

- To advocate a US foreign policy of peace through strength.

The Heritage Foundation helped create the alliance of the neo-cons, those of us who started our political lives as Democrats, and the old-fashioned conservatives. It was an alliance of the profoundest type, anchored in philosophical principles. It was not tactical, not a political marriage of convenience.

The realignment of US politics that joined William Buckley with Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz – that bound together supporters of Barry Goldwater with supporters of Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey – has helped change our country and the world. At home, it made the conservative slice of the political spectrum a lively place, intellectually scintillating, creative, ambitious to transform government, attractive to young people, and decidedly non-stodgy.

Abroad, the makers of the Reagan Revolution – with the Heritage Foundation as a key node in the network – elevated the status of ideas as weapons in the arsenal of democracy. The Reaganites understood Realpolitik; they grasped the importance of guns and money and the other “hard” realities of world affairs. But they appreciated also the potency of the human desire for freedom.

They saw the Cold War not as a balance-of-power exercise between two “superpowers” – much less an arms race between “two apes on a treadmill” – but as a noble fight of western liberal democracy against Soviet communist tyranny. They abraded conventional sensibilities by speaking of an “evil empire” and insisting that the truly representative voices in that empire were those of Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Sharansky and their fellow dissidents.

This engagement in philosophical warfare, I need hardly remind folks at the Heritage Foundation, created no small controversy in the politics and diplomacy of the western world. President Reagan’s talk of democracy and good-versus-evil and his exhortation to tear down the Berlin Wall were widely criticized, even ridiculed, as unsophisticated and de-stabilizing. But it’s now widely understood as having contributed importantly to the greatest strategic victory in world history: the collapse of Soviet communism and the liberation of the peoples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe without war.

As we develop and execute our strategy today in the Global War on Terrorism, there is much to be learned from the Reagan era about the power of ideas. With President George W. Bush having just returned from Britain, I’d like to recall the remarkable speech that President Reagan gave on June 8, 1982 to the British parliament.

In it, he challenged the pessimism about the future of liberty that was common in the 1970s:

optimism is in order [he said] because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all fragile flower. … the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none – not one regime – has yet been able to risk free elections.

President Reagan recognized that democracy is not the preserve of one people or one cultural group. He said that democracy [quote] “already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy.”

Accordingly, President Reagan proposed a program [quote]

to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

That program grew into the National Endowment for Democracy, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. President Bush spoke at the celebration of that anniversary a few weeks ago, recalling Ronald Reagan’s words as “courageous and optimistic and entirely correct.”

In the last few weeks, in his National Endowment for Democracy speech, and in his speech in London, President Bush carried forward Ronald Reagan’s ideas and applied them to the Middle East and the Muslim world generally.

In President Bush’s words:

The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership. For too long, many people in that region have been victims and subjects – they deserve to be active citizens.

As in the case of President Reagan’s 1982 speech, George W. Bush’s advocacy of democracy serves a number of purposes: The “advance of freedom” is, President Bush said, not only the “calling of our time, … it is the calling of our country.”

But there’s more at work here than just idealism. All free peoples have a practical stake in the spread of democratic institutions and the rule of law. Promoting freedom is fundamental to this Administration’s policy in the Middle East, and in the Muslim world in general, and in the war on terrorism.

The Bush Administration’s strategy in the war on terrorism has three parts:

· First, disrupting and destroying terrorist networks and infrastructure.

· Second, the protection of our homeland.

· And third is the intellectual component of creating a global anti-terrorist environment. We call this third part the “Battle of ideas.”

Our aim in that battle is to de-legitimate terrorism as an instrument of politics. This means working to change the way people think, making toleration of terrorism – let alone support for it – unacceptable to anyone who wishes to be regarded as respectable. As President Bush’s National Security Strategy says: People everywhere should put terrorism in the same despised category as slave-trading, piracy and genocide.

President Bush alluded to this point in London last week when he noted that American “zeal” has been inspired by English examples and he cited “the firm determination of the Royal Navy over the decades [of the early nineteenth century] to find and end the trade in slaves.”

If the United States and its Coalition partners are to succeed in changing the way the world thinks about terrorism, we’ll have to ensure that terrorism is punished rather than rewarded and that state sponsors of terrorism pay a price for their activities. (The Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes have paid an especially large price.)

But our efforts also have to target the recruitment and indoctrination of terrorists. No matter how successful we are at killing and capturing terrorists, or intercepting their weapons and funds, we can’t win the war on terrorism unless we can reduce the supply of new terrorists. So, what are the circumstances that create fertile ground for the recruitment of terrorists?

I see many of the usual answers as off the mark.

Consider, for example, the phenomenon of suicide bombers ‑- terrorists who perform attacks that they know they cannot survive. Many commentators have asserted that such terrorists don’t calculate the benefits and costs of their actions. Westerners commonly assume that only a person ensnared in deep despair could do such a thing.

This diagnosis implies its own solution ‑‑ that the world should address what are called the "root causes of terrorism," the poverty and political hopelessness that many people imagine are the traits and motives of the suicide bombers. This diagnosis, however, doesn't correspond to our actual experience. And it blinds us to opportunities we have to confront terrorism strategically.

When we look at the records of the suicide bombers, we see that many aren't drawn from the poor. Mohammed Atta, for instance -‑ a key figure in executing the September 11 attack -‑ was a middle‑class Egyptian whose parents were able to send him to study abroad. And his education meant that he could look forward to a relatively privileged life in Egypt ‑‑ hardly grounds for extreme despair.

Rather, what characterizes terrorists seems to be a strange mixture of perverse hopes:

First of all, some bombers cherish a perverse form of religious hope. The promise of eternity in paradise is a tenet of many faiths, a noble incentive and consolation to millions of people. It's as cynical as it is sinister that leaders of al Qaida, Ansar al-Islam, Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups convince young people that eternity in paradise is available as a reward for murder.

Second, there is the bomber's hope of earthly glory and reward -‑ praise as a hero from political leaders and honor for one's parents.

Third, there is the bomber's political hope. Suicide bombing is what defense analysts categorize as a form of asymmetric warfare, a means for the weak to fight the strong. Some terrorists are motivated by their hope that it is a winning strategy.

This suggests a strategic course for us: attack the sources of these malignant hopes.

Regarding the religious hope: Many Muslim religious leaders disapprove of suicide bombing ‑‑ but many have been silenced or intimidated to voice support for the terrorists. The civilized world can do more to support moderate clerics, defend them and provide them with platforms on which to protect their religion from extremists who want to distort and hijack it.

The civilized world should also deal with political leaders who heap honor (and money) on the suicide bombers and their families. President Bush, speaking of suicide bombers, said: "They are not martyrs. They are murderers." Other world leaders have the responsibility to reinforce this message.

Finally, as to the suicide bombers' political hopes, it is important that terrorism be seen as a losing strategy. It is of strategic importance that neither in Iraq nor Afghanistan nor elsewhere will the terrorists achieve success.

In addition to batting down these perverted hopes, our mission is to create the conditions in which the people of the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world can cherish the humane aspirations of free people everywhere for liberty and an opportunity to use their talents to win a measure of prosperity for themselves and their families.

As President Bush noted:

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.

We’re now engaged in creating the conditions for freedom in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Although there is much to be said about Afghanistan -- in my remaining time, I’ll confine myself to a brief review of the situation in Iraq.

Our work in that country is guided by President Bush’s idea that a successful, new Iraq could serve as a model to the Arab and Muslim worlds of modernization, moderation, democracy and economic well-being. A free and prosperous Iraq could provide tens of millions of people with an alternative way to think about the future: Life doesn’t have to be dominated by fanaticism and tyranny.

We want to give the Iraq people the opportunity to create a new and thriving Iraq – but we can’t create it for them. The problems are many and large. We should not play Polyanna. But substantial progress has been achieved.

