Lee Hamilton, the director of the Center on Congress at IU, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
IDS reporter Abby Llorico spoke with him this weekend about matters of national security and the recent crises spurred by terrorist group ISIS.
Here is a complete transcript from the interview:
IDS I’m here with Lee Hamilton, the director of the Center on Congress here at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, Mr. Hamilton, how are you this morning?
Hamilton I’m fine, thank you. Nice to be with you.
IDS Great, thank you so much. I do appreciate it. So I kind of wanted to talk to you a little bit about ISIS. It’s on everybody’s mind. We saw yet another tragic beheading video this week and I kind of wanted to get your perspective on it. So I know that you have spoken to the fact that ISIS seems to have grown considerably without being on American intelligence’s radar but that at the same time this is almost understandable because of the large number of groups we have in the Middle East with what you’ve called ”axes to grind.” So, considering that, what kind of lessons can we learn from this?
Hamilton Well I think we are confronted with a very new and quite recent challenge from ISIS. Most of us could not identify the organization just a few months ago. Until very recently, nobody could identify their leaders. And it has had a remarkable impact in a very short period of time. It’s a scary group — ambitious, highly disciplined, strong ideological appeal, been very effective in recruiting extremists to come to their banner. They’ve had a very effective propaganda organization. Obviously, they’ve been a very brutal group, unbelievably horrific actions, the barbaric killing of American journalists, for example. But having said all of that, ISIS is not invincible. It is only one of many groups in the region that pose a threat to us and we have to, of course, keep closely in mind the development of the terrorists of the landscape in the region. But we’re faced with a formidable challenge, and that major challenge now is putting together a strategy for the short and the long term to defeat ISIS.
IDS And you’ve characterized the U.S. approach to defeating ISIS and its growing power in the Middle East as something that’s a little bit unfocused. What are your biggest concerns with the U.S.: things that we should be doing that we’re not currently doing or, perhaps, things that we could have done in the past?
Hamilton Well, I think we need to put together a comprehensive strategy. I think that’s beginning to emerge now it’s taken us a little while to get there. Kind of a slow development, if you would, of a strategy. But it’s important to try to get it right. There are a lot of elements to that strategy. Most people, of course, focus on the military side of it. That’s very important. That includes the airstrikes, which have been occurring against the ISIS forces in Iraq and I think have proven to be effective. And the other aspects of the strategy are also terribly important. I think we need some help from partners. And so we need to put together, and I think we are beginning to do this, a coalition of partners to help us in dealing with this threat. We have to have a political strategy, including those partners. We have to lead a coalition. It has military aspects to it, intelligence, diplomatic and the political — even law enforcement. And we have to organize our allies in such a way that we can isolate ISIS.
I don’t think we want to tackle this challenge alone. I think we need some help. Most American politicians talk about not putting boots on the ground. We’ve modified that a little bit now and said no boots on the ground except for combat purposes, but obviously we’re putting more boots on the ground regularly. One of the areas that I think really needs to be developed, and I’ve seen very little on this, is the component of the strategy relating to the war on ideas. ISIS is fundamentally an ideological movement. And it, we need to counter it with ideas. I’ve seen virtually no consideration of a strategy to take on ISIS at this fundamental “war on ideas” level.
The president speaks now about degrading and destroying ISIS. The degrading part of it is pretty obvious. Our military action is a major part of that. Destroying ISIS is another challenge. I suppose it’s possible — it is possible — to destroy an ideology. We did it with Nazism. We did it with Fascism. But it is not done easily and it is not done without an affirmative counter message, and I have not seen us developing that counter message. We have to get help from the Muslim nations, our friends in the region, to begin to put together a counter message so this propaganda effort I referred to earlier by ISIS is countermanded and the appeal of a peaceful Muslim, Islamic world is made more clear. I think that’s an important part of the strategy that needs to be put together.
IDS Do you have any idea what this, I don’t want to say “war on ideology,” but what this approach would look like? Because the references to defeating Nazism and fascism obviously had a very strong boots-on-the-ground counterpart. What would the ideological aspect itself look like in something like combating ISIS?
