Dempsey Explains Danger Posed By Extremist Groups

By Claudette Roulo

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

ASPEN, Colo., July 24, 2014 – It's important to recognize that the various religious extremist groups that threaten the United States do not share the same ideologies, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here today.

"Some of them are opportunistic, some of them seek to establish a sense of political Islam and theocracy under sharia law, and some of them are apocalyptic, actually, meaning they have such a world view that it becomes of a magnitude that makes them, I think, especially dangerous," Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum.

The group known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seeks a sense of religious legitimacy, he said. Its leaders believe they are the heirs to the Islamic caliphate that Muslims believe began with the prophet Muhammad.

"They can only sustain that religious legitimacy if they continue to succeed," Dempsey said. "So this is not a group that can go halfway. It has to keep moving toward its ultimate end-of-days, apocalyptic narrative or it will lose support, because it loses religious legitimacy."

ISIS must be contained, then disrupted and, ultimately, defeated, the chairman said.

"What makes it very hard is that ultimate defeat has to come from within the Sunni population," he said. Their defeat can be enabled and assisted by the United States, Dempsey said, but their end will come about only when moderate Sunnis of the region, and the world, reject them.

The group is very dangerous, he said. "They will employ whatever tactics they have to employ," the chairman added, noting that they have succeeded through infiltration and misinformation and by preying upon a "youth bulge" and disenfranchised populations in parts of the world that aren't led by inclusive governments.

"And then they just pop up one day, and you have to deal with them," Dempsey said. "And you deal with them by either allowing them their way or suffering the consequences."

The nation must take a long view in dealing with ISIL in particular, but also in dealing with many similar organizations that are filling voids where governments are absent or failing, the chairman said.

"This isn't about us. … This very much has to have the support of the government in Baghdad," he explained, adding that it remains to be seen whether the nation has a credible partner in the re-formed Iraqi government.

ISIL isn’t a unified force in Iraq, Dempsey said, but rather is a syndicate of several disenfranchised Sunni groups willing to work with ISIL “because they’re winning.”

“When you are disenfranchised and believing that the government in Baghdad will never be inclusive and never allow you to be part of the government, you’ll back a winner until that winner is contained,” the chairman said.

The collapse of the Iraqi military is representative of this disenfranchisement, he said. They were overcome because their soldiers concluded that their future did not lie with the government in Baghdad, Dempsey said.

“Look, why do any of us in uniform stand and fight?” he asked. “You know, it’s not just because were wear the uniform. We stand and fight because we believe in what we stand and fight for. … If we were ever placed in a position where you didn’t believe what you were fighting for, you know, you wouldn’t see the kind of military you have in the United States today.”

The problem of ISIL isn’t isolated to Iraq, he said. The border between Iraq and Syria has ceased to exist, Dempsey explained. In addition, Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq are uniquely positioned to pressure ISIL, he noted.

“It has to be a partnership, a coalition, and we have to build partners who can reject it from inside out,” the chairman said.

“The immediate task is to determine whether Iraq has a political future, because if Iraq has a political future, then we will work through Iraq, among others, to deal with the ISIL threat,” Dempsey said. “If Iraq does not have a political future as an inclusive unity government, then we’re going to have to find other partners.”

Odierno: Information, Instability Travel at Similar Speeds

By Claudette Roulo

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

ASPEN, Colo., July 24, 2014 – As the world has become more interconnected and information travels faster than ever before, it also has become more unpredictable and dangerous, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said here last night.

“People now understand more about what other people might have, what they might want, how much control they want -- they want a say in their government -- and so what you're seeing is people have opinions and rise up through the ranks to challenge long-term hegemony that in many places is going on,” he said.

That interconnectivity is particularly evident in the Middle East, Odierno told the audience at the first day of the Aspen Security Forum.

“One thing I've learned over the last 10 to 15 years is that the main thing you’ve got to figure out is why is something happening [in the Middle East], and when you dig into the why, the interconnection is incredible,” the general said. “The second-, third-, fourth- [and] fifth-order effects compound as you go forward.”

A second factor contributing to international instability is a shift away from the bipolarity of the Cold War toward a rise in regional powers, he said.

“I've characterized it as clearly the most uncertain time that I can remember in the 38 years that I've been [in the Army],” Odierno said. “I won't say it's the most dangerous, but it's certainly the most uncertain and most unpredictable, and that makes it dangerous.”

Both of these factors are on display in Iraq, he told the audience.

The country was going in the right direction when the United States left in 2011, but Iraqi leaders overestimated the progress made by their military and government institutions, said the general, who led the 4th Infantry Division in the first year of the Iraq War and later commanded coalition ground forces there before serving for two years as commander of all coalition forces in Iraq. The lack of a status-of-forces agreement between the United States and Iraq after the war limited the possibilities for military-to-military relationships, Odierno added.

The problem in Iraq was not the training of the Iraqi security forces, he said, although their ability to sustain their own training was “disappointing.” The problem was a lack of confidence, trust and loyalty between troops and their leaders because of politicization of Iraq’s military leadership, the general said.

“Leaders were changed out,” he explained. “Many of them weren't qualified. There was some sectarian nature to the changes that were made.”

Members of the Iraqi security forces were unwilling to fight for a government that they perceived as not standing up for all the different peoples of Iraq, Odierno said. “So when they were challenged,” he added, “you saw them very quickly fade away.”

But military power isn’t enough to solve the problems in Iraq, or elsewhere in the Middle East for that matter, he said.

