their failures were that contributed to this economic disaster and then the week after we'll be looking at the investment banks and what their major contribution was to this ecom disaster. but today's hearing will be now adjourned. thanks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. . >> now, booktv on c-span2. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of nonfiction books, public affairs, history, and biography starting saturday at 8:00 am through monday at 8:00 am eastern. >> this weekend on c-span2's booktv, live today from the annapolis book festival panels on global security and the world's water supply. also william cohen and barry lynn on "after words," harry markopolos on his effort to talk to the fcc on the bernie madoff

onno o would listen." .. i really do have to comment on some of the of professor's remarks, as well as those of the

rabbi, and when i first went to germany as a young soldier in the 1970's, i was bewildered, because as someone who spoke german, whose family was half german, i was a member of the club, so things would be said to me that weren't said for public consumption, and for whatever reason, you just can't kill anti-semitism, so i'd like to just as a way of prelude, offer a few my views on it, specifically concerning the middle east and europe, and to begin with europe. you've got to understand that while the holocaust was an immeasurable, immeasurable tragedy for the jewish people, it was a great embarrassment -- >> people can't hear you in the back. >> sure. it was a great embarrassment for europeans, and embarrassment is a potent force and with you see the irrational criticism and

outright lies told about israel and europe, i think you can understand it in terms of their psychological needs. the european, the cont mental europeans, know full well how monsterrous they were in their sins of commission and omission. the collaboration with the nazis by many people, beyond the borders of germany. as psychologically in their shame, they need israel to be bad. they need israel to be as guilty of atrocities as they were, hence several years ago, when the imaginary jenin massacre, you may remember that, when suddenly it was terrible and several thousand palestinians were killed and that cancelled out auschwitz, made the score even. of course it didn't. and it turned out, the massacre was largely palestinian propaganda, but the europeans length on it as did many in the north american media and i think there is that need, but there's

even something beyond their need to believe that israel is as bad as they were, therefore the score is even. it's the astonishinishing penchf cultures, of civilizations to commit sue site at various times in their development. if you look at german-speaking culture, in the 19th, into the early 20th century, the most sophisticated and profound in the world. now, we've lost a sense of this, but in north america, especially in the lower 48, in the 19t 19th century, german thought was profoundly influential, much more so than french thought or english thought to the extent there was english thought. emmeson and his circle relied on thought, and in the early 20t

20th century in vienna and elsewhere, it is by and large jewish culture, and germany, the german speaking land, turned whether interest jealousy, complex series of causes, they turn on it and they butcher their own culture and since 1945, germany, the german-speaking lands, once the fountain of the intellectual thought in history, what have they produced since 1945? automobiles and gummy bears. it was amazing to me how this could happen and i know we riddle about it all the time, so i think with the european criticism, i do see it largely as the need to cancel their own guilt. now, in the middle east, you

know, when i speak to you, washington-area audiences, i stress jealousy as a strategic factor. we don't think of jealousy as a strategic factor. no, no, it's about demographics or theories of underdevelopment, blah blah blah, but i truly believe that emotion plays a far greater role in human affairs, in hour irrational collective choices, than does cold logic and analysis. and certainly, in the middle east, how can arab states not be jealous? centuries of comprehensive failure capped by the modern tragedy of the arabs, not the creation of the state of israel, but who got the oil wealth. now, once upon a time, many centuries ago, there was a blossoming of arab-speaking

cultures and cultures of life cycles and they fade, but the saudis and the gulf emirates were not responsible for that blooming of arab culture a thousand years ago, 1200 years ago. they were tribal, they didn't built the great mosques of cairo. they built sheep pens on a god day and the saudis, the number one enemy the united states, the saudis got so much of the money, and despite this inflow of massive, unprecedented wealth, what has the arab world done. what has it achieved? where is the world class university? where are the software programs? where are even the growing 20th century style automobile factories? it has gone literally into the sand. the palestinians, what has arab

oil wealth done for the palestinians? it has kept them on a drip feed, just enough to keep them alive as a cause. and so when you go to israel and see the remarkable, the stunning job the unprecedented creation of a modern, just rule of law democracy, amidst the moral squalor and incompetence, comprehensive incompetence of the middle east, how can arabs not be jealous? if you stand on a mountaintop in northern israel, and look north, you know exactly where israel is. it's where the green stops and the brown begins. why can't hundreds of millions of arabs do better? i believe the answer -- culture is fate, and there wounds are largely self-inflicted.

they were not the victims of centuries of colonialism for the most part. we'll talk about that a bit more later, but how can they not be jealous of israel? jealousy is a profound human factor. and you go to the broader world of anti-semitism and really, we need a new world because arabs of semitic people as well, anti-judaism, just anti- >> sentiment -- anti-jew sentiment. humanity may or may not need a god, you believe it does, but i can guarantee you that human kind needs a satan, someone to blame when the cows don't give milk. someone to blame for the epidemics. someone to blame for the bankruptcy. someone to blame for personal and collective failures. we need a say ton. and -- satan. and throughout much more of

history, what satan could there be tan the jews. for so many centuries, powerless, what a marvelous thing for humanity's need to blame others or another force. an entity scattered, without critical mass. a satan that can't strike back. what a gift. and then of course, with the founding of israel, the satan can suddenly defend itself. can stand up for itself. history isn't fair. life isn't fair. but i was asked just before this whether i saw any hope with the coming advent of the eye rain -- the probable advent of iranian nuclear weapons. of course, of course i see hope. i am absolutely confident that the jewish people, really the jewish people in this wonderful,

creative, brilliant grace on humanity, will indeed survive, and will prosper. but it will not be easy, because this is a world in which our noblest sentiments are so often frustrated. when in washington, i hear people with no sense of history say all men want peace. but yet, how many of those protesters would like to live in a town or city without a police force? all men and women do not want peace. i believe the majority do. but history is not changed by majorities, except in a few democracies. in iran, does anyone here believe that the average iranian wants a nuclear confrontation with israel? i certainly don't think so. like average people anywhere, the average iranian wants to get through the day, make a little more money, get the bills paid, but decisions won't be paid by that average iranian. they will be made by those who

have grasped and fully intend to retain power. a handful of men who, by our standards, may be men. men who have fallen in love with sonotese. we now face and more of this later, enemies who regard death as a promotion. and that is profoundly different. and on that note, let me begin what i really want to talk about. i'm going to cram a five-hour opera into the next 45 minutes. specific issues, please, ask me about them in the q & a, but i want to step back, put on the wide angle lens, because i believe that speaking from the lower 48, but also speaking, i think, for canada, and for the west overall, one of our fundamental problems is our -- the elactaty with which we have tried to erase history. we've taken serious history

teaching out of school rooms. history to the extent it is taught today is about making children feel good about themselves. if you do not know history, you will die of myth. facts matter. and one of the things that are truly worth -- that is truly worth fighting for are facts. factual history. we'll pay a great price for taking it out. so we tend to think, whether in the lower 48 or in canada, we think of history in terms of election cycles. for the united states, vietnam, well, that's, you know, that's kind of like greeks and romans, right, it's so far in our past. world war ii, that's mistologyized -- mythologized now. and it's very, very dangerous. so let me stand back. and do what we really need to do. certainly in washington, the capital of arguably the greatest

power in history, that has not produced a world class strategist in over 50 years. we produce in the military side, brilliant tactile generals, division commanders, those who know how to fight. but not those who understand how the fight fits in the greater strategic scheme work and the flow of history. and in washington, in so much of the west, i see people clinging to the 20th century, because it was pretty good for us. we won and they know the theories and now we live in a changed world, a world so profoundly different that the 20th century theories and answers do not work. the answers do not answer. but we resist the reality before our eyes f eyes because it is so painful and dangerous to say

nothing of politically incorrect. so where are we now in 2010? in the great stream of history, and you must look at the grand sweep of history if you have any hope, to have any hope, of understanding where we are now and thus some feint notion of where we may be going. and history is not a guide to the future. but it will provide you with a dashboard full of warning lights. it enables you to recognize the same mistake the third or fourth time you've made it. at any rate, where are we? the first place we're at, and it's really a very layered, complex equation. i'll only be able to talk about a few parts of it today. we are at the end of the age of ideology, and a turn-back to the great stream of human history. now something very strange, remarkable, in a negative sense, happened to humanity for about 200 years.

