The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps (33 page)

Mr. Woolsey:

Oh, I don’t think a preemptive strike alone is going to get the job done of taking out either Iran’s nuclear program or the instruments of power of the state. I think it would have to be an air campaign. This is not like 1981 when the Israelis attacked the Osirak reactor. They took out one reactor and they stopped the Iraqi nuclear program for years.
In moving against Iran, we would perhaps not have to go in on the ground, but I think we would have to have a sustained air campaign against their air defenses, their nuclear weapons program, the instruments of power of the state such as the Revolutionary Guard, and on and on. We can’t just drop one set of bombs and think we’re going to accomplish anything.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope we could bring about a regime change with lots of other types of pressure of the sort we’ve discussed. But if it does come to that, we shouldn’t think we can just launch a strike and get anything particularly useful done.

MDE:

Can the State of Israel—if Israel reaches the point where they feel like they have no other options—are they capable of doing the job?

Mr. Woolsey:

It’s much harder for them because if I’m right, and it requires an air campaign rather than just a strike, they are going to need a lot more tankers and air surveillance, and a lot more assets than they have. They’re a superb air force, but they’re a relatively small one. And Iran is a lot further away from them than Iraq. So fueling their aircraft and getting ordinates on target—one doesn’t want to say they couldn’t do it. The Israelis are remarkably effective soldiers and airmen. But it would be really a very difficult operation if they were trying to win a sustained air campaign.

MDE:

You hear over and over from Iran that they believe that America isn’t going to do a thing.

Mr. Woolsey:

Well, the Iranians have more reason than that to doubt our will. They seized our hostages in ’79, and we had an ineffective rescue operation. And then we tied yellow ribbons around trees. In ’83, through Hezbollah, they blew up our embassy and our marine barracks in Lebanon, and we left. The ’80s, for various Iranian and terrorist attacks, we basically sent lawyers. We treated it as a matter of law enforcement. We prosecuted a few of them. President Reagan did attack Libya that one time.
Then in ’91, President Bush, the forty-first president, had half a million troops in Iraq. We’d encouraged the Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Saddam. They were succeeding in fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. And we stopped and stood aside and effectively invited Saddam to move against them and watched while they were massacred. And then we left—but not completely. We had an air-protected area in the north.
In ’93, Saddam tries to kill former President Bush in Kuwait with a bomb. And President Clinton launches two-dozen cruise missiles against an Iraqi intelligence headquarters in the middle of the night so it would be empty, and has his secretary of state explain that we did it in the middle of the night so there wouldn’t be anyone there. And I don’t know what we had against Iraqi cleaning women and night watchmen, but I would not have called that an effective response.
In ’93, we had Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu, and we left. And then the ’90s, with a reserve facility in Saudi Arabia and the East African embassies and Khobar Towers and the
Cole.
And up until 9/11, we basically did what we did in the ’80s. We ran this as a law enforcement operation and tried to catch a few terrorists and put them in prison, which doesn’t have much effect at all on religious fanatics who’d really just as soon either go to prison or die—best of all, die.
So if the Iranians or, for that matter, the Baathists in Iraq, look back at the history of the last quarter-of-a-century-plus, I think that it’s understandable how they got themselves into the mode of thinking that we’re paper tigers. The most dangerous thing in the world in dealing with these religious fanatic totalitarians is to talk big and then not follow through. Teddy Roosevelt had it right: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

MDE:

Are we winning the war on terrorism? And if we’re not winning it, what can we do to win it?

Mr. Woolsey:

John Lehman had an excellent piece recently in the Washington Post
analyzing this question.
²
And I would say there are some huge gaps. We’ve done well with some aspects of law enforcement and working with our immigrant communities here in the U.S., but I don’t think the reorganizations of intelligence or the FBI have done much to help us so far.
We achieved brilliant initial victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq with a minimum of military force, and then we didn’t plan in either case adequately for the long haul. And we’re having difficulties in Afghanistan and big difficulties in Iraq because of that: insufficient military police, insufficient nation-building, insufficient money for immediate projects to improve the water and sewage and electricity, and so forth.
And in this country, as the Lehman article points out, about 80 percent of the mosques and religious institutes are funded by the Saudis. They’re Wahabists, essentially. Certainly that’s not true of 80 percent of American Muslims. But the institutions are funded by the Wahabites, and they are fanatics.
So we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a serious problem. We have problems in our prisons. We’ve got problems with some of our Muslim chaplains in the armed forces. We have not figured out that we can’t open the gates to the Wahabites and let them structure—either through the organizations they fund or their mosques or anything else—let them structure in the West what it means to be Muslim. This would be like turning over Christianity to Torquemada.
We have got to find some way to work with the hundreds of millions of good and decent Muslims in the world who don’t want to be terrorists, don’t even like terrorists—Sufis and others—and figure out a way to make common cause with them so they can’t be frightened into silence the way the Wahabites and their allies—people like Al Qaeda—are. Now Wahabites and Al Qaeda hate each other. They kill each other. They’re sort of like the Trotskyites and the Stalinists in the ’20s and ’30s. But their underlying views are effectively the same. They’re essentially genocidal with respect to Shiites, Jews, homosexuals, and apostates, and terribly repressive of everybody else, including, in particular, women.

