Ken Berwitz
“I\’vesaid for some time that ISIS is a national security threat to the United Statesand to our allies and … We\’re putting troops on the ground, we\’re droppingbombs but we need to talk about how we’re going to fill the political vacuumsin the Middle East that allowed ISIS to flourish.
“Ilast served in Iraq during the surge and we actually got Iraq to a relativelystable place but then we pulled out. We pulled those political advisers out ofthe ministries, out of the prime minister\’s office and the Iraqi governmentwent off the rails so much so that its own army didn\’t trust them.
“Andas a result we\’re sending troops back into Iraq just five years after we left.I went back to Iraq in February as a member of the Armed Services Committee andit was disheartening to see so much of what we fought for and frankly achieved,just gone to waste because we didn”t have a political plan for the aftermath.
“I wasconcerned that we\’re not doing more. I don\’t think we have this long-termstrategy. We\’re not going to defeat ISIS just by killing their fighters on theground.
“We have to have a diplomatic and politicalplan and we\’ve got to be clear to the troops we send in to combat what theirlong-term mission is. I don\’t think we\’ve made that clear.”
