Transcript
JAMES LINDSAY: Thank you. I'd like to welcome you to another in a series of Brookings press briefings on the United States campaign against terrorism. Today we once again have a group of distinguished scholars to talk about various aspects of the campaign. I am joined at the podium by my colleague Mike O'Hanlon, who is a senior fellow here at Brookings; also joined by Shibley Telhami, who is a nonresident senior fellow and a professor of government and holder of the Anwar Sadat Peace Chair at the University of Maryland, and my colleague, Roberta Cohen, senior fellow here at Brookings.
As everybody knows, last night the president held a major, prime-time press conference, the first prime-time press conference held by a president since 1995. Clearly the President's objective was to reassure the American public that the Administration is moving, making progress in its campaign against terrorism. And as the President made that speech what is remarkable is that he has what can only be described as unprecedented public support behind him.
In the days since the bombing campaign began on Sunday, a variety of polls have been conducted in the American public and they show that by a number greater than nine out of ten Americans support the President's actions, even though equally large numbers in the polls acknowledge that the campaign is likely to be hard, it is likely to be difficult, it is likely to be costly.
To put that in perspective, the poll results you're seeing from the first few days of this campaign are remarkably more supportive than the American public was in the opening day of the Gulf War campaign where public support for the war topped out initially in the low 70s, so it's about a 20 percentage point gap. As someone who's been studying Congress and foreign policy for two decades and American public opinion, you can't find unanimity like this on any other issue of any major substance.
I think the American support for the campaign against terrorism clearly carries over to politics. We have a remarkable degree of bipartisan support on the Hill. Even, for example, after the President announced he was cutting off briefings to key Members of Congress because of what he perceived to be unacceptable leaks, there was some grumbling on the Hill. What was remarkable was how little grumbling there was.
Likewise the President through Condoleezza Rice made the very unusual request to the American news media to reconsider airing Mr. bin Laden's videos on American television, and rather than leading to a public protest, many of the news media acknowledged it and are in serious discussions about how they should treat such issues.
So I think it's really important to underscore how different the politics of the campaign on terrorism are from much of what we've been used to over the past several decades.
The obvious question that follows from that is can it be sustained? That is, will the American public stand behind the campaign against terrorism, especially if, as President Bush said last night, it may take a year or two.
Now clearly, many people are arguing the fact that the American public will prove to be casualty phobic in the words of, I think it was Saddam Hussein, "Americans don't have the lungs for the ardor of losing lots of blood." And in this case I think it's really important to underscore how different this campaign is than let's say Somalia or Lebanon—both cases in which the United States reversed course after losing forces. Again, in Somalia, what happened was 18 Army Rangers died in October of 1993. America's policy quickly changed... What's important there, what the American public focused on then as to Lebanon was not simply on the cost but what did they stand to gain from this operation? And I think Americans at the end of the day, in the case of Somalia, where Lebanon asked the question what are we getting out of this adventure, and the Administration couldn't come up with a compelling answer to that.
I think when we talk today about the campaign against terrorism, I think the President will be able to make a pretty compelling answer as to what's at stake. One need only watch the video of the World Trade Center collapsing to have that point driven home.
And again, for those who worry that Americans don't have the stomach for this, let me take us back to the war against Vietnam or in Vietnam, which belies the notion of a casualty-phobic American public. In that case, I point out in 1973 after eight years of war, nearly 60,000 American soldiers dead and not much to show for it, more than 40 percent of the American public favored staying in Vietnam. So I want to underscore the likelihood of American commitment.
Obviously playing into the American public's ongoing support for the war is going to be this battle for hearts and minds. Last night the President spoke about the need to make a better case, a better job of making our case to the public in the Middle East, in the Islamic world. I think he's actually fighting for the hearts and minds not only abroad, but here at home as well.
In terms of fighting for the hearts and minds abroad, clearly the evidence last night on the Children's Relief Fund of American children to provide a dollar each for Afghan children, I think also the appeal by the President to Americans to remain tolerant, not single out Arab Americans or Muslim Americans, people who might appear to be either, for harassment and violence clearly is designed to continue to make this argument to the Arab and Islamic world that the United States is not engaged in a war on Islam or a war on the Arab world.
Now Shibley obviously can talk about the extent to which that is likely to get much traction outside the United States, but I want to emphasize that those appeals also resonate home politically. Those are also designed to remind Americans and our allies abroad that there is justice adjustment to the American cause.
Conversely I would point out that obviously Mr. Bush is not the only one playing for hearts and minds. Mr. bin Laden and his associates are releasing videos, clearly are trying to influence public opinion particularly in the Arab and Islamic world. He's been hailed for his masterly use of video and modern technology to put his message out and to mobilize the public, and particularly his sudden decision to move the Palestinian issue up to the top of the issues mobilizing him.
I think it's also important to keep in mind that when Mr. bin Laden does this he may be galvanizing Arab and Muslim public, but he's also galvanizing Western and American public against him. It's a two-edged sword. Again, I think Mr. bin Laden's video last Sunday was quite clear on his attitude towards Americans and his goal.
This of course raises a broader set of questions about what American policy will be, American foreign policy. I think last night the President emphasized two important things in the short term. One is that the United States is going to be engaged in nation building. We're not going to call it nation building. I believe the term of art now is stabilization of a future government, which is a mouthful. But clearly, we're going to do it. We're not going to turn around and walk away from Afghanistan. It's a major commitment.
Obviously the President, given the campaign promise last year, is not going to embrace the term nation building. Mr. Blair may call it nation building. We'll call it something else, but we'll be doing the same thing.
The second thing quite significant last night was the President called for a role for the United Nations. He's going to bring the United Nations into the process process of providing long term stabilization in Afghanistan. I think, again, that is significant.
But looking at the longer term consequences for American foreign policy, things are still very unclear. It is not clear that when the dust settles from all of this whether we will have an America that is outward-focused, bold, pursuing an international course, or one that will turn inward. I think the answer to that question depends a lot less on what happened on September 11th than what happens in the aftermath of September 11th, in the next weeks and months.
I do think quite clearly, given some of the events in the Arab world in recent days, it would not surprise me in the weeks and months to come to see American politicians start to ask very serious questions about the nature of American alliances in the Middle East. I would expect people to point out that the Islamic Conference, I guess we've declared we had a victory with the Islamic Conference because it did not condemn American military strikes in Afghanistan. That is not something that's likely to sit well with large numbers, or segments of the American public.
Likewise, it wouldn't surprise me in the weeks and months to come for American politicians to begin to ask serious questions about the nature of our relationship with Saudi Arabia, particularly given the Saudi's reluctance to fully embrace the coalition battle, most recently, with the decision not to freeze assets.