MDE:

Many describe this as a potential World War. Some call it World War III or IV. Is this, in essence, a World War? And what do these individuals have in common?

Mr. Woolsey:

Well, I borrowed a term from my friend Elliot Abrams, who wrote a piece right after 9/11 calling this war World War IV, saying that essentially World War III was the Cold War and this had some things in common with the Cold War. It was going to be very long, the ideological elements, and so forth. But I stopped talking about World War because when people hear World War, they tend to think of World War I and II—and they tend to think of Gallipoli, or Iwo Jima, or something that’s quick and very, very violent. Newt Gingrich is now back pushing World War III.
There’s no really great term to define this. A Global War on Terror, or Terrorism, is really, I think, a bad phrase. We didn’t call World War II in the Pacific a Global War on Kamikazes. Terrorism is a tactic—it’s a terrible tactic—but it’s a tactic. We’ve got much bigger problems than terrorism. And I think we, in using a phrase like “Islamic Fascist,” or “Islamic Fascists,” I think the president was coming closer to an accurate description of what we’re fighting. Like I say, I prefer “Islamic Nazis.”
And what do they have in common? Ahmadinejad and Mesbah Yazdi on the one hand—on the Shiite side—and Wahabites and Al Qaeda on the other? What they have in common is a passionate belief that they are the instruments of Allah’s will; that infidels deserve at best to be put into a subservient position and in many cases killed; that there is no reasonable justification at all. Wahabist fatwa
s
are very clear about this in even working with, or dealing with, infidels at all—that in Ahmadinejad’s and Mesbah Yazdi’s case, they are working to get the Mahdi to return so they can hopefully, from their point of view, get the world to end as quickly as possible.
From the Wahabists’ and Al Qaeda’s point of view, they want to get the United States and all Western entities, including Israel, as they would see it, out of the Middle East. And then after they establish a caliphate—a union of mosque and state, a totalitarian structure, essentially a theocracy—to govern the Arab world, then the Muslim world, then the part of the world like Spain that was once Muslim but isn’t anymore, and then finally the whole world. That’s the way things should go from their point of view. So I’d say what they have in common is that they’re theocratic, totalitarian, and anti-Semitic genocidal fanatics.

MDE:

Do you feel like we have an effective plan to win the war?

Gen. Shelton:

I think we’ve got a good plan. Could it be better? Yes, it could be. I do not think that right now we are using as effectively as we could all the tools in our kitbag, so to speak, to go after the terrorists. We’re using the political tools. We’re using the diplomatic tools to a degree. We certainly are using the military big-time right now. But when you look at the economic and, in particular, the informational tools, there’s room for improvement—considerable room.
This is a war of ideas that we’re in today. It’s an ideological war as much as it is a shooting war—and I don’t think our program is that effective and that we can do it alone. It would require an informational war that is carried out in concert with our friends and allies around the globe. We do a lot of good around the world, but yet what, for the most part, gets attention in a lot of these third world countries, so to speak, undeveloped nations, are the bad things that are presented to them by the radicals and by the fundamentalists. So we really need a more effective campaign to show them the good things that are coming about as a result of not only America’s efforts but also our friends and allies that are in this war with us.

MDE:

There are some that have said that we have begun to move away to some degree from our position of not negotiating with terrorists. Do you feel like in our relationship with Iran, the way that it’s developing, that any of that has happened?

Gen. Shelton:

For sure. I am quite concerned that we seem to want it both ways with Iran. We have elements in Washington, as an example, who are convinced, I believe, that we need to handle them with kid gloves because there’s such a large number of the Iranian people that really like the United States and would like to see the regime that’s in power—the more fundamental or more radical regimes. But those are the people with guns and those are the people that are ruling the nation-state of Iran right now, and I do believe we’ve handled them with kid gloves.
For example, direct traces by the FBI to the Khobar Towers incident that killed and wounded hundreds of U.S. airmen—they’ve yet to pay a price for it. They should have. There’s a linkage, I believe, to just about every terrorist activity that’s gone on that can be—that you can show—goes back to Iran and their support—or their direct involvement, one of the two—with those efforts agains America and against our friends and allies.