from 1989, the french revolution to 1989, the fall of the berlin wall, or if you prefer, 1991, the formal dissolution of the soviet empire. human kind, went through this age of ideology and it would frustrate me when president bush would say, well, we're in a war of ideas with al qaeda,. no, we are not. not at all. there's no ideology on other side. we are fighting for values. democracy is not an ideology. democracy is a technique of human self-governance that uses the tool of elections. and it can be adapted or maladapted to many ideologist. -- ideologies. we are fighting for values, for freedom, human rights, the rights of women and so forth. our enemies, in an asymmetrical conflict, are fighting for belief.

and our absolute refusal to acknowledge, speaking what, that we are fighting islamist fanat fanatics is debilitating. it cripples every effort we make. this is not meant as a condemnation of islam. religions or for me, i am a believer, although as and -- list, i must separate that, we have a genius for perverting the law of god, for bending it to our own ends, but consider the situation in which we have put ourselves. where we have enemies in al qaeda, hamas, hezbollah, other organizations, who openly, not just saying, but screaming, shouting, that they are dying for allah, they are fighting for their version of their faith, and we in the west say oh no,

no, no, they're only kidding. they don't know what they're talking about. again, these are enemies who regard death as an emotion. it is a profoundly different situation. when our enemies, be it u.s., canadian, brits, our countersurgery theories, the parainsurgency theories in afghanistan would have been terrific in vietnam in 1957. they do not apply to the 21s 21st century. now, just give you one brief example. everyone loves malaysia, the british experience, where they mouth down the maos. it was successful over a period of a better part of a decade. the profound difference was that no urban chinese, ethic chinese in kuala lampur was born a

maist, and they could be persuaded one way or the other. now end of the 21st century, with the death of marxism, maoism, thiesmann constructed, inorganic ideologies that have killed so many human beings that still echo on the campuses or in the media, but they're really functionally dead, nobody really believes outside of liberal arts faculties, that marxism is going to work, it just isn't and we got it. there are echos here and there around the world, but it's over, it's done. the that's the good news. the bad news is we have defaulted back to what human beings have always fought over, blood and belief, so in this aberration period, people were fighting for ideas. and their minds could be changed. again, one way or the other.

but now the entire world under the destabilizing impact of globalization, human kind is asking, every individual is asking, who am i, and the answer now, more and more frequently, is i'm a muslim, or i am a jew, or i am sengali, not even indian, or i am a pashtun, or i am a kurd. it's a period of breakdown. of atomization. for the average human being, it sews tremendous doubt. ignorance was bliss. so you have in the 20t 20th century, these insurgencies placed on political ideologies and the profound difference was except for the

psychotics, the man made construction for human organizations, governance, economy, culture, etc., they were sometimes willing to die for their cause, but their great preference was to live and participate in the spoils, in the change, the new system, the new utopian world order. be it communist, nazi, or of what. but now you do have enemies, the hard core of whom seek death and we're dealing not with learned identities, but we're dealing with innate identities. you are a persian. you are a kurd. now, the western democracies have, by and large, gone beyond this. not completely, but by and large. we still have our ethnic pride, etc., but in much of the world, this is the defense mechanism p. this is the tribe closing ranks, i am muslim, i am hindu, i am

pashtun, and it's very, very dangerous, because while you can change a maoist's mind, it's very hard to change the identity of a persian or a kurd. how do you change these innate identities and religion, it's very hard to persuade someone to change their religion and in afghanistan, and we can talk about that in the q & a, we're not asking people to change their form of government. we're asking them to change their civilization. and it is very, very hard. to persuade a human being to do that and to persuade them enduringly. so that's the first place we are. humanity, after the age of ideology, the age of ego mania, individuals, marxism, lenins, maos, really believe that sitting down if the reading room of the british library or in a cafe in zurich, that they could

devise better systems of human, cultural, economic and private organization, than human collectives had designed over the years and another reason why democracy works. it's not an ism. there's no ism on the end it. the other reason it works is it grew up organically. democracy, because it would be isolation of the british isles, and it took us 800 years to get to sarah palin and nancy pelosi. so it's not a perfect process. we're still working on it. but it's self-correcting. human collectives, the genius of all of us together, can put together better systems of organization than these ego maniacs could and think of how many human beings die for the vanity of a marx, or a lenin, or a mao. so that's the first place we are.

humanity has, by an large, passed the age of ideology. although a new ideology could spring up and galvanize the world tomorrow. for now, the ology is done. the fact is we have defaulted back to what men and women have always fought about -- blood and belief, faith and ethnicity. where else are we? this is very important. we are at the bare beginning of the post-colonial era. this isn't a left wing or a right wing pitch. i'm trying to look at things objectively to get beyond our own ideologies, and when you look at history, the european imperial powers, the portuguese have the longest stay, they rule some often misrule, they reform and deform, native societies around the world, for up to six centuries, up to six centuries. this is not a pitch for neil

young's line back in the 1960's for flower children, etc., etc. many of the native societies impacted by -- were nasty. the aztecs and mayans really weren't nice. other tribes else where had relatively pacificist views of the world. pre-imperial era had worked out systems that functioned for them. they might have been grisly like the aztecs, they may have been war-like, they might have been mercantile, but it worked for them. and then the european impact comes, an for a variety reasons, do not seek single causes, for pa variety reasons, europe is so powerful civilizationly, but it over powers these native

cultures for better or worse and it's not all bad. in this last decade, anything that worked in india had been built by the brits. they're getting beyond it now. but my point is this. that if you talk to many an interelectric electric actual -- intellectual, 600 years, between one and six centuries of european impact, changing the world, that cannot be undone in three decades. it may indeed take another six centuries for societies to right themselves. look at latin america. most latin -- south american, spanish-speaking states, south american, gain their independence in heroic struggles against spain, in the second decade of the 20th century. sorry, the 19th century. it is 200 years later and only in this generation are many of

those south american countries coming to grips with the colonial hangover. now, this is junior high school physical -- junior high school physics. what happens when an external force pushes a system out of balance, keeps it out of balance, and the external force is very suddenly removed. the reaction is at least equal, to the force exerted. in a utopian universe, in which most of us still live. when you see it around the world with the brush fire conflicts, the religious struggles, the fault lines, is the world trying to reshape itself, societies, countries, entire continents, trying to find a new organic balance. what can work for them? well, the problem is, when the european empires, which ran the gamut from relatively benign, the brits, to absolutely monsterrous in the case of the dutch, those innocent dutch and the portuguese, is a recession of empire, they left behind this