Now the President quite clearly last night tried to tamp that irritation down by saying we're only asking for what we can get from countries, and we'll take what we can get. Some help is better than no help. But I think it's a long term fault line. Indeed, one irony may be in the long term in terms of U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia that U.S. troops and U.S. support Saudi Arabia may weaken, not because of Mr. bin Laden but because of the inability of the Saudi monarchy to stand with the United States at this particular juncture.
With that I will close and we'll go and I'll turn it over to Mr. O'Hanlon.
MICHAEL O'HANLON: Thank you, Jim, and thank you all for coming. A couple of other quick thank you's. Jim who has got two great books in the works has suspended them yet again to do a lot of the leading on this project, and I know we're all grateful. And people like Fred and Stacy and Ellen and Aaron and Robert and our various public affairs and foreign policy research [departments] have been tremendously helpful. And I thank you all, yourselves, again for coming.
Let me just make a few very quick points because the military campaign hasn't developed that much in the last couple of days, and we also have Shibley and Roberta to talk about other dimensions of this problem that we have not discussed in previous briefings in quite the same detail. So I'm just going to make five or six quick points and then be available for discussion and questions later.
First of all I would say this week already underscores the Bush Administration was right to have a two-pronged military strategy. Some people might say why not just focus on bin Laden and al Qaeda, given that they are the ones who carried out the terrorist attacks September 11th. Why focus on the Taliban? Why get into the political mess? Why go down the nation building road? There are a lot of reasons, of course, but one very clear reason, just from the narrow military perspective, is the evidence from this week's bombing campaign. We are doing very, very well it appears, at least as a first step, on the second goal. In fact a major concern is how to make sure we don't do too well too quickly in bombing Taliban positions and opening up opportunities for Northern Alliance forces too soon, before we broaden this to include a more representative and legitimate form of an alternative government to rule Afghanistan. That part's going well. As for the first goal, going after bin Laden and al Qaeda, there's no sign of any progress, and that's not surprising. It underscores why you couldn't just go after people. You couldn't just rely on the commandos. That takes luck, it takes patience. That may take more than a year or two. That may never work. They may slip out of Afghanistan before we get our hands on them, or at least some of them may.
We've got to go in a broader sense to help a new regime come to power that will at least help to arrest some of the people, deprive al Qaeda of a sanctuary, deprive it of training facilities, deprive it of places where it can work on chemical and biological weapons and so forth. So the basic strategy of changing regimes in Afghanistan, I think the logic of that has been underscored, again, by where we're doing well and where we're not doing well on the battlefield in the first week.
It's much easier, even though it's still hard, it's much easier to help the resistance tilt the balance of power within Afghanistan with an eye towards ultimately changing regimes than it is to in any clear schedule, along any clear schedule get our hands on the al Qaeda leadership.
A second point would be the Bush Administration is correct, I think, to be holding off on a little bit of the attack of forward positions near Kabul [these days]. I'm not sure how much longer we can continue that strategy of patience, but we really do need to worry intensively about what comes next. The Northern Alliance will not do the trick. This is a group of people who are not very renowned for their ability to work together or for their ability to fashion a viable government in Afghanistan. We need to broaden that base. We need to create legitimacy for that group, and we need to create leverage over that group so that over time they will see incentives to keep working with us, even once they're in power.
A big part of the set of incentives is going to have to be laying out an agenda for state building or nation building or stabilization or whatever you want to call it. That has to involve some significant economic incentives to help them reconstruct the country. That may not be enough to get Mr. Dostum and other warlords to decide to work together and become peaceful and turn away from military enterprises and towards reconstruction. There may not be enough resolution, but we have to try to create as much of it as we can and create as much of a coalition under a civilian figurehead like King Zahir in Italy.
So again, the patient approach is sound. However, again, I'm not sure how much longer we can sustain it. One reason is humanitarian. Roberta will talk about this soon in much grater detail, but I'm quickly becoming tired of the number 37,000. It seems to be our maximum capacity for rations delivered per day to Afghanistan. It's roughly a factor of 100 short of where we need to be. There's been no public discussion of what will be used and implemented in order to get up to the millions of rations per day that we need.
To my mind, this involves Western forces protecting safe havens inside Afghanistan to allow the safe disbursal of humanitarian relief. That's a pretty tall order. I have reason to think there are a number of allied countries that would help in that kind of effort. I have reason to think that you can do this with a few thousand Western forces here and there, maybe a total of 10,000 to 20,000. You don't need a ground war. You don't need a large effort. But you do need to do better than we did in Srebrenica. We do need to have a legitimate safe area. We do need 1,000 to 3,000 troops probably per safe area in order to make this work and make these forces sufficient to protect the people inside of them, and to protect themselves. Even once you get there, you're still going to take some casualties from the occasional mortar round or sniper bullet that will undoubtedly be aimed in the direction of the safe haven. But I think you have to do it.
Again, I will let Roberta talk more. But that's the reason why you can't just wait forever and stay in this bombing phase indefinitely. We only have I think a few weeks with which to work in order to set up some of the corridors we need to get in place before the winter.
So the patient approach has been smart. Waiting until Sunday to start bombing was smart. Waiting a few more days now to start bombing around Kabul and start becoming the air force, effectively, for the resistance, is also the right way to go. But I'm just not sure we can sustain that more than perhaps a few days or a couple of weeks at the very outset. Not to mention, of course, the issue of Ramadan coming on next month presumably complicating any U.S. attacks even further at that stage.
A narrow military point, just two more simple comments or facts to put on the table. A military argument as well for why we can't wait indefinitely to do bombing. Even once we start bombing Taliban positions I think it may take us a little while to achieve success to the point where the Northern Alliance can really take Kabul in conjunction with other forces, Pashtun and other resistance forces that may be cobbled together as part of a broader coalition by that time.
If you go back to the Gulf War experience or the Kosovo experience, we basically have a hard time destroying more than one percent of enemy ground forces per day from the air. Obviously rules of thumb are very dangerous in military policy, each situation is different. The Taliban may be even more inept than some of Saddam Hussein's forces at digging in. Our tactics for tank plinking and other things we did in the Gulf War may not work as well or may work better, so it's hard to use any one rule of thumb to predict the long term outcome. But I believe you have to assume we may need a couple of weeks of bombing, intensive bombing, of the Taliban positions to allow the resistance to successfully move into Kabul, and it may take even longer than that.
So I don't think we can assume this is a rheostat we can just turn up and down and have instantaneous results. This week we've seen a lot of things change day by day. We're not necessarily going to see produced results on a day by day basis in the future.
So again there's one more reason why even though patience is appropriate at this time and why we have been correct I think not to attack those Taliban positions with their remaining infantry vehicles and pickup trucks and other things that we can see to target from the air, we're going to have to get at it fairly soon.