MDE:

In light of everything, where is the outrage? With the knowledge of how Iran has been tied to so many activities, terrorist activities, where is the outrage? Why are we opening doors in allowing Iranian leaders to come over and to speak at the UN, and to speak at Harvard, as Khatami did this last weekend?

Gen. Shelton:

Well, of course, when you talk about the UN, you’re talking about all the nations that are members having a right to come to America and to visit the UN and participate in UN activities. And then you find more liberal universities in America that would invite the president of Iran to come over and make speeches at their university, et cetera, and I wouldn’t say that that’s all bad.
I’m not opposed to freedom of speech and opposing opinions, but what I am more concerned about is turning a blind eye as a government to the movements that are going on and the support of terrorism that is coming out of Iran in almost every aspect—almost every aspect—of violence that has been directed against the U.S. in recent times.
I mean, if you look back at Bosnia and Kosovo and you look at the Khobar Towers and Afghanistan, Iraq—there are ties into Iran that can’t be denied, and we shouldn’t let them off the hook. They are supporting terrorism to a large degree, and yet because we have a military that is committed very heavily right now, we seem to want to just kind of turn the other way, and so they get away with it.

MDE:

One could argue that the threats that Osama bin Laden made, which were happening long before 9/11, were maybe not taken as seriously as they should have been. How might you compare the threats of Osama bin Laden with that of the Iranian president, and how seriously should we be taking this?

Gen. Shelton:

I think you have to take any threat that is made against America and against America’s citizens or against our friends and allies around the world—I think you’ve got to take them all serious. I think you treat them both the same and you deal with both of them the same. Now I would tell you that, you know, before 9/11, there was a considerable effort made to go after Osama bin Laden, to capture or kill—and I emphasize the word
kill
—this individual because of the ills that he had already perpetrated against America and against our men and women and against our warships, et cetera.
But in the same breath, I’d have to tell you the guy’s pretty good at avoiding them. He does all the right things. He knows how to survive. He’s a survivor, and it’s because he does what he has to do in order to survive. The result of that is he’s not nearly as effective as he would have been, but still, our efforts have to be, I think, to continue to go after him and all of his lieutenants—to more or less chop the head off of the snake and that outfit. Al Qaeda is a snake.

MDE:

James Woolsey has said that we’ve treated the war on terrorism to some degree over the years as more of a law enforcement problem. You know, what’s your opinion of that?

Gen. Shelton:

Well, I think probably that analogy to law enforcement is the fact that they’re not a good military target. They are more like a law enforcement target. Fighting terrorism is more akin to fighting organized crime. You want to decapitate them for sure. You want to deny them their sanctuaries for sure. But you also want to go after their economics, their base of support. You want to do everything politically and diplomatically that you can.
Unlike a military organization, they don’t have tanks and airplanes and infrastructure that you can attack and bomb and whatever. So you’ve got to go after individuals, and in that regard it’s more like fighting crime than it is going after military. But again, the military is an integral piece of it, and in support of the FBI or in support of the CIA, it’s a very potent piece of it—but it’s only a piece and, to some degree, a relatively small piece….

MDE:

In our current confrontation with Iran, who would you really say at this point is winning?

Gen. Shelton:

You know, the confrontation with Iran, I think to some degree, you’d have to say, since there is no open conflict between the two nations, that the Iranians are getting away with a lot more than they should be allowed to get away with. Their continuous pursuit of a nuclear weapon even in the face of an international community telling them to stop, their resistance to do that, their continuous support of terrorism as the world’s largest exporter of terrorism resources, advisors, et cetera, tells me that they’re getting away with a lot that they should not be getting away with, and therefore I have to put them in a “win column” because they’re doing a lot more than they should be allowed to do against the international community and against America….

MDE:

You know, as far as talking about whether or not Iran is winning or losing in this confrontation, what do you think that their potential—what their mentality is or opinion—regarding who’s winning or losing?