poison pill of dysfunctional borders. on a practical level, there is for -- no more grotesque cause of violence in the world today than dysfunctional borders. and if you go to the department of state in washington, d.c., it mention -- you mention dysfunctional borders, they go into a panic, because in our state department, every border that exists today as existed at least since the time of exodus. borders have changed and will always change. why on earth would something so abstract matter to us. think of where canadian soldiers have fought, where the u.s. mill tar has been engaged. since and including desert storm, every conflict, multiple conflicts in mesopotamia, in iraq , somalia, the balkans, afghanistan, they are all either caused by or exacerbated by dysfunctional borders, left behind by europeans who drew

them for their own interests. their own selfish reasons. if you look at afghanistan, afghanistan is not and never was a country, a state, as we know it. it's an accident where other people's borders ended. in the east and southeast, the durand line, is as far as britain thought they needed to and could push a buffer zone to protect british india. in the west, afghanistan's present boundaries include historically persian areas, because persia was weak when the boundaries were drawn. the alexander's river, that divides uzbeks. the european boundaries, drawn for european's own interests, do one of two things. they either thrust people together who do not want to be together, or they push people apart who do want to be

together. for instance, the kurds. 36 to 40 million people without a country, divided because of where the europeans drew the boundaries. the pashtuns, the taliban's home constituency, the pashtuns. again, probably around 40 million people without a country. and as an aside, you've got to differentiate between your enemies. divide and conquer is much smarter than just alienating everybody. the taliban, while i have no sympathy with them, they are by and large, hil hillbillies. they have local and regional aims. al qaeda has a global aspiration, and it may seem whacky to us, but they are very serious. so faced with an international, mobile enemy with global aspirations, we are currently concentrating on fighting local

hillbillies. we are not thinking. but at any rate, if you look at why saddam invaded kuwait, because in the old system of boundaries, kuwait would have belonged to iraq in his version of the world. somalia, does anyone here really believe that somalia is or ever will be a functioning state within its current borders? rational borders can be totally differently drawn. yugoslavia was a frankenstein's monster of a state, pit putt together with ill fitting body parts and what we are in now is this period of evolution, to break down and you can no more tell people to secede, but they won't listen to you any more than your friends will listen to you when you tell them don't

marry that man or woman. in yugoslavia, as the dennis kucinich aids go by, some of the states will find they are that small to function and they will come together in the form of customs union and new entities will emerge. but first, you've got to go through the breakdown. and this is very important, because we have been involved, the western military, the united states, western militaries, the united states, have involved these great democracies -- these great democracies have been trying to preserve a european world order. it is madness. and people worry in the short term about instability. we have instability. instability is coming, and again, the longer you keep the pressure on, the more violent the explosion is going to be. if we could do one thing, and our politicians will not do it, of course not, but if we could do one thing, to amend the world's problems somewhat, it would be to develop a somewhat more peaceful means of altering

borders, so maybe we'd only have small slaughters, instead of major massacres. again, it's not need. you can't -- so many cities or mixed populations are intermingled. certain anybody who studies the middle east knows that, but my point is, we're not coming to grips with the problems. that men and women are now again fighting for blood and belief. wars of religion and ethnicity. they're fighting because european legacy doesn't work. it just doesn't work. and oh, by the way, let's go to the next level of complications. our insurgency theory, that the canadian, u.s., brits and others try to apply is aimed at mid 20th century secular revolutionaries. in afghanistan, somalia and elsewhere, we are facing religious reactionaries.

it requires -- what we're trying to treat, we're trying to treat cancer with flu medicine. it just doesn't work. it doesn't function. and the really ugly news, sorry, but 2500 years of recorded history do not offer a single example of a violent religious insurgency that has been put down without efor must amounts of bloodshed -- enormous amounts of bloodshed. i cannot find one put down by negotiation, because again, with people are ablaze with faith, and convinced that violence is required by their translation of that faith, they've gone too far. and you know, human societies throughout history, whether you look at what's now israel, 2000 years ago, or the germanys in the high middle ages, or the middle east in the 20t 20th century, the patterns

really -- it always holds up the same way. local people, impacted by a powerful foreign culture, with which they cannot compete, rome, in the case of what's now israel 2,000 years ago, the holy roman empire, the power of the well organized church of rome and the germanys in the 15th and into the 16th century, or the palestinians who cannot begin and arabs who cannot begin to compete civilizationly with europe and israel in the 20t 20th century. you have the same thing. the first step is always that the locals will actually try to accommodate themselves to the system. jews try to accommodate themselves to rome's civilizational power, but it did not work. you cannot finally match judaism

with roman civilization. the values were too anti-thetical for the most devout jews. in germanys, the first thing you get are local secular rebellions, against the church of rome, you know, the centralizing power, and when it doesn't work, you get them turning to religion. so you have this revolt, which such more complex and be careful about lionizing the zealots. like israel, -- then you get the germans going through the same thing, resulting in the reformation, 130 years of incredibly bloody religious warfare without a real competitor until the bloody 20th century. and now you have the late 20t 20th century, in the middle east. where the plo originally, while its demands were excessive, it was not religious.

yasser arafat was hardly the model muslim. but as they couldn't get traction and couldn't compete, they did what others have done. they default to religion. so if you do not find a means of accommodation in that first stage, where they're looking for a political resolution, once it goes into a religion, a religious fueled insurgency, there's no reverse gear. so on that level, i am not hopeful. the really good haters, the religious fanatics, again, there's no reverse gear, there's no switch to turn it off, and that's the bad news. so we're in this world of bad borders, very bloody faith, but again, this other level, which in the 20th century, the countryside came to the cities. look at istanbul.

100 years ago, 1910, istanbul was far more cosmopolitan than it is today. and in -- whether you speak of istanbul, ankura, caracas, cities around the world, beiji beijing, as populations expanded, as minor, incremental improvements in public health allowed populations, and nourishment, nutrition, enabled populations to explode, the countryside could no longer support them. they went to the cities, where the streets were supposedly paved with silver, if not gold, and they weren't. in the past, over the centuries, cities could accommodate and thrive on increments of populations from the countryside, but the speed, even in the lower 48, with which americans from the south came in the northern cities, was incredibly destabilizing, because you can't accommodate

the sudden flood and so what happens when the country, the people come from the country side, entire villages moving in some cases, the city isn't the answer, it doesn't have the great jobs for them. yet, they have to walk by the shop windows and the signs of modernity that others enjoy. they go into reaction and they begin to try to impose the values of the countryside on the city. what we are seeing now in the islamist world and we're seeing it there primarily, because that is the most comprehensively failed civilization currently in the world today, we're seeing a reaction against sophistication, against education. against progress. in afghanistan, we are the revolutionaries. again, we are fighting religious reactionaries, who want to turn back the clock to an imaginary golden age that never existed.

