less than 1/50 of the amount of space that has been opened with the great eastern. what happened is that because there was no bulk head deck, once the water got to the top of the first compartment, it spilled into the second. when it cot got -- when it got to the top of the second, third, ship went straight down in two hours. the difference between the two ships, the first ship cause the compartmentalization when there's a blow and you are able to isolate the disaster and localize it. second ship because there was no ability to isolate it when there's disaster in one place, you have that disaster every place. within the system that is the ship, it's a global disaster. you know, it's essentially bad engineering. so now i want to like sort of take you through a couple of things to witness from the

earthquake in japan. you know, we saw a loss of capacity, access to capacity in the northern coast of japan. what are some of the things? just like the automotive. toyota in japan was shut down completely for five weeks. now toyota in japan is operating again, globally, the entire system, north america, europe, throughout asia, it's operating at less than 30% capacity. and they don't know when they are going back up. they are saying maybe by november or december that they will be up to full capacity. maybe. honda is actually probably in worse shape than toyota, nissan is almost as bad, ford just this week they shut down operations in taiwan, south africa, india, philippines, we're talking six weeks after the earthquake. we've also seen disruptions of g m, chrysler, volvo, we've also

seen productions in the ge production lines for aircraft, there's been disruptions for ipad, smartphones, appliances, cameras, motorcycle repair part. a lot of the disruption is hidden. we see it in the form of higher cost. if you go out to buy a car, it's going to cost more. fewer cars will be sold. if you go to rent a car, certainly in europe, the price is already up 30%. financially, i mean the financial sort of impact, the bank of japan came out and said the japanese economy is shrinking. the imf said this event, we're talking six weeks out before they realize this. in the asian growth is threatened by the event because of the lack of fdi that's going to be coming out of the foreign direct investment in japan. goldman sachs said this this event probably is going to knock about a point, one percentage point off of usgdp this year, up to a point, between a half

percent and one percent. this is going to a robust year of growth. we're probably not going to see that. if this has been last year, that was a lot of potential growth that we could see. and we have to remember that this -- we were lucky. this event was -- no matter how bad it was, it could have been vastly worse. one the top managers came out after the event, just last week, and he said it is an absolute miracle that we did not see a catastrophic shutdown of the entire system. so why did this happen? the things that we have found that has been revealed to us since the event that single companies in northern japan in single sites, just, for example, 60% of the key semiconductor resin of the global capacity, one site in the world. 60% of the used in the -- 90% in

lithium batteries. 90% in brakes. these are global, one factory, one place in the world. japanese companies in every one of these cases and many more, they control 100% of the world supply within the borders of japan. so we have all of these essentially in engineering we call them single points of failure. we can also look at them as key stones in the archways. when you pull out the key stone components, the entire system crashes. so, you know, what we have and can see is that with our global industrial system there's a number of cases in which there's absolutely essentially no compartmentization. the system is not resilient. the system is extremely rigid, it is extremely brittle. a disaster in one place is

transmitted throughout the system almost instantaneously. it can easily become a disaster every place. and some of these disasters we could imagine being extremely destructive. one the things we can understand, this is a new phenomenon. the first industrial crashes, that's what they with, the first industrial crashes, we didn't see them until 19 99. it happened after the earthquake knocked out the shipment of components from a town outside of taipei to the rest of the world. within a few day, the factories all around the world shut down. we saw industrial crashes after 9/11, we saw a crash through the sars event, and three or four years ago in japan, there was a

smaller earthquake that knocked out one factory. we saw all 12 shutdown. the layman event and shock of september 2008 knocked out both the supply and credit to the system and it also knocked out a lot of demand within the system. and we saw a number of disruptions in the industrial system after that. other danger zones, pretty much any place where you see extreme concentration of capacity. the south of japan, much greater concentration than in the north. any kind of an event, even quite a bit less severe. the disruptions would have been probably worse. korea got 80% made in seoul, or around seoul. this is the global supply. something happens with north korea, you are going to lose access to the memory chips. india -- a number of companies

do close to work, u.s. companies do their back office work in india. you lose access to india, you lose back office work, companies like ge, and companies with access to. taiwan and the earthquake, there's been no change in there in the distribution of that capacity that we loss access to in the earthquake. we're talking 80 plus percent of the assembly of the electronics takes place in china. drugs in this -- in this country, 80% of the raw materials come out of china. what we used to preserve our foods in this country, all of the foods and all of the store shelves, acid, vitamin c, it was something that was first

synthesized by an american scientist. 100% now comes from japan. you lose access to any reason to a supply of china, you are going to have disruptions within the supply of food. we live in a world, in other words, in which a natural disaster can trigger significant, perhaps catastrophic disruptions within the industrial system. we could see it because of a pandemic. we see a disruption because of the financial disaster. also we can see disruptions because of unintended, unintentionally, political actions. if there were a spat between the united states and china, there could be disruptions in the trade system, even way before we went to war with china. those disruptions could cause severe disruptions to the larger systems. if the chinese people rise up

again, tienanmen ii, we saw the support among the truckers. they rise up not in china, but in the midst of our industrial system. the one that we rely on here to provide us with our basic foods and drugs and goods. india, pakistan happens in the middle of our economy. and, of course, you've got intentional political event that is are designed specifically to disrupt the supply of goods, such as we saw last year with china in the case of rare earth. they cut off of rare earth andic bar -- and embargo. and we get to what you deal with, which is terror. you know, if -- you know, if the fedex printer cartridge sort of event last october, if that's the case many which you actually

see these people using the systems that we also rely on for the transportation of all of these vile components. so, you know, this is kind of a fantastic story. the fact that we have an industrial system that is quite radically different than what we think it is. and it's much -- it's radically different than the way it used to be. so, you know, just very briefly, how does this come to be? >> 15 years ago, you know, the fact if there's an earthquake like we saw, we would have lost toyota or honda or general motors. what we saw now, we lost toyota, honda, and general motors. the reason is -- the reason is didn't happen, or would not have happened is because the system was doubly compartmentalized. it was compartmentalized within

the self-sufficient nation states. since then over the last 15 years, we've seen what we call globalization. which -- sometimes we call it off shoring. this is essentially the blending together of industrial systems. we now share an industrial system with all of the other nations, some nations do a, other nations do b. we have to connect a,b,c,d. we see disverticallization. the firms that used to do everything themselves share the supply activities. it's important though, it's either globalization nor outsourcing leads to this kind of concentration, or this kind of risk. on the contrary, both globalization and outsourcing should in theory lead to greater

distribution of capacity, greater distribution of risk. what actually resulted in this kind of concentration was another that we don't talk about very much. abandonment of our anti-monopoly enforcement back in the 1980s. in this country, it was the abandonment of our anti-activity at the federal level using trade policy back in the 1990s. what we did, we left the number of people free to concentrate power. that's what they seek to do. in the process, they have also concentrated capacity and hence they have concentrated risk. there's police reasons that went behind this. but the fact is that, you know, for our purposes today, two key facts stand out. one, the system that you guys are protecting is improperly engineered. you know, and i've had one of

the top guys in motorola say we have broken all of the rules of engineers. and the second thing is almost no one that you know really understands this. no one in washington. none of the public officials, very few of the economist have any inkling of this. there was -- you know, just sort of to wrap up here, last year for the first time wto, an economist at wto wrote an article in the "world bank publication" this was as much the panic of 2000. and this is, you know, this is the first sign these guys are picking up on this. he wrote, globe production networks have introduced new microeconomic editions that run parallel to the shock

transmission. if a shock occurs in one of the participating sectors or countries, the shock is transmitted quickly to the other stages of the supply chain through backward and forward linkages. production networks have an inherit magnification affect on shocks. that's a good start. but it's only a start, and i'll leave you with this, it's the fact that this knowledge remains extremely isolated. for instance, last week the federal reserve is trying to figure out what's going on with it -- with the economy. this is one the headlines that you might have seen last week. which is impact on japan's quake on u.s. factories surprises fed. so again it's like this is something that, you know, is not well understood. and so the stake that is are at play here are quite a business larger than most people realize.

[applause] [applause] >> great. i love how barry can make all of us look like the option -- optimist as karen just said. thank you, everyone. there was a great panel. very diverse, looking at what is a broad range of concerns in the domestic theater. i want to turn over to questions and answers for the floor so that we can get a little bit more discussion. and then i've been instructed that at 2012 we're going to call it quits and shift to lunch. all the way in the back would be great. if you can wait for the microphone to come and state

your name. >> thank you, can you hear me? >> yes. >> i'm eric, i'm with the drug enforcement administration, and my question is first specific to ms. greenberg, and maybe in general terms, i was going to ask you does your babes track all terrorists related, or just specific direct plots to the united states. i want to point out successful prosecution, pending prosecution against viktor boot, as well as 960a for members of the aqim. and how they factor into the analysis. from our perceptionive, those individuals who from the earlier panel, members of al qaeda, already necessarily, you know, nuclear chemist. but individuals like these who have the access to maybe get,

you know, larger scale wmd in the hands of those people who want to use them to kill americans. also to point out with the successful conviction title xviii conspiracy to kill americans. i wanted to get your thoughts specifically. anybody else care to address that? >> yeah, really good questions. these are the kind of questions that we debate all day long. susan in the back, hit her up later for how we make the decisions. no, i'm glad you raised that. the way these get into the database is 99% by the u.s. government willing to expand the category of terrorism to include these. so that's basically how i go about it. so i don't think victor boot is there, assad is, and most of them are. you'd have to check with susan. you've raised an interesting point. one the reasons we make the

divisions, jihadi crimes, and these are farc crimes, there is a large database separate from the data that i was giving you are drug crimes, that involve some of the same charges of terrorism. yes, they are in there. what's even more interesting about this is that -- this is just sort of a footnote, but in terms of bringing these trials in the united states, the drug enforcementment -- the d.a. cris use a different method of getting information. i think you know this. in terms of who they have on the ground, how they get the forensics. it changes the way the cases were argued in court. we have been looking into how to broker the conversation to take some of the techniques that were used in the other cases that you were talking about particularly

the drugs and use that understanding of the international, evidentiary environment to bring it over in a sense to terrorism cases. susan and i would both like to talk to you. thank you for your question. >> next question. you are next. there we go. thanks. >> bill pope, retired foreign service, formerly in the office of the coordinator for counterterrorism at the state department. one the most discouraging aspects of where we are right now ten years later is the psyche of the american public. it was referred to the in the first panel, it could have easily been asked of them and referred to again here, about zero tolerance, about fear, about lack of resiliency even though in the psychological sense. i wanted to ask system secretary kayyem about this. al qaeda claiming the underwear bomber failed and many of the