My final point would be, and this underscores why the British officer apparently yesterday said that we may have to do this for quite some time at a military level, perhaps into next year, because it's going to be very hard to get solid control of Afghanistan. It's one thing to take Kabul, take some of the major transportation corridors and major cities. It's going to be something else entirely to consolidate control over all the country which is necessary if we're going to drive al Qaeda off the territory. It's admittedly desirable to have the capital city and the communication system or transportation system. That's already something, because it complicates al Qaeda movements, it complicates some of the operations of al Qaeda, but it's not enough. If you want to get after the training bases, if you want to get after the people, if you want to get after whatever chemical weapons they may be trying to produce, whatever simpler bomb-making facilities they may have, ultimately you're going to have to try to consolidate control of this country throughout many of the highland regions. That means that Kabul is just the sort of second phase of this, not the final phase.
The first phase has been what we've done so far, weakening air defenses; hitting some of the big, big targets; hitting some of the airplanes; getting the conditions on the battlefield essentially more favorable to alliance operations, Northern Alliance operations and U.S. commando operations as well as British commando operations.
The second phase is going to be taken against cities and transportation corridors.
A third phase is just as important, and again that's consolidating control over the country. That's going to take quite awhile. So I would reaffirm what's been said in the last 24 hours by British and American officials, this will take a long time—not just the broader fight against terrorism, but the narrow military struggle within Afghanistan involving Western forces will certainly take us into next year because I think we're going to have to help that alliance and the broader coalition, the broader resistance movement, not only seize the big cities but then consolidate control, and that's going to be a long time coming. Right now they control only tiny areas and maybe have 15,000 or 20,000 troops at their disposal. We're going to have to try to multiply that number by at least a factor of five, in my judgment, and get up to probably 100,000 resistance forces operating with much better equipment, much better training, and air support in order to really do what needs to be done over the longer term.
I'll stop there.
MR. LINDSAY: Thank you, Mike. Thank you for giving us a very nice plug to begin with. I'll also tell you that Mike has been giving up things and working very hard in this crisis as well. We appreciate it.
Now we'll go to Roberta.
ROBERTA COHEN: Good morning. I always like listening to Mike O'Hanlon because it gives me the broad military context through which the humanitarian crisis must unfold.
The first point I would like to make is that the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan did not begin September 11th. Only interest in it began on September 11th. After three years of drought and two decades of war prior to September 11th, you had the result that a quarter of the population, maybe about four million people, were dependent on international food aid to survive.
You had more than a million people who were internally displaced within the country living in abandoned buildings, in tents, crowded in with relatives, some in holes in the ground. You had four million refugees, two million in Pakistan, 1.5 in Iran. This is the second largest refugee population in the world. You only had a quarter of the population with access to safe water.
Donor interest, however, was quite limited prior to September 11th. The UN in 2001 requested $250 million in humanitarian aid, but donors pledged only well below half that amount.
For any programs beyond emergencies to develop agricultural support, irrigation systems, food security, 12 percent of what was requested was pledged.
A combination, of donor fatigue, of lack of interest in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal, of opposition to the Taliban, explained this limited involvement.
Now there is a great interest in the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and evidently that is because the military and political strategies of the U.S. and its allies coincide with humanitarian concerns. We know that the U.S. and its allies want to show that their military campaign is not against the people of Afghanistan or the Islamic world, and they want to reach out to the people, and one way to do this, one vehicle, is humanitarian assistance.
Thus, the UN appeal of September 27th for $584 million for over a six month period to help 7.5 million Afghans has already been exceeded, the U.S. providing $320 million.
Now this convergence of humanitarian and political goals has caused great consternation in the humanitarian world, at the UN and among private relief organizations. They cannot accept the U.S.' dropping food and dropping bombs at the same time. They want a separation of state action from non-state humanitarian aid. Humanitarian action is supposed to be neutral, impartial, non-political and sharply delineated from military and political actions. This is why the relief groups have been so fiercely critical of the U.S. airdrops of humanitarian daily rations.
To be sure,there are legitimate concerns at dropping a food package from 30,000 feet and not monitoring the distribution. But largely for ideological reasons, they want humanitarian aid to be separate, to be pure. They don't want to acknowledge that humanitarian aid in a civil war is usually not neutral. It quickly is perceived as aiding one side or another.
I think the groups also don't like being upstaged. Of course the humanitarians do have a practical point. They have to still negotiate with the Taliban to get their trucks in. Although the Taliban does not seem to be making such distinctions
In my opinion what is needed here is actually a closer cooperation between the aid organizations and the military so that the humanitarian consequences of military strategy can be better dealt with.
Lack of hard information is another difficult part of the humanitarian situation. Everyone is constantly asking how many people are starving, how many will starve? The U.S. says that 1.5 million Afghans are at clear risk of starvation by winter's end and that between five and seven million face critical food shortages.
The UN has been saying that in two or three weeks, and at least two of those weeks are already past, that 400,000 will face starvation unless food stocks are replenished. That would mean that people are starving right now.
The UN overall figure of those at risk is about six million. The UN says that it has to get 56,000 metric tons into Afghanistan each month to feed six million people, and it's clear that the UN cannot get anywhere near that inside at this time given the on again/off again truck deliveries because of security.
Now of the thousands of local staff that remain inside Afghanistan after the international staff departed, some continue to distribute stockpiled food; some remain in contact with international staff although it's very difficult; some have reportedly been beaten; some have fled to safer locations.
So basically there are guesstimates about the extensive starvation and about the extent to which thousands of tons of food arriving cross border—and that is the main strategy, bringing in the food cross border. The extent to which that is being well distributed is not entirely known. The best that probably can be said is that it reaches at least some of those in need and that the airdrops which are in more inaccessible areas, again, one hopes that they reache some of those in need. There really aren't any reports of how they're being received.
Far less attention has been paid to non-food items. Having spoken directly with several Afghans in the last number of days I'd like to draw attention to clothing, blankets, shelter—People are in open spaces—and fuel, as the temperatures dip below zero. I would note that in January 2001 480 internally displaced Afghans outside Herat in the west, including 220 children, froze to death due to lack of shelter and blankets. That did not seem to arouse much attention at the time.
Now one clear strategy for feeding, clothing and sheltering Afghans at risk is open borders. Letting them become refugees where the international community can take care of them. But in this case there are very severe problems. The humanitarian community has called for open borders and continues to call for open borders, to let the people go outside. However, the five neighboring governments and the United States have supported closed borders on security grounds.
There are legitimate security and political concerns. Some of the refugees have been reported to be armed. There are pro-Taliban factions among the refugees. There is no international consensus about how you separate combatants from civilians in refugee camps and this is a problem that's an international one. Both Pakistan and Iran already house millions of Afghan refugees. In addition, there are growing concerns of late about whether the refugees will be secure in Pakistan. There are demonstrations against them. There is stoning of the UNHCR office in Quetta. There's opposition by tribal leaders in Pakistan's northwest to accommodate refugees.
