charlie: we begin with david trias -- pretpetreus. how bad is the situation on the ground in iraq and syria today? the impression is that isis is gaining ground and cities. david: it is worrisome. as we say, the enemy gets a

vote. that's what's happened in romani. this is both an operational and strategic setback. i think we will regain the initiative on the ground in iraq, but this is a moment where you sit back and ask what we need to do in the military arena. what also, doing it to do in the political arena. you have to make the gains on the battlefield. isis is almost a conventional military force right now. the center of gravity is in baghdad, and that's where we need to look in particular to make sure we have the right military structure to complement the embassy. who is there to work with the ambassador? do we have the right people there to enable those iraqi leaders who will bring about the political change?

this is about having a new awakening. that also has to take place. charlie: is it a threat to the united states? david: well clearly, isis is a threat to the united states. it is also into north africa trying to recruit in afghanistan and pakistan. charlie: when you look at what is necessary to do it you say we need a new strategy. does it me know -- does it mean more american participation at any level? david: i think it does. you need to look at what you have and figure out where you need to augment. do you need to bring the troops to brigade level or battalion

level? i think there should probably be more troops on the ground. this is a very important fight against a very threatening organization an extremist organization of considerable magnitude. this wants to control territory. charlie: can it happen if the iraqi troops neither have the will to fight, nor the ability? david: we know they have the will to fight, if and only if there is good leadership they can count on and if they think someone has their back. the troops at ramadi fought for months. there was a moment where their confidence was shaken and they retreated. they will retake it.

we have to look at this and ask what could have been done better. what else can we do to help with the reconstitution of the forces , the training, the equipment getting there? don't forget baghdad. the complementary piece to this where our military leadership and diplomatic leadership can help shore up the prime minister and help with the leaders who are going to be inclusive who will get the sunni arabs back into the full, instead of feeling alienated as they came to feel in the years after we left. charlie: if push comes to shove should we let iraqi militia with connections to iran participate? david: i think that is something we don't want to do.

i think that would be a very last resort. they are not going to get to the outskirts of baghdad. iraq has a lot of capability in its military. what we need to do is look at what the concepts are that we have determine how we need to augment, refine, change them. in particular, focus not just on the military. you can't kill or capture your way out of an industrial-strength insurgency like this. you need to have the political component. without that, you are not going to succeed. charlie: political component is support in baghdad that will enlist the support of sunni arab tribes. propaganda war. isis is using social media like no one has ever seen before. a are getting recruits from around the world that are

replenishing their forces. what does the coalition have to do to bring to bear a combat in the world of ideas? david: a lot more. there is clearly a war of ideas that is being fought in social media and other places in cyberspace. we have to contest in that war of ideas. all of the coalition countries -- this is where those gulf cooperation countries come in so importantly. it is impressive that they are in this fight. they are all in it. david: -- charlie: should they put their own troops on the ground if necessary? david: no. unless it's a buffer zone in syria or something. certainly not in iraq. iraqis can handle it with the assistance we are providing. if we also add some of these other assets that i have

discussed and also augment the training equipment -- charlie: has of combating them online been insufficient -- has us combating them online been insufficient? david: yes. in purely, that war is not going well. -- empirically, that war is not going well. charlie: are we winning or losing? david: it is arguable that we will win again in iraq. i think that iraq can be handled. i think it can be kept intact. we have to do a lot more in syria. we have to do more in some of the other areas. charlie: -- what is the

significance of aleppo falls? david: in syria, there have already been 225,000 syrians killed. millions are displaced outside the country, millions more inside the country. the fall of aleppo would be huge. in this war of ideas, nothing succeeds like success. jihadi's want to go with the winner. we have to show that isil is not a winner. in syria, we have to get that ground force going. this has been a long effort something that really needs to be shot with steroids.

the forces there are insignificant. we have to figure out if there are some other allies and partners we can enable on the ground in syria. as we saw in kobani, our air power hammered the extremists. charlie: there are people in the political world who will say, if the u.s. had let troops -- left troops in iraq, we would not be watching the rise of isis. david: i supported leaving troops. it is arguable. i would like to have tested the proposition but it is by no means certain. there were other agreements made at the time that were not consummated and required no boots on the ground, no uniforms. they would have helped the

president enormously pureed those were not allowed to be brought to bear. i was involved in that. there is no guarantee that having troops on the ground would have changed anything. it would have given us a better infrastructure for what we are doing now. no one can guarantee. ♪

charlie: valery was president of fan -- president of france and was one of the architects of the union. although the constitution he proposed was rejected in 2005, he continues to actively lobby. i am pleased to have him back. let me talk about europe first. you have the crisis in the eurozone of the greek debt. valery: it's an exaggeration. it is not very important in the eurozone. they probably shouldn't have been a member. we have 28 countries.