other fails, they were still real successes for them, because we freaked, we panics, you know, took all of the steps. let's throw another trillion dollars at something. is there anything that we can do, the president, bully pulpit, the congress, anything to do, more like the israelis do it, the bus gets bomb, people sweep up, bury the dead, and the next day they are back at the same bus stop to take the bus. is there anything as a nation to become more psychologically resilient? >> that's a good question. it is terribly ironic that a nation as big as ours has relatively few casualty over the last decade related to terrorism is as you point out, the one most likely to react in that, you know, in that sort of zero

tolerance, big, bad, lots of money way that nations are dealing with it every day. maybe it's not ironic. maybe that's because we just had no idea of -- i think people were so surprised by september 11th, not just because of it's size, but because most people didn't even know what al qaeda was or bin laden was. i think it is predominantly, i can bash the media and, you know, it's just not federal media, literally, you guys see local news. it's crazy. you know, oh i got a pen and a knife on to the airport. these are the big stories. these will be the stories about 9/11. trust me. around the anniversary of 9/11. these will be tremendous stories about reporters sneaking on various materials that could have killed the pilot and everyone else. but i think it is the bully

pulpit is really the only -- i mean sort of -- well i can tell you from the president on down, i think he has been successful in that regard. i think you just -- you don't see this breathlessness coming from the white house or from the department after every attack. it's going to take -- or attempted attack. it's going to take many years. goodness knows if there's another, what the dialogue will be like. then it's the leadership on down to the state and local level. then i think the american public is just got to -- i'll be blunt. just got to grow up about this. i don't mean -- it's just not given the evidence in the first panel. it's not a threat. it is a bad threat. it could get worse. we have tremendous work. but, you know, i could give awe long list of things that i'm more worried about for myself and my kids than i am about this. we have to figure out a way to

educate each other about this. i will say, just -- i'm, you know, you can talk to a room full of terrorism experts like all of you, i'm on the consumer end of this, and y'all are really smart and think about in and about terrorists. then you ask the question, you know, if there was an earthquake in your town could you and your family survive for 72 hours. which is much more likely to happen if you are from california. and the number of people who can't answer question is shocking. part of it is us growing up too. stuff happens. >> great. anyone else want to take a crack? all right. next question. in the blue. coming from behind you there. >> my name is bernard moore, i'm from the united states special office command but don't represent them for the purpose of the question.

the question is aimed at peter, specifically. to what degree do you think a possibly aggressive united states foreign policy in the last 25 years in the middle east has been the taboo subject or sacred cow not talked in the idea of approaching counter-radicalization. in other words, getting to the core of some of the radicalization might just happen to be policies which seem to be to others in the middle east rather assertive. >> i answer that question maybe 1,000 times in britain. it's always the first question that comes up. to what extent is foreign policy the reason for all of this. and the conventional wisdom used to be that it is. i'm slightly less convinced. not that i reject the idea that foreign policy isn't an important factor in this. i think the factor is the

narrative in how foreign policy fits. the narrative is the west at war with islam. anything that seems to confirm that narrative is the asection of the ideology. so if, for example, the u.s. does something like invading iraq, for example, that feeds into that narrative, that will be used in other words to exploit people and in order to radicalize and recruit people. all of these things feature. but similarly, it can't be domestic things that can also be fashioned in order to fit that narrative. so the foreign policy is a function of the narrative, rather than the other way around. foreign policy itself, i don't believe, causes people to be radicalized. i've been most astonished by, but no expert has given me a good answer to. is why we saw such an enormous amount of obvious radicalization around the iraq war in 2003 in

europe. but not in the country that was leading that invasion, namely the united states. and i still haven't got a full answer to that. i'm still getting to the ground. and if i find an answer, i'll let you know. thank you. >> if -- to follow up on that, to what extent is economic prospects have we talked about these somali kids who's economic future is not looking all that bright necessarily. new immigrant who's are struggling, to what extent do we see economic conditions playing a role as well as in the radicalization process. >> well, again, i mean -- it's been said 1,000 times by people that have studied this much more than i have that, you know, poverty is not directly related to people participating in terrorism. however, it's very important to understand that an important component of the radicalization cycle is some kind of grievance.

it will be filled by ideology and perhaps will be mobilized by a terrorists group into action. grievance is not sufficient, but necessary for someone to become radical. the perception of socioeconomic exclusion can be a grievance that plays a role. it's certainly true that american are earning a lot of money, highly educated. they are on the pock pocket, ane somali community in this country is actually quite similar to many european muslim community that is are particularly deprived. i think for that particular community, measure that is are aimed at capacity building,

building youth centers and creates economic activities for people could help produce the risk of people experiencing those cognitive thoughts. >> great. thank you. more questions from the field? with that, i will not stand between you and launch. please help me thank our panel for a great presentation. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] :

>> president obama announced a number of changes to his national security team with current cia director leon panetta replacing robert gates as defense secretary and general david petraeus to head the cia. track their careers including their earliest appearances online at the c-span video library. search, watch, clip and share. it's washington, your way. >> the state department's counterterrorism coordinator daniel benjamin says they're watching for al qaeda in the middle east uprisings. he spoke earlier this week at a new america foundation event in washington about al qaeda looking for a way to gain influence in the protest areas. this hour-long discussion was part of a conference focusing on terrorist threats 10 years after 9/11. >> call it back tord. such order as we possess. i hope you enjoyed your only 15-minute break of the day. and got some lunch obviously. still out there if you need

to go out for a cookie but i thought we would stay on time and ask you again, particularly given the luncheon speaker's subject and the importance of his public remarks, just make sure you resilenced your phones if you took them out to make some calls during the break. it is really a privilege to introduce dan. i think he is known to many of you, some of you anyway, certainly, i count him as a friend and admire him from his professional work as a government servant but even more,'s one of those rare people who managed to move from journalism into public policy and back and forth and retain his integrity and independence and clarity of voice and do good work in lots of different guises. and it is really terrific to have him here as the

keynoter for this conference because i think not only is he in the right job to offer this kind of perspective as the counterterrorism coordinator at the department of state with the rank of ambassador, soon to become i believe an assistant secretary of state once the long argued-over counterterrorism office is finally elevated to a state department bureau which is to happen soon. so not only does he have the right perspective in terms of access to current information and conversation both within the united states government and perhaps as importantly through constant global travel but for a conference that is framed around the 10 years that have passed since 9/11 he's also one of those rare specialists who has been studying al qaeda, its affiliates and the context in which they have arisen and operated since well before it was fashionable or even well-understood.

dan went to harvard and oxford as a marshal scholar. despite that he is awfully decent guy and after college he worked as a journalist for "time" magazine. he was a foreign correspondent in germany among other assignments and then he entered the national security council staff in 1994 and served there until 1999. eventually as a senior figure in the counterterrorism bureau working with steve simon and dick clark. at the moment when a relatively small people inside of government recognized that the united states had a problem on its hands, that much of the public and indeed much of the government simply did not understand in its full dimensions he and steve simon demonstrated their sort of sense of where this

was going by writing a book called, the age of sacred terror that was published in 2002 and but actually reflected the understanding and research they had done prior to the 9/11 attacks. i think with peter's work provided one of the most reliable, early and essential sources of clarity and balanced analysis for american and english readers after the 9/11 attacks. he and steve also wrote a book a few years later called "the next attack" that was fallly sharp assessment about five years after 9-11 where both the enemy and american counterterrorism responses had arrived. as i say, these are all reasons to admire dan and even resent him but it is very difficult to do so because he really is a terrific guy as evidenced by his willingness to share his time with us today. today he will talk for 30 minutes or so, 25 or 30

minutes and we'll take some questions from the floor. dan. [applause] >> i must say i wish i got such warm greeting at all the meeting i went do. i particularly want to thank steve for that. the temptation after an introduction like that is to sit down because nothing you can possibly do will live up to it but it is really a great pleasure to be here at new america again. i was here before i was in government any number of times. i always enjoyed coming and it's great to steve and peter bergin and so many other friend and colleagues in the audience here. as someone who spent the last decade and a half either inside the think tank world or in government consuming the products of the think tank world i have the greatest admiration for new america which i have to say in next to no time at

all put itself on the map and became a central focal point, if that isn't redundant, of the debate on so many issues and has done it so impressively. i have to say as a former journalist i particularly admire the emphasis you've put on being part of the debate, on being in print, keeping your fellows in ink all the time. i think it is absolutely fabulous, good for the democracy, good for the discussion. you put together a great lineup today. i'm quite honored to be part of it. well as you noted, steve, i've been looking at al qaeda for some time and throughout that period have been asking the question, what is the relationship between al qaeda and the affiliated groups? it has cultivated in disparate places. these are dynamic, changes tiles. steve, both you and i mentioned in books we wrote what seems like a long time

ago that the first metaphor i think that was used about al qaeda, it was the ford foundation of global terror. well that, many other metaphors have been used as well but after the east africa embassy bombings and of course 9/11 the metaphor changed dramatically and no one was using such benign analogies. the ties to affiliates have evolved with varying degrees of command-and-control, influence between the core and the affiliates. this conference is particularly timely because as most of us recognize, the affiliates are playing a greater role today, a more menacing role today than they have in quite some time. that development is not an overnight one by any means. it has been in training for some time but we're in decidedly different place from where we were say two or three years ago. and what makes the issue of the affiliates particularly urgent now the context which they operate has changed so

dramatically in a matter of just a few months. let me begin by outlining the global threat environment and then i will suggest what it is we're trying to do to deal with this changing situation. let's start at the heart of the matter, the aq core leadership in pakistan, the group responsible for 9/11. as you know the u.s. and pakistan together in counterterrorism cooperation put considerable pressure on aq and pakistani military operations aimed at eliminating strongholds in the federally administered tribal areas degraded much of the group's ability. as the result the aq core had significant leadership losses and is finding it more difficult to raise money, train recruits and plan attacks outside of the region but although aq core is clearly weaker it retains capability to conduct regional and transnational attacks. in addition aq forged closer ties with some of the other militant groups in the region.