So as a result of these concerns, the closed borders, and also Taliban restrictions on people leaving, particularly young men, since September 11th, only 25 to 30,000 have made it to Pakistan and 5,000 to Iran, which is far fewer than anticipated.
Afghans basically seem to be largely trapped inside the country. That being the case, and as Mike O'Hanlon was talking about a long war I would just like in closing to draw attention to three areas of concern.
The first one is the need to explore setting up safe havens within Afghanistan to feed, shelter and protect displaced populations. There are certainly possibilities here, there are also a lot of caveats. But it should be explored.
The second is the need to ensure that the Northern Alliance and others that the U.S. is supporting respect civilian populations. The Northern Alliance has a rather horrendous record for abuse—executions, rape, reprisals, killings, attacks on civilians—which could alienate the population the U.S. is trying to win over.
Third, attention is needed to landmines. People moving around the country in search of food, water, safety, need to be alerted against five to seven million landmines. It's one of the most heavily landmined countries in the world. Unconfirmed reports say that some of the U.S. airdrops have been near mined areas which is very risky then for people who would try to go get the food.
Finally, and Jim Lindsay mentioned this point, it's not too early to plan rehabilitation and reconstruction for Afghanistan. The Bush Administration may have come into office reluctant to get involved in what they call nation building, but it's going to have to do just that in a big way, and it's going to have to go beyond providing emergency aid and rebuilding infrastructure to addressing many of Afghanistan's deeper political, ethnic and economic divisions. And I don't think they can just fob it off on the United Nations. I think the U.S. is going to have to play a substantial role.
MR. LINDSAY: Thank you for those remarks, Roberta, and especially for placing the problem in a broader context as it existed before September 11th.
Now I'll turn it over to Shibley who will talk about consequences for the Middle East.
SHIBLEY TELHAMI: I want to make a few points about uphill battles for the hearts and minds in the region.
First of all, I think it's a mistake to look at it as a direct war to win the hearts and minds of the entire region. I think it's an uphill battle, there's a lot of mistrust. I don't think no matter what we do we're going to win the hearts of everyone and I don't think we should even look at it is a direct conflict between us, that is the U.S., and even the military. Instead I think we should look at it as an indirect war to win the hearts and minds of the people, and specifically to recognize that there is a war within the region, a conflict within the region, between moderate majorities and militant minorities that are (inaudible) [non-sensitive] and moderate majorities who are [going to be sensitive] and in essence aim our strategy to help mobilize the moderate majorities and have them win in this battle. I think that is the way we should look at it.
And let me just elaborate a little bit more and suggest a couple of things that we can do.
First, I think there's no question that only minorities are supporting bin Laden as such. When you look at it, even in the Palestinian areas where you have a lot of despair, the latest poll yesterday shows 64 percent of the public not only opposed the attacks on the U.S., but believe that they were "a violation of Islamic law".
There is certainly a rejection at least to the method and in most cases the aim of bin Laden. I think there is no question that at some level bin Laden is terrifying to not only governments but the vast majority of, at least in the region. This is not a world they want to live in. They don't want to live in a world that military Islam represents.
What his strength is, however, is that he plays to issues that matter to a vast majority of the people in the region. Although his aims are different. He's ambitious and his broader aim is perhaps in conflict with the aspirations of the vast majority of the region, the issues that he focuses on in his fight are those that resonate from the region. Whether they're the economic difficulties, the Palestinian issue, the Iraq issue, the sense of humiliation that is out there in the region, the sense that the rest of the world does not care about Muslims and Arab lives and so forth. That is a pervasive feeling that he tries to capture.
More importantly, he tries to capture the, to empower people to believe that they can make a difference. What you have in the region today is a sense of helplessness that is far too pervasive even among the leaders. A sense of absence of power. They can't affect their politics, they can't affect their foreign policy, they can't affect their own lives. Things have gone from bad to worse. And what he is doing in a way, he's providing an empowerment. He's saying look, with a few dozen men I was able to shake up the super power and international order. He is promising change.
In fact if you hear his tape he says "the winds of change are blowing". That's music to a lot of people's ears, even those who hate his own aims or his methods. And the problem right now is the moderates are on the defensive because they don't have an alternative.
Let me speak to that a little bit more. I think there are two problems why the moderate voices are not being heard other than just rejecting the message. In fact if you look at the air waves in the Middle East today, really the militants are winning the war of ideas. Even though they're a minority, they're not wining by virtue of having better ideas, but they're winning by virtue of the vacuum that's out there that the moderates do not have an (inaudible) vision to present, and they're on the defensive, and all they do is reject terrorism or reject bin Laden specifically. But at the same time there's a lot of anger out there. And to the extent that the militants exceedingly are posing this as a war between them—even if it's not all the Islamic world—them and the U.S., the choice is between people they don't like, bin Laden and company, and the U.S. that they don't trust and whose policies they don't like. Even those who love American standards of living, who have a love/hate relationship with the U.S., still don't like American policies. So to the extent that that's the way the conflict is being posed, it is tough to mobilize the moderates in this particular confrontation.
There are two areas I think where we can help mobilize the moderates, and I think they also have to do a lot on their own. This is a time for self assertion. This is a time for understanding that the conflict that has gone on is not just a conflict between the U.S. and some groups in the region, or even a conflict about terrorism. It is really a conflict within the region right now. It is a civilizational conflict, not across civilizations but within civilizations, and that has to be understood. But they need help in being able to have a credible vision out there, to be able to have ammunition to fight against the militants.
There are two areas where I think that's possible. Number one, I think the way we are framing the conflict on terrorism, we are sending some conflicting messages that are playing in a way to the hands of the bin Laden types. In part because I don't think we've sort them out well early enough, and now we're beginning to sort them out. That is that in fact we have two separate missions in this campaign. One mission is very clear. That is, we were attacked in a horrific fashion, and everyone understands that we have a right to respond, self defense. In fact the group that we're fighting have declared open war on the U.S., so the U.S. has a right to self defense. Everybody can relate to that. Everybody can understand that. Of course they want to make sure that we're holding the right people responsible and that civilians are not the casualties, but they understand that that has to be done. In that sense, even people who don't like the U.S. understand that.