Iraq’s national Governing Council is the most representative government Iraq has ever had – and it’s gaining acceptance at home and abroad. It’s appointed interim ministers, who run the ministries, setting budgets and making policy. Local councils and officials are beginning to exercise power – countering Iraq’s history of extreme centralization.

Last week, the Governing Council, working with Ambassador Jerry Bremer, announced a process and timetable for creating a transitional government, electing the members of a Constitutional Convention, drafting and ratifying a new constitution and holding elections under it to elect a permanent government for Iraq.

In addition to the national Governing Council, there are over 250 governing councils functioning at the municipal and provincial levels throughout Iraq. This is a development of high significance, though generally under-reported.

The problem that dominates the news reports from Iraq is, of course, security. It’s a problem that’s interwoven with political and economic developments in Iraq, but I’ll offer a few comments specifically about the military dimension, which is under the responsibility of General John Abizaid, the Commander of US Central Command.

General Abizaid is an intelligent and tough-minded commander who knows the region, has analyzed the various elements that compose the enemy forces and has devised an aggressive strategy to defeat them. The strategy includes offensive pressure, precise and relentless, to capture or kill enemy leaders and fighters, to disrupt and defeat their operations, to cut off their sources of supply and support and to extract and exploit intelligence. We are applying technology to counter the enemy’s improvised bombs, mortars and other weapons. Our forces are adapting continually to counter enemy tactics.

Our enemies in Iraq are not numerous and not popular. Only a small portion of the Iraqi population has any desire to see the return of Baathist tyranny or the establishment of a government of extremist jihadists. But our enemies are well-financed, well-armed and motivated by the recognition that the success of Iraqi democratic political reconstruction will end or severely damage their several causes. No one should underestimate the difficulty of our mission. But no one should doubt that the US-led Coalition will succeed.

Our strategy aims to put the Iraqis in a position to run their own lives, manage their own government and provide for their own security – and to leave as soon as we have done so.

Thus, we have a dual message to convey to the Iraqi people:

· First, that we in the Coalition will stay the course and see the job through until Iraq is well-launched on the path to freedom and prosperity.

· But second, that we have no ambition to rule the Iraqis and intend to hand their country back to them as soon as we can.

Fundamental to our strategy is getting more Iraqis trained and equipped to provide security for their own country. We are creating a new force, the Civil Defense Corps, which will perform combined operations with US and Coalition forces. We are also rebuilding the Iraqi police force, which disintegrated with the old regime’s collapse. Re-training will also be necessary – the old Iraqi police force was not a capable institution: the real work of “law enforcement” (if one can call it that) under the old regime was done by the now-disbanded internal security services, using means that can have no place in a free Iraq.

Even as the new Iraqi security forces are being trained, they can take over some tasks, such as fixed-site security. Highly-skilled U.S. troops are not needed for such missions. US troops can more efficiently be kept in reserve to provide a quick reaction force that can deal with situations that go beyond the Iraqi forces’ abilities.

As more Iraqis function in the various security forces, they will improve the Coalition’s intelligence, which is the key to dealing with former regime loyalists and with terrorists. Knowledge of the terrain, of the society and of the language are all advantages that an indigenous force will have over any outside force, no matter how well-trained or technologically advanced.

Although we are on the right tracks in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no doubt that we still face difficulties in both countries. But it bears recalling that, in 1982, when President Reagan gave the London speech from which I quoted earlier, we also faced difficult, even frightening, national security problems, and bitter controversy over the prudence of our polices and their chances for success.

Now, when we look back twenty years, the Cold War’s successful conclusion appears not just brilliant but inevitable. Indeed, many Americans across the political spectrum now recall the Cold War with a sort of nostalgia as a time when the nature of the enemy was clear and our key foreign policy choices were obvious. But, as this audience knows, it was nothing of the sort – there were intense debates and doubts about the course President Reagan took in those years, especially what was criticized as his moralistic approach to confronting the Soviet empire.

I believe that, twenty years from now, President’s Bush strategy – the actions in the war on terrorism that I have been discussing and other initiatives that I haven’t mentioned, such as the transformation of our alliance structures and the transformation of our military forces – will also appear excellent, inevitable and perhaps even obvious. We’ll look back at them with pride and satisfaction, knowing that the United States rose to the challenge of the defense of our freedom with skill, moral clarity, determination – and success.


- END -"

Transforming the U.S. Global Defense Posture by Douglas J. Feith

Transforming the U.S. Global Defense Posture by Douglas J. Feith: "Transforming the U.S. Global Defense Posture



Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Speaker: Douglas Feith

I am pleased to be back here under the sponsorship of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I thank your President, John Hamre, for the Center’s hospitality and for his personal continuing contributions to U.S. national security policy.

The Policy organization at the Pentagon does two main kinds of work. There are the day-to-day tasks – drafting instructions for negotiators, for example, or working a coalition issue in the war on terrorism, conducting defense talks with other countries or responding to a civil war in Liberia. This topical work tends to attract the most attention from the Congress, the press and the public.

But some of the most important work we do grabs few headlines. This is the longer-term thinking about U.S. defense strategy, which is the Policy organization’s second major line of effort.

From the moment President Bush came into office, he has asked the Defense Department how best to position the United States in the world for the decades ahead. He and Secretary Rumsfeld have demanding appetites for strategic thought – that is, large ideas, broad in scope, that set courses that can run many years into the future.

The name given to this effort is “transformation,” because the President is determined that the Defense Department think boldly and remake itself thoroughly, changing the way we:

− train and equip our forces,

− use them, for combat, stability operations and otherwise,

− position those forces around the world,

− work with allies and partners, and

− conduct procurement and other business activities.

Some people think of “transformation” narrowly as a matter of using new technologies to produce better weapons. But the concept is more comprehensive.

A key facet of transformation is realigning our global defense posture – that is, updating the types, locations, numbers, and capabilities of our military forces, and the nature of our alliances. That’s the aspect of transformation I want to talk with you about today.

Even before 9/11, President Bush said that the security threats of the future would differ from those of the Cold War era – that they required a different way of thinking and of organizing our defenses. He campaigned on a platform of transformation. Since the Soviet empire collapsed, he observed, the world changed far more radically than our own defense doctrines, institutions, equipment and alliances had changed.

I can report that the United States has made progress toward transformation during the Bush Administration.

First, we’ve transformed our relationship with Russia. We’ve recognized that the hostility that characterized US-Soviet relations during the Cold War has ended, hostility that was enshrined in the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Accordingly, along with the hostility, we’ve set aside that morally dubious doctrine and that out-dated treaty. We’re cooperating with Russia in many fields. And Presidents Bush and Putin agreed formally to make unprecedented cuts in their nuclear arsenals. At the beginning of this Administration many commentators voiced anxiety about the risks of US-Russian tensions over arms control, NATO expansion and other issues. This is now a non-issue.

Second, we are transforming our Alliances. Today, we have an enlarged NATO with increasing (though still far from adequate) capabilities, a good plan for streamlining NATO’s command structure, a new NATO Four-Star Command focused specifically on military transformation and an affirmative answer once and for all to that old chestnut – can NATO take on a mission “out of area.” NATO has taken on command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and NATO assisted Poland in assuming command of a multinational division responsible for stabilizing a portion of southern Iraq.

Likewise, we are developing a more robust US-Japanese alliance, an up-to-date US-South Korean alliance, and a strengthened U.S.-Australian alliance. Our key Asian and Pacific allies are investing in new technologies, playing roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, coordinating with us regarding global and regional threats, such as the North Korean nuclear program, and working with us to rationalize the US troop “footprint” in their countries to keep the alliances sustainable and capable well into the 21st Century.

And, of course, we are transforming US military capabilities – strategies, technology and organization, as well as hardware.