pakistani taliban and haqqani met network. in the last year, we've seen two high-profile law enforcement cases involving individuals who appear to have been trained and handled from the fatah, operating with the u.s. borders. this is in distinction to what we had seen in the post-9/11 period. najibullah zazi a got his training in pakistan and pleaded guilty to charges he was planning to set off several bombs in the u.s. we saw faisal shahzad linked to pakistani car bomb in times square almost a year ago. the significance of these cases and the ties that they illustrate can not be ignored. although i would not characterize it as an fill though its ideology bear many similarities the continued menace of taba a large well-armedded

technically capable terrorist group adds as well to the overall threat in south asia. now while the aq core has weakened operationally the affiliates have become stronger. consequently the stronger aq threat is geographically and ethnically diversified. at top of affiliates list is al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. aqap as everyone knows. it demonstrates growing ambitions and strong desire to carry out attacks the region. if established itself as first of aq affiliates to make attacks at u.s. at home a central goal. the group made the debut with the christmas 2009 attempt to destroi an airliner bound for detroit n october 2010 it sought to blow up several u.s. bound airplanes by posting bombs in cargo that would have been in the plane's holds. as those efforts and qaap's failed attempt on the life of saudi arabia's deputy interior minister

demonstrated group is tech lodgely innovative and eager to put new tactics into use quickly. aq affiliates are taking on a greater share of the propaganda war. here too aqap is at the forefront. it last july released its first english language online magazine aspire and four subsequent issues publish since. it provide ad platform for al with laak can i who emerged a idealogical leader of aqap. i wanted to underscore, a laak can i is no near mentioner but someone integrate involved in terrorist at activities. through his sermons and online writings. a qap open under new field of recutement moong english language speakers. move to northwest africa where no group made a bigger name in the kidnapping business than aqaim.

worth noting here kidnapping for ransom is become one of if knot the foremost source of revenue for aq-related groups everywhere. will that is itself deeply worrying we can talk about this later if you like i also think it is a sign of excellent work that was done in counterterrorism finance begun by yuan here and carried on by others aqim raised tens of millions in euros in the past several years through kidnapping for ransom operations. it currently holds four french men who were abducted from the uranium compound in last september. in january, we saw an attempted kidnapping of two young frenchman in niger failed and they were killed during a rescue operation involving nigerian and french commandoes. we believe much of this ransom money goes to sustain the organization which is no small feat in the environment of the but there is plenty as well to build

truck bombs and these have been used in places such as mauritania and niger although not with great success from the terrorist perspective. aqim attacked and ambushed military forces in mauritania and alger recently as well as in mali the group is looking to increase its operational reach in africa. we move to the horn of africa, al-shabab is somewhat different organization composed after range of groups with varying motivations and interests. some of al-shabab senior leaders have links to al qaeda and are interested in waging a global struggle in the classical mode while others have a purely somalia agenda and some others of course are just in it for the money. yet this group has also expanded its reach. last july we saw al-shabab conduct its first major attack outside of somalia when claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings at the time of the soccer world cup that killed 76 people in kampala.

al-shabab widening shope of operations and safe haven in sew maul yeah make it continuing threat to east africa and u.s. interests in the region. in addition, this is also much discussed in the press, al-shabab has a cadre of westerners including fighters of ethnic somali dissent from the somali diaspora and american converts this makes it a matter of particular concern. we shouldn't omitenti iaq whichs continued to suffer leadership losses and has seen its constituency further dwindle. although aqi remains capable of carrying out occasional signature attacks it is believed to be responsible for the february attack on iraq's largest oil refinery and late march attack on the provincial council headquarters, still its violent tactics failed to destablize the iraqi government or inanything like that night the sectarian violence that it sought. instead we saw successful 2010 election in iraq and a

decision by sunni leaders in the country to participate in the political process. we could talk about other groups there seems to be no shortage of them but, why don't we step back here and just note while this shift has been underway for some time, the events of the last few months in tunisia, egypt and elsewhere have really altered the context dramatically. we are indeed in a fast-changing landscape and a season of transformative change in the middle east whose full implications are still taking shape and journalists here will remember if you covered what happened in soviet union in eastern europe in 1989-1990 those events were five, six, seven years in training at least if i don't go back to solidarity in 1981. this happened in the blink of an eye. really extraordinary commentary are you how things have changed. but the changes of government and the broad based efforts to win new

freedoms for people of the region hold, i think we should be very clear about this, enormous promise. tremendous numbers of citizens advanced peaceful public demands for change in a precedent-shattering way and in some places libya syria, for example, some risk and sometimes lose their lives through opposition. they have done so without reference to al qaeda's incendiary world view. thus upending the group's longstanding claim that change would only come through violence. these men and women if the streets underscored in new and most powerful fashion the lack of influence al qaeda exerts over the central political issues in key muslim majority countries. should the these revolts, should these uprisings result as we hope in duringable, democratically elected, nonautocratic government, then aq single-minded focus on terrorism is instrument of political change would be severely and i think

irretrieveably delegitimatized. this would indeed be a strategic blow. the successful democratic outcome of the demonstration we have sign and striving of so many to enjoy their basic human freedoms is something all of us should support because this is a profound good in its own right but i want to add from the security perspective we also have a great deal to gain because democracies increase the space for peaceful dissent and give people a stake in their governance, greatly weakens those who call for violence. we should be clear, this is a moment of extraordinary possibility for americans, for the global community and most of all, for the inhabitants of these muslim-majority nations. inspiring is the moment may be we can however ignore the attendant perils. the political turmoil has distracted security officials in a number of countries. we are concerned with both the issue of terrorist transit in light of the instability in libya and

with the threat posed by loose munitions previously under libyan government control. we are working aggressively to counter these propotential dangers though this will be continue to be complicated by lack of resolution to the current unrest. undaughter he hadly terrorist groups will be tempted to exploit the situation to carry out conspiracies. we know the turmoil has caught the eye of al qaeda which is trying to insin eight itself into this picture. terrorists plots it should be obvious to all of us have significant disruptive implications for states undergoing challenging and difficult democratic transitions. let me now begin to address the question of what we're doing to deal with this threat. to begin with of course we're working with our various interagencies partners such as homeland security the military and intelligence community to keep americans and our interests safe. the subject of the innovations in particular in homeland security would easily fill a whole other

lecture and i can give you the names of plenty of colleagues who would be delighted to give it. but with this whole of government approach we're comprehensively strengthening our partnerships around the world by insuring that all u.s. government security assistance providers are working from the same playbook. that they're making sure that our system is, assistance is more balanced to improve both security and long-term governance and the rule of law. helping our partners more effectively confront the threat within their borders is both good counterterrorism and good statecraft. so let's look at some of the key regional issues and begin with pakistan-afghanistan. as everyone recognizes the fatah and high per patun continue to be used as base for terrorist organizations operating in pakistan and afghanistan. pakistani security forces have undertaken efforts to counter these threats. pakistan has made some progress on the ct front against other groups,

against taliban pakistan the but the challenge remains to make these gains durable and sustainable. in pakistan we're focusing on shared threats as well as addressing pakistan's political and economic challenges. since 2009 we worked with the pakistani government and the pakistani people including through our enhanced strategic dialogue which met twice last year at the ministerial level and i co-chaired the law enforcement and counterterrorism working group which includes representatives from the fbi, doj, treasury and dhs. and which has been focused on three main issues. establishing a cooperative law enforcement framework, illicit finance and border security. we're working closely with the government of pakistan on a range of counterterrorism related capacity-building projects including numerous training courses for pakistani police which are administered by state department's diplomatic security bureau. our international narcotics and law enforcement affairs bureau also works closely with the pakistani

government on the border security and other law enforcement matters. it routinely provides pakistani security and police forces with equipment to counter extremism and it is truly a whole of government effort. fbi and doj are working with their counterparts on investigations proscutorial and training matters. treasury and dhs are working with pakistan on important matters related to terrorism finance and border security. even as we've endured serious challenges to the relationship, some of which have made headlines we continued civilian and military assistance throughout the country and solidified our cooperation. pakistan today is more willing to take on extremist groups that directly threaten pakistani targets such as military bases intelligence offices and police stations. the ttp, the pakistani taliban, is a prime example of such groups. nevertheless we continue to press pakistan for increased action against that group and to engage other allies on the dangers posed by taba

and encourage all parties to take appropriate action against that group. yemen. well obviously we're talking here about a country smack in the middle of a transition and in the headlines every day but to put things in perspective let me back up a bit. the gravity of the aqap threat was clear to the obama administration from day one and we've been focused on yemen since the outset. in the spring of 2009 the administration initiated a full-scale review of yemen policy that led to a new whole of government approach to yemen that led to re-engagement with the government of sanaa and counterterrorism after several years of a cool relationship. our approach also aims to coordinate our efforts with those of other international actors. our strategy seeks to deal with imminent and developing threats. at the same time it addresses the root causes of instability in yemen and to

improve governance there. central to the approach is building capacity of yemen's government to exercise its authority and deliver security and services to its people. given the interlinked nature of yemen's challenges, and the implications for u.s. interests we've adopted a comprehensive and sustained approach taking into account political, cultural and socioeconomic and security factors. to help meet immediate concerns we provide training and equipment to particular units of yemeni security forces with counterterrorism and border control responsibility. in coordination with our securities efforts. usg increased development to yemen significantly and development programs from yemen in the fiscal year 2008 went from ruffle $11 million to 2010 of over 100 dal million. we are in a period of uncertainty but let me just stress that our shared interests with the yemeni government in fighting terrorism particularly in

dedefeating aqap does not rely solely on one individual. we hope successful government in yemen women be a solid counterterrorism partner. let me go back now to north africa. mentioning a moment ago i mentioned importance of international partnerships in fighting terrorism. where possible these should be not only bilateral but regional because the threat no knows no borders. u.s. creates a regional partnership in northwest africa. trans-sahara counter terrorism partnership in 2005. the strategic goals. cscp build law enforcement capacity, foster regional cooperation and counter violent extremism. we very much want the region to lead on ct rather than be led by a group ever western allies. cstp is working to enhance the range of military and civilian cape capabilities including in mauritania, mali, chad and niger. and fourth south with senegal and facilitating

cooperation in the the those countries and tunisia. we believe this program is beginning to pay off with partners taking a greater than ever role in ct operations in the region. we've also seen positive signs of greater regional cooperation among these countries particularly between algeria, mauritania and mali. select allies in other parts of the world such as canada and france have also joined to bolster tstp efforts with their own problems that compliment ours. and while we work in the regional forum i also point out to our intensified bilateral ingaugement. in algeria for example the quality of our ct relationship has improved dramaticly in the last two years. in the most critical aspects involving military an law enforcement information-sharing we have greatly improved linkages with the algerian government. one recent example of this was inauguration of our bilateral counterterrorism contact group which had its