Here the coalition is merely instrumental. We're not using the coalition to justify our action but really to make it more effective. But the second mission, which is the broader war on terrorism, the way the Middle Easterners understood it first of all, was that we're going down the line only to focus on the broader problems in the Middle East related to the Arab/Israeli conflict. The names mentioned like Hesbollah and so forth are groups that specifically have to do with Arab/Israeli issues, and so they saw that as a step toward a campaign to only affect those issues that they care about rather than a broader world campaign on terrorism. And I think what we need to make sure is that we have to have for the broader campaign on terrorism to involve the UN as the President has declared, and to make sure that we have a universal definition and not so much to target groups which is inevitable actually in the practice, but to target to particular civilians, against targeting a particular principle, against targeting of civilians by any group internationally. We have to make it universal, we have to implement this universally. We have to hold people responsible across the board. And we can't just pick and choose for our own political purposes which ones we want to fight. Unless we do it that way, unless we clarify our missions that way, we're going to play into the hands of those who want us to become a civilizational conflict.
The second point I want to make is the point of division. Why are the moderates on the defensive in the region? They're on the defensive for a lot of reasons, some of which really are their own fault and government's fault. But there is a broader problem, and the problem is the collapse of the vision. This is in part the legacy of the Gulf War, really.
When you look back at what happened after the Gulf War, after the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of anger already in the Middle East. By the way, before Iraq invaded Kuwait and what Iraq tried to exploit in invading Kuwait, was a lot of anger directed at the U.S. Most of it in 1989 and 1990, if you look back at the record, was directed at policies toward the Arab/Israeli conflict. In fact at the time I was advising Representative Lee Hamilton who was then the chair of the subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East. I went to the Middle East and I wrote a lengthy report about the public sentiment. That was two months before Iraq invaded Kuwait. And I identified the anger in the region to be at the highest level I had seen it since the 1967 war. Most of it was aimed at the Arab/Israeli issue, but it was broader than that. There was a lot of anger out there.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, aggression was so blatant a lot of people put all of that aside and moved to come on board with the U.S. because the Iraqi threat was far greater than any anger they had had towards the U.S. The U.S. understood the anger. During the Gulf War there was an understanding that there was anger, and the U.S. in fact waged a concept vision that came out of the Gulf War. That is a definition of what was called the new world order. Then world order was going to put an end to the Arab/Israeli conflict, put an end to regional disputes through a negotiating process in which the international community, especially the U.S., would play a major role, and a world in which there would be political and economic reform. It would open up a way for economic prosperity. That was really the vision with all its ups and downs and failings, that prevailed in the 1990s—to try to have a moderate vision that when the moderates went on TV to debate the militants who wanted to use violence, to say no, we have this, it's working. The peace process is moving forward, agreements are coming, we have plans for economic prosperity, investment, international aid. It's going to work.
Well the whole paradigm collapsed at the end of the '90s with the Camp David negotiations, but really before because the economic prosperity and the political reforms never materialized. There were a lot of reasons for it, a lot of reasons and there's a lot of blame to spread around, but it failed.
In the past year there's been a lot of violence with no vision, no positive vision. And there are people in the region who badly want to change. There is demand for change. There's a lot of despair. There's a lot of humiliation. There's a lot of anger out there. It's not the anger that explains what bin Laden did, but it's anger that bin Laden tried to capture to recruit members, to get financial support, to get public opinion on their side, to shake up the political order.
There's a lot of it out there, and when the moderates go on television today to debate those who way well at least the militants are offering a choice, they don't have an answer other than to reject the message. They don't have an answer, and the public wants answers.
You can't just say well, no, we'll go back to a negotiation because well, they say well in ten years of it things went from bad to worse and we don't have an answer. It's not a question of objective reality of who is to blame with making an assessment. It's a perception, and the perception is they blame the powers to be, and the powers to be are the U.S. at the global level and Israel at the regional level. That is the prevailing perception.
Now what we need to do, therefore, in order to help the moderates and the governments be empowered and mobilize is to have a vision, an ultimate vision to the military. It has to be a war of ideas, not just a war of military forces on the ground. It has to be that for sure. There are a lot of evil people out there who have to be responsive. What we're doing in Afghanistan, certainly targeting specific groups is our right. But in terms of, to win the hearts and minds battle it has to be a war of ideas. And here I think we can do something together with the region. Not alone. But we certainly need two things very quickly.
One is to have a dialogue of reform in international forums that would indicate a serious commitment to put resources and a [solid] process that would give promise on the economic arena down the road. Even if we don't make it happen today, to have a process that looks serious, that plays to the minds and hearts of the public.
And second, we must revive the Arab/Israeli peace process. I know that this is a cliche for many because you say what does this have to do with it? It's true, that the anger toward the U.S. is not entirely or even mostly related to the Arab/Israeli conflict. I think it is true that the U.S. seems to be anchor of a political order that many people in the region don't like. But don't underestimate how much of that anger is also related to the Arab/Israeli conflict. That is the most visible symbol of it. I have done a survey just a couple of months ago in which in the Arab world, in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon. In all of the countries but Egypt, 60 percent of the public said the Palestinian issue is the single most important issue to them. Sixty percent of the public. In Egypt, 79 percent of the public said it is the single most important issue to them.
You don't have to look at these as absolute numbers. It just tells you that this is an issue that is on the radar screen. That is why bin Laden specifically focuses on it. Not because he wants to liberate Palestine. He is an ambitious man. In fact he hates Yassir Arafat. He doesn't even want to see a Palestinian state because he wants to see an Islamic state. He is not an ally of the Palestinian people, but he uses it. Why? Because he knows it resonates. He knows it resonates. He knows it works. He uses it. He employs it.
And unless we have a process that raises hope, that revives hope that we're moving forward in that direction, we're going to have a huge problem in winning the hearts and minds. This is not going to be enough. It by no means would resolve it, but in the short term it can do a lot. Between that and an economic process, I think it would be a campaign that could buy time at a minimum, and then certainly the governments in the region are going to have to wake up because they have a problem on their hands that is not related to the U.S. per se. They need to reform politically and economically. But I think we can help them get the ammunition they need.
Thanks.
MR. LINDSAY: Thank you for that excellent analysis, particularly for reminding us that the Arab and Islamic world is not a monolith.
What we're going to do is get microphones. If you could raise your hand, we will give hand you a microphone. Please identify yourself before you ask your question.
Q: Miles Benson, Newhouse Newspapers.
I'd like to ask Mr. Telhami and Mr. O'Hanlon, if it's true that an Arab/Israeli or Palestinian/Israeli settlement would not end the prospect of terrorist attacks on the United States, would it not then also be true that such a settlement would not end terrorist attacks on Israel? And what are the implications for a peace settlement of that type?
Shibley: It's absolutely true that bin Laden certainly, and many of the groups like bin Laden are not doing it for the Palestinian issue, and they don't even accept Israel as a state and they would not be satisfied with an Arab/Israeli peace. Absolutely right.
