“Good morning. Today the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee will take a closer look at what we’ve done right and wrong and what we might do to restructure our efforts to combat Al Qaeda and violent extremism.

 “The U.S. has been forced to learn difficult lessons about fighting terrorism in the last seven years, with both successes and some failures along the way.  With al Qaeda and affiliated groups still presenting a major threat, the U.S. must apply those lessons learned more comprehensively – and be open to the advice of our allies fighting the same struggle – if we are to effectively counter this persistent threat. 

 “I believe the key is to fight ‘smarter’ – not necessarily ‘harder’ – by more effectively utilizing a broader range of tools beyond just the military-led, kinetic approaches to counterterrorism.  That means we must more aggressively pursue strategic communications strategies, intelligence and policing work, targeted development assistance, and a range of other counterinsurgency and irregular warfare tools.

 “Along the way we have had some successes and we must continue to pursue these strategies, but we also have had some short comings and we must reevaluate our strategies and refocus our efforts. We have had significant success in tracking, capturing, and killing high-value targets. Our special operations forces and intelligence community have become experts at these ‘direct action’ missions. 

 “But I am concerned that we haven’t made nearly as much progress in developing and employing the other ‘tools’ we have at our disposal in combating Al Qaeda and violent extremism.  We may be capturing and killing some top high-value targets, but the core Al Qaeda leadership remains in Pakistan and radicalization continues throughout the Muslim world. 

 “We must make better use of our non-kinetic tools, such as: intelligence and policing work; strategic communication and public diplomacy; building host-governments’ own counterterrorism capacity; and providing assistance to help stabilize failing and weak states in order to prevent terrorist safe havens and other conditions that lead to terrorism.

 “We must work harder to ‘know the enemy’ and apply that knowledge in our counterterrorism efforts.  Our mistakes in Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan and Pakistan have shown us that we need a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the contexts in which terrorism emerges.

 “In order to win in this struggle against violent extremism we must develop a more comprehensive and preventive approach. I look forward to hearing the witnesses’ views on how we might undertake that effort.”