Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, played a leading role in reforming the Energy Department's nuclear weapons complex before Sept. 11 and in creating the Department of Homeland Security afterwards. He currently sits on both the House Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Well regarded in both parties for his thoughtfulness on security issues, he now laments what he sees as deepening partisan divides on everything from Iraq to intelligence.

National Journal reporter Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. interviewed Thornberry on Oct. 28.

NJ: Where do security issues stand 10 months into Obama administration?

Thornberry: If you'd asked me in the spring, I would have said that I was really disappointed in his domestic agenda but I was pleasantly surprised at his national security agenda, both the people that he chose and the policy positions he'd enunciated. I didn't agree with his announcement to close Guantanamo. But in March he was strong about Afghanistan, he had picked good people.

Now I'm very concerned about this endless deliberation on Afghanistan and what it means to the people that you've been interviewing on the ground. I think it really puts them in a hard position. It encourages the enemy. It causes our folks to question whether they're going to be backed up and what their purpose in being there is.

NJ: What is the strategic art of the possible in Afghanistan?

Thornberry: I think it is achievable to have Afghanistan be able to provide for its own security in a way that does not offer sanctuary for terrorists or destabilize its neighbors.

That's not shooting for the moon. I think that's a fairly reasonable expectation. And I have no better information or not clearer opinion than that offered by General [Stanley] McChrystal in his assessment, which is that we can succeed -- if that's an approximation of what it means to succeed -- but if we continue along the path we're on, we're gonna fail.

I think the president needs to either support General McChrystal and his plan or replace him. I think in some ways the worst option is some sort of compromise middle ground where you have them go do the mission but tie one hand behind their back. I think that's the worst position to put people in.
Again, this is not somebody that's the big traditional Army tank guy who's asking for many more troops and much more weaponry than he needs. This is among the best if not the best person we have in counterinsurgency operations, who had been living it for years in Iraq.

And that's why I believe you either say, I'm with you and I'll back you up, or you say, I don't agree, you know, I don't have confidence in you, I want to get somebody else.

NJ: Vice President Joe Biden and others say we can keep troop levels the same, or even reduce them, and focus on counter-terrorist operations with Special Forces.

Thornberry: It does not work, it cannot work. To be successful in what we're trying to achieve in Afghanistan, Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates has said you've got to have people on the ground to get you the intelligence you need to strike targets from the air. Some people have argued that this kind of light-footprint, just-strike-from-the-air approach has been what we've been doing since 9/11 in the FATA region [the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan].

We're just setting ourselves up for maybe more cleverly disguised sanctuaries but sanctuaries nonetheless for al-Qaeda and such groups to not only attack us from but also destabilize Pakistan.

NJ: How much of the Intelligence Committee's time is spent on the key issues of intelligence reform as opposed to figuring out, for example, whether and when the CIA briefed Speaker Nancy Pelosi on torture?

Thornberry: I don't think the intelligence committee is focusing as much as it should on the substantive intelligence challenges our country faces.

Just this week, for example, we had a hearing on notification and the whole purpose seemed to be to try to prove that the Speaker was right, that they really do lie all the time. So in some ways I'm discouraged at the extent to which partisan considerations have infiltrated the work of the Intelligence Committee and even Armed Services Committee, more than in the past.

Armed Services is a lot better than Education and Labor or some of the other committees, but still, to put hate crimes on a defense authorization bill is just abominable to me. It is using folks in the military and our -- the country's legitimate support for them and their efforts to promote a divisive domestic agenda. However you feel about hate crimes, yes or no, but it has nothing to do with our national security.

NJ: Are the Republicans innocent in all this?

Thornberry: Of course not. And that's part of the big challenge, is how do you avoid getting into a tit for tat situation? And Republicans are not innocent by any means. But I will say that it has deteriorated significantly in the past three to four years, in my opinion, where more of these national security committees and issues and debates have this kind of purpose and agenda. It's not just Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other; it's being hijacked for these domestic partisan reasons, and it's very disturbing.

It is abusive, I think, to people who are out there risking their lives to keep us safe, whether those people have a uniform on, like the military, or whether they don't have a uniform on, like CIA folks.

You get the sense that there are some people, not all Democrats by any stretch, but some Democrats that always think that our intelligence and national security folks are doing something wrong, that we're the ones to blame.

I think there is an underlying suspicion or perhaps hostility to military and intelligence organizations and people that undergirds some of this.

This decision by the attorney general -- and the decision by the president to let the attorney general -- go after people who have been involved in some of our counterterrorism programs is a prime example. Where it's all been investigated before by independent folks, now they want to go back into it again, and even, you know, there was talk of disciplining the lawyers for writing legal memoranda that they didn't agree with. So all of that stuff, what's that going to do? It's going to make everybody in the field as well as in Washington more cautious, less likely to take risks and make our country ultimately less safe.