they want to enforce a form of islam that they regard as purified, a wahabi version of it, which has very little to do with the original teachings of mohammed. again, religion is what men and women make it. so we're going through all these things, dysfunctional border, the hangover of the end of imperialism. the tension between rural values and the cosmopolitan, urban values, playing themselves out in so many ways. again, the taliban are fighting for that good old time religion. they're fighting for their traditional pashtun way of life as they see it. and layer on top of this, this is the last topic i'll have time to talk about before we go to q & a, although there's much more. many other factors destabilizing the world today. the other is that in select western countries, in my

generation, we went through the most profound social revolution in all of human history. the transition of women from man's property to man's equal partner. there is no precedent. it changed the roles of 50% or 51% to 52% of the population. in entire societies, couple tours, states, and this is -- i'm so glad, professor proud up freud, i think freud tells us a lot. just as we would never talk about jealousy as a strategic factor. if you look at the middle east, the arab, of afghan, pakistani cultures, these are couple tours that are afraid of the girls. they're terrified of female sexuality. women are also very good satan, the witch, the idea of the

witch, you know, the cows don't give milk, so some nasty old woman or beautiful young woman who do it. but this is an intractable part of the problem. i mean, since i was in university in the late 1960's and early 1970's, i have stood for women's rights, for women's liberation, because i realized early on, it made the dating process a lot quicker and cheaper, and so i was there for you, sisters. and but seriously, think about this social revolution. it doubles our human capacity, our human potential. the only respect, speaking for the lower 48, you can tell me if it applies if canada, the only downside of women's emancipation, equal rights, call it what you will, the leveling of the system, the only downside for us in the lower 48 is it destroy k-12 education, because when i was a student in the 1950's and 1960's in k-12, women

teaching it, especially the older ones, were brilliant, but they're now senators and lawyers and doctors and flying navy jets, but in that time, they had no choice. so you had real first raters, teaching k-12, an now although there are still many good teachers, i'm often apauled by so many. i believe if you can take a survey of u.s. k-12 teachers, that i believe that over three quarters of them would not be able to accurately date our revolution, our civil war, or world war ii. the historical amnesia is so dangerous. so this transition, which we welcome, which is so enriched us, despite the current recession, the introduction of women into the work force to their fullest potential, and i foe there's still some glass ceilings, but a new one shatters

every five minutes. i mean, it's amazingly equal, and the ease with which our society absorbs, is truly revolutionary, change is remarkable. mine, there weren't major massacres. part of it was guys were just watching football and missing the show. but on the whole, we absorbed this great revolution phenomenally well. in other parts of the revolution, it just doesn't work. in afghanistan, for instance. a woman is important property, and i will tell you, that there's one thing, and there are several things that men will fight for, in traditional society, it is their right to abuse women. to regard women as their property. so we go to afghanistan, we want to bring democracy, education for girls, you know, rights for women, and you are dealing with issues so fundamental to the

human psyche that we don't begin to comprehend it. now, i'm all for education for women. but you know, there are some things we may not be able to force. and we lie to ourselves. we say, well, all peep, all human beings really want the same thing, they all want better lives for their children. explain the mother who is proud of her wallison who became a suicide bomber. explain to me the father who has his daughter murdered because she may have flirted with a boy. these human cultures are profoundly different from us. yes, we all need air, water, we all would like better lives, but some want better lives in the here of a. some want them now. humanity is infinitely complex. we attempt to simplify, we paint ourselves into a terrible, dangerous corner and in places such as afghanistan, we're simplifying terribly. now, ladies and gentlemen, i appreciate your patience. i've only thrown out a few ideas

about where i think the world really is, but i think you can see the implications. if these things are true, we will not see the issues resolved in our lifetime. so policies, to set artificial dead lines, or changing a country that is 500 years old, with troops and aid, the surest wave to defeat ourselves is to set unrealistic goals. in this very complex and difficult world, if we want to function effectively, efficiently, provide for our own security, and be of some benefit for human kind beyond our borders, we must begin with a realistic appraisal of the world and human kind as they are, not as we wish them to be. with i speak to students, i tell them, look, i'm all for being an idealist, but the only way to be

an effective idealist is to begin with a realistic assessment of the world and human beings. otherwise, you're on the road to killing fields of cambodia. all of those of began with idealism. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] >> thank you very much, ralph peters. i neglected to indicate at the beginning that today's colloquyism is student activism, colloquy, which we have every year, right, an our director happens to be in florida,

couldn't get back nestor today, but he supports this annual event, which is in the interest of the students, in cijr's saip program. a few people have said to me, let ralph peters speak another 10 minutes, 15 minutes before the question and answer. [applause] >> i don't know whether he wants to do that or he has a few items he would like to sharpen and then we lead in to the question and answer. that's up to him to decide. >> i think it's important that this be a dialogue. and so while i am notoriously fond of the sound of my own voice and i won't promise you short answers, i do want to hear from you, but fred, you just mentioned, that he couldn't come back from florida. now i want to warn you canadians, i've been hearing stuff about, well, there are going to be water issues in the

future. canada may not want to share its water with the lower 48. if you don't share your water, we are going to take florida back from canada. just so you got it. so ladies and gentlemen, questions, please. sir. >> identify yourselves and ask a question, don't pacificist a statement. >> my question concerns capitalism and the obvious difficulties that it's going through now. could you comment, can we learn anything from that? it seems to me it's a system that's in great difficulty. >> well, i think it's important not to exaggerate capitalism's difficulties. and i think there are -- although they can be painful, look at where we are. think of where your grandparents or even your parents were. capitalism has been pretty good to us. but like any human system, it's imperfect. only god is perp. so when you have a -- only god

it per. so when you have a complex system, it's a tool, it's a system of organizing, assigning values, and exchanging goods. that's what capitalism is. and it's the most effect tv one we've -- effective one we've found out so far. socialism, sooner or later you run out of somebody else's money. now, the tragedy for humanity with many of these ideologist, is that -- ideologies, is that the rhetoric of the left is beautiful, it's inspirational. you know, peace and bread, equality of all. etc., etc., etc. it sounds good, but give me the map to make it happen. give me the directions to the kit, and with it comes down to making things happen -- you know, one part of this talk, i cut this short, but the discussion of ideologies. what is amazing was not just

that these ego maniacs like marx or lenin or mao, second rate intellect with first rate ambitions, sitting in lansburg prison, they design these systems, human beings sign up for them hand what happens when there turns out to be a flaw in the system? instead of adapting the system to fit human complexity, the answer is always change humanity to fit the system and you're on the road to the gulag or the death camps, etc., etc. so to the age of ideology, i certainly say good riddance, but capitalism, look, you always need brakes on any system. every vehicle needs a braking mechanism and the question is, how hard you want to hit the brakes, and i'm afraid we human beings are so subject to emotions, and can be so stirred up by rhetoric, that we are apt

to first of all, drive too fast, then hit the brakes too hard. now, in the past 20 years, we drove too fast. now the challenge is not to avoid braking too fast, because capitalism, with all its inequities, with all its flaws, has nonetheless given us those who have been lucky enough to be born in the functioning capitalist systems, the best quality of life and the greatest amount of freedom in human history. there's just no precedent for it. so anybody that says capitalism doesn't work, fine, show me something that has worked better. you really want to live in an old fashioned mercantile state, or in an ethnic dictatorship, etc., so capitalism, i am not one who has profited from it supremely, but i have a better life than my father, and mother, who had a better life than their father and mother. another problem with capitalism

versus the leftist rhetoric, you know, the left -- the retrofit prick from the left, any of the ideologies on the left, and remember, national socialism, what is nspab, what's it stand for? nazi party. national social -- national socialist german workers party. let's not forget, hitler's roots were on the left, but he was very adept at going where his ambition at the spur of the moment would take him, but the left has this stirring rhetoric about justice, but the left also brings with it the message of revenge. and i don't have to tell this audience who the victims of revenge often are. i mean, it's emotionally satisfying to plame others and -- blame others and that's something else about our wonderful society, the

inhartance from england. in this wonderful society of ours, we all people the human tendency, with something goes terribly wrong in hour lives, there's an impulse to blame, but it's amazing the extent to which we get over it. and we roll up our sleeves and fix it. in much of the world, that is not the case. the impulse to blame is indulged, and you show me a culture, a society that warm lows in blame, i -- wallows in blame, i will show you a failed society. so capitalism, it's ugly, imperfect, brutal, nasty, except it's the best system for sharing wealth. balls the trick about wealth, if there's no wealth, you can't share it. so step one is to create wealth and capitalism has done a sunkly effective job at that. so i'm a reluctant but

enthusiastic capitalist. contradiction. : >> on one in their subject to fits of mass hysteria, but it's a very disorganized society.