first meeting just in this past march where where i represented the united states. i mentioned all that's going on in the magreb clearly successful transitions in tunisia and libya will be the best bar to inroad by violent extremists in both countries and in north africa more broadly. in the short-term however the instability in libya and transition in tunisia may provide aqim with new openings and we can not afford to become complacent. we must continue to adjust our strategy inness response to the evolving conditions, work with our partners in the region to preserve the gains we made and bilaterally both through ctcp and bilaterally as well to insure we remain on track to achieve our goals of containing and marginalizing aqim. finally in the horn of africa, obviously this is one of the most difficult places that we face. the chronic instability in the lack of a strong government in somalia creates fertile ground for al-shabab which poses a

serious threat in the u.s. and to regional interests. the recent offensive by the transitional federal government, excuse me, and the african union mission in somalia, has shown some promise in fighting al-shabab but a great deal more in work needs to be done. the u.s. continues to pursue a dual track approach to create stability in somalia. on the one track we support the djibouti process. while continuing to encourage the tfjg reach out to moderates that support peace and stability in sew mao yaw. i think on -- somalia. on track two, this is something where we made important innovations we're broad are our outreach to include greater and anti-al-shabab actors and groups throughout south ken central somalia in order to broader the security and stabilization efforts throughout the country. we're reaching out to diaspora communities and civil society to foster dialogue and peaceful

reconciliation and let me just say i'm not going to go into great detail now. we're creating an east africa, something much like we what have in north africa, integrated program called the partnership for a regional east african counterterrorism and we think that this too will have broad benefits for our work in the region. there is lot more we can talk about but let me just in the desire to get to the q&a, just try to put this all in a framework. the arab spring only underscores the need for us to further improve our capacity-building programs with ever greater focus on civilian law enforcement and broader rule of law efforts. i do believe we're on the right track. the kinds of efforts i've described in yemen, the trans-sahara and elsewhere are cornerstones of our counterterrorism poll which we continue to try to take to a truly strategic level. strengthening political will

while building capacity that will ultimately result in partner nation ownership of more security capabilities is the way to deal with the threats we face. we are working to make the counterterrorism training of police, prosecutors, border officials and members of the judiciary more systemic, more innovative and more far-reaching. we're addressing the state weaknesses that terrorism thrives on, helping our partners to become more effective in countering the threats they and we face. before closing i want to mention one other area of activity where we are innovating, namely in our programs to counter radicalization and violent extreme i. compared to the capacity-building work which has been going on for many years this is relatively new activity but i believe it will be crucial. this focuses on three main lines of effort that will reduce terrorist recruitment. delegitimatizing the violent extremist narrative in order to diminish what we call the pull factor. developing positive alternatives for youth who are vulnerable to

radicalization to diminish the push effect of grievances and unmet expectations, and finally building partner capacity to carry out these activitis. to counter aq propaganda we helped stand up within the state department an interagency body called the center for strategic counterterrorism communication, the cscc. which is to push back against aq's online and media activities. one emfast has been to reorient our digital outreach team to place greater emphasis challenging extremist messages online in arabic or and erdu this included producing original video content some of you may be familiar with. success at cbe will involve more than messaging and we are working with the interagency to develop programs that address the upstream factors of radicalization in communities that are particularly susceptible to terrorist recruitment overseas. efforts include providing all terns for at-risk youth

encouraging use of social media to generate local initiatives and enhancing resilliance of communities to counter extremism. another central part of my office's cbe effort is strengthening our partners. propagating best practices and building an international consensus between the effort to delegitimatize extremists and their ideologies and ultimately this will be the key to success because this is the road to staenable countering violent extremism efforts. let me just conclude saying the threat remains formidable but we're making progress. al qaeda proved itself adaptable and nimble adversary as you all know as well as i do. in the race to protect the united states and stay one step ahead we too must stay sharp and improve our offense, maintain our intellectual edge and continually adapt to changing conditions on the ground. we must constantly evaluate each situation to insure that we use our most

effective tools of civilian statecraft to continue to serve our national security interests. this is a continuing challenge and as we've seen recently the specifics can change quickly and dramaticly. but i think we are working along the right principles and along the right guidelines. i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and i welcome your questions. [applause] >> on behalf of everybody thanks very much for a cogent presentation and one eerily on point for the subject of the conference. >> real failure as a government official if you address the issue at hand. >> we're appreciative. i'm just going to ask one question and turn it over to the audience. i wanted to actually ask a regional question. you talked several different times in an interesting ways about the challenges in the magreb and thinking about

aqim in particular. you're a student of muslim brotherhood influence, political formations and parties in the arab world. you'll recall from your own scholarship the episodes around in egypt, violent splinter of muslim influence groups. obviously today in these important transition countries, tunisia and egypt in particular, there are peaceful, large, political formations that are either explicitly rooted in the muslim brotherhood's history or influenced by it. and then there are also young unaffiliated youth running around on the streets setting things on fire. how do you analyze the role of the muslim brotherhood political parties as an element of this counterterrorism challenge in particular? are you engaging them? what's your strategy? are they part of the solution? are they part of the problem? are you not sure?

>> well i hate those substantive questions. it is of course a core question and, yes, we all are aware of the sparks that the brotherhood threw off at various points and the violence that it embraced early on. i think that you, embedded the answer right in your question insofar you noted its current peaceful orientation which it has been very explicit about and which frankly the track record of the last couple of decade i think in egypt they renounced violence in the '70s for example, is very much to the point and the key issue for the united states going forward is going to be, are the groups that we going to engage with going to be peaceful? are they going to be dedicated to the rule of law, to democratic institutions? and if they meet those tests i think we absolutely need to engage with them.

and i think it's also important, and this is not something that's often discussed in the washington discussion, the extent to which, you know, without saying what kind of partner the brotherhood would be down the line but the extent to which bmb is deeply opposed, violently opposed would be the wrong word, deeply opposed to extremism, violent extremism. those of us who studied this and read the poe lemm micks between ayman al-zawahiri and egyptian muslim brotherhood this has been a very important break against extremism. when you consider the extent, the strength of the them in egypt, it has the potential to play a positive role in terms of dealing with violent extremism. there are obviously a lot of other political issues that need to be dealt with and there are obviously a lot of matters on which, you know,

we may not agree with them. but if they are peaceful, if they are dedicated to the rule of law and to democratic institutions and peaceful developments of their countries, then they have to be part of the conversation. >> -- policy. from the audience. yes. >> thank you, mr. ambassador. returning immediately to your statement there, unfortunately it would appear, and you're far more schooled in these things than i am, what you're saying is somewhat antithetical. the violent fundamental islamist by their own espouseals anti-democratic. that they consider democracy as obtrusive, as almost offensive to allow. so how do we -- allow.

d -- allah. how do we break that barrier. >> i want to distinguish between the different groups steve was talking about. those in the streets torching cars, attractive to al qaeda, who oppose the democratic development of their states are obviously not going to be partners for us in, insofar we have a role in dealing with these countries in the future and these societies but those that are in fact determined to see their countries develop, become part of the 21st century economy, become part of the global community in a full way and become part of the community of democracies will be and right now i think that we need to look at what the different groups are saying. the muslim brotherhood in particular given its numbers and what the record shows

and, you know, there may be closer students of the muslim brotherhood in the audience or watching this than i am but at least in egypt the record of statements is quite clear in the support for democratic institutions. and i don't just mean one election. and of course, you know, as with all conversational partners as with all interlocutors they need to be tests and we need to see where this goes but i do think that we have a responsibility to be careful analysts and to both insure that we're satisfied by what people are saying is what they truly believe, but also that we don't tar unnecessarily enormous sectors of societies because of our own perhaps

insufficient understanding of the groups involved, their history and so on and so forth. we have, as i said, we have a huge interest in the peaceful and democratic evolution of these countries and to rule out interlock cue tores who are going to have a clear and powerful role in these countries without really examine who they are and what they're about i think would be a big mistake >> [inaudible]. >> i flattened them. >> well, i'll ask one while you're thinking. yuan, did you have one? >> first of all thank you for being here today -- [inaudible] i appreciate that very much. have you all thought about reconceptualizing what cbe

means in this arab spring environment? that is to say a lot of the cve thinking was born in a pre-arabbing spring environment. have you thought billion either in concert with usaid and others how a cve construct work where al qaeda and violent extreme i isn't the prince approximately -- principle adversary but the motives of arab spring become the primary goal of reinforcing cve campaign? how is arab spring affecting your notion of what cve actually means globally? >> it's a characteristically good question, yuan, thanks. i think that when we came in and when the administration began in 2009 there was already a discussion underway as to how we would do encountering violent

extremism and i think some of the changes we did in, conceptual changes in 2009, and 2010 have put us in a gadd price for going forward in which we want to be careful what the goals of cve are and how we distinguish between cve goals and outreach because, because we have a powerful interest in the success of these societies. i've said that already but we also have a powerful interest that requires that we not make everyone feel like they are the target of a, what is ultimately a counterterrorism policy and if we are going to engage in all kinds of, you know, positive, salutary outreach whether through aid's governance work, education,

health care, on down the line, if we are, if we hitch that wagon too closely to the counterterrorism horse and think we are creating a bad dynamic and, you know, the catch word is securitizing everything we do, we should be doing those things because they're the right thing to do if. if they succeed they will have clear benefits in terms of pushing back extremism. but as we do, but there's still a requirement to address areas where we see the thriving of, you know, an al qaeda world view related to actual activity, that could potentially be violent and would lead to terrorism. so if, i think if you start with that division of rabe bore -- labor, that understanding i think you're set up to go ahead and do the kind of work that we as

a nation with a sense how we want to help others develop can do the assistance work that is necessary but also, you know, promote our own security interests through cve. i do think that we have been handed, you know, a great issue, a great tool to say, you know, this really is the way to, you know, thriving economies, rewarding governance, that is responsive to the aspirations of their people through what's happened over the last few months. it is quite inspiring and i think that, this is something that we should, we should attach ourselves to and you know, make all those appropriate connections. but what we shouldn't do is turn this into an opportunity to do counterterrorism on the grand scale. >> right here.

>> thank you for your comments. you know there is very predictable event in a way presents some opportunities and also some pitfalls for countering extremism, the 10th anniversary of 9/11. which if mishandled could be mini tactical victory of al qaeda about supposed victory they achieve if the government doesn't approach it the right way. your thoughts how you have to commemorate it and what are the themes and terms that you take when you are doing that. . .