As we have transformed deterrence and our alliances, we want to transform our global posture. Our current posture as John Hamre mentioned, still reflects in many ways the mentality and reality of the Cold War era, during which US forces deployed forward were defensive, tripwire units that were expected to fight near where they were based. The kind of forces used for that mission are not the agile, fast, lean forces we need for the future.

Our forces overseas should not remain positioned to fight the Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s demise, we reduced the numbers of US troops deployed forward. But they remained concentrated in their Cold War locations, from which they have had to be deployed to deal with crises elsewhere – in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and other locations. Key premises underlying our forward posture have changed fundamentally: We no longer expect our forces to fight in place; rather, their purpose is to project power into theaters that may be distant from where they are based.

We are revising our thinking about forward deployed forces in light of our new strategic circumstances. The 9/11 terrorist attack literally brought home to us how dangerous those circumstances can be:

§ Terrorists as well as rogue states can command formidable destructive power, including through access to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, but also by targeting the critical infrastructure on which advanced industrial societies rely.

§ U.S. and friendly territories are vulnerable.

§ The proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missiles continues.

§ Ungoverned areas serve as breeding grounds for global terrorism.

§ Threats from these sources may require immediate military responses.

President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld directed a reexamination of US forward deployments that is free of old orthodoxies and takes the long view. We are aiming to achieve the most basic and comprehensive review of the nation’s global defense posture since the United States became a world power.

In the immediate post-World-War-II period, Dean Acheson had a sense that his work was creating institutions that would last a long time; he made that point by entitling his memoirs Present at the Creation. President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld likewise are thinking about the relatively distant future. In developing plans to realign our forces abroad, they are not focused on the diplomatic issues of the moment, but on the strategic requirements and opportunities of the coming decades.

Let’s be clear about what we are and what we are not aiming to achieve through transforming our global defense posture:

· We are not aiming at retrenchment, curtailing U.S. commitments, isolationism or unilateralism. On the contrary, our realignment plans are motivated by appreciation of the strategic value of our defense alliances and partnerships with other states.

· We are aiming to increase our ability to fulfill our international commitments more effectively.

· We are aiming to ensure that our alliances are capable, affordable, sustainable and relevant in the future.

· We are not focused narrowly on force levels, but are addressing force capabilities.

· We are not talking about fighting in place, but moving to the fight.

· We are not talking only about basing, we are talking about the ability to move forces when and where needed.

In transforming the US global defense posture:

· We want to make our forces more responsive given the world’s many strategic uncertainties.

· We want to make our military presence increasingly rotational with the emphasis, as I’ve noted, on the capabilities of forces rather than their numbers.

· We want to benefit as much as possible from the strategic prepositioning of equipment and support.

· We want to make better use of our capabilities by thinking of our forces globally, rather than as simply regional assets.

· We want to be able to bring more combat capabilities to bear in less time, that is, we want to have the ability to surge our forces to crisis spots from wherever our forces might be.

Strengthen Allied Roles

It bears reemphasizing: Our military forces, both forward deployed and based at home, are only part of our military capability. Another part is rooted in the network of alliances and security relationships we have created with other nations. When the United States acts in the world, we don’t act by ourselves, but as a part of a community of states. That network of friendships and alliances is a valuable element of this community. The network’s composition and nature have changed over the years as strategic circumstances in the world have changed. To surmount such problems as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and failed states, we need to organize differently and increase our capabilities. Realigning the US global defense posture is an essential part of what we need to do.

Understanding of our realignment plans should help lay to rest the accusations that the US favors “unilateralism” in national security affairs. Our plans will help ensure that the US has the defense resources and relationships in place to allow us to work with allies and friends in the future. It will make those relationships affordable and usable, that is to say, relevant.

Our intent is to expand existing security relationships, and develop new ones. We want to build partnerships that manage concerns, ensure compatibility among forces, and facilitate intelligence sharing. In some cases US forces will be in a supporting role, in other cases, US forces will be supported. For example, we were in a supporting role when West African ECOWAS forces intervened recently in Liberia and when Australian forces did their peace operations in East Timor. Examples of support for U.S. forces include NATO ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and the role British and Polish forces have taken in commanding multinational divisions in Iraq.

Changes in the U.S. global posture also aim to help our allies and friends modernize their own forces, strategies and doctrines. As we discuss the US realignment with them, we are discussing cooperative transformation efforts. The new NATO Response Force and Allied Command – Transformation in Norfolk are examples of combined allied transformation efforts.

Realigning the U.S. posture will also help strengthen our alliances by tailoring the physical US “footprint” to suit local conditions. The goal is to reduce friction with host nations, the kind that results from accidents and other problems relating to local sensitivities. Removal of the U.S. Air Expeditionary Wing from Prince Sultan Air Base, for example, should help improve our relations with the Saudis, and relocating U.S. forces south and out of the densely-populated Seoul area in Korea will help remedy various problems with the Korean public while serving other important military purposes as well.

Contend with Uncertainty

Our new posture emphasizes agility to respond to changing circumstances. Intelligence is never perfect, so we need to be able to hedge against errors regarding emerging threats. We need to plan, but we must plan to be surprised. Our forces will be deployed forward in regions selected to enable them to reach potential crisis spots quickly. We also want to maintain familiarity with various parts of the globe.

Focus Across Regions as well as within them

In the Cold War, we focused on threats to specific regions. Now we are dealing with threats that are global in nature. So global strategies and actions are required. President Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative is an example of a global strategy for dealing with the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missile-related materiel and technology. We need to be positioned properly – with the right forces, the right relationships and the right authority – to execute that strategy. In addition, we want to develop our capacity to project power from one region to another – threats don’t respect the administrative boundaries of the Defense Department’s Unified Command Plan.

There is value in developing support capabilities away from front lines – relying on so-called “reachback” technology. For example, intelligence support, including battle damage assessment, can be provided from outside the theater of operations. We also may be able to increase our use of “reachback” capabilities of our allies and friends.

Develop Rapidly Deployable Capabilities

Because our forward-deployed forces are unlikely to fight where they are based, our key goal must be to make those forces rapidly deployable to the relevant areas as events require.

We can project power in a rapid manner, whether from bases in the US or overseas, but it is helpful to have support infrastructure overseas. Examples of an expeditionary approach to warfighting that drew upon such infrastructure include Kosovo, a case of power projection within a region, in pursuit of regional stability and in concert with regional allies, and Afghanistan, a case of global power projection, in which forces flowed into Central Asia from US, European, and Asian theaters. We are encouraging allies to establish deployable – truly usable – headquarters and forces. We intend to increase combined training for expeditionary operations, for example, to encourage Allied participation in so-called “high-end” U.S. exercises

For this deployability concept to work, US forces must be able to move smoothly into, through, and out of host nations, which puts a premium on establishing legal and support arrangements with many friendly countries. We are negotiating or planning to negotiate with many countries legal protections for US personnel, through Status of Forces Agreements and agreements (known as Article 98 agreements) limiting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court with respect to our forces’ activities. And we are putting in place so-called cross-servicing agreements so that we can rapidly reimburse countries for support they provide to our military operations.

Focus on Capabilities, Not Numbers

Military capabilities have increased stunningly over the past decade as a result of technology and innovations in tactics. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown the world how relatively small forces can have large, strategic effects. A single fighter/bomber sortie now hits multiple targets, whereas in the past, multiple sorties were required to hit a single target. Small teams of Special Forces and Marines, supported by flexible close air support and often operating together with indigenous forces, were able to accomplish missions in Afghanistan and Iraq that in the past would have required brigades or divisions. Old military thinking about numbers has been overtaken thoroughly by events. Longstanding notions about ratios of offensive versus defensive forces and about how much can be accomplished by a certain number of troops or platforms have had to be revised wholesale.