you know, in the u.s. military in the schools, whatever, the slogan is always co-operate and graduate. well, in the arab world, persia world cup which, of course, is not arab, or pakistan on the other side of the afghanistan, or afghanistan, they never learned to cooperate. i think one of the reasons cooperation works so well in north america, north of the rio grande, in our one big culture that accent is different, with so much in common and what do we have, but we are frontier cultures. when you were out on, owing out west, and certainly on the indian frontier in the 19th century, you might not have liked presbyterians or you might not have liked catholics or you might not have liked jews. while the indians were coming. some of that disappeared. and you fire that rifle?

and i'm oversimplifying obviously, but on the frontier, because by and large we didn't come in great masses. there was a forced mixing. with its nebraska or saskatchewan, vancouver today, we are frontier cultures and we remain so even though that's not territorial frontier has been closed, except in the arctic, we are still the great experiment in human societies. the degree to which we can cooperate and trust each other. i mean, i live part of my life in the world of publishing. in the world of book publishing a handshake deal, a handshake still seals the deal. was you have an offer and you agree to it, it will not be reneged upon. in the arab world, persia, it doesn't work. they are so travel light.

basically concentric circles. first of all you take care of the immediate family. your immediate family against everybody else. within your cousins and stuff, you work with them but then it's the greater, extended family, then it's the clan and tribe there are decreasing levels of loyalty. but basically you can cheat anybody. for your family. we just don't do that. individuals to cheat, and human beings, regardless of race, color, creed are perfectly happy to cheat some of the time. but what an astonishing on his cultures. we are willing to share the wealth to a remarkable degree. some of you may prefer, hey, if i have a jewish part of that's great, but it's a real good you is working with an anglican, will public a with the real good do. we've come a long way in the last few generations, montréal has exclusive lines.

there are still lines but they're not like they were in the past. our societies, we are breaking down age old human of prejudices. but in much of the world tradition societies it's the family against everybody. the tribe against everybody else. it's terribly destructive. it's hard to democracy and a tribal society. democracies tend toward in states such as canada or the u.s., where so complex that no one ethnic group today, the church of england can no longer dominate elections. the episcopal church can no longer dominate virginia. so we got to build coalitions, and a coalition shift. but in the middle east it's very hard because you are loyal to your family and tribe, and no one beyond it. it's curious. when i was going up in the military, arabs can fight.

we did ask ourselves the old question, what do arabs fight for? people fight for different things. arabs don't fight for states. in the arab world the state was always the enemy. in afghanistan, not arab of course, always, afghanistan was a city state of kabul. 2000 years ago. the city state of kabul with tributary cities. that's all that mattered. the caravan routes and cities, kept the tribes out. so there was no sense of cooperation, no sense of statehood, no sense of integration. but with arabs we say and can't buy because the israelis. i get a ringside seat for the latter half of the 2006 war. little legs standing watching things go off and tanks firing right beside it, et cetera, up in the northern border.

they gave the idf a very hard time. part of it was the idea asphalt. some was a political correctness. now they're fighting people with better weapons, better organization. but the bottom line was hezbollah fought better with more tenacity than arabs had thought before because they were fighting for a state. they were fighting for nasa or saddam. they were fighting for their faith, their family and their turf. has both hit the trifecta. and likewise in afghanistan, karzai has been talking about a draft. because we can't get afghans to fight for the corrupt base feeding karzai government, surprise surprise. but in afghanistan, the kabul government was always the enemy. they took your money, sons and sometimes took your daughters. but but the taliban has no

shortage of volunteers. because pashtuns will fight for the traditional way of life. to us it's madness but they will fight for. it's a long answer. but let me try to wrap it up this way. judaism and christianity are very, very healthy today. they have changed much over the centuries. i really don't think any of us, jews are christians, want to live by the rules of leviticus. at least not most of them. but we evolved into an amazingly humane faith. a humane faith is not a contradiction because there is god and then there is practice. and they can often be very, very different things. but i think christianity and judaism are very healthy because they are both religions of exile. the middle east the deserts of arabia, have a genius for producing monotheist religions. but the sand can't sustain them, can't nurture them.

and you look at, if you're a darwinian, look at judaism and had survived, you folks must be the most talented human beings in history. you know, if darwin is anything to say about it. but judaism, the survival, the need to preserve the core that if all on the outer shell for the peripheries, it made jews particular death. when you look at christianity, up until the 14th century, there were far more christians in the middle east than they were in europe. christianity comes late to your. in the 14th century, lithuanians are still pagans. we -- the germans are still having trouble. in the heart of europe. the pagan influence hangs on for a long time. but first of all, jews are

exiled around the world. christians wind up in that once force of continents, europe, the transforms itself and the we exile them again. self exile this time to north america. or to israel. and this self-selection, the later stages, this movement toward a frontier, this bravery, this willingness to take risks to rebuild, to restart life, sometimes for necessity, sometimes from ambition. i think it's really kept us fresh and healthy. and you look at the middle east, and it is just walled in dysfunctional traditions that there was never a change. so i think the tragedy is a tragic of the greater middle east. now that said i look at islam for longtime. islam is healthy on its front years. if you go to synagogue or indonesia, it's doing just fine.

indonesia, 222 million people, give or take a couple million, of whom well over 90% are muslims, and they produce a couple hundred terrorists. a couple hundred terrorists out of 210 or so million muslims? that's not bad but i did a research project in indonesia, and overall in the nation's just a want any part of it. so are stricter believe that others. one of their ties goes back to the trading routes to mecca in the middle ages did but they don't want any part of it. hinduism and buddhism prevail in indonesia far longer than islam. so look at indonesian islam on the western tip, it's an ammo come. there's a little hinduism, a little buddhism, a lot of animism go thrown in. i don't have time to go into some dollars practices that drive the saudis not but it's

different. but indonesia is a frontier for islam. it came in the really, it comes around the 16th century. and later to other islands and other parts. that's a relatively short span. religions like societies change on the front years. the problem isn't islam to me that the problem is middle eastern islam, which is just locked in concrete. and unable to change and clinging to his civilization that they cherish. it is there's. that's what they know. but it just doesn't work. middle eastern civilization, beyond israel, as not competitive. in a single sphere of human endeavor. not even terrorism because right now we are terrorizing the terrorists. what is the situation was reversed and this culture we cherished was also a dysfunctional? how well would we adapt? i don't know. madame? >> first of all, indonesia,

there was an article yesterday that is becoming much more radical than it used to be. much more muslim radical. but i wanted to ask you about, it sounds like you disagree with a role in afghanistan, and what's your take on the end of it? >> two very different questions. you might get an uptick in radicalism in indonesia because the media and saudi money. saudi money pours into everywhere. trying to turn indonesia into the lobbies. i don't worry about indonesia. it will produce some terrorists. but the great line that applies really consummate businessman in indonesia. said the problem with those damn indonesians is they just won't stay bought. intonations have their own traditions that they choose. there will be some radicals parts may become more conservative.