>> i hope juan could agree with me one the great positive stories of the last ten years has really been the development of a common cause against terrorism that was unthinkable been 2001 and that has seen the creation of, you know, connections between governments that are somewhat stronger and below the surface than i think we ever could have imagined on september 12th. so i think that it is actually a

moment in which without spending a lot of time talking about events in a way that would open the door to al qaeda, we do have quite a positive story to tell about where we have gone since then. and about how we view the future, and particularly against the backdrop of something like the arab spring. i think that, you know, we have a lot of -- a lot to work with. but your, you know, the cautionary note in your question is well taken. >> sorry. stephen, i saw, then christina, then i'll come over here. >> ambassador, thank you very much. you had spoken about regional counterterrorism strategy and about cooperation at a ct level with pakistan. i was wondering if you could speak a bit more broadly against regional counterterrorism strategy for the south asia region like in bangladesh and

some of the threats that have been based in pakistan, and the jihadist lam, they have spread become pakistan and even india to other countries. >> thanks for question, steve. we have seen significant, i would say major movement with the counterterrorism coop nation with india. this is a challenge. it's an enormous country with a highly federal system. that requires that we work hard with both states as well with the federal government. but it has become a pillar of our strategic relationship, and it is something that i work on quite closely, there's constant travel back and forth on a range

of different ct issues all the time. there are a number of different activities involving lessons learned on things like mumbai and what we do in some of our big metropolitan police forces. there is -- i mean interest in protecting mass transit, we're sharing lessons on things like that. it's become quite a positive relationship. additionally, bangladesh is quite a positive story. and it's not just bilateral story, although that is a very good one, but actually relations between bangladesh and india have improved quite impressively in the last few years to where they are working quite effectively on preventing infull tradition from bangladesh and india, and bangladesh itself has done a good job. so there's a lot going on. there are still problems to be addressed. you know, i wouldn't say it's a problem. but i would say, for example,

nepal has been an area that we've seen l.e.t. activity, and insurgency, and now appearing to be coming to a better place and better suited to deal with it's counterterrorism issues. i think by and large, there are a number of key good stories in south asia. >> thank you. i want to ask you about something that happened this week, the kandahar prison breakout and how concerned you are about any of the individuals that escaped. >> well, the numbers involved speak for themselves as a source of concern. and obviously it's one that we're quite seized with at the moment. i think the -- i can't speak about particular individuals right now. but i will say that all of them were as it were biometically

enrolled. so these people have a trail. we will be working with the afghans to try to bring them all back to prison. but it obviously was not, you know, a great moment for the prison system there. and it's going to require a lot of work to neutralize the effects of that. >> thank you, ambassador. i'm mary pat randstrom. i'm at the counterdefense university. i'm going to talk about a topic we haven't talked about much, the internet and the location effect for al qaeda as they have hit the world. i'd ask you to take a look at what's happened to the arab spring to talk about what influence the internet which is really just a means and tool for communicating, what impact that may have had for what we saw

happen there. >> well, i think that the historians will be looking at this for a long time. although i used to be in the first draft of history business, i'm no longer called upon to do that. but obviously the repeatty with which the uprising happens and the drama of the change suggests that we have to look hard at the electronic media and social media in particular as positive factors in terms of bringing people into the street and demonstrating the like. starter people than i will part, and figure out how important it was. this is a chain of events that was just extraordinary from, you know, tragic self-imlation to where we are today in the brink of an eye. highly illustrative, it's something that has caused

governments around to world to think hard about what they do with the internet and how they have to conduct themselves in the internet era. i think lots of my colleagues in government had already recognized just what happens when you have something go viral on you, especially if it's false. this is obvious a level of concern that's far beyond that. i think it's a whole new area of scholarly endeavor. >> can i ask a question, ambassador, about your core subject of your remarks which were the affiliates? and you introduced the historical observation that in the late '90s it was -- people like you understand the fed rated structure of al qaeda and compared it to the ford foundation. when -- and you went through each region, i think, very carefully and in a very informative way, what can you say about the whole and the

architecture between the affiliates and the center today after so much pressure had been placed upon the center? what are the tightest relations and what do those consistent of and what are the losest relations and how would you characterize those? >> well, recognizing that any answer that i give are result in 20 calls from different parts of the government when i get back, let me be careful here. perhaps not surprisingly, i think aqap is the group that has has the communication mindset with the core. i talked about the composite nature of al shabaab. there are people there who are really on the same wavelength at

aqap. it is nonetheless striking that lots of different groups in this particular period are capable of holding on to an al qaeda world view, but charting their own strategy. and sometimes even, you know, disregarding what they are hearing from the core. you know, we talked about -- there's sort of two -- there are these two factors, one is relationship between affiliate and the core group, and there's also within that, there's always the tension between the near enemy and the far enemy. and so you have all kinds of different quirking going on all the time. and for us, obviously, it's a great concern if a group like aqap decides that it wants to make the u.s., you know, high on it's target list, especially u.s. at home. but the other thing to remember

is, of course, if they are very successful there on -- you know, the southern end of the arabian peninsula. we also have huge problems. so you do see this sort of dynamic ebb and flow. a lot it have is personally related. a lot of the questions that we will be asking is who might be in circulation now who wasn't there six or eight months ago who can change. does, for example, the distraction of security services mean that there will be more travel by people who are closer to the core to the affiliates, to reign them in, to give them direction, all of this is speculative. it's too early to say. we don't really know. but it is a different -- as i said before, it's a very different context than we have to watch that closely. all of the groups that i discussed, however, you know, have had some connection,

communication, beyond just their aspirational, we're in al qaeda and in this part of the world group, even aqim, who was historically the most independent. they all have the connections, shared set of understandings. for that reason, they all pose a significant danger to us. >> on behalf of the audience and everybody here at new america, thank you for your time. >> my pleasure. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> the next panel will start in five minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the state department hosts a town hall meeting today on discrimination and hate. state officials specializing in jewish and muslim communities will discuss their efforts to combat hate and they'll answer questions. we'll have live coverage of that starting at 2 eastern. tonight on book tv, prime time, juan williams talks with rubin "hurricane" carter about his book "eye of the hurricane."

>> what i try to do is tell a story with visuals instead of words. i'm writing paragraphs, they just happen to be with images. >> four pulitzer prizes, carol guza has won the prize more than any other journalist. >> i think we get to experience so more parts of the human

condition. >> she'll talk more about her craft on sunday night on c-span q & a. you can also download the podcast at c-span.org/podcast. >> live sat, white house correspondent black tie dinner, later remarks from president obama and "saturday night live" seth meyers. and your comments from facebook and twitter. and on c-span.org, follow allow with the interactive video player, featuring video clips, social comments, and live hd video. u.s. chamber of commerce ceo tom donahue says the government needs to produce more oil and stay out of labor disputes. it was the first speaker at the

annual aviation industry conference this week in washington. this portion of a meeting is about half an hour. >> well, being well known is not an as important as knowing what you are well known for. carol, thank you, good morning. we appreciate everyone that's taken time out of very busy schedules to join us here today. i want to particularly thank carol and the national chamber of foundation team for putting together another outstanding conference. i understand as she said, this is the best attended we ever had. in this town and in this room, i find that that is generally created from an equation that the level of problems have gone up. therefore, the level of attendance is more significant, looking for solutions. i think the high level of interest is being driven by one over riding question. what's next in the aviation

industry? the industry is weathered a decade of storms since we first staged -- started hosting the annual summit ten years ago. that was 9/11 and the war on terror. there was -- there were two recessions, the last one the most severe since the great depression. the silver lining in the storm clouds was the sue sue sue -- sd demand, not only in aviation, but also in sorts, on roads, and all of the supply chain system and the movement of people and goods was being pressed with a fast-rising economy. we got some relief on that. the bad news was $60 billion in losses for passenger airlines and the loss of 150,000 jobs. airports had to get creative to

accommodate new and consistenting, evolving security requirements, cargo airlines struggled to deliver on customer expectations like next business day delivery, while keeping up with those same security requirements. and don't forget human spikes in fuel costs, wildly fluctuating fuel prices can threaten profitability in an instance. i'll probably say more about that. but just look what's going on in the last days. and yet in what may have been the most challenging decade in aviation history, safety has actually improved. several airlines managed themselves back to profitability through consolidations, alliances, adjustments, fleets, schedules, a la carte offerings for customers. overall, the past decade has been tough on aviation. where do we stand today?

the faa says the industry turned a profit last year of $9.5 billion as the u.s. economy began to rebound. so we're doing a little better. but there's a different between doing a little better and doing well. and we're not doing all that well yet. there are many challenges ahead, perhaps the biggest one is this. how are we going to deal with an expected 36 percent increase in fliers by the year 2015 and huge increases in cargo? today we don't have the infrastructure to accommodate that. it's been almost four years since the faa bill was reauthorized. we're making progress towards getting a good bill now, but we've lost a lot of time. funding for badly-needed systems like nextgen has been

inadequate, and it's implementation much too slow. every aircraft flying in the national airspace system still needs it's own equipment. rising energy prices, burdensome regulations, and mischief by national labor boards are also major obstacles to success. why should the public care about these challenges to aviation? they just want to get it, take it, get on a plane and go some place. let's not forget commercial aviation accounts for $1.3 trillion in economic activity. that's a lot of job. that's a lot of economic activity. or 5.6% of the whole u.s. economy and supports 12 million jobs. the nations economy relies on a safe, secure, and efficient aviation system. so how do we get from doing better to doing well.

by concentrating on the fundamentals, that's what we saw in business all the time. by assuring a found infrastructure, modern technology, reasonable regulations, a flexible work force, and stable energy prices. stable energy prices. now there's another whole meaning. so here's a brief flight plan to help the aviation industry take off. first, let me say a word about infrastructure. nothing is more fundamental than basic infrastructure. we need to expedite air traffic modernization and grow systems capacity through smart investments. that's what is needed to get the faa reauthorization bill across the finish line. it's been passed by the house and the senate, so let's get the conference going. let's get the deal done. nick will take care of it and report back to us shortly. what will the chamber look for in an faa bill?