Military and political leaders around the world are just beginning to absorb the lessons of the recent fighting and to appreciate why US officials emphasize military capabilities as opposed to numbers of forces. These lessons have an important bearing on our global posture realignment. Our key purpose, as I’ve noted, is to push increased capabilities forward, which is crucial to the security of the United States and our allies and friends. That purpose does not require that we push additional forces forward. In fact, we can now have far greater capabilities forward than in the past with smaller numbers of forces. We want to ensure that our allies and friends recognize that, in transforming our posture, we are strengthening our commitment to secure our common interests, even in those places where we may be reducing forces levels.

Conclusion

Last week, President Bush announced that we would “realign the global posture of our forces to better address” the new challenges we face and would be consulting around the world on this matter. I have discussed the principles and purposes of our realignment work. But I want to stress that no final decisions have been made.

So the consultations that the President announced last week will be real consultations – all the decisions the President will eventually make will depend on the inputs we receive in the course of these consultations. How our partners react to our ideas is important to us, as are the steps they are willing to take to advance our common security interests through host-nation support and other means.

Indeed, the consultations in and of themselves are an element of our global posture. They help strengthen our relationships by harmonizing our thinking and our assessment of threats and military requirements. They give us an opportunity to explain the rationale of our global realignment – such as our focus on capabilities rather than numbers.

In their recent trips to Asia and Europe, Secretaries Rumsfeld and Powell began to describe our efforts. Next week, my colleague Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman and I will carry forward the consultations, which will over time include US allies and partners in every region of the world. This is a global initiative, and our consultations will be global.

Our friends and allies are sensitive to changes in the US overseas posture. That is why we are consulting with them before the President or Secretary Rumsfeld makes any decisions on changes. Whatever improvements in military effectiveness the actual posture decisions produce, they will serve our interests fully only if they also help sustain and strengthen our ties with our friends, allies and partners around the world. We are confident that they will.


- END -"

U.S. Strategy for the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith

U.S. Strategy for the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith: "U.S. Strategy for the War on Terrorism



Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Remarks to the Political Union University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Speaker: Douglas Feith

I’m glad to have been invited to speak here at one of America’s great universities. I’ve been asked to talk about the war on terrorism and some of the ideas underlying our strategy for the war.

The September 11 attack

The 9/11 attack was an event so terrible and significant – so damaging and threatening – that it required us to reexamine a long list of national security concerns.

Officials had for years been thinking about:
· terrorism,
· defense policy in the post-Cold-War world,
· the spread of weapons of mass destruction and
· problem states such as Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

9/11 compelled U.S. officials to reexamine all such matters in light of the terrorists’ audacity, ambition and hatred – and in light of our own vulnerabilities and our responsibility to protect the lives and freedom of the American people. 9/11 showed that threats hitherto belittled as wild speculations or hypothetical dangers of the remotest possibility are realistic, indeed actual.

Before 9/11, terrorism was commonly viewed as political – an action intended to influence or persuade. Many discussed terrorism as a form of “political theater,” a way that terrorist groups used shocking actions to call attention – sympathetic attention – to a cause. According to that view, the terrorists, adhering to Machiavelli’s dictum that it’s better to be feared than loved, nonetheless still wished to avoid being hated.

But that view could hardly explain 9/11. The terrorists who killed 3000 ordinary people at the World Trade Center, where ten times that number worked on a daily basis, would have been pleased to have killed them all – or many times more than that, if they had had the means to do so.

Al Qaida and other terrorists targeting the United States are engaged in more than “political theater.” What are their goals and calculations? There are various possibilities – for example:

The calculation of gain and loss by the suicide bombers is not limited to this world; they act to obtain benefits in the next world.

Some of the terrorists appear to be nihilists, driven by a desire for destruction and death for their own sakes.

And some seem to believe that they can achieve victory over us, not by gaining political support, but by pulverizing their enemy – demoralizing us, destroying our unity and sense of purpose, ultimately collapsing our political order – to the point that we could no longer resist them.

In short, we must deal with the idea that we are at war with terrorists who think that they can use terrorism not to extract some political concession from us, but to defeat us completely. Such a goal may seem to us fantastic or preposterous – but it may seem achievable to those who credit the Soviet Union’s collapse to their own resistance in Afghanistan, not to mention as a manifestation of divine favor for themselves.

Window into administration thinking

I’d like to give you something of a window into the Administration’s thinking in the days just after 9/11. The first thought of top policy makers was what can be done to prevent the next attack?

As you recall, steps were taken immediately to shut down air traffic and to tighten border control. You will recall also that soon after 9/11 came the anthrax attacks on some news media offices and U.S. Senate offices. Steps were taken immediately to quarantine and inspect mail and to hold up delivery of packages. To this day, we do not know who made those attacks or who provided the anthrax.

Terrorism as crime, terrorism as war

The President’s most basic decision after 9/11 was how to think about the attack.

Keep in mind that for years Americans were hit by terrorists. There were hijackings, murders and bombings. In the 1990s, Americans died and were injured in the:

first World Trade Center bombing,

bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia,

destruction of our East Africa embassies and

bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

The U.S. government’s response in those cases was to use the FBI to investigate. Our government was looking for individuals to arrest, extradite and prosecute in criminal courts.

President Bush broke with that practice – and with that frame of mind – when he decided that 9/11 meant that we are at war. He decided that the US would respond not with the FBI and U.S. attorneys, but with our armed forces and every instrument of U.S. national power.

That was a momentous decision. I believed it showed a proper comprehension of the problem. It looks obvious in retrospect, but that’s often the case with grand insights. At the time the President decided to respond to 9/11 by going to war, he was departing radically and boldly from many years of a different policy.

What does it mean to be at war?

Once the President announced that the United States is at war, the key questions for policy makers were:

How do we define the enemy?

What is our war aim?

What should be our strategy?

The enemy

First, who is the enemy?

The enemy is not a state or group of states; it’s not a traditional type of enemy we have faced in war. The enemy is not a discrete, hierarchical organization either. Rather, the enemy is a far-flung network of terrorist organizations and their state and non-state sponsors.

Terrorist organizations rely on state sponsors for safe haven, funds, weapons and other types of support. We cannot win the war on terrorism if we do not cut off state support for terrorist organizations.

What is our war aim?

Which brings us to our second question: What does it mean to “win” the war on terrorism? How do we define our war aim?

Setting a war aim is an important task. We recalled that in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the United States set its war aim as the liberation of Kuwait. We built our coalition on that formulation. In the Spring of 1991, after Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait, that war aim proved a decisive constraint on further action.

In September 2001, after 9/11, the President and his team devoted a great deal of brainpower to getting the war aim right. We didn’t want to set an unrealistic, unachievable aim, such as “eliminate terrorism.” We couldn’t honestly promise the American people that our government can prevent all future terrorist attacks.

The most basic national security responsibility of U.S. officials is to protect not just the lives but the liberty of the American people. If terrorism causes Americans not to fly, not to open our letters and packages, to shut our borders and to abandon wholesale our civil liberties, then the United States will have been defeated in this war.

So, after all the deliberation, President Bush set our war aim as: Defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society. This sounds simple enough, but it is a weighty and pregnant formulation.

A strategy of offense

Aiming to defeat terrorism as a threat to our freedom — to our way of life as a free and open society — means that we cannot rely solely or even primarily on a defensive strategy. If we tried to do so, we would have to clamp down drastically across America, intruding grossly on the privacy rights and other civil liberties of Americans. As terrorist attacks occurred, US officials would continually be under pressure to move toward police state tactics — to sacrifice our freedom and change our way of life.

The alternative to that bad option is a strategy not of trying to defeat terrorists on American soil, but striking them abroad where they do so much of their recruiting, training, equipping and planning. Given that our aim is to preserve our society’s liberties, we have no alternative to a strategy of offense.

In other words, we concluded that, in dealing with the terrorists, we had either to change the way we live, or change the way they live.