Hamilton Well I think it emphasizes an orderly, peaceful approach to solving our problems, the extension of freedom, freedom of worship and the fundamental freedoms that we in the United States think about. It emphasizes the aspects of Islam that have made it such a strong and powerful religious force in the world, and I don’t think it’s really very hard to counter ISIS in this area. ISIS is brutal. It’s repressive. It kills people. It murders people. It beheads people. It takes over communities and insists those communities follow ISIS or they’re going to exterminate people. Now that cannot possibly be an ideology that appeals to most people, certainly not in this country but in any country. That kind of brutality, repressive, horribly violent message and activity by ISIS cannot seem to me to have worldwide appeal. So we have to marshal the good forces, if you would, the decent forces of the world and in that region, and there are many such people and many such forces in order to counter the threat to ISIS.
IDS So one thing that Americans have heard and has kind of been almost a buzzword for them and fueling the fear of ISIS as a growing group is that al-Qaida fears ISIS. And, to Americans, al Qaeda has been the No. 1 group since 9/11 and often before that. Would you say that ISIS is more of a threat to Americans than al Qaeda?
Hamilton Well I think both are threats. Now al-Qaida carried off 9/11 the attack on the World Trade Center. We had some 3,000 casualties in a single day, probably one of the most traumatic, maybe the most traumatic day, in the history of our country. Now ISIS obviously represents a threat, but it has not shown the capability that al-Qaida showed on 9/11. I don’t think al-Qaida could pull that kind of an attack off today because I think it has been degraded. But ISIS has never pulled it off, that is, an attack against the United States. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI maintain that they have no credible information that ISIS will be attacking the U.S. homeland. They also say that ISIS represents a limited threat. The word “limited” is important. But it could get worse if it’s unchecked. So both organizations, al-Qaida and ISIS, represent threats to the United States. In assessing a threat, you have to look at both intent and capability. A threat, I think, obviously, is clear from both parties, al-Qaida and ISIS. Capability is much harder to judge. I don’t think al-Qaida has the capability it once had. ISIS has not yet shown the capability to attack across the ocean.
IDS Absolutely. So my final question is a bit open-ended and goes back to what we mentioned earlier and how ISIS posted the second video of the beheading of an American hostage, Steven Sotloff, and that’s following the killing of another American reporter not long ago. So this is all fresh in Americans’ minds and we’re seeing it, unfortunately, every time we open up the Internet. It almost seems like there’s more news about ISIS. So what did you think that the American people should be asking their Congress members to do about the ISIS threat?
Hamilton Well, I think we have to keep our heads about us. Those two acts of beheading infuriated Americans as they should. And they show the utter brutality of ISIS. We have to make some hardheaded judgments about what we are willing to do with our allies or without our allies. How much money are we willing to spend? How many lives are we willing to give up in order to defeat ISIS? It’s very easy to talk about rolling back or destroying or defeating ISIS. The real question, however, is not the rhetoric. The real question is what kind of resources are we prepared to achieve our objectives? I think we have to take this kind of a step at a time. The most important thing in the very short term is to make sure that ISIS doesn’t advance any further. Now, in time, we hope that we will roll them back, whatever roll back means. Geography is a little sketchy, but the immediate task is to slow their momentum and to stop any advance that they are making. We have to put together the broader strategy that I talked about a moment ago. An awful lot depends here on what our allies are prepared to do. We’ve had a lot of experience with our allies slapping us on the back and saying, “Go to it, Americans. We’re behind you all the way.” But they don’t give us any money. They don’t give us any military action. They don’t put boots on the ground. We don’t want to, I think, get into that kind of situation. We’re willing to lead the coalition. We’re willing to participate ourselves and put a lot of American power, military, political and economic, into this, but this battle against ISIS is more than America. Many countries should step up to the plate here and be helpful to us and to help degrade and to destroy ISIS.
IDS Absolutely. Well, very enlightening conversation on a very important topic. Thank you, again, so much, Lee Hamilton, the director of the Center on Congress at IU and longtime member of the House of Representatives. I do appreciate you talking to me this morning.
Hamilton Thank you. Nice to be with you.