17,000 islands, about 3000 inhabitants to some degree. could be wrong about that number but 17,000 islands so you going to get a lot of choices. a lot of the conflict between christians and muslims in indonesia, and i'm quickly recognize a religious conflict. a lot of conflicts were a result of government policies to move excess population to other islands that had large christian populations. they are fighting about land rights. but then it becomes a religious war after it starts. yes, in afghanistan. i'm glad you asked that i have never opposed to killing terrorists. i am opposed to capturing. terrace -- was a human being commits a terrorist act of he or she sets themselves outside the boundaries of humanities, as far as i'm concerned. to kill the innocent is a sin in

any religion. and i have no patience with them. and i'm sorry, especially you get the christian side, this idea of everybody can be redeemed. well, know they can. sorry. if god wants to take your of redeeming them, fine, but we can't do it. we really can't persuade diehard religious fanatics to sign up for the pepsi generation. it doesn't work. it's not going to happen. we've had no success at it. this is a war to the knife. you know, i always tell people, even if you're not religious, read the old testament. you know, there's so little new under the sun. it against with the plight of two refugees. turned quickly on to genocide, wars and rumors of war. the book of joshua, what a ferocious book. ferocious. but the point is it recognizes humanity as it is.

and by the way i think another reason where we have done so well, and while women's rights came here at a long gestation period, but if you look at religious literature, in both the torah and write to the old testament to the new testament, in our shared religious heritage, look at the characters, look at the people. they are full human beings. look at the women. they are the ones you want today, the delilah's. then there are the ones you want to marry, ruth. the women are real human beings, rounded figures, no pun intended. and we look at the stick figures in the koran. there are women in there, but they are not real. and i think the fact that our founding documents of faith, the

word of god showed us the path. we are just slow learners. but i do think the fact that our founding -- are documents of faith, recognize unity in all its richness and complexity. it's not just good and evil. they are complex. david is an incredibly complex. it recognizes humanity and so many other religious text simply do not. now, afghanistan. i'm all for killing terrorists. i don't want to leave afghanistan completely. but i think we made a terrible mistake in 2002. we went to afghanistan in 2001, to smash al qaeda and punish the taliban for harboring them. by may 2002, the mission had been accomplished we should have come home. left a small residual force to keep a terrorist stronghold. instead we assigned ourselves

this idea that we could somehow turn afghanistan into a a land of florida. and it's not going to happen. it just is not. whenever ask ourselves the basic questions such as what do afghans want? to extend there's an afghan i didn't. you're talking about pashtuns, whose backs, persian speakers, all of whom want something somewhat different. i think a mistake we made was assigned ourselves goals that were unrealistic. we have to keep pursuing terrorists. some of the stuff are doing is nice to do, but when it comes to strategy, as complex as it is in its execution and details, the fundamental questions, which we do not ask, are very straightforward. there are three. unless a war such as world war ii is forced upon you, if you

have a choice, you start with three questions. one, what precisely do we hope to do? clearly, what do we hope to do? we can draw it with sharp contours. number two, can it be done? number three, is if they can be done, is it worth doing? we haven't asked ourselves any of those questions about afghanistan. now, i'm not making light of casualties when i say this, but strategies also very much like investment. who here would invest willingly in a corporation, say, that has 200 years of history of defrauding and bankrupting foreign investors? i mean, strategy is like investment in the sense if you have a choice, you want to have at least a reasonable chance of

a positive return on your investment. but we just doubled into this idea, this assumption, that we have to fix afghanistan. okay, they hosted -- talbott hosted al qaeda, kind of attack us we have to fix afghanistan. there's no logic to this. [inaudible] >> in 2002. [inaudible] >> this voice, i was writing in "the wall street journal" that the job we went there was to kill al qaeda. i was never tried to fix afghanistan. i am for women's rights come and as long as we're staying there i was for us doing what we legitimately could. but again, i'm an amateur student of history. they're british, after a long time of trial and error, figure out how to deal with afghan tribes that when the tribes into violent, you hammered them into left that you didn't try to turn them into squires from sussex.

and so again, i'm not saying that, oh, don't worry about humanitarian answers. i'm saying if you want to be a good humanitarian, start with things that are doable. be clear about the purpose. what exactly are you trying to do, can it be done? so i hope i will. i hope our efforts in afghanistan are fully successful in afghanistan becomes a fully integrated democratic member of the united nations, and every afghan is going to university. great, hope it happens that i don't think it's going to. so i resent the idea that we're trying to do something the local people don't want at great expense of blood and treasure. speaking for the u.s., we have fallen into this pattern from the cold war when we supported dictators and authoritarian figures because they were ours. the cold war is over. we don't have to do anymore. but we still can't stop. and the pattern is the same. we lie to ourselves. in vietnam we keep getting

ourselves that these guys are cherished by the people and they just did a little more time and the local militaries are going to come a long. we've been in afghanistan almost a decade and we can get afghans to fight for what we want them to fight for. doesn't that tell us something? at what point do the afghans step up? iraq was different. i was for iraq. not because of weapons of mass destruction, but because the middle east is so broken we had to do something to try to kickstart change. and it may work. we will know in 30 or 40 years. it takes a long time. but afghanistan has no inherent value. it's worthless dirt. they are hillbillies. our goals in afghanistan should be to keep it from becoming a base for al qaeda again. you don't have to turn it into toronto for british columbia to do that. and i say we should elect in 2002, kept in a special forces

him to keep having al qaeda, but we might have to go back. okay, then you go back. but think of the expense we've engaged in, blood and treasure, try to get afghans something that most of them just don't want. now, we also fall into the trap, how to talk to countries with we talk to people who speak english or educated in the west. the hobbit card size. and they're often brilliant can't. they know just what to say. democracy come human rights, there was a guy who charmed us, supposedly hardheaded bush administration. i am on record as saying a 2003 he was a con man who couldn't be trusted. and you didn't have to be a genius to see. you just have to have bought a few persian rugs in your life. i mean, he wasn't under on. and now he is iran's point man in iraq. very tight with revolutionary

guards. just because somebody like bhutto, just because they speak english and say what we want, doesn't make them died in the wool democrats. for america's, if they can speak with an oxford accent, that's really impressive. but bhutto's family a slaves. incredibly corrupt. incredibly corrupt. but she knew what to say and we didn't probe beyond that. then we go to religion in afghanistan. i keep hearing from people trying to rationalize. we don't want to do with religion as a force of human affairs to so they will say al qaeda is using a religion as a tool. well then, we don't ask why is the tool so effective. well, the taliban, this won't end up on, they're hypocrites. if hypocrisy they gave the power of religion, no religion would exist. religion does exist.

and again, i keep fighting for people in washington to accept the fact that when you're in the insists he is fighting for his religion and he's going to die for his religion, it might be to take him or her seriously. i mean, we pretend, the intelligence, the ivy league grads, they are so secular in education but didn't get a power thing. the transformative power of revelation. the incredibly, the shattering echoes of the voice of god in human affairs. they don't understand that power. so they just rationalize it away. but i put it to you, what could be more powerful than religion? of the five come here of the five most powerful, great world religions. judaism, to a layperson like me is at least 3000 years old, about 26 to 28 as we nobody goes back obviously for the.