The WMD/ terrorism/state support nexus

Another essential part of our thinking about a proper strategy for the war on terrorism is the danger of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in terrorist hands. As I’ve noted, officials and defense analysts for years before 9/11 were attuned to the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But 9/11 gave the problem greatly intensified urgency.

The terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center would gleefully have killed ten, a hundred or a thousand times the number of victims on 9/11 if they could have — if they had had access, for example, to biological or nuclear weapons. It’s a significant coincidence that the list of key state sponsors of terrorism overlaps so extensively with the list of problem states that are pursuing WMD capabilities.

This is why President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and others in our government have, since 9/11, been explaining that the main strategic threat in the war on terrorism is the nexus among:

Terrorist organizations;

Their state sponsors; and

Weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. strategy in the war on terrorism

The U.S. strategy in the war on terrorism is to organize and help lead international efforts to deny terrorist groups systematically what they need to operate and survive, including:

safe havens,

leadership,

finances,

weapons (especially WMD),

ideological support and

access to targets.

We think of our actions in the war on terrorism as falling into three categories (which are useful though not entirely distinct):

Disrupting and attacking terrorist networks;

Protecting the homeland; and

Countering ideological support for terrorism. (Battle of Ideas)

Countering ideological support for terrorism

Let me say a word about this third category of actions — which is sometimes referred to as the battle of ideas.

The war on terrorism will never end if all we do is disrupt and attack terrorist networks, because while we are doing so, new terrorists are being recruited and indoctrinated — probably faster than anyone on our side can capture or kill them. If we’re going to avoid placing ourselves on an ever-accelerating treadmill, our strategy must aim to stem the flow of people into the ranks of the terrorists. Doing this requires a focus on the widespread ideological support for terrorism.

Changing the way millions of people think about something is a difficult task, but history knows examples of successful campaigns to do so.

In the 20th century, fascism and Nazism were discredited with the defeat of the Axis powers.

And, in a fifty year struggle culminating in the collapse of the Soviet empire, communist totalitarianism lost much of its following.

In the 19th century, another 50-years campaign, led by Britain and the Royal Navy, changed the way the world thinks about the slave trade.

As President Bush has said, the world should view terrorism as it views the slave trade, piracy on the high seas and genocide — activities that no respectable person condones, much less supports.

To succeed in this crucial third element – the ideological element – of our strategy in the war on terrorism, we are working to:

De-legitimate terrorism; and

Support the success of models of moderation, especially in the Moslem world.

The ideological struggle within the war on terrorism is in large part a civil war between extremists and their opponents in the Moslem world. In the war on terrorism, the US is not fighting the world of Islam. On the contrary, we are allied with the many millions of Moslems who do not want to be dominated by the kind of extremists who follow Usama bin Laden. Democratic reform and the success of democratic institutions in the Arab world and the Moslem world generally are essential parts of the strategy to defeat terrorism as a threat to our own freedom.

Implementing the strategy

The United States and its coalition partners have been implementing this war on terrorism strategy for two and a half years.

We’ve done so by ousting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and supporting the new Afghan government.

We’ve done so by training local forces around the world to do counter-terrorist operations – in the Philippines, Yemen, Colombia, the former Soviet republic of Georgia and elsewhere.

We’ve done so through international cooperation on law enforcement, intelligence, interdiction of terrorist finances and maritime interdiction operations in the Mediterranean, off the Horn of Africa, in the Pacific and elsewhere.

We’ve done so by capturing or killing terrorist leaders and key operatives, including two-thirds of the known leadership of al Qaida.

We’ve done so by liberating Iraq from the Saddam Hussein regime and working to launch the Iraqis on the path to freedom.

And we’ve done so by inducing the Libyan government to declare, dismantle and abandon its WMD programs and stockpiles.

I hope this review of the War on Terrorism strategy helps you see how our difficult tasks in Iraq fit with that strategy.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

As President Bush explained in his April 13 press conference, our stakes in success in Iraq are large. Operation Iraqi Freedom has so far:

Eliminated a safe haven for terrorists like Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, Zarqawi and others.

Eliminated a source of financial and other types of support for terrorists – recall that Saddam encouraged Palestinian suicide bombings by offering to pay $25,000 to the murderers’ families.

Eliminated a possible source of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons technology, materiel or training for terrorists. (By the way, this point is not negated by our not yet having found Iraqi stockpiles of WMD or the possibility that Saddam secretly destroyed all the stockpiles before the war.)

Much work remains to be done to extend basic security throughout Iraq and lay the foundation for stability, freedom and prosperity.

As President Bush remarked, we’ve had a rough week or two in Iraq. Our losses weigh heavily. But there is no cost-free option for America in Iraq.

The mission there is as important as it is complex and dangerous. The Coalition force and the CPA have the steady leadership required to make the transition to Iraqi sovereign authority this summer and to help the new Iraqi government implement the admirable interim constitution developed by the Iraqi Governing Council. But we don’t underestimate the difficulty of the work to be done in Iraq.

Our forces

Likewise, much work remains to be done in the war on terrorism outside Iraq. In this war, there are continual accomplishments, but also setbacks. There is great determination among the United States and its coalition partners, but the enemy is also intensely determined and capable of exploiting the vulnerabilities that inhere in the free and open nature of our societies.

I want to pay tribute to the tenacity, creativity, courage and willingness to sacrifice of the Coalition forces fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terrorism – and especially to the US forces, who are responsible for so much of the effort.

Among our forces, there’s a phrase that has become common as a byword: “Failure is not an option.” Those forces give us protection, insight and inspiration. Failure is not an option.

- END -"

Defense, Democracy and the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith

Defense, Democracy and the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith: "Defense, Democracy and the War on Terrorism

Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Remarks to the Black Sea Security Program, Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thursday, April 22, 2004

Speaker: Douglas Feith

· I want to thank Tad Oelstrom and the Kennedy School for inviting me back to Harvard.

· Thirty years ago, I was a student here at the college majoring in Government and concentrating on international relations. Among the hot topics of the day were China-Taiwan, Cyprus, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, international terrorism and that hardy perennial, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

· That those topics remain hot demonstrates a degree of regrettable continuity in world affairs. Nonetheless, international relations and the global security picture are drastically different now from what they were then. And no one can appreciate the transformation more acutely or personally than those of you who come from countries formerly within the Soviet empire.

· On March 29, 2004, which was an appropriately sunny, warm and promising Spring day in Washington, I attended the White House ceremony at which President Bush welcomed into the NATO alliance our seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

· The event received less public attention in the United States than it deserved. It marked a grand achievement in international security affairs. It was a bright moment in the history of human freedom.

· That ceremony capped many years of effort. The effort began, not just a few years ago when the new allies formally entered NATO’s membership action program, but decades ago, when they were still squarely, and it seemed to many, inescapably, within the Communist bloc.

· For some of us, the project to liberate the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from Communist tyranny was a lifetime project.

· I deepened my intellectual engagement in that cause as a student here at Harvard and benefited especially from the lectures and books of Professor Richard Pipes, who headed Harvard’s Russian Research Center.

· We were part of a rather small minority in Cambridge who thought that working to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only a noble pursuit, but a realistic project. Richard Pipes joined the Reagan administration to implement that project and I had the honor and pleasure of working with him on the National Security Council staff before I crossed the Potomac River for my first stint at the Pentagon.

· As many of us in the Reagan Administration saw it, the Cold War was fundamentally about protecting the freedom – the lives and civil liberties – of the United States and our allies.

· We won the Cold War while avoiding World War III, a rather amazing strategic accomplishment for which the world is a better place. But we find that our lives and civil liberties – our security and freedom – are threatened seriously again – now from other quarters – in particular from al Qaida and its network of fellow terrorist groups and their state and non-state supporters.

· As promoting freedom for others was a potent element of our strategy for winning the Cold War, so it serves as an important element in our strategy for winning the war on terrorism today.