europe is a fragmented continent. 18 have the euro and 10 don't including britain. charlie: why don't you think the greek issue is significant? do you worry what will be the consequences if grace leave the eurozone? valery: there will be very little consequences. i support a solution which is not considered at this moment. to let grace -- greece have its own national currency.

greece needs to have a currency. the euro is strong. it went down a little in the past six months, but it is still a strong currency. it cannot be to value weighted -- devaluated. their own currency in greece will help them to become stable again.

the bank of greece can issue a new currency. if everything goes well, they will come again. charlie: what about david cameron who was just elected? valery: brilliant. not a surprise for me. two days before the election, i thought he would be reelected. charlie: he is having conversations with the european union because he wants to reform. valery: he's right. first, it is the common interests. it is good for great britain.

many of them could be satisfied. it supposes a serious negotiation which hasn't started yet but it will. france would support some of the british demands. angela merkel has said she understands some of the british demands. there will be a change in the open union in the direction of the british. charlie: you recently met with

putin. he was supporting some insurgents in eastern ukraine. tell me what you think he is doing. did he satisfactorily answer your questions? valery: yes. it was a long conversation. open. he told me something very important. he accepts the external border of ukraine. it is a problem by itself. it is a country that is very badly governed. it is split between groups, some of them russian and orthodox

come -- orthodox, some of them are polish. for the moment, they are fighting each other. the solution is not easy. charlie: what is an unacceptable political solution to vladimir putin? valery: to have a large decentralization system. it removes the possibility of an autonomous region. you have scotland's, spain, and great britain.

we cannot support the idea of violent fighting in ukraine. i think the united states should be prudent there. not giving the indication that they will support military action by key people. charlie: military action isn't coming from those that russia supports in eastern ukraine. not only with arms but also there has been a captured russian soldier. valery: yes. you have a long border. it's an empty country.

the east cannot win. the east could go if they had russian support. the west is giving some military action into the east. we have now a truce. it is produced by the open structure. it must be reinforced. they must publish who is doing something, which side because

the last events came from the west. then, finish the negotiation. lift the sanctions. charlie: do you approve of what the russians did in crimea? valery: yes. please, listen to me. at the end of the war, when stalin convened a conference to finish the war, where did he convene it?

[indiscernible] the only point you can debate crimea was next for russia. the referendum said that it was controlled by the institutions. charlie: you are suggesting that if there is a country in which the people would like to vote to change their nature and their associations, that is ok as long as the people vote? valery: yes. charlie: but it's not ok if

there is some element of force that is used? valery: yes. charlie: tell me about putting himself. what does he want -- tell me about putin himself. what does he want? valery: first, he is an intelligent man. he is not a madman. he has a strong will. he has been very shocked by the dislocation of the soviet union. it was the second world power for years with the u.s. charlie: he said it was the worst thing that ever happened in his life to see that. valery: -- charlie: he will try

to rebuild the russian influence. valery: public opinion does not support him. they want to have a relationship with russia. charlie: does he consider it a european country? valery: absolutely. charlie: he talks about his relationship with asia. valery: he is speaking about developing a relationship with china because they have a long order. -- border. i told him it cannot be symmetrical. they have another culture.

they have another economy. they will be competitive. you can have good relations but it is not symmetrical to europe. he agreed. he considers himself under pressure from the united states. charlie: some believe that what he would like to do is develop a relationship with china in opposition to the united states in the same way that your friend henry kissinger developed a relationship with china in opposition to russia. valery: yes. i told him i do not think it is realistic.