"The lesson here is [that] you've got to stand up an institution," Odierno said. And that includes not just a military, but also a functioning government, he noted.

Iraq will continue to disintegrate if the unity government doesn’t re-form, the general said.

"The good thing about this is they are in the process of forming a new government,” he said. “They just had an election, [and] nobody had a majority. … The hope is that the government that would come out would be one that clearly supports a unity government as we go forward.

“Will that solve the problem?” he added. “My guess is not completely. But that's the first step.”

Iraq Must Do Its Heavy Lifting, Pentagon Official Says

By Terri Moon Cronk

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2014 – Though the United States must protect its people and is helping Iraq to face the threat posed by the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, it is up to Iraq to do the heavy lifting, a senior Defense Department official said today.

Elissa Slotkin, performing the duties of the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the United States has a vital national security interest to ensure Iraq and other countries don’t become safe havens for terrorists who could threaten the U.S. homeland, its citizens or interests abroad, or its partners and allies.

The immediate goals are to protect American people and property in Iraq, gain a better understanding of how the United States might train, advise and assist Iraqi security forces as necessary, and expand the nation’s understanding of ISIL intelligence, Slotkin said.

All three factors are critical, she said, to any future U.S. strategy involving Iraq, and the nation has three measures in the strategy:

-- The United States added forces to protect its people in Iraq. “The safety of U.S. citizens and personnel throughout Iraq is our highest priority,” Slotkin said, adding that DoD is meeting all requests from the State Department for extra security for the U.S. Embassy and the airport.

-- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the amphibious transport ship USS Mesa Verde into the Arabian Gulf. “Its presence adds to the other naval ships there, such as the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and provides the president with additional options to protect American citizens and interests,” she said.

-- Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets are part of the U.S. ramping-up effort. “We’ve significantly surged ISR capabilities into Iraq, [to] over 50 sorties a day, compared to one a month in previous months,” Slotkin added.

“We are now capable of around-the-clock coverage of Iraq, and have been focusing particularly on ISIL-controlled territory and around Baghdad,” she said.

The small teams of 300 U.S. military advisors in Iraq are assessing and evaluating how the United States might potentially help Iraqi security forces, Slotkin said.

Hagel and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, received the draft assessment from U.S. Central Command last week, she told the panel.

“Department leaders are taking a deliberate approach and reviewing this lengthy assessment,” Slotkin said, adding that the assessments will be used to make recommendations to the president.

“Additional assessment work continues in and around Baghdad with respect to the developing situation on the ground,” she added.

Vice President Shares Admiration for 9/11 Generation

By Amaani Lyle

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2014 – Vice President Joe Biden paid special tribute to the 9/11 generation during his address to more than 12,000 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the organization’s national convention in St. Louis yesterday.

Biden singled out former Army Sgt. Ryan Pitts, who received the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony later in the day for his actions against more than 200 heavily armed insurgents near a small Afghanistan village in 2008.

“Even as nine of his fellow soldiers were killed around him, even after he’d been wounded by grenade shrapnel and was losing blood, even when he realized he was alone in the fight, Sergeant Pitts … stayed and fought to protect the troops at a nearby base and held off the enemy until reinforcements arrived,” the vice president said.

Biden emphasized that Pitts’ heroism represents the resilience of the 9/11 generation. “Just since 9/11, 3.5 million women and men joined the military with near certainty that they’d be deployed to a war zone, [and] there have been over 2.6 million deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

The vice president noted that his daily schedule as vice president has included an update on the number of U.S. troops wounded or killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. “For every one of these warriors,” he said, “there’s an entire family … back in America that has bled or is bleeding.”

Today, he noted, 6,688 troops have died, 51,931 have been wounded and 32,000 remain in harm’s way in Afghanistan.

“The Taliban’s decision to harbor those who attacked us on 9/11 compelled us to use military power,” Biden said. “We’ve been in Afghanistan almost 13 years … struck devastating blows against al-Qaida and prevented Afghanistan from re-emerging as the launching pad for attacks against our homeland.”

But the vice president acknowledged that while the military can provide the opportunity, it cannot solve the problems of the societies in the region.

“In Iraq, enduring sectarian divisions have lingered, and today, Iraq faces a tough fight against a terrorist organization, the progeny of al-Qaida,” he said.

That fight, he explained, comprises a larger challenge of ethnic and sectarian strife that extremists have exploited in a conflict “that does not respect, and now seems to erase, the border between Iraq and Syria.”

Biden said he’s been in constant contact with Iraqi leaders as they work to form a new government and chart a new path toward inclusive politics that gives all Iraqi communities a greater stake in the future of a federal Iraq.

The vice president also said efforts continue to rally support from surrounding countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia to promote power-sharing and compromise over a zero-sum sectarian competition.

Multinational Exercise to Test Special Operations Forces

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2014 – Security forces from 21 countries will participate in Fuerzas Comando 2014 in Colombia tomorrow through Aug. 1, Defense Department officials announced today.

Fuerzas Comando is a U.S. Southern Command-sponsored exercise that has been conducted in Central and South America and the Caribbean since 2004, officials said.

The Colombian military is hosting the multinational special operations skills competition. About 700 military, law enforcement and civilian personnel from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Uruguay will participate.

Through friendly competition, officials said, the exercise promotes military-to-military relationships, increases training knowledge and improves regional security. The nine-day event will demonstrate and test participants’ skills through special operations forces competitions, they added, and will include an executive combating terrorism fellowship program focused on topics such as combating terrorism, organized crime and illicit trafficking.