· Some assume that when US policymakers discuss promoting freedom we mean creating systems of government in other countries that look like the American Constitutional system. But that isn’t the case.

· The 18th century British political philosopher Edmund Burke gives us some useful guidance in thinking about the championing abroad of freedom and democratic political institutions. Burke wrote at a time when the fervor of the French Revolution was sending tremors through Europe. Burke cautioned against enthusiasm for theory -- against the dangers to liberty and human happiness that can arise from political abstractions. He warned that successful political institutions are rooted in tradition and rely on organic connections to the local soil and culture.

· These are weighty admonitions. They tell us to respect the importance of the differences between societies long accustomed to democratic practices and other societies. And they highlight for us the magnitude of the task of encouraging democratic development in the latter societies.

· Burke’s admonitions, however, do not mean that countries without experience of democratic government are doomed forever to remain undemocratic. There are too many examples from the last half-century of successful new democracies in Asia, Latin America and Europe for us to believe that.

· Successive US administrations have promoted freedom abroad for a variety of good reasons. Among the principal good reasons for our doing so now is the role that democratic institution-building can play in our strategy for the war on terrorism.

· We cannot win this war if all we do is disrupt and attack terrorist networks. Terrorist groups can recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists faster and far more inexpensively than the US and its coalition partners can capture or kill them.

· Victory for the coalition will require us to counter ideological support for terrorism – to reduce the flow of new recruits into the terrorists’ ranks. This task has at least two parts: First, the de-legitimation of terrorism, making terrorism (as President Bush has put) like the slave trade, piracy on the high seas and genocide, activities that no respectable person can condone, much less support.

· The second part is support for models of political and philosophical moderation, especially in the Muslim world. Championing freedom can make a crucial contribution here.

· As the distinguished scholar of Islam, Professor Bernard Lewis, put it: “The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked – neither can succeed without the other.”

· That's why President Bush outlined what he calls a “forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East.” As he puts it, so long as freedom does not flourish, the Middle East “will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

· President Bush does not have the view that a particular governmental structure suits every person and every society. But he does believe that the aspiration for freedom is inherent in people everywhere. The societies that best satisfy that hope are those that enjoy the greatest stability, creativity and prosperity.

· President Bush often speaks of the sources of the liberal impulse – the God-given desire for personal freedom. But he does not believe in “one size fits all” or “cookie cutter” answers to the complex questions facing developing countries. President Bush, if I can put it this way, champions freedom without violating the precepts of Edmund Burke.

· We know from experience that some of the world’s more grievous ills can be solved or mitigated by giving people governments that allow them to live freely. The good effects reach far beyond politics. Liberal democratic societies tend to enjoy greater health, more trade, richer exchanges of ideas and other large blessings.

· The development of diverse democratic institutions in the states of the former Soviet Empire represented here tonight is an example of the process at work.

· The political development of your countries demonstrates how democracy can conduce to peace – how it can create states that become stronger, safer and more prosperous, without threatening their neighbors.

· This is also what we hope to achieve in Iraq.

· The adoption last fall of our timetable to turn over sovereign authority to the Iraqis on July 1, 2004 has been useful in stimulating political reconstruction in Iraq.

· The coalition’s strategic aim in Iraq is to put the Iraqis in a position to run their own country. The US has no desire whatever to run Iraq, let alone (as the conspiracy mongers allege) to exploit it.

· Strategic success will be Iraqis creating for themselves an Iraq that gives freedom and prosperity to its own people and does not threaten its neighbors or others.

· The setting of deadlines – for example, the end of February deadline for the adoption of the so-called Iraqi interim constitution and the end of June deadline for the handover of sovereign authority – has had the intended effect of encouraging Iraqis to become more active in running their own ministries and in getting work completed in the Iraqi Governing Council.

· The interim constitution, which was completed only three days after the deadline, is an admirable document, the fruit of impressive political skill and the art of compromise on the part of the Iraqi Governing Council.

· Iraqis have stepped forward to manage the health ministry, the oil ministry and other key national ministries. And Iraqis are doing good work in the over 250 local governing councils also.

· The security situation in Iraq poses a number of serious problems now, as you all know from the newspapers. But we intend to proceed with the political reconstruction of Iraq – and the turnover of sovereign authority on July 1 – because that can help improve security in the country.

· The coalition will not be abandoning Iraq on July 1. On the contrary, as the interim constitution provides, coalition forces will remain to help provide security and to continue to train Iraqi security forces after July 1. The coalition will be pleased to withdraw its forces from Iraq when Iraqi security forces – police, civil defense forces, army and other elements – are ready to handle the remaining security challenges. The Coalition is working to improve the skills, leadership and equipment of Iraq’s new security forces. It will take some time, but it is a crucial mission and the Iraqis want to be in a position where they can provide for their own security.

· As President Bush has recently reaffirmed, the United States will see our mission through in Iraq. Success in Iraq can contribute importantly to success in the war on terrorism generally. The building of democratic institutions in Iraq is crucial to fighting the battle of ideas within the war on terrorism. Iraq could become a model of moderation, freedom and prosperity. The stakes there are high.

· Now, I’d like to turn to a few thoughts on U.S. defense policy.

· As soon as President Bush came into office, he asked the Defense Department what changes we should make to position the United States properly in the world to perform our military missions in the decades ahead. The name given to this task is "transformation." The President has exhorted the Defense Department to think boldly and remake itself thoroughly, changing the way we:

· Train and equip our forces,

· Use them, for combat, stability operations and otherwise,

· Position those forces around the world ,

· Work with allies and partners, and

· Conduct procurement and other business activities.

· Some people think of "transformation" narrowly as a matter of using new technologies to produce better weapons. But the concept is more comprehensive.

· A key facet of transformation is realigning our global defense posture – that is, updating the types, locations, numbers, and capabilities of our military forces, and the nature of our alliances.

· As the President stated, “A fully transformed and strengthened overseas force posture will underscore the commitment of the United States to effective collective action in the common cause of peace and liberty.”

· The force posture changes we have in mind aim to increase our ability to work with other countries in military operations. Despite all that one hears these days about unilateralism, this Administration recognizes that our alliances and partnerships with other countries are a key strategic asset of the United States.

· Unilateralism, I suppose, is such a common political accusation precisely because a U.S. national security official would have to be a fool to be a unilateralist. With all due modesty, we are smarter than that.

· We plan to realign our defense posture to increase our ability to fulfill our commitments abroad. As we do so, we’ll be guided by the following considerations:

- First, develop flexibility to contend with uncertainty. We no longer think we know where we might in the future have to do military operations. So we no longer think that forces will fight where they are based. Accordingly, we need light, agile forces – usable forces – easily and quickly deployable to help prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming wars – and, if necessary, to win wars.

- Second, encourage transformation in allied roles and capabilities.

- Third, adopt a global not a regional perspective regarding the use of forces. We need a single military force capable of moving to a fight anywhere in the world. The idea that forces are assigned to a commander for a specific region is passé.

- And fourth, recognize that the key defense measurement is capabilities, not numbers of forces or numbers of platforms. New technologies and new doctrine and tactics make it possible for a relatively small force to achieve military results now that in early times would have required a far larger force.

· Europe, and especially our new NATO allies, will play an important role in this aspect of our transformation.

· Most of your countries are already active in the war on terrorism. Your support to coalition operations in the war on terrorism is highly valued.

· Over fifty nations are supporting Afghanistan and Iraq stability and humanitarian relief operations.

· It should come has no surprise to any of us that nations that so recently gained their own freedom are at the forefront of the effort to help the Afghan and the Iraqi people to achieve freedom for themselves.

· While some of your countries are NATO allies, the support and cooperation of the non-NATO partners here make you all allies in action, if not allies by treaty.

· President Bush has stated that “The door to NATO will remain open until the whole of Europe is united in freedom and peace.” At the NATO Istanbul Summit in June, NATO will formally reaffirm its Open Door Policy.