first, adequate investment to fully realize the benefits of nextgen. we have got to get on with that. components of that system are operating. a few weeks ago, the high-tech air traffic control system center was dedicated. it's an infrastructure element that drives increase and productivity and greater mobility for passengers, freight, and reinforced our commitment to safety. the command center is a true success story. we can't stop there. we'll never achieve the full benefits of nextgen if we don't equip the planes with the technology to make the whole system work together. let's be frank, the equipment that's required here represents a large investment. perhaps as much as $5 billion. although, you know, $5 billion doesn't sound like quite so much

money as it did some years ago. i mean we're moving $5 billion around like poker chips right now. and this would make a fundamental change in how we do our business. we don't think that cargo business or passenger airline aviation should have to bare the full brunt of this cost. when there is such a great public benefit from nextgen. so this has to be a cooperative effort. it has to be born by many of us together. that's why we believe the faa reauthorization bill must assist the aviation community with the equipment necessary to move nextgen forward. and don't -- let's not forget about the airports themselves. i had breakfast with one of your speakers. he was going to tell you about an airport that he took over as an volunteer, private airport in illinois. he took it from the can to one the best airports in the

country. that story is a great story. we can do this all over the place. slashing funding for airport improvement programs, however, is a classic example of cutting off your nose to despite your face. we need to adequate funding levels to maintain, modernize, and expand our airports. how? we invest aviation funds is also critical as much as the overall amount. congress must provide budget firewalls, ensuring that all dedicated -- lies exclusively for their intended purpose. marion, you and others now what happened in the highway deal. we got more highway money going to everything but highways than you know what to do with. we cannot have that in the aviation business. that means by the way that airport and airway trust funds

shouldn't be used to pay for security costs, but specifically for air traffic and airport maintenance. all of the 9/11 cost is a societal cost. we need to find a fundamental way to do that. when it comes to making spaces, we need to stream through the approval process. it takes far too long to build anything in the country. everybody knows it. anybody that's been to china goes there one year and stay in the hotel, and there's a hole next door. they come back the next year, there's a 50-story hotel there. in the united states we've been spending four years to get the permits. we have got to take another approach. we have a choice to make smart investments to ensure the aviation remains one the crowned jewels, or starve it so badly of

needed funds and watch jobs and economic growth disappear. congress has many difficult choices facing it today. and everything from entitlements to budgets and debt but aviation success has got to be one of them that holds this economy together on a global basis. now one way to restore consistent profitability to the airlines is to bring more stability to what are now very volatile energy prices. as i said, this could be a whole nother meeting. jet fuel prices increased by more than 20% in the first two months this year alone. i think it's up more than that now. and cutting deeply into aviation profits if you look at the latest numbers. consider this. if jet fuel prices increased from $2.50 to $3.00, it would

raise the fuel bill by $15 billion. now that's getting to be a large number. when it comes to energy, we are shooting ourselves in the foot in this country. we have locked away vast reserves of oil, oil shale, and natural gas on federal lands, and off both coasts. meanwhile, we're sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to buy other people's energy. a lot of it from dangerous, unstable places. does that make sense? it makes more sense that's for sure. they are estimated to contain 2.31 cubic feet of natural gas and 31 billion barrels of oil of what we know now, but there's a lot more to find. producing some of the energy could reduce our imports, ease price volatility, create american jobs and generate huge

tax revenues to reduce the deficit. it doesn't sound like a hard decision to me. even less sweeping reforms can make a difference. imagine the impact that more runways could have. fewer planes in the air, idolling on the ground, and burning up fuel. it's time to increase domestic energy production, all across the board. traditional and alternative. and our national and our economic security depends on it. now to another system is the labor system. more reasonable labor policies would also have a tremendous positive effect on the airlines. labor is your number one cost. we need strong government action on funding, infrastructure and energy, but on labor, we need government to ensure a safe working environment and workers rights and then get the hell out of the way. if you look at what's going on now, in this industry, this

government pushing labor agendas that don't help anybody, we've got a real problem. we're deeply concerned about politically driven proposals by congress and the administration that will undermine the success of this industry. we are are very pleased that the house version of the faa reauthorization bill includes a provision repealing the recent ruling by the national mediation board made at the afl-cio. the national -- the -- excuse me, nmb ruling would over turn more than 70 years of precedent and make it possible for a union to be organized without the support of the majority employees. in that class. and make it virtually impossible to be -- impossible to desert if i a union.

doesn't sound like a good idea. thousands of comments were ignored, majority member excluded, undermines the nature. the time tested rule by the board was fair, it worked, and it should be maintained. in a separate matter, i want to say we'll do everything in your power to oppose the national labor relations board, attempt to prevent boeing from building their new 787 at its nearly completed plant in south carolina and forcing them to build the plane in washington state. now we have -- think about the implications of this. we have lots and lots of states, 24-25, i think, that are right-to-work states. we are going to tell them they can't invite business into their

state. this is going to be a hell of a fight. i'm looking forward it. we're on a slippery slope when the government attempts to interfere so that it can reward politically favored groups and it ain't going to happen in this country. because we're not going to stand for it. let me just wrap up with a couple of comments. i wanted to say something about cargo and business aviation. when discussing aviation, we can never overlook the importance of cargo and business aviation which helps create jobs, improve productivity, and facilitate trade. i could give a separate speech on each of these topics. let me just mention a few issues. on cargo, we must respond rationally to security threats. and strive to elevate security and trade facilitation simultaneously. these two goals are not mutually exclusive. security mandates will continue

to change as the threat level changes. how we fashion and a implement security mandates making all of the difference. we must avoid overly burdensome and restrictive rules. like the failed 100% program that damaged our economy and badly undermined the just in time delivery system so vital to our economic growth. by the way, we have learned a lot about that through the terrible happenings in japan in recent weeks. instead, we should be developing more flexible rules that meet the same goals in a more efficient and productive manner. further, we should be building off of the success of existing trusted shipper programs and harmonizing them with the international community rather than creating new and redundant programs for business. another cargo issue of importance is the harmonization

of regulations governing the shipment of lithium batteries, which the chamber strongly supports. you know, it seems like a small issue. the batteries are, in fact, small in size. they play a critical role in the mobility and productivity. powering electronics and keep us on the go, like laptops, smartphones, and all of the toys my grandchildren have. harmonizing with international standards would enhance safety and minimize the financial and technological burdens of complying with multiple and inconsistent regulatory requirement. this is a very important issue. we have to get it right. on business aviation, we think the attempt make public flight plans for business aviation users an ill advised populous movement that should go the way of some of the other things we

have hauled the way around here. it poses a security threat to the users of business aviation, and there's no legitimate reason for it. we said as much to the house when we weighed in on the faa reauthorization, and we're pleased that their version of the faa bill blocks the agency from moving forward. now let me conclude, carol, i'm afraid i'm into your schedule already. if you'll excuse the pun, i've given you a quick 30,000 foot view of some of the basic steps we can use to improve the aviation industry. an industry that's so critical to the success and way of life. much like the u.s. economy, u.s. airlines are climbing out of the deep hole in the wall and we have a long way to go to be financially strong. to assist in the process, we've got to read double our efforts to educate policymakers about the importance of aviation.

we must ensure federal policies recognize the link between the national aviation network and jobs. between the link and economic development and global competitiveness, between this link and the quality of life and between it and national security. and the industry itself must continue to innovate, transform, and reinvent itself to meet growing demand to force the profitability and meet competitive challenges from around the world while improving safety. and today you are going to hear ideas on how to strengthen the aviation system from some of the nation's leading authorities. right now we're going to start talking a little bit about infrastructure. so i'm going to turn this over to jack potter, jack recently joined us after a lifetime and a half as the postmaster general of the united states, and he's working with us on a major

project to look around the world at the global supply chain and see what it is we can do to assist it on a policy basis. and with him is janet kavinoky who leads all of the chambers transportation efforts, including our efforts on the infrastructure side. i'm going to leave it to you guys. i want to thank everybody for being here. this is a very serious piece of business. it holds this nation and the rest of the world together and we can screw it up. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, tom. for that handoff. as tom said, i'm here with janet kavinoky, she has a complicated title. i told her i'm going to let her introduce herself.

>> i wear a lot of hats at the chamber, i'm executive director for transportation and infrastructure in congressional and public affairs and vice president for the americans for transportation mobility coalition. i begged actually for a card that was double sided, but it didn't work out that way. >> well, this morning what we're going to do is pick up from tom's very comprehensive remarks. because i think he set the table for the whole day. and talk a the bit about infrastructure. and i'm going to stop by talking a the bit about the background, kind of the world that we find ourselves in. i'm going to pass it to janet and she'll talk more in depth about the particulars about where the chambers stands on a lot of legislation that is pending on capitol hill and some of the studies that are being done that you can expect to see over the course of the year. let's just talk about the backdrop. where do we find ourselves? i was fortunate enough to go with tom to japan. i have to tell you, you know, as

he said i'm working on supply chain management and what better place to look at supply chain than at japan and the challenges that have faced us today. i have to tell you, i walked away very impressed with the japanese people. they have taken good care of the situation as a result of the tsunami. obviously, there was some tragic losses there, but they had some 450,000 people who were displaced, homeless, and they found homes for all by 150,000 of those folks already. and they are working very hard. you don't hear any horror stories. when it comes to japan, i was shocked to learn they have two electric systems. the way i say it in plane english, half of the country is europe and half of the country has the united states electric system. the bottom line is, half of the country is fine. tokyo area is impacted by the fact that they have nuclear

power plants down. japan is open for business. it's working well. but the experience there be cause everyone to step back and look at supply chains in general and ask a couple of questions. so around the world, people are questioning nuclear power. around the world, people are starting to think about, gee, does it make sense to have one supplier in one location? or do i need to have redundant suppliers. the whole notion of what's going on in the supply chain area is something that we all have to be cognizant of and be very mindful of going forward. because it does represent a very interesting challenge. now on top of that, we have everything that's going on in the middle east. and there, obviously, we have a situation where we have political turmoil. we have wars, and, of course, we have terrorists.

that has a direct impact on all of us in this room because first of all, in the short run of timing, it's a tremendous impact on energy costs. and they've spiked tremendously. how much of it is speculation? we have a big debate about it as tom said. but it's affecting your industry, and it's also affect the kind of the decisions being made going forward about where you get those supplies. in addition to that, it has an obvious effect on security. i have to tell you somebody who is at the post office for 30 years and ran if for nine, i always had challenge dealing with the folk that is work for me, particularly those people who in a sense if you think about it, we regulated the mail industry, who found it much easier to fix things by pushing the burden on to mailers, or suppliers. so we have a challenge when it comes to security we have to make sure we're working together

with the folks in the administration that are responsible for it on capitol hill, and we have to find solution that is are mutually beneficial. when i dealt with mail, it was obvious. put two owners of regulation, we would drive them out of the mail base, or drive them to competitor. we have to be out there talking about security. yes, we need security. we have to make sure we are as security as we possibility can be and minimize the risk. at the same time though, we have to do it in a pragmatic way so that it doesn't dramatically impact our economy at a time when our economy is challenged. speaking of that, we're going to talk about infrastructure. today i'm going to pass the janet to talk about it. when you think about the infrastructure, much of the infrastructure in the america is funded through the government. as tom said, governments around the world right now are challenged.