And then why am I saying what I'm saying about the need for a peace process? For a very simple reason. That these guys have the upper hand because they fight the war for the hearts of the middle, the swing voters, so to speak, in the region. This is a fight for the hearts and minds of the swing voters in the region. And what you need to do is prevent them from becoming popular, prevent them from getting more financial support, prevent them from recruiting more desperate people to join them.
So the war empowers the moderates and enables them to fight their own war against the militants as they need, because the militants are a threat to them as much, even more than they are to the United States. There is, as I said, a conflict to them, and we need, we should look at it not a conflict between the militants and the U.S., but a conflict between two different segments in the Middle East. And we should work to help the right guys win the internal battle. Not win it for them, but work with them, help them win it. And they have to understand that it is a conflict for them and they have to take an issue to it. But we can play a big part of it.
MR. O'HANLON: I have nothing to add really to this kind of analysis. [He knows] it far better than I do.
I would simply say that on the U.S. front even if we get lucky, get Osama bin Laden and a few other people in the near future, we have to proceed not only with the broader effort to stabilize Afghanistan, but also with the homeland security agenda here in the United States. We have to assume that apocalyptic, cataclysmic, largescale terrorism is a thing we have to face in the future and deal with. Regardless of whether al Qaeda is fully intact or not. I think we're going to have to keep doing things like (inaudible) airport security, expanding the size of the Coast Guard, monitoring ports more heavily, making databases more real time and interrelated between CIA, FBI, INS. A lot of the homeland security agenda is going to have to proceed regardless. Some of this it was obviously necessary before September 11th, and it should continue regardless of how well we do against al Qaeda.
Q: Hi. I'm [Ghotoma Curry]. I'm a consultant with the National Endowment for the (inaudible). Formerly I was with the Times of India.
The question is for Mr. O'Hanlon, and a second question for Mr. [Telhami].
I wonder if you've seen today's report in the New York Times about the whole military operation going into a sort of a roadblock because the Northern Alliance at the request of Pakistan has to be held back and are not being allowed to follow the bombing raids that are going on. In fact the bombing raids themselves are concentrating on a largely empty Kabul, whereas the positions where the Taliban is entrenched are being avoided for the time being because the argument is that you can't allow the Northern Alliance to go in and take over Kabul.
Now there is also appearing in that same report that this might be a tactical ploy to delay the whole operation until winter sets in after which it gets delayed anyway. So I wonder what you make of that.
And Professor Telhami, I was wondering what can the United States do in a forced war situation or while in the (inaudible) of the war, to introduce democratic practices, democratic institutions in any of the, in all of the states in that region because it's never been there. And is there a parallel you see to let's say the Cold War situation and the way we worked in Eastern Europe? Is there some kind of an example there that you might sort of replicate in this region? Thank you.
MR. O'HANLON: As to the first question, I have no doubt those reports are true. I consider them now to be authoritative and no longer particularly open to speculation. That's what I was essentially alluding to when I said we are not bombing front line positions on purpose because we don't want to give the Northern Alliance the opportunity to take Kabul. I'm not sure the Northern Alliance could do this on its own right now anyway. I think they need our help in bombing front line Taliban positions.
As I say, I think that waiting is appropriate for at least a short time, and it may even have a military advantage. To the extent you bring the Taliban out to those front lines they're isolating themselves, they're making themselves vulnerable, we may be able to cut them off. So the more Taliban that come out and dig in north of Kabul, the fewer are left in Kabul. I like that for a military trend, at least for a few more days. But I think we're going to have to begin to start attacking the Taliban fairly soon.
It's obvious that we're not trying very hard right now. I went through the DoD press briefings. For the last few days, and I'm sure many people have also gone through them, we've been sending 10 to 12 bombers, 10 to 15 carrier-based jets on attack missions, and attacking six to eight targets. This is nothing. This is not even the scale of a large training exercise at this point.
We have established, we have completed the first phase and we are waiting to start the second phase. We're not trying to speak of it in quite those terms, but that's what's going on. I mean we are waiting for phase two for precisely the reason that you mentioned. We have to make this coalition broader, we have to make the resistance force more representative and more legitimate.
MR. TELHAMI: You really put your finger on a very important question. There is no doubt in my mind that political and economic reform is essential in the Middle East down the road.
One reason, by the way, why militants go underground, why you have opposition jumping on the bandwagon of religious organizations, is that you don't have legitimate outward support for opposition. There's a lot of reasons for people to oppose, but there is no legal political opposition possible that can make a difference. People are driven to social institutions, and the mosque is one of the few available vehicles for political mobilization, so people turn to it to organize, to have an impact on the political process indirectly.
So ultimately there's no question in my mind that we're going to have to have political reform. The question is how.
The dilemma for the U.S. now is very, very huge. Because on the one hand we have a war on terrorism that's going to last for years. And we understand that terrorism thrives in anarchies. This is one reason that we talk about Afghanistan in that way. We need to have a central authority. Where there is anarchy, where there is no central authority, you have terrorism, or at least terrorism can hide more easily. And it's harder to get at it.
So in a sense, what has happened is that the states are emerging as the natural allies in the war on terrorism, and they're the ones who are sensitive to punishment and reward, they're the ones who have incentives to monopolize violence—terrorism is conducted largely by non-state organizations and they pose a threat to states. States are the national ally of the fight on terrorism.
In the process, we want to strengthen them, build alliances with them, give them incentives, and therefore overlook some of the things that they will do domestically. We saw that already a couple of days ago when Arafat confronted an anti-American demonstration in Gaza and a couple of civilians got killed. And we applauded that, by the way. Because we thought this was serious, he's actually taking the militants on.
So therefore there is even incentives to be even more centralized, more repressive, so to speak, in this war. That is a problem. What is the incentive, what are the levers that the U.S. can have if in fact we envision the war going to go on for years. We say at the end of the war... Maybe at the end of the war against al Qaeda or Afghanistan. But we're envisioning this as a long term fight that requires a huge cooperation, collaboration of governments over a long period of time.
So what is the incentive that we have? In my judgment there are two things where we can make a difference, even though we can't really pressure them directly and force them to reform. Our lever will be small.
One is we have to express who we are. That is our values have to be up front, and on human rights we have to speak out, no matter what the outcome is. At least we empower people from within who will speak out and use our rhetoric and therefore just take positions, even if we don't directly force governments to do this or that, but take positions that are consistent with our own democratic values and values of human rights.
Second, and I think the more important point, is the easier way, difficult as it is, is to force economic reform. That would require transparency. That is an issue that resonates both with governments and the public. And ultimately if you look at the trends historically, political reform is connected to economic reform. It's an area that is easier for us to focus on politically, and actually an area that requires immediate attention to inspire the public. And where you have economic reform you have political form following, and that's the way I would proceed.
Q: [Heinlich Kreitz], I'm the (inaudible) Center. I have a question to Mr. O'Hanlon and others can comment about it.