I want to close by offering a tribute to the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and especially to the US forces, who are responsible for so much of the effort. They are skillful. They are brave. They understand the importance of their mission. And they will succeed. We thank them for protecting our freedom.

And I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight."

Iraq: One Year Later by Douglas J. Feith Address to AEI Tuesday, 4 May, 2004

Iraq: One Year Later by Douglas J. FeithAddress to AEI Tuesday, 4 May, 2004 : "Iraq: One Year Later

Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Remarks to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, 4 May, 2004

Speaker: Douglas Feith

· I’m pleased to be here at the American Enterprise Institute. I have some long-­time friends here, as you know if you’ve studied the published wiring diagrams that purport to illuminate the anatomy of the neo-con “cabal.”

· This AEI conference is being held to look at Iraq now that a year has passed since Coalition forces overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime.

Review of the Past Year

· At the beginning of May last year, seven weeks or so after the war started, major combat operations ended. Iraq has changed greatly over the last twelve months, and largely for the good, though the intensity of the fighting in recent days tends to overshadow the progress. It is true that the past weeks have been as costly to us as any since March 19, 2003. We’re in a difficult period now. So, sober reflection on where we stand, where we’re heading and why Iraq is important should be at a premium. This conference is timely.

· Iraq has been transformed since last May.

· First and foremost: The Saddam Hussein regime is gone and is not coming back. The threats that he posed to us and to his region have been eliminated and 25 million Iraqis have been liberated.

· Economically, Iraq is recovering, though the ruinous results of the Baathist decades continue to impede progress.

· Given its oil resources, and the education of its people, Iraq should have been a wealthy country. Under Saddam, however, its infrastructure became pathetically dilapidated. Coalition forces managed to spare most of that infrastructure from destruction during the war and, over the last year, the coalition has worked to repair and upgrade it.

· Electricity generation has surpassed pre-war levels and is more evenly distributed. Iraqi schools have been repaired in large numbers. Health care spending in Iraq is 30 times greater than its pre-war levels.

· Unemployment has fallen by nearly one-half over the past year. Inflation is a quarter of what it was before the war. A large-scale currency exchange was conducted successfully at the end of last year. The new currency has been remarkably stable, and its value has risen lately by 25% or so over its value last fall when the conversion was underway. Iraqi marketplaces are filled with consumer goods for the first time in decades.

· Politically too, Iraq has moved forward.

· At the national level, the major achievement has been the unanimous approval by Iraq’s Governing Council of the Transitional Administrative Law – the TAL – which will serve as the interim constitution until an elected assembly drafts a permanent constitution to be ratified by the Iraqi people.

· The TAL is the most liberal basic governance document in the Arab world, with assurances of basic freedoms and equality of all citizens before the law.

· As you may remember, the status of Islam was one of the more controversial issues in the drafting the TAL. The result was a compromise that includes protection of “freedom of religious belief and practice” and a provision that no law may contradict “the universally agreed tenets of Islam, the principles of democracy, or the [enumerated individual] rights cited” in the TAL.

· This latter provision’s precise meaning will have to be worked out over time – as is often the case with constitutional principles. But it’s noteworthy that the TAL assumes a compatibility among individual rights, democratic principles and the “universally agreed tenets of Islam.”

· The TAL’s text is important. But the process by which this interim constitution came into being may be even more so. After all, non-democratic regimes often have high-minded constitutions, decreed by the dictator, that are belied by the actual practice of officials who are above the law. By contrast, the TAL emerged from vigorous bargaining among diverse Iraqis – men and women, secularists and Islamists, Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds. It was not decreed by a cynic from on high. Rather it was debated, crafted and approved by the most representative governing body that Iraq has ever had.

· There have been welcome political developments at the local level too. Over ninety percent of Iraqi towns and provinces have local councils. More than half of the Iraqi population is active in community affairs.

· A number of Iraqi towns have held popular elections for local officials. Here is a press report about some successful local elections in Dhi Qar province. It comes from the Guardian, which – no doubt gritting its teeth – reported as follows on April 5:

… hundreds of would-be Iraqi voters pushed into a sparsely equipped school … to cast their ballots for the local council of Tar.

Deep in the marshlands of the Euphrates, the town of 15,000 people was the first to rise against Saddam Hussein … in 1991. Now it was holding the first genuine election in its history.

The poll was the latest in a series which this overwhelmingly Shia province has held in the past six weeks, and the results have been surprising. Seventeen towns have voted, and in almost every case secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties did better than the Islamists.

• This good has been wrought collectively by a large number of people – Iraqis, Americans and Coalition partners, military and civilian, government employees and others, who have served in Iraq during the past year. They have been self-sacrificing and brave. Iraqis in this effort have risked assassination, and refused to be intimidated as they committed themselves to building a new, free Iraq. Coalition troops – our own and those of partner countries – have borne the brunt of the fighting and are making sacrifices every day. Our forces deserve praise and gratitude for their bravery, resourcefulness, high mindedness and devotion to duty.

· It’s especially important to make this point now, as the horrific stories are told of the abuse of some Iraqi prisoners. The Defense Department’s leadership will continue to ensure that the ongoing investigations are completed properly and remedial action is taken. Individual accountability is crucial.

· Let me add: No country in the world upholds the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict more steadfastly than does the United States. This is true not only because Americans recognize a moral obligation to be humane and because Americans are law-abiding by nature and in practice. It is true also because no country in the world has a greater practical interest than the United States in respect for the laws of war. We’ll deal promptly and properly with the terrible abuses. The interests and dignity of our numerous, admirable military forces must not be undermined by the reprehensible actions of a few individuals.

The Current Situation

· Now, I’d like to shift to some comments about the current security picture. There has been great interest in whether the fighting in Fallujah represents a widespread insurgency. It is not one now. Coalition forces, Iraqi authorities and the Coalition Provisional Authority are working with Sunni tribal and other leaders to try to ensure that it does not become a broad-based attack that could threaten the progress country-wide toward Iraqi self-rule. They are working to prevent the other major Sunni cities from erupting in sympathy with Fallujah.

· In the Shi’a community, Moqtada al Sadr’s power grab has not succeeded. According to all reports, support for him continues to decrease as the major Shi’a religious figures influence their community against him. Our desire to avoid fighting in the Shi’a holy city of Najaf has given Sadr something of a sanctuary for the moment, but the Shi’a community continues to pressure him to agree to a peaceful resolution of the situation.

· So neither Sadr nor the Fallujah anti-coalition fighters represent a broad movement or insurgency in Iraq. Unlike in other historical guerrilla or terror campaigns, hardly any bombings in Iraq have been accompanied by a claim of responsibility. The Ba’athists and terrorists behind the bombings know that they have no philosophical or political basis on which to appeal to the Iraqi people.

· Their only hope is that we will lose heart and depart, and that they will then be able to impose their rule on the Iraqis. This is not going to happen.

Why We Went to War

· This AEI conference is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of why we went to war in the first place.

· The controversy concerning our failure to find stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons has obscured the actual strategic rationale for the war – the public debate lately has focused on questions relating to the intelligence failure: Were the assessments “cooked?” Was there political influence on the intelligence process? And so forth.

· The intelligence failure, and the blow to US credibility that it caused, is a serious matter. We should get to the bottom of it, and the President’s decision to appoint a commission on WMD intelligence reflects his desire to do so.

· But that matter shouldn’t blind us to the larger point: The strategic rationale for the war didn’t actually hinge on classified information concerning chemical and biological stockpiles. Rather, it depended on assessments about the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime and its activities. The relevant facts were available to the public.

