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Vice Admiral Robert Harward Zeroes in on the ‘Complicated’ Middle East
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Thursday, July 20, 2017
 

STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

A key to much of the fighting in the Middle East lies within the Muslim community, said a man who has been involved in fighting terrorism since the night of 9-11.

Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward told a Sun Valley audience this week that Muslims need to step up and counter the extremists within their faith if we're ever to see peace. in the Middle East. A few are doing that but too many are intimidated, even though extremism is as problematic for the Muslim community as it is for ours, he said.

"Even the fundraising is going to extremists because Muslims are not taking a big enough stand against them," he said.

Harward was a keynote speaker at a forum examining “The U.S. and the Middle East: Crises, Challenges and Opportunities” this week at the Valley Club north of Hailey.

The forum was sponsored by the Middle East Institute and the Sun Valley Global Affairs Forum, with the idea of challenging experts with such questions as “What should we do about this very, very troubled part of the world,” said Jim Holman, a member of the host committee.

Harward is America’s No. 1 Navy SEAL, having devoted more than 35 years serving his country—often at the expense of his family, said Holman. Harward grew up in Iran where his father was stationed in the Navy. As a young man he hitchhiked through Afghanistan during “the rock and roll years.”

Then he returned to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for six-plus years.

He was on a plane headed for Afghanistan the night of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. But he said “No” when President Trump asked him to be his national security adviser, despite the efforts of others like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to get him to take the job.

Harward declined partly because of his family, he said.

“They said, ‘We like this new happy Bob,’ ” he reiterated.

But, he said, the major reason he turned the job down was because of questions about how effective he could be in the Trump Administration.

The entire government worked together on policy during the Bush and Obama administrations, said Harward, who served on the National Security Council for office combating tourism following deployment. But he was concerned with the lack of experience he saw in the Trump Administration.

He wondered how well he could communicate with the President and whether he could make him focus on the issues at hand.

“The hard part wasn’t saying ‘No’ to the President. The hard part was saying ‘No’ to my shipmate Jim Mattis (now Secretary of the Defense),” said Harward, who served as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command under Mattis.

“Good or bad, the President is a business man. And he’s got Jim Mattis influencing him, bringing him along,” he added.

Harward told the audience that he never understood why President George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

“I felt we paid too high a price,” he said.

But gradually he came to believe it was because of Bush Jr.’s hopes to establish a regional base of power there from which the United States could operate, similar to what his father President George H.W.  Bush had seen created in Japan in the wake of World War II.

Harward noted that the Afghanistan War, at 16 years, is the longest war the United States has ever been in.

He added that Sun Valley's Stephanie Freid-Perenchio, who served on the host committee for the forum, met the first soldier to step foot in Afghanistan while she was shooting a photographic book on Navy SEALS.

“He’s a Navy captain now. He’s been in his whole life. That’s all he’s ever known,” Harward said.

Harward said the United States was reluctant to use cyber capabilities until 2012 when they lost a soldier and decided they needed to plunge ahead with them.

Today’s drones will be obsolete in five years, replaced by stealth machines offering much more sophisticated surveillance, he said.

One of the strengths about the Trump Administration is its willingness to “go places” that the previous administration didn’t, he added. One of the greatest successes of the Obama Administration was dismantling what was the largest stockpile of chemical and biological weapons the United States knew of.

The good thing about social media is that it forces government to be responsive to people and address their needs.

Expect water to spark the next wars for countries like Yemen that are running out of the liquid gold, Harward said.

“As water becomes a more and more valuable commodity, this is what counties are going to be fighting over.”

WHAT IS THE MIDDLE EAST FORUM?

This is the second year the Middle East Institute has joined hands with Stephanie Freid-Perenchio’s Sun Valley Global Forum.

Last year’s conference featured the U.S. ambassador to Syria. And an Iran scholar followed up his visit in the fall.

“People loved us and wanted us back,” said Kevin Cowl. “The people of Sun Valley are savvy people who like to be kept in the loop. And that conference started a conversation about Middle Eastern affairs, offering insights people aren’t usually privy to.”

The Middle East Institute was started more than 70 years ago in Washington, D.C., immediately following World War II. Then the focus was on the Cold War—no one was paying much attention to the Middle East.

But its founder, a military man who had served in the Middle East, predicted it would one day be the subject of attention. And he formalized the institute as one of the first think tanks in Washington, D.C.

By 1980, of course, the Middle East was regularly front-page news, thanks to events like the oil embargo, hostage crisis and Six Day War.

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