russia is more economically advanced than china. charlie: but the chinese economy is growing much faster and is not energy dependent like the russian economy. valery: but the competition by the chinese will be very hard for the russians. and hard for the europeans. they will not gain much. they will have to compete with china and not get support from china. i am convinced, we see the future of russia as a partner of the european union. charlie: part of the problem was the ukrainians wanting to have a dialogue with the european union. valery: we are ready have

collocations. -- we already have some complications. charlie: the dream of jonbenet. is it alive? valery: in public opinion, probably not. among some leaders, yes. at this time, europe was split. you understand that the eurozone is in the line of thinking in the same project. charlie: are the sanctions against russia having an impact

and do you favor them? valery: they have an impact. i am against sanctions against individuals when they are not heard. it hurts the russian economy but it hurts hours also. -- ours also. at this moment, it cannot be changed. at the end of 2015, we should end them. charlie: let me turn to french politics.

what do you think of france wall -- francois alland? valery: i never comment on my successors. i think it is unfair. degaul did not have debates with the other politicians. i observed that france is not in a good position or situation. all over europe, you have

movement of protests. some are on the right, some are on the left. in spain, it is the left. in france, it is the right. in poland, it is the right. you have about 15% of people who disapprove of modern politics. usually, they are people of simple lives. they cannot be judged too harshly. a are frustrated. charlie: can france have a modern economy as long as it has the level of state is him -- statism? valery: no.

if we do it very quickly, things will burgeon again. we have good people, good engineers. of course, the success of the administration should be changed. charlie: what's interesting is french foreign policy. it appears that your minister to foreign affairs in the iranian agreements is taking a firmer stance then kerry. valery: they are complex problems. charlie: there seems to be a

reasonably muscular french foreign policy at play. you saw what you did in libya. valery: that was the former president. charlie: it has been continued. valery: i wouldn't say so. in a more potent way, and africa of the west. the french put an end to their war culture. now, i think questions should be

addressed in a sensible and responsible way. we should avoid excessive postures on one side or the other. if you take the number of victims, it is limited. there is a different mood about terrorism. even the legal points, freedom of expression, protection of private life, must be taken into consideration. charlie: there weren't that many deaths at charlie hebdo, but it shocked france. valery: deeply.

first, because we are an emotional country. there were two elements. one was freedom of speech. the other was to kill journalists because journalists have difficult responsibilities. it shocked the french people. at first, there was indignation that was expressed. charlie: do you worry about china and its ambitions? valery: no. i am very interested in china. i go there once or twice a year. i have studied the language, the culture. i know many people there. i understand the trends, the

behavior of the west in china in the 19th century. they have a past that was very difficult. they went through a change of regime. they had civil war. they had the japanese occupation. now they are on a new track. charlie: they have a new, young vigorous leader. valery: no one knows how to govern 1500,000,000 people.

you can't have a campaign for that many people. it's impossible. charlie: they have committed to the party. valery: yes. for the moment. it has an advantage. the party has no legitimacy. the fight against corruption is made by the party. the inquiries the arrests all made by the party.

criminals, judges, justice. they need to have a future organization that is a legal part of the political life. charlie: a rule of law. you have spent many years on this earth. you have been president of your country. you are president at one time of a remarkable group of artists in france. what worries you the most? what do you see happening? your friend henry kissinger talks about world order and disorder. you think what is most troubling today? for the world. valery: a new sort of virus

which is not war. i hope that there will be an understanding of what the muslim world really wants. we want the extremists. how to have a stable relationship with the muslims as we had in the past with persia and turkey? in the western world there is no type of violence. there is no serious danger.

in the center of the world there is an interruption. -- eruption. a researcher found that in many years, there will be more muslims and christians. charlie: it is the rise of non-state actors. valery: yes. one is an organization as it has been made by the u.s.

[indiscernible] if we are more organized, it is more easily settled. the second element is the social network, communication. it changes the postures of people not of leaders, of people. charlie: thank you for coming. back in a moment.

charlie: richard reeves is here. he is the author of more than a dozen books on politics. he is a professor at the school of communications and journalism at the university of southern california.