Given the fact that there are so many different factions, so many different ethnic groups within Afghanistan, and given the fact there are so many countries in the region heavily interested in Afghanistan including (inaudible) powers, would it help to think about the peace process, to think about a nation building process along the lines of the [Cambodians]?
MR. O'HANLON: Catharin Dalpino and Fiona Hill made this point recently in the Financial Times, and I find it compelling. I don't have the ability, I'm not an expert on Afghanistan who can detail how to piece together the sort of umbrella we need, but I think what you need is there are two minimal requirements. You need peace. If you have general peace and stability no country in the region's going to have a major complaint. There aren't any countries that have, someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know if there's any country that has fundamental ambition to take land of Afghanistan or to see a radical regime wage a broader crusade where the Taliban arguably would if it could, I don't think the incentives of Iran or Pakistan or Uzbekistan or Tajikistan or anyone else, are like that. I think they simply... They could all be content with a broad government that simply stabilized the country. That's premise one.
Premise two, of course, is it does have to be broad. And I think therefore the effort is appropriate and we're all I think very proud that our former colleague Richard Haass is part of that process of trying to cobble together the coalition. It's absolutely essential. There's no way to guarantee it's going to work. I think some kind of an umbrella structure is the natural way to go, with a fair amount of regional autonomy below it, and the international community being engaged at multiple levels in the longer term state building process, both at that umbrella level and also at the regional level to give everyone a stake in the new government. But beyond that I'm not really qualified to go.
MS. COHEN: I would just add that on Cambodia, and I haven't studied this in great depth, but there's certainly been a lot of reservations about the Cambodian experience and the fact that the process was hijacked, really, when Hunsen took over, and that human rights issues, for example, and democratization issues were not given as strong a push as could have been by the UN. So that is the lesson to at least study and look at and see.
The other point I would make is that there must be attention to including civil society inclusion in nation building. Very often you go toward the political leaders, but there's a lot to be gained from local groups, local community groups, and they're often left out of the process. Yet they're the grass roots needed to build up the systems of whatever rule of law, adjustments or equity in the system, so it's very important that they be very much brought in. Even if there are no clearly established organizations, there are people and there are networks that have to be brought into the process.
MR. LINDSAY: Thank you, Roberta.
Let me emphasize a point that Mike made and that is that the piece that Catharin Dalpino and Fiona Hill wrote is available on the Brookings web site www.brookings.edu/terrorism. There's a whole list of the commentary that Brookings scholars have produced over the last several weeks. (inaudible)
I would add to your question, (inaudible) number one nation building or stabilization of future governments is a term of art. (inaudible) It's extraordinarily difficult in other another country to do, and our track record in doing it is at best spotty.
I would also say Mike is quite right that everybody in the region probably has an interest in a stable Afghanistan. With no irredentist claim to territory. The problem is the vision of Iran, the vision that Pakistan, the vision that Russia has of what constitutes an acceptable, non-threatening Afghanistan government is widely different. We're trying to sort that out. And while I would like to think that we would all come together as reasonable people, to do what's best for the people of Afghanistan, the track record of human history suggests that each of those countries is going to try to push the process to the fora of their own interests and the disfavor of their potential adversaries, which greatly complicates an already complex situation.
A final point, it's very important to emphasize that in talking about nation building, it's something far more challenging than feeding people and teaching them how to feed themselves. We're talking about trying to create a political order.
We're very good at teaching them how to feed themselves, we've had a lot of success in doing that, producing a stable politicalorder is another challenge.
Q: Mike Neeas, with (inaudible). I have a question for Mr. Telhami.
Last Sunday President Bush announced the launch of the airstrikes, and at that time he said the United States is going to drop not only bombs, but food as well, and he called it humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan. But the serious food shortage in Afghanistan didn't start all of a sudden last Sunday, and President Bush has not, as far as I know, ordered to increase the food aid to the sub-Saharan area of African countries so everybody I think is sure that this is a political aid.
This rhetoric apparently attracted a lot of support domestically, in the United States, according to the opinion polls. My question is, does this kind of rhetoric add to the anger among the Muslim people?
MR. TELHAMI: No. I think we have to understand there are some people in the Middle East we will never win. That's okay. That's just a fact of life. There is a lot of mistrust and everything the U.S. will do will be seen to be an instrumental act. But I think it's the right thing to do nonetheless, for two reasons.
One is it's right as a moral issue, regardless of what else we should be doing, it is the right thing to do morally.
Number two, it does work with a lot of people. It does help those moderates who want additional ammunition in their arguments with the militants. It does give them additional elements to create the separation that they want to separate intellectually. And I think therefore it's worthwhile. Even with all its failings. Obviously we've heard from Roberta how difficult it is and how huge the task is, and I think we have to take it more seriously than we have.
Mike made a lot of suggestions. I don't really know about the logistics, but I do think that we have to take it very seriously. We have to take it very seriously for its own sake, but we have to take it very serious instrumentally, even aside from public opinion.
Remember, you have starving millions who are homeless. Think about what our war on terrorism is all about. That's all I would say.
MS. COHEN: I just wanted to say that in some ways I think the U.S. is sort of damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. In this case, you do have a convergence to political and military goals with humanitarian concerns. So why begrudge the United States because they're going to drop food or try to help in a humanitarian way? Certainly there is a political element behind it, but that shouldn't stop the benefit of the aid. I think it's unrealistic to think of aid as just something that exists in a vacuum. It's generally given in a political context.
I would just add that I was reading the Senate hearings the other day on the aid, and as long as Senators keep being concerned about whether the aid comes with some paper in the local language to show it's from the United States of America, the political aspects underscored But basically I frankly welcome US aid. I think it would be much worse if we didn't have air drops.
Q: (inaudible) I would like to pose a question to Mike.
There might be a scenario that during the second phase of the military campaign the Taliban would give up the big cities without fierce fighting and flee to mountains and wait for a better chance to wage war against the new government from the mountains. Probably that might be a third phase.
If that happened, what could or should be the strategy in fighting that for the coalition?
MR. O'HANLON: I think you're probably right about mapping out the strategy. It's not entirely bad though. The Taliban does at the moment use pickup trucks and other vehicles (inaudible). You can't do that very easily from the mountains. You have to have access to fuel. Many of these areas are not going to be favorable in terms of terrain for those kinds of vehicles. The Taliban is going to have to revert back to being a true guerrilla force, and it really hasn't been for awhile. So it's going to be a challenge for them, too. I just wanted to say that to begin.
But having said that, it's going to be a big challenge for us. To win control over this size territory is going to require, as I said earlier, probably at least 100,000 forces on the part of the Afghan resistance and the former coalition government. That number is very moderate estimate based on traditional measures of military adequacy for a certain size population, certain size area. Even once you have that number of course you've got to go out and do the hard work and the bloody work of sweeping areas, of trying to ferret out the guerrillas, and it's going to take quite a bit of effort.