our own government is challenges. people are looking at ways to, you know, narrow the death as best as they can. and we have to, again, make sure we are voice and janet is a voice from the chamber, talking how important infrastructure investment is and how important it is that funds that come in or are targeted or earmarks actually go through the infrastructure. it is a dynamic time. i think that the fact that we have so many folks here today is just a recognition of how challenging a time we live in and it's important that we're out there as a group talking about the fact that if we don't keep up with our infrastructure, and invest in our infrastructure, we're not just impacting, you know, ourselves today, but long term we're putting yourselves at a disadvantage from an economic stand point. so with that as a backdrop, talk

a little bit about some of the details on many of the programs that tom mentioned, janet, if you would. >> sure, thanks, jack. first of all, thank you all for being here today. i just got my five minute signal from over there. so how i give you a legislative and regulatory update in five minutes is -- well, being it's actually virtually impossible task. let me tell you what our priorities are here when it comes to infrastructure. so the third hat that i wear at the chamber is running the let's rebuild america initiative. this is our focus on transportation, energy, water, and broadband infrastructure. it's the chamber's way of saying when we make decisions in this country, whether it's at the federal, state, or local level, we have to make decisions about infrastructure investment that are about economic competitiveness. what we find is there a lot of other countries in the world who's infrastructure policies are driven by the question what does this do for our long run

economic competitiveness in the world? we don't ask that question here nearly as focused away. so our efforts are built around making sure that economic competitiveness is the core part of that conversation. now we launched something last year called the transportation performance index to try end really aim very, very narrowly on the focus question. we asked a lot of you, we asked people around the country, what really matters for business when it comes to transportation infrastructure? we heard about time, reliability, cost, availability of infrastructure, and we heard repeatedly, we need to be preparing for future growth. we put together a series of factors into an index to look at whether the performance of infrastructure has been getting better or getting worse over time. and then to look at how that related to economic growth. and what we found is disappointment record levels of investment since 1990 across all

modes of transportation, we are kind of bumping along as it comes to performance. now that speaks in may way to the iningenuity to the business, ability to adapt, it also tells us we are not thinking about the future. when you look at the analysis of the index, we have provided them for you today, we are really headed into a decline in terms of how well infrastructure meets the needs of today and tomorrow. :s

>> that ends up being a pretty big chunk of change. so, i would encourage you to make sure that you are signed up for our updates so you can see the letters we have set on f.a.a. reauthorization, our focus on trying to make sure that we are taking care of all of the areas of our membership in the aviation industry. we're watching what's going on notches in the f.a.a. but other areas because we need to bring the singular focus, economic and business across infrastructure, particularly within aviation. it's a system i'm going to test out later tonight when i fly to san francisco. so whoever is here from united airlines i will be giving you feedback later. with that --

[inaudible] >> i never check my bag, jack. and with that, the hook is here. i might even take that bag. thank you so much. we really appreciate this, janet and jack. i wish we could continue on but we as you know have a very busy schedule this morning. let's give them a big round of applause. [applause] >> c-span will be live at eight eastern as potential republican presidential candidates will talk about spending and job creation. >> live pictures this afternoon from george washington university here in the nation's capital with the state department is holding a town hall meeting this afternoon on combating hate against muslim

and jewish people. the program is expected to focus on the state department 2011 hours against hate campaign which was launched earlier this year. the aim is to promote respect and in bigotry a cross-cultural religious class and gender lives. speakers at the state department special envoy to monitor and combat abacuses and -- combat anti-semitism. we expect this to start any moment. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> again we are at george washington university here in washington with the state department is about to begin a town hall meeting on combating hate against muslim and jewish people. we expect to get underway in just a moment. while we wait earlier this afternoon president obama went to survey the damage done by recent hurricanes in alabama. the president met with government officials and he describes the damage as heartbreaking.

>> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the president greeting in meeting with some of the people who were affected by the tornadoes and hurricanes that blasted through the area in

alabama around tuscaloosa. president also had planned to visit or watch the space shuttle endeavor launches this afternoon. that launch was scrubbed due to technical issues. >> now we are live at george washington university for the state department's town hall meeting on combating hate against muslim and jewish people. this is just getting under way. >> 2011 hours against the hate campaign. i would like to begin by introducing the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism, hannah rosenthal, and a special representative to muslim communities, farah pandith. hannah rosenthal was sworn in as special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism on november 23, 2009. sparked by the work and expense of her father, a rabbi and

holocaust survivor, and her own experience studying to become a rabbi, hannah rosenthal has led a life marked by activism and a passion for social justice. before joining the state department, ms. rosenthal was executive director of the chicago foundation for women where she led one of the largest women's funds in the world. prior to that, she was executive director of the jewish council for public affairs for five years where she worked on domestic and international policy for the organized jewish community in north america. ms. rosenthal also served as midwest regional director of the u.s. department of health and human services during the clinton administration. farah pandith was appointed special representative to muslim communities in june 2009. her office is responsible for executing secretary clinton's vision for engagement with muslims around the world on a

people to people and organizational level. prior to this appointment, she was senior advisor to the assistant secretary of state for european and eurasian affairs where she was responsible for policy oversight for integration, democracy come and islam. she also worked on issues relating to countering the violent islamic extremism. before joining the department of state, she served as the director for middle east regional initiatives for the national security council, coordinating u.s. policy on muslim world outreach, and the broader middle east, north africa initiative. prior to joining the nsd, special representative was chief of staff for the bureau for asia and near east for the u.s. agency for international development. welcome, hand and farah. -- farah and hannah. >> hi, everyone.

it's very quiet in here. >> it is. we are not going to get election. this will be a fun afternoon and we want to thank you very much for taking some time to share with those. we are especially looking for to the questions and answers. what we thought we would do in just a few minutes is tell you how we met anti-chavez campaign how this campaign got started. hannah and i have very different jobs. you heard our log files. thank you very much for the. you know we have different mandates and the secretary of state has asked us to work on important issues but in different ways. so i had not met hannah when i received a phone call from her office saying that hannah really needed to speak to me urgently. and so of course i said please come. i'm in my office, and hannah comes up and she gives me a hug and she says, and i have to say to, this is at a time when we just hearing about what happened in times square, the plot that was thankfully foiled. but she came and gave me a hug

and she said, i want to be of help to you. and she said the messenger matters for us. and i know that what has happened in times square is going to mean that many people are going to look out the religion of islam in a strange way, and they're going to hold muslims accountable for something that has nothing to do with the religion of islam. she said, how can i help? that's hannah rosenthal. so, we went to a conference in kazakhstan. don't put it on your bucket list. [laughter] >> it was a very long flight. we went to a conference that was put on by the organization for security and cooperation in europe, one of the leading regional groups around the globe. and what's wonderful about the osce is that they have a focus on human dimension. and they actually care about human rights and tolerance.

by the way, the word tolerance does not mean we will put up with you. in the diplomatic world, tolerance means mutual respect and acceptance and pluralism. and so please understand, we were at a tolerance conference. and i wrote the official u.s. statements condemning anti-semitism, and farah wrote the official statement condemning islamophobia is how it was worded at the conference. and the night before the conference we decided to swap speeches. and so when the conference begins with the focus on hatred and muslims, i was sitting in the u.s. chair. and when they called on the united states i introduced myself, my name is hannah rosenthal, i'm the special envoy on global anti-semitism, and i want to condemn in the strongest words possible all that is going

on that is increasing hatred of muslims. and then when the next session focused on the subject of anti-semitism, the same thing happened. and farah and spoke as the representative for engagement to muslim communities around the world, condemn in the strongest words possible, anti-semitism. the message was strong, and at these conferences there are a lot of statements written and spoken. and so when you do something different, it, it may catch attention, and it did. but there also was the message that in addition to the profound message we were saying, it mattered who said it. and by having unusual suspects speaking, you have greater impact. and that's how we have been operating ever since. >> so what we heard from people at the conference was that was really powerful, that the united states delegation made such a

bold move. now, for those people are not in government it doesn't seem like such a bold move. but trust me when i tell you, in government we usually don't see this kind of thing. but what they also said what civil society said to me and my job and hannah enters, was can't stop there. this can be a one off conference in kazakhstan to which the united states make such a bold statement and then does nothing with it. so what did we decide to do? we thought a lot about how we can think about an action oriented campaign that we're going to do something for generations, that the president and the secretary has talked a lot about, a generation that is under the age of 30 worldwide, that there are people who want to be active, and people who want to think about their world in a new way, that want to build partnerships of mutual respect, and to do something that really was going to take hold of an opportunity to use technology in new ways. and so we developed this idea of a campaign 2011 hours against hate, and in your hands, i see a

lot of you have a package, a toolkit, on that campaign. but we decided to launch it virtually. so that anyone in the world could take hold of this campaign and make it theirs. so hannah and i went back to the osce in february of this year and spoke to all of the ambassadors of the osce and said, we did this in kazakhstan last year, and this year, the year 2011, we are going to seed this initiative so the world can take hold of it and create a better place. >> and so, we thought about having people do something instead of just talk about it. and that's really what the campaign is about. it's a global campaign. is a virtual campaign. and it's a campaign that is totally accessible. if you go on the website, you'll see people speaking on different language. you might even understand some of them. it's people saying i'm going to pledge a certain amount of

hours. hi, i'm a muslim and i'm going to pledge five hours to work in a jewish clinic. hi, i'm a roman catholic and i'm going to pledge three hours in a food pantry, et cetera. people are engaged. we have indices that are taking this and running with it. we have nongovernmental organizations. you will note on the logo nowhere on it does it say the united states department of state. it is just out there. so we want to encourage you to take it and make it your own. this is about deeds, not just words. and the theory of the campaign is to encourage people, young people, but we will take some of the rest of you as well. myself included. and pledging hours to serve and volunteer at an organization that serves people that don't look like you, that don't pray

like you, and don't live like you. and people, particularly young people, get it everywhere we've gone. >> and we've gone to three country to watch it. weapon to turkey and we've been to spain. we picked those countries very particularly because they have history of pluralism. they have histories of different communities working side-by-side. and what was remarkable to us was that while of course an older generation said it's about time something like this happen, it was the young people that fled forward and moved their ideas and their interests on flight. so when you go to the facebook webpage you see campaigns that it started at university. you see these ngos. you see young people taking it and making it their own. why? because decent people do not want to live in a world in which there is no mutual respect. we have seen enough. the speech we both come each of our speeches in the osce in the with the same paragraph.