Gen. Shelton:

I’d say that’s a good question. It’s a tough question. I think from the Iranian standpoint right now in their minds, they think they’re winning, and I think they feel like they’re winning because they have been able to get away with attacks on Khobar Towers. They’ve been able to get away with support of the radicals and fundamentalists without—you know, through both resources as well as through advisors—without having their hand called at it. They have continued to defy the UN as they pursue nuclear power, and they keep getting warnings, and it’s somewhat reminiscent of the warnings that the Taliban were getting to stop supporting Al Qaeda or they were going to pay the price. But they didn’t stop until 9/11, and we went in and took out the Taliban. So I think Iran is in the same seat right now, and in their minds they’re doing very well.

MDE:

I think there are examples of where we have gone in and addressed it fully and completely, like taking out the Taliban. You can possibly come up with other examples where we have stepped out of the situation and maybe didn’t respond as fully. Do you feel like Iran has a reason to believe that America doesn’t have the will to act and to truly take military action against them?

Gen. Shelton:

Well, if I were sitting in Iran right now with my Iranian hat on and I had defied America, if I had defied the UN inc my pursuit of a nuclear weapon—nuclear power for sure; potentially a nuclear weapon—if I had continued to provide the resources, the wherewithal, for a lot of the activities being directed against America around the world and was not having my hand called at it, I would think that I’m doing pretty well. I’m walking that fine line the way I’ve stayed just outside enough to, offering enough provocation to America to come at me directly, and yet I’m getting away with an awful lot in the process and I’m damaging, probably, their self-esteem. But I’m damaging their reputation for sure.

MDE:

When you look at the various alternatives that we have in relationship to Iran, compare the ease or difficulty with which we can potentially do an invasion versus actually make peace. You know, which do you think is potentially the easier road? Do you think that it’s impossible to make peace, or do you think the invasion is sort of a hopeless route as well? Or—you know, compare the two.

Gen. Shelton:

I think when you look at Iran, you have to put it in the context of how would you go about either one. How would you go about waging war against them? How would you go about pursuing peace with the greatest degree of leverage in your favor? And in my opinion, that is in an international environment. It is either through a coalition of United Nations partners or United Nations efforts or a coalition of European partners that you pursue peace.
And certainly if you want to—if you are going to go in and take out their nuclear capability—if it’s going to become an outright shooting war between Iran and whoever starts the invasion—it’s in America’s best interest to use the international community that is also being rebuffed by the Iranians, not just America, and form a coalition. Use those political and diplomatic tools that I talked about. Get that coalition put together just like we did in Desert Storm—Desert Shield/Desert Storm—and use that coalition either to bring pressure against them to settle peacefully and accept a UN supervision of their nuclear development, or use them to go in and take it and do whatever you feel you need to do militarily that the international community feels is necessary.

MDE:

If we actually do go in after Ahmadinejad, what would the first strike look like? What steps might actually have to be taken?

Gen. Shelton:

You know, I would not want to speculate on that. I am too knowledgeable, you might say, of what some of the plans for dealing with the Iranians are if we had to deal with them—in waging war. But I would only say that I would hope that unlike some of the plans that we’ve got, that for the most part have been operational plans that have been developed by America, that we would take the time to develop those same types of plans with partners, with a coalition. And I think, needless to say, it should be overwhelming. It should be fast and with a follow-up plan that says, “Here’s how we’re going to deal with it in Phase 4,” so to speak, unlike what we did when we went into Iraq.

MDE:

Can you speak to the advantages or disadvantages of pursuing a regime change?

Gen. Shelton:

I don’t think there’s any question that if it came down to the decision that we’re going to go into Iran and we’re going to have a regime change, hopefully, we’d be able to do that in an international—with an international force. I think that’s extremely important because of the perception throughout the Middle East that America is there just for the oil. We’re not there just for the oil, as all of us know. We’re there to try to provide a peaceful and stable environment in a part of the world in vital national interest to the United States.
And so if you’ve elected to go into Iran, you want to do it as part of an international force. After all, they’re defying the international community now with their nuclear program—not just America but the international—the UN—and, therefore, it should be the UN that makes that decision. And then in terms of what you’re going to do once you go in, I think you’re going to replace the regime. They’ve got to come out. They’ve been uncooperative. They have resulted in you having to go to war.
So consequently, you need to think through right upfront, who have we got? Who’s in the wings? Who are the moderates in the country right now that you could then reach out to once you had removed that regime—and re-establish them as the central government and a plan to follow on—to help them get back on their feet with the new leadership in that country?
Needless to say, it’s always easier to get in than it is to get out. We’ve learned that time and time again. But it’s a lot easier to get out if you’ve got a good plan going in for transitioning into the nation-building aspect of it, and from that a withdrawal plan to pull all of your forces out or remain—a small contingent that stays as part of an international force until the new government is fully stood up and ready to maintain peace and security themselves.