christianity, 2000 years old that hinduism, god, who knows? buddhism, about 2000 years. islam is a baby. it's about 1300 years old. 1300 years to think of the empires that have risen and fallen over that space of time. ideologies that have come and gone. no ideology has ever created a religion, although religions have housed many ideologies. darwin, because of when he allegedly was, was blind to one thing. religion is the most powerful tool for preserving human collectives. even more powerful than in this, because while people will fight for the plan, their tribe, their family, look at al qaeda. al qaeda, they don't all speak arabic. they are sorting not all arabs. they come in brown, tan, yellow,

white, black. it's a real multinational corporation, but they will die for each other for the vision of their faith. to underestimate the power of religion in the human affairs, it's like putting a ball and chain on our strategic angles from the outset. so in afghanistan, i don't want to leave. i want to keep some forces there to keep hammering al qaeda, but let us recognize al qaeda is not in afghanistan anymore. we don't want them to come back. they are in somalia that they are in yemen. they are scattered throughout other arab countries that although there is one piece of very good news about al qaeda. i'm also proud of this. back in 2006, in 2007, i wrote that there was a good chance that the sunni awakening of the sunni flip against al qaeda would mark the high watermark of al qaeda. and it has. because al qaeda set itself up

as a chance of sunni muslim to remember after september 11, 2001, iso- pictures of palestinians and others jumping up and down in the streets celebrating? because al qaeda did what religious fanatics in power always do, pushing things too extreme and alienated the local people, they pretended to champion. millions of iraqis, arabs turned against them. and that did rule out the arab world. so very different from 2001. right now al qaeda is not welcome in any arab country. they are still there and there are backroom deals and funding from gulf emirate and saudis. but they are not formally welcome anywhere there are not big celebrations of osama bin laden. the butcher of baghdad, he is not being held up as a martyr anywhere. the trouble is muslims have been failing arabs, especially

fitting for so long, they needed a win. 9/11 was the biggest when they had since before the mongols. i mean, that was it. they have been failing so long to get a success story. i was hoping, and i so hope, soberly, the iraq will prove to be an arab success story. and arab society, that kind of the sort of sometimes treat people decently. so to leave afghanistan. leave behind unrelated ambitions for afghanistan. we can't tie our military down to one where facing a global enemy. madame. >> one with a two which were just saying. what your position on pakistan, and your position on pakistan and the president of course but emphasizing getting into pakistan, fighting taliban to pakistan do you think there's

any validity to that, any hope that something can be accomplished? that's number one, never to speak number one is complex enough. first of all, i'm not the dixie chicks, and although either something about president obama you can read in the "new york post" and i will not trash an american president. sun-kissed i going to talk about obama, but you read the post. pakistan, she asked about pakistan. pakistanis are great comments. pakistan's a losing proposition that it's an artificial country. doesn't make sense. and doesn't work because the champion and great enemy of muslims insisted on having a muslim state because majority hindu. think of how much more powerful the muslim voice would be. pakistan, its own rationale for being a state is that they are all muslims that is to go to pakistan you cross the river

going west, you leave -- the river device pakistan. you go west of the river and your the culture of central asia. the passions, it's a culture of central asia, eat, manners, traditions, interpretation of islam. you east of the river and you're in the culture of the subcontinent the it's very much influenced islam. and so it is a country that just doesn't hang together. sunnis are the business people. the pashtun tribe and a northwest also furnish more of their share of officers of traditional warriors. it's a country that just doesn't work. i have worked with the pakistani military in pakistan in the

mid '90s, and it is so corrupt and so hypocritical, and they are so anti-american for all the help we've tried to give them. they have blamed the united states when everything went wrong. if your car broke down, it must be a drone overhead or something like that. and we played into the hands. bhutto would come here and say all the right things. but the pakistani media, most anti-american in the world, by far. it's utterly irrational. it is either failing so badly what india is taking off, the great enemy. that they need someone to blame. we are the great satan. and i think we're absolutely foolish for supporting pakistan. i would even closer embassy that i would pull everything out of pakistan. we can, i was a white in a moment, but in the is the future for all its many problems and

flaws, it is a functioning democracy. it is not perfect. but it is big, it's largely democratic. it's very, very corrupt but they are fun. they still respect the rule of law. there are attempts to reform the courts that it has a long way to go. the hindu is the biggest con game in all of human history. about it, i can kind of memorial a small number of people figured out how to convince the rest of the people that in times of crisis, famine, plague, whatever, war, that the small elite should be protected and be protected and if you really good you would be an elite is, a member of the league the next time around. that said, india, for all its -- i think called a million minis now, it is a wild place that i have been a research project there. fascinating. but that's what we should be supporting. pakistan i would abandon. but we are not. the united states is a state

sponsor of terror indirectly. because pakistan government is a terrorist country. it has were the taliban a long time. it supported terrorist attacks against india. after the last round in mumbai attacks, horrible. and the pakistanis, the isi greenlighted. they are cia. the isi greenlighted the attacks. because they knew the united states would step in and prevent india from retaliating. they have been gaming us for years. they attacking because we said then, stop india from hitting back. so the pakistanis never have to behave responsibly. and with her idiotic military approach to afghanistan, we have put our troops at the end of a 1500-mile supply line for the port of karachi up through the passes into afghanistan. and the pakistanis can turn off the flow of supplies anytime they want to. and the aftermath of the mumbai

attacks suddenly there were attacks on our supply lines. to warn us that we didn't stop india from retaliating they would hit us. so our response to pakistani is to get ourselves that they would be good allies and to give them another $6 billion which will go right into -- it's an incredibly corrupt country. it will be stolen. and when the aid doesn't make it out to people or to the low-level pakistan infantrymen, the united states will get blamed for the aid that didn't get to them. pakistan will never behave as a mature state if it is capable of doing so, as long as the united states continues to protect it. again, i would pull everything we had out of their but we can't right now because we a chain ourselves to the supply route. by the way, any officer who submitted that as a solution to a school, a textbook problem

would be failed. i mean, the it easy, i don't want to bore you with military details, but we are doing things that are so utterly idiotic militarily that future historians will marvel, marvel. in the back, madam, you been waiting for a while. >> what is rahm emanuel's feelings about israel, and how much influence does rahm emanuel have on obama's request okay, i'm sorry. i not going to talk about president obama. i just don't do it. it's an act of disloyalty. i don't -- i'm not an obama supporter but he is my president. >> untracked eyesore, she had a second question. >> i want to know about rahm emanuel's feelings towards israel spent how can i answer that? i don't know. i've never met rahm emanuel. i'm sorry. i won't pretend. if i were a real journalist i would like that i would say oh, rahm emanuel. [inaudible] [laughter] >> there you go.