The good news is that I think you can live with that kind of protracted struggle. It's not going to mean you have any one decisive moment. It's not going to mean that al Qaeda is finally and fully expelled at any given moment. It's not going to mean we get our hands on bin Laden and all his top lieutenants necessarily. But it will mean that we will help the resistance coalition to really muster its units together and expand its military. It can happen; the odds are on our side. And al Qaeda will be increasingly on the defensive. The Taliban will be increasingly unable to control much land.
So I like the overall [trend] provided that we get the government to work together as a broad coalition to get back to the central point, and that's the hardest part of all.
Q: John Parker of The Economist. A question to Professor Telhami.
I know everyone says that no one in the region believes a word anyone in America says, but I just wondered if there were a couple of sort of more direct things that could be done. For example, do you think there's any role for Muslim leaders from the United States itself, have they spoken out in the way that you think would be helpful? And people have made references to the Cold War. There's been nothing like the sort of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty actions in the region. Do you think, for example, kind of setting up a rival blow to zero, or much greater involvement of sort of Voice of America in Arabic, would that help?
MR. TELHAMI: I think you put your finger on something very important. Actually, I wrote about it much over the past year before this strike. The fact that there has not been a people-to-people dialogue between the U.S. and the Middle East. The U.S. is seen through the prism of very narrow policies and very narrow television programs. Dallas seems to be representative of the social life of America.
There is a lot of misconception of what America is about or what America stands for. There are lots that people love about America. People aspire to be like America in some ways. People will pay money to get a visa to come to America or live in America. So even as they dislike America's policies, there's a lot of contradiction in the region.
I think what we have failed to do publicly, one is we have failed to display a degree of empathy. That's why you have the sense of people saying you don't care about our lives, you don't care about Arab and Muslim lives. We've failed to... Even through our rhetoric or policies or statements over the years, a level of empathy. People sometimes want empathy even more than action. It resonates a lot, particularly people who are (inaudible). That's why politicians go to funerals a lot. They understand. Even when people understand it's a (inaudible) thing, you'd be amazed to know how effective it is, and people remember who attended their parents' funeral or something like that.
It's something that matters a lot and we haven't done it.
Second, we haven't done enough (inaudible) public performance. We don't have many people who speak the language and know the culture, people who can identify themselves with Americans—they're all foreigners. There's not enough involvement of Arab Americans in Muslim (inaudible), in the public diplomacy and in the high level diplomacy. There's a huge absence in the bureaucracy of Muslim and Arab Americans who would represent America, who would speak as Americans.
One of the battles that is being waged now is actually by Arab and Muslim American organizations who are totally focusing on their American identity and speaking on television in the region against the militants as Americans, but also as Muslims and Arabs. They're having actually an impact.
There's been a failing of reaching different segments of society. When American leaders or even academics or State Department officials go to the Middle East, they go to talk to the narrow groups that are either the governments themselves or the business people associated with them. Rather than going to universities and speaking and having a dialogue, you need more exchanges, you need more information sharing.
I think this is in a way a time to think about those kinds of programs. I was in the Senate the last couple of days talking with a number of Senate leaders who themselves are actually speaking of that (inaudible) and they understand the need to try to bolster the relation at that level. But there's definitely a huge vacuum there.
Q: (inaudible) ...the last couple of years, (inaudible)... There's been a lot of back and forth about how much money we required and we've already gotten a fair amount and (inaudible)...
MR. O'HANLON: I'll try to throw out a couple of dollar numbers in the spirit of speculation, I hope that's understood.
I think the right level of military effort vis-a-vis Afghanistan itself is going to be in the broad neighborhood of a billion dollars a month, based on the assumption that you need 20,000 to 30,000 Americans and that it is obviously a difficult area to operate in, and you also have humanitarian costs above and beyond that. So I would expect that would be roughly the number for the Afghanistan specific part, a billion dollars a month.
Secondly, there is a broader political question of how much the post-September 11th world simply upped the defense base line. We all know, we've all heard about opening up the lock boxes, throwing away the key, and that's no longer a political requirement to keep locked. I would think that the higher level of defense spending that we're seeing in 2001 and 2002 will be the new base line. Everything will now be at a higher plateau starting with that new baseline in the future.
I'm not sure that increases will continue, but I think that will be a new higher plateau. That new higher plateau will remain even after this set of military operations is over. And an additional $5 to $10 billion a year more for homeland security will be spent as well, mostly outside the defense budget.
That's a second number, that higher plateau.
My third number I'll just throw this out quickly and be done. If you look to a broader war against terrorism, we're probably talking about isolated terrorist sites. You've got the Philippine Islands, those sorts of things. To do those sorts of things, again, will cost at the level of hundreds of millions a month, maybe up to a billion dollars a month.
But if you escalate this, and some people have proposed we attack other states, whether it be for limited bombing or an all-out war against Iraq, obviously there could be a whole spectrum of possibilities. But if we are serious that Saddam Hussein not be left in power, given possible ties to al Qaeda, not proven but potential, then I think you have to take the prospect of Desert Storm II and Desert Storm II being close to half a million American troops marching on Baghdad, a $100 billion operation to depose Saddam, probably 10,000 Americans killed in action in the process, possible Iraqi use of chemical and biological agents, and possible Iraqi decision to give such weapons to al Qaeda at that point. Then you're talking about a longer term occupation. You don't just depose somebody and walk away. If you're going to march on Baghdad, you've got to do state building there as well. You're going to have probably a couple of hundred thousand troops for several years. You're looking
I don't think we're going to necessarily do that, but when I think of the potential war against Iraq, we'll have to get serious if we're going to do it.
MR. TELHAMI: By the way, just a footnote on the Iraq connection, there may be a lot of reasons to confront Saddam Hussein and to contemplate how to deal with it.
There is a recruitment (inaudible) to recruit people (inaudible). The target shows the King of Saudi Arabia and here is Kuwait as agents of the U.S. and (inaudible), and it also shows Saddam Hussein as a (inaudible) worshiper of God and (inaudible) soldiers (inaudible).
Certainly at least ideologically and in their own recruitment states, they target things. And whether there is (inaudible), I don't know what the evidence is or lack thereof, but it is interesting at least that ideologically (inaudible).
MR. LINDSAY: Again, in 1990 when Iraq was invading Kuwait, bin Laden offered to fight against the Iraqis. Saddam Hussein is a secularist. There's a great deal of hatred and bad blood there. But of course enemies that didn't cooperate before can cooperate when their interests coincide.
I want to thank everybody for coming today. I especially want to thank my panelists for speaking. We'll have more next week.
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