let's talk about the book and politics. i am always interested in what brings a good writer with a broad experience to a particular story. richard: i have always been fascinated by the story. i grew up in california for the most part. you also go past -- you always go past the gate house at manson are. -- m,anzanar -- manzanar. all the laws that made this possible are still in the book. we could round up the muslims, the border crossers whatever, tomorrow with the same laws and

probably with the same negative results too. i go back to the fact of what happened to the camps. it was easy to get in, it was hard to get out. in hawaii, we did not incarcerate the population. we did it in the mainland of the united states. when the time came, we realized we had made a mistake. only 1200 kids from the camps enlisted. 20,000 in hawaii. charlie: they had not been interned. they were more patriotic towards america. richard: the japanese-americans were totally patriotic. they allow themselves to be put

in concentration camp because they thought that was there -- their debt to the country. but after living in the wilderness in terrible places, some of them had turned against the united states. charlie: you say it is the best and worst of america. why the best? richard: what is america about at its best, it's redemption. one result of what earl warren one of the great villains of this book he was arguing that there was no japanese sabotage is because they were waiting from the big one on instructions from tokyo. 15 years later, this guilty lutheran organizes legal

segregation in america. it's because of this, i'm sure. california does these extensive oral histories of their governors. lauren's was six days. -- warren's was six days. when asked about 1942, he broke into tears, left the room, and never came back. he knew. charlie: you say that what has pushed america forward is not the values of the forefathers but the blind faith of each new

wave. richard: i absolutely believe that. even leaving aside slavery and the indians, we brought northern europeans into farm, we built railroads jews, irish need not apply. in each case, we treated these people as if they weren't us until they were us. they are us now. the people in this book, the people who came aboard ellis island, every place else. that's our great strength. if you look at europe today, the problems they are having with that. i don't know if we solved, but we dealt with those problems

and all the people in a book like this who were literally at rifle-point and rounded up, now or some of the most important people in the country. harvey attano daniel innowei. he lost an arm and won a medal of honor in italy. the hawaiian japanese-americans were very different than the others. these places were in the middle of nowhere. temperatures range from 120 two -30. a local scoutmaster took his

scout troops to hart mountain. so there would be an american and a japanese-american in each tent. the american was alan simpson. the japanese-american was norm minetta. both, later politicians and friends for life. that friends for life is what made america work. charlie: sharing a tent will do that to you. there are also heroes and villains. cordell was a villain. what was fdr. richard: he was a villain in

this case. a great man. he had real flaws in inpatients and stupidity. he believed in eugenics. he believed that the japanese were aggressive because their skulls were shaped differently than caucasians gold. -- caucasian skulls. he believed it would take 2000 years for them to reach the civilized level of people like you and me. it's just ridiculous. a lot of people who grew up in the 1920's believed in that stuff. also, his advisers were from the smithsonian institution who also believed i've left out the part about roosevelt talking about castrating all the germans. that would've taken a lot of

effort. he had other things on his mind. charlie: that's what the nazis talked about before they talked about it. richard: in tokyo and berlin this wasn't a big story in the united states. most people do not know this was going on. it was a big story in berlin and tokyo. what are we doing that different from the americans putting all these people under machine guns and tanks and barb wire? in the end, it is an american story on both sides of the barbed wire. in this case, we resolved it. charlie: who are the heroes? richard: the heroes are the

young attorney at the aclu who resigned when roger baldwin, the founder said they could not bring any cases that mentioned race. these young guys quit and represented these people for free for years, including the latin americans, the peruvians and whatnot that we had kidnapped and put in the camps to trade for prisoners. when the war was over, we try to deport them as illegal aliens because they never had papers when they were brought handcuffed to america. then people stole their land as they stole the land and money of the japanese-americans here. charlie: here are some books you've written.

"the reagan d tour -- detour." there's a lot of interest in presidents. what's your opinion about obama? richard: i think he is a terrific man. my daughter is a special assistant to the president. his personnel policies are terrific. charlie: he knows bright women when he sees them. richard: he does, indeed. he is on the right track in our relations with other countries. he is not meant to be president. he is too thoughtful.

president to survive historically are like harry truman who operate from the gut. obviously, obama operates from a very well honed mind. charlie: where did franklin roosevelt operate from? richard: gut. charlie: abraham lincoln? richard: i would say gut. they were high iq guys. but that's not the major qualification to be president. charlie: thank you for being here. richard: my pleasure. charlie: it's good to see you. the next time. ♪ -- see you next time. ♪

emily: she took ebay from a 30 person startup to a multibillion-dollar powerhouse. and then lost a race for governor. and now meg whitman faces her biggest challenge yet, turning around struggling giant hewlett-packard. the solution, to split the company in two. joining me, hp ceo meg whitman. thank you for joining me. meg: you are welcome. i am an admirer of your show.