· Intelligence can play a crucial role in operational decision making. But it should surprise no one that the grandest strategic considerations of statesmen in democratic countries are commonly based on open, rather than secret, information. Such statesmen, after all, would have a hard time arguing that their country should go to war, for example, but the reasons for the war cannot be shared with the public. President Bush made no such argument. Rather, he explained to the American people and the world the reasons that it was necessary to oust the Saddam Hussein regime.

· Saddam’s regime was recognized widely as a threat to world peace since at least 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saddam had launched aggressive attacks against a number of countries in his region. His military was the first in history to use nerve gas on the battlefield. He was outspokenly hostile to the United States and defiant of numerous attempts by the UN Security Council over a dozen years or so to constrain him and compel him to account for and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

· Saddam had ties of various types with various terrorist groups. For example, the terrorist Abu Nidal lived in Iraq for years, as did Mahmoud Abbas, who was responsible for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. In addition, Iraq maintained links with the Palestinian terrorist groups responsible for “suicide bombing” attacks and Saddam famously boasted of paying $25,000 to each family of a suicide bomber. Iraqi intelligence also carried out its own terrorist actions, notably the assassination attempt against former President Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

· All of these points were known to the public.

· The 9/11 attack compelled US policy makers to reevaluate the known dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. It was clear that the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks would have gladly killed a hundred or a thousand times the number of their 9/11 victims if they had had the means to do so. The principal strategic danger to the United States in the war on terrorism is the possibility that terrorists could get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. That was and remains the focus of our attention.

· Given Iraq’s record of hostility, aggression, WMD use and ties to terrorists – and given Saddam’s frustration of a dozen years’ worth of efforts by the UN, the US and others to “contain” him – President Bush concluded in light of the 9/11 attacks that it was necessary to remove the Saddam Hussein regime by force. The danger was too great that Saddam might give the fruits of his WMD programs to terrorists for use against the United States. This danger did not hinge on whether Saddam was actually stockpiling chemical or biological weapons.

· President Bush told the American people and the world that the removal of that regime would make the world safer, would free the Iraqi people and would open the way for the development of democratic institutions in Iraq that could inspire the growth of freedom throughout the Middle East. If Iraq built democratic institutions, it would not only help ensure that Iraq remains off the list of terrorism supporters, but it could help us in the crucial task of countering ideological support for terrorism. It would be of great practical benefit if Iraq became a model of moderation, freedom and prosperity. The terrorists of al Qaida and other organizations know how devastating that would be for their interests, which is why they are doing what they can to fight the Coalition in Iraq.

· It bears stressing again: What I have just summarized here was the strategic rationale for the war. Those were the considerations that moved the key US policy makers. On that basis, the President appealed for support to Congress and to the American people. On that basis, the President obtained the support of our coalition partners. As interesting as the intelligence questions are, assessing the strategic rationale for the war did not require anyone to have access to any secrets. Reasonable people did and do dispute whether that rationale justified the coalition’s military action. But I think no one can properly assert that the failure, so far, to find Iraqi WMD stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war.

Strategy in Iraq

· Accordingly, the Coalition’s strategic goal has been a unified Iraq that:

o Is on the path to democratic government and prosperity,

o Foreswears WMD,

o Does not support terrorism and

o Seeks to live in peace with its neighbors.

· We aim to achieve this by transferring power to a government in Iraq that will govern by compromise and consensus among the various ethnic and sectarian groups – that is, by the means used to produce the Transitional Administrative Law – rather than allow one group to oppress the others.

· The creation of such a government not only serves our strategic purposes, but it is a key to managing Iraq’s current security problems. We have a security interest in Iraqis’ understanding that the US and the Coalition have no desire to control, much less exploit Iraq or its resources. We want Iraqis to run their own country. Our strategy is to encourage and enable Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own affairs in all fields – security, economic and political.

· This is why the upcoming restoration of sovereign authority is so important to achieving our objectives in Iraq. I would argue that those who say that the current security problems will or should lead to a delay in the transfer of sovereign authority to the Iraqis have the analysis backwards.

· First, an early end to the occupation is essential to the political strategy for defeating the anti-Coalition forces. A sovereign Iraqi government will be better able to marginalize its extremist opponents politically while Coalition forces defeat them militarily. As the captured letter from Zarqawi to his Al Qaeda associates demonstrates, such a transformation is the worst possible scenario for those who oppose the emergence of democracy in Iraq. Zarqawi wrote: “How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the Americans start withdrawing? This is the democracy... we will have no pretext.” The Baathists and terrorists fear the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people, and that’s why they are trying so hard to derail it.

· Second, Iraqis have shown reluctance to take responsibility if the Coalition Provisional Authority appears intent to remain in charge. This is understandable. Anybody who demonstrated leadership qualities and initiative under Saddam’s tyranny, more likely than not, was quickly killed by the regime. Consequently, without the sense of urgency and accountability that a fixed deadline imposes, Iraqi leaders have been unable to resolve the difficult issues required to conduct elections and shape a new government. But when such a deadline is established, as it was with the Transitional Administrative Law, Iraqi leaders have shown that they can come up with the compromises necessary for the Interim Iraqi Government to take shape.

The Importance of Steadiness

· The situation in Iraq is not easy. There is value in thinking calmly and comprehensively about our strategy – assessing the facts, updating assumptions, reviewing the formulation of our objectives, and deciding the ways to achieve them. Strategic thinking aims to see the important connections among the ideas and events that may appear superficially to be unconnected. And it aims to think ahead many steps into the future. Strategy takes a long view from a high elevation.

· It is well known that no pre-war prediction will unfold perfectly, and that there will be setbacks that require adjustments in both objectives and courses of action. In war, plans are at best the basis for future changes. This Coalition has the benefit of leadership and strategic thinking, but it has shown also that it can be flexible as necessary.

· Examples of flexibility include:

- Requesting a large amount of supplemental funds when it became clear that Iraqi reconstruction was going too slowly, in part because the Iraqi infrastructure proved to be in much worse shape than we expected.

- Creating a new type of indigenous force (the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) to fill the gap left by the Iraqi police service, many of whose members turned out not to be as well trained as we had supposed.

- Responding to Iraqi demands for an earlier resumption of sovereignty by developing the idea of a transitional government that could take power before a permanent constitution is ratified.

- Dropping the “caucus plan” for selecting the transitional government, when it turned out to be unpopular with Iraqis, and substituting a two-step process involving an interim government that can take power before legislative elections.

- Revising the mechanisms for implementing the de-Baathification policy to address complaints that the appeals process was not working as intended, and to respond to the Sunni minority’s fears of marginalization.

· Throughout all these changes, we have retained the strategic objective of Iraqis stepping forward to run their own country under a proper, representative arrangement that can win broad-based support.

· A challenging mission such as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) requires steadiness. If the basic strategy is correct, then steadiness in the face of setbacks is required. Even as tactical adjustments are made, the essence of the strategy continues to provide direction.

· Having a strategy means not being buffeted by the news of the day, not allowing fluctuating polls to determine what we do.

· History teaches that steadiness is a gem-like trait of a war-time leader. Yet when a president is steady, as President Bush has remained throughout OIF, some folks inevitably will describe his steadiness as unapologetic stubbornness. One can only imagine what today’s news media would have said about Winston Churchill in the face of his dogged refusal to change his strategy in the face of repeated setbacks! Steadiness, so long as one is willing as we have been to revisit assumptions and demonstrate tactical flexibility, is a virtue.

Conclusion

· One year after the end of major combat operations, we are still at war. As our target date for the hand-over of sovereign authority to the Iraqis draws close, we must expect that the enemies of a free Iraq will become more violent. They know that the establishment of a sovereign, credible, representative Iraqi government – a government that builds democratic institutions in Iraq – would be a major defeat for them, and they are determined not to let it happen. The struggle against them will not be easy, but they offer nothing to the Iraqi people but a renewal of oppression. The Coalition has the will, the forces, the resources and the strategy to succeed. And what we are fighting for is important and right.

Thank You"