delay in think i second question, then the gentleman in blue and then you. they will get over your. we will get them all. >> give in the christian communities precarious position, in the west bank, how would you explain the anglican churches against israel? >> i can't. it's just silly. but again, human beings are heard animals. i may, always a, do you want to understand journalists? they are heard animals. and i saw the going back to 2006. a few pilot fish lik like a near times, bbc said the direction of the coverage and everyone jumps on. and 2006, the "new york times," bbc, and a few others decided that the sort of the 2061 is going to be lebanese sovereignty, and israel's

barbarity towards the lebanese. and all the star journalists went to lebanon. and they really filmed the same dead baby coming out of the rubble again and again and again. and all followed the same stories. when i was up there i was days there for several days. and i saw one of the journalists on the front lines while i was there. he was a reporter who came up and went out for a few hours and went back. reporters from the major international networks standing on hotel terraces with black jackets and helmets while people were having dinner inside the restaurant, but they are outside pretending the danger is right here. the coverage in 2006 was incredibly corrupt. at the storyline was, oh, those bad israelis. oh, those innocent lebanese are being tormented. rockets are raining down on israel.

israelis, some are becoming refugees for the first time since 1948. others are living in basements and in shelters. and there is virtually no coverage of them. so i was a to things to hurt mentality in the media, but also fashion. how many of you have teenage daughters? or granddaughters. they will some pretty silly stuff, right? it is not a thought their process. of analytical decision-making. they're wearing what their friends are wearing. and unfortunately, anti-semiti anti-semitism, or anti-israeli sentiment, could be every bit as fashionable as tattoos. i mean, don't expect rational answers to all these things. humanity in its fits of madness, there is no rational way to explain the holocaust. is humanity going off the rails,

and humanity intermittently does. server? euronext. >> i am a former russian jew. anyhow, i have a question -- >> people who presented they are, why we having such a terrible time, here, counter pr the palestinian, the arab networks, why does israel have such a horrible pr? even, they can put three words together to defend what they believe in and what they're doing. what's going on? >> well, you know, you have to answer that for yourself. i would just give you my personal experiences. look, when the canadian media is interested in which audience, canadian audience. the israeli media is interested

in the israeli audience. when i was with, i was the only civilian, it was almost a. the press center was there, the commission was there. and the president really weren't interested in me. i was pro-israel as it gets. and some friends that help me get up there and stuff. but the press officers, they find after today's got me an escort which in hit get me because i'm much happier just wandering around saying things on my own. but they weren't interested in having an american reporter for the "new york post" who is the six largest paper in the united states, incredibly pro-is a, take a jewish audience that they weren't interested in because their first impossibility was to the israeli audience. and they concentrated on the israeli domestic audience that so i think it's partly, there is a media aspect of that, but also

it's really hard when the entire world is against you to counter argue. and the media, i mean, i think many in israel to make arguments for why the criticism is unjust. but it just goes unheard. it goes back to the heard mentality that is you will be in the doghouse and so many of the west have been conned by left wing propaganda, here's another point, people self segregate. you know, in our societies it's not as intense as it used to be. certain kind of people join the military. a very different kind of person generally becomes, seeks a career in journalism. and those in the journalist world in the united states certainly are overwhelmingly left of center. they are not all hard left. some are. you can get a job and journalism, and internship in less you are at an ivy league

school. it's now an elite profession for which it ever was before. in the '60s and '70s journalism would from a light blue collar professionalism to a wide profession in the united states which is why the new times is failing. and increasingly journalists write for other journalists for prizes instead of writing for the audience. but anyway, i think so many of these we now two generations of journalist in the united states who all went to these good schools. the liberal arts faculties are dominated by leftists. the myth of palestinian suffering, palestinian rights is just dominant. i mean, how can you possibly get a date with a really hot left wing chick if you're pro israel? it's just not going to happen on campus. the word chick, goes back to my and the seats of the horse cavalry. but beyond that i don't have a

good answer for you. i simply don't, except it is a fad. it is fashionable. once again, to hate jews. it's in vienna, 1910. >> you presented working generously be determine that's as a mystic view of the arab world and islam, although you later express some shaded optimism regarding iraq, but you also, you know, at the beginning of the lecture, the past does not determine the future, although uses slightly different words. how will democracy which proposes ideologic of human rights and constitutional and legal protection of those rights alter the kinds of tribalism which you identify as bringing down the arab and islamic world civilization only, and which i see also my understanding of patriarchal understanding of

religion. elements of which all exist in modern forms and other parts of the world. and so could you answer that? and could you also consider -- >> let her go, this is good. >> will you also consider the relative merits of pessimism versus optimism, ideas of predictive theories of democratic progress as they relate to the arab islamic world, because we know the theories of war and peace suggested that democracies are less likely to fight each other. >> adolf hitler came to power through democracy. it's a myth that democracies don't fight each other. human beings will always find a reason to fight. human beings when they a fit of madness takes over, world war i. germany had a kaiser certainly had its reichstag project

democracies fighting each other. so just go with that. i absolutely agree with you that patriarchy is part of the problem. i don't know exactly how far the literature goes in judaism. are you for my with the book of judith? is an example i always use. judas, nice jewish girl, she's basically good looking and young and happily married. and some elders spot her and she goes down to the secluded place to bathe. and a spotter baiting, picking at her, kind of voyeuristic. and they come back and tell lies about her because she rejects him. she doesn't want them. she's old and it revealed to be innocent, et cetera. the point of the story of judith, and this is true in every religion, when old men make the rules, young women suffer. which is why i firmly believe

that religion is so healthy in our societies now, because women do have a voice. they have to be heard. they have to be heard. in so much of the greater middle east, women don't have a voice. unless it is heard screaming from a beating. so as far as being a pessimist goes, i'm really not -- human beings to myself as a mystic because it's a pretty ugly world situation. human beings are survivors. we are the cockroaches that have powers of speech. we managed to get two things somehow. but i think you make your way forward much more difficult when you lie, when you pretend that there are no bad human beings. when you pretend that all men want peace. because clearly they don't. the closest some human beings come to being a god is taking another life. the empowerment, the individual, i have seen them, people who

have never had any power in their lives suddenly in a disruptive society get a gun and a badge of some kind. or a shred of a uniform. and suddenly they are licensed to kill and abuse. and the people that always earn more money than them or the women that wouldn't give them the time of day, suddenly they can be beaten, killed, raped, whatever. and make no mistake, at least a small sliver of humanity delights, delights in harming other human beings. beating the hell out of and killing and raping and murdering jews in ukraine was not a hard days work for the average ss officer. dad loved his work. you know, to be flippant. and if you do not recognize that some human beings delight in inflicting pain on others, you can't achieve anything that

looks like a lasting peace. and when we, with the best intentions of the world, we try to redeem human monsters, or in human monsters. what do we do? by protecting the monsters, we condemn the 99% of human beings who do want to live in peace, to the tyranny of the monster. you have to heart make hard choices in life, and this is not an argument for, execute every shoplifter. but the violent criminals rarely are fully reform. and terrorists, violent terrorists who slaughtered masses of innocent people are unlikely to come around and be really good students in their new incarnation. it just doesn't happen. while i'm sure us a very pessimistic, i'm just trying to inject a level of reality that i see missing in washington.

and that's really all. i have great faith in humanity. i'm one of those people my wife marvels at, people always expect me to be some sort of being guided as i want to kill terrorists. i want to kill terrorist because i value civilization. i value peace. i value human rights. i delight in every day, even a rainy day in montréal in march. i mean, there's something absolutely beautiful about every single day of our lives if we're willing to open our eyes to it. but the terrorists want to close our eyes. they want to close our hearts, close our minds, close our societies. so to me, fighting islamist terrorism, or any other violent terrorism committed in the name of any god, is the ultimate humanitarian mission. [applause] >> i really don't worry