hate is hate. and hate is hate. we do not want you look at a future in which we continue this momentum in which a new generation is picking up the baggage of the pass. what we're hoping to do as look at the demographics worldwide is to anchor this energy generation that believes in themselves, believes in the future, and underscored both the president and the secretary can say, to live up to the god-given potential and to do more for themselves. we want to be helpful in that effort. >> using the technology that young people know so well, i'm just learning, has caught on. while we were traveling, sarah who was traveling with us, taught me how to tweak. and we tweet and then we get a program, and i came back and like 100 people, young people all over the world were following me. i still don't know how they found me, but this is how the

communication is happening and we need look no further than our television sets to see what that kind of mutation has burst forward. in the world. so we are very excited that this campaign which provides people around the globe something to do. we recognize that young people -- by that, we have focused on 30 and younger -- neither of us are that, right? >> i wish. i really do. >> my children are. that they don't have disposable income to write a check to an organization, which has been the model of philanthropy and activity in so many places. they don't yet have an expertise from their life experiences to help an organization, perhaps organize your but they have

done. and every hour matters. so what we have learned here in the united states is it is part of our culture to volunteer time. it is not anyone else that we have been. pretty fundamental questions like well, how do you volunteer? and so when groups -- when individuals trying to find a group of people that are not part of the community, it takes some work. and in that work there building a relationship. and isn't that what the goal of the state department is, is to wage peace through relationships. so the european union has designated 2011 as the year of volunteerism, because they recognize this is something missing in their culture. and this is the campaign that is going to help them in showing people how to go about volunteering.

>> so, before we turn the podium back to you, we would like to just gives you -- i see some of you tweeting out there. the hash tag is hash tag 2011 against a. will come back to the point at the end, but thank you very much for being here. thank you. [applause] >> we will now show the video from secretary hillary clinton about this campaign. >> since becoming secretary of state i've traveled to nearly every corner of the globe. wherever i go and make a point to meet not only with government officials, but also with citizens, especially with young people. because i want to hear their ideas about how we can find new ways to come together, to support new foundations of understanding, and build hope

for a better future. more and more i see committees and people turning their backs on old boundaries and barriers, and finding new ways to bridge all kinds of divides. that's the idea behind 2011 hours against hate, a campaign to promote respect across lines of culture, religion, class and gender. together, we are asking people from around the world to volunteer 2011 hours in the year 2011 on behalf of someone who doesn't look like you, live like you, or pray like you. we think it can be important to learn about another religion, to volunteer in a different community, to reach out to people from another culture. and to find out how they live. so i urge all of you to join this campaign, stand up and speak out against hate. visit our facebook page, 2011, 2011 the hours against hate to

learn more. because more than dialogue and conversation, it's time for action. so let's join together and seize this moment. let's chart a new course for the future. we can only do it if we do it together. >> i would now like to introduce tad stahnke who is the director of policy and programs for human rights first. tad join human rights first and january 2008 as director of the fight discrimination program, and covers is as director of policy and programs. prior to join human rights first, tad work at the u.s. commission on international religious freedom from 2000-2007, when he served as deputy executive director or policy as well as acting executive director in 2002 and

2007. tad led the commission's efforts to strengthen u.s. foreign policy to advance the right to freedom of religion and belief. he participated in fact-finding missions in asia, the middle east and europe, and served on official u.s. delegations to human rights conferences of the organization for security and cooperation in europe and the united states. welcome, tad. >> thank you. thank you irene. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak a little bit today. so, i was asked to make a few comments about what this campaign means from a human rights and civil society perspective, and i came up with four points really to make. one is that combating prejudice and hatred is extremely important aspect of protecting human rights. hatred, prejudice, this is the

climate in which we find all too often ask of discrimination and violence occurring. and act of violence that can terrorize a community, and it can prevent its members from exercising their rights. in my work at human rights first, i have met people, african students in st. petersburg who are afraid to leave their rooms. jews from belgium who were afraid to wear their yarmulkes out in the street. gay and lesbian activist from uganda who come in standing a publicly to fight for the rights to life, knew that they were putting their life at risk. by doing that. muslim women in austria who expected to be harassed out in the streets when they are wearing and knew they were not going to get the job as a clerk in a store because they would be too public for somebody, for somebody like that.

christians in saudi arabia, hindus in pakistan, the list goes unfortunately on and on. which leads me to my second point which is that hatred and bigotry are not confined to any particular country or region, or any particular community. it's a global problem and it affects many communities. and when i described what we do in our fight discrimination program, it's quite a mouthful, combating racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and it goes -- there's more. and when you realize that every group is a minority somewhere, you understand that this implicates all of us. and there are differences among different types of hatred, but what we find time and time again is that while there might be

distinct problems, many times the solutions are shared. and that brings me to my third point which is that the strategies to combat hatred can be inclusive once. it needs to focus on governments because public officials and police when they are part of the problem, it makes the work of protecting human rights, protecting communities, protecting lives all that more difficult. and it requires leadership, public officials to speak out against acts of intolerance and violence but it will require law enforcement to investigate or prosecute crimes of hatred. and it requires leadership and political will to bring police and politicians and communities together, to work together to

address these problems. but how do you find that leadership and political will? well, part of it is diplomacy, and part of is what the state department does and what hannah and farah and the others at the apartment to speak to others. and part of it is groups like us that are continually abiding recommendations, shall we say, encouragement to do more, to do something different or to do something better. but there's a key ingredient, a critical ingredient that also has to be part of the strategy. and that's what we're talking about today, which is my final point, is that you need to engage people everywhere. on this problem. right? there is no one community can or should be left alone to deal with this sort of problem. as was mentioned before, and i couldn't agree more when

somebody speaks up, when one community speaks up for another community, that gets attention. win a broad array of people speak up for a committee, people who you wouldn't expect, that gets attention. that gets noticed. and people everywhere can both speak up and reach out. the great thing about this campaign is that it combines both. you can speak up online, you can make your pledge known, and you can reach out. you are encouraged to reach out and do something, and reach out to a community that is different from yourself. and this is another thing that we find in our work, and that is that what happens online is increasingly more and more important. this also gets noticed. is also can help shape the debate and shape actions by governments and by communities.

but people also need to do things together, and again when communities do things together, and it doesn't have to be solved the middle east peace together or solve differences between, you know, one religion or another. .. >> hello again. let me introduce myself more formally. my name is irene and i'm

director for peace studies program here at the george washington university and also professor in the religion department. i have been asked to speak about why he a peace studies program and academia generally would want to support an initiative like 2011 hour against hate. in my opinion, one of the most important goals of a college education is to teach students so that they will become thoughtful citizens of all communities, our society and the world. in order to do so, students must not only acquired the intellectual skills to comprehend and analyze our increasingly complex society, but also acquired the leadership skills to initiate and to carry out the changes that will better our lives here and lives abroad. these two aspects of learning, the book learning, and the service learning, are best achieved when combined in such a

way that students can relate what they have read and discussed and wrote about in the question to the world about them and i have to admit that academia has been rightly criticized for not engaging in this interaction enough. but, i think that is changing. students should not only be able to do the learning in the classroom but they can also take their experience from outside the classroom and use it to think critically about the text that they encounter in class. students in my ethics and world religion course for example, not only learn about islam from articles and documentaries they encounter in the classroom but they are also able to filter the constant news media about islam and muslims and a thoughtful and engaged way. initiatives such as these are critical for the cross-cultural relationships that are and will continue to be so necessary in

our lives. working with and for people who are different from us toward shared goals is one of the best ways for us to end discrimination that worsens unnecessary conflict in this world. so i beseech you, college students and especially to use their experience at the university not only to learn in the classroom and to view their activities as separate worlds but to try to combine them to improve our society. there are two students who i would like to introduce who i think are doing this in an especially exemplary way, and they are daneyko brown and e. k. daneyko brown from the black student union is also student body senator elect. e. k. is the incoming black student union director of membership. i would like to introduce them and have them both come to the

stage. [applause] >> good afternoon everyone. ignorance is a state of mind that divides. we claim to live in these united states and what perpetuates hate must be resisted. i name is e. k.. >> my name is daneyko brown. we represent the black student union of the george washington university. to stop the hate campaign addresses an issue that has been pervasive throughout american history. based on the idea that we cannot coexist with what is different. essential tenet of the psu has been and always will be to create an environment where differences can be embraced.

in 2007, the psu lead a collaborative campaign entitled stop the hate. back then, we faced abuses across campuses, the incarceration of the jena six and rising anti-islamic sentiment in america. the bsu created a space for the student voice to be heard through the use of social media and traditional protest methods. >> today the bsu has continued in that spirit of unification. when faced with an anti-affirmative they sell, we felt that while the first amendment guarantees the freedom of speech it does not guarantee that all voices in the commerce nation are heard. in addition to holding a non-violent educational protest, we hoped a forum facilitated by experts to educate opposing sides. this agreement can no longer divide but it must always called us to remember our collective common and american heritage. the past and present have shown us that campaigns are seasonal that hate is not.

and thus the tools to resist hague should not be either. it is not about reacting but rather proactive engagement of all parties regardless of race, creed, gender or sexual preference. >> the black student union of the george washington university pledges its commitment to the efforts of the stop the hate campaign. >> as dr. martin luther king jr. once said, we are called an inescapable web of neutrality. whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. thank you. [applause] >> okay. i have been asked to moderate a question and answer session, so we have a phone in the center so i would in courage all of you to

get up and fire away with your questions, but i am very happy to ask to take my prerogative and ask the initial question. to both sarah and hannah. you see in the united states a number of acts of intolerance playing out across the news on a fairly regular basis and i'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what that means for your work abroad and how you talk about that and how you see what is happening in the united states connected to what is happening around the world. >> well, i will say that while we are in the state department and we said at the table of foreign policy, we of course care a great deal about what is happening in our country and following this very closely, with pain i think. i think that when we think about what it means to be an american, we have certain values and high

ideals that we all worry may be getting frayed when we see acts of hatred and such intolerance happening and it can be against a wide variety of vulnerable groups. it can be as immediate as what happened in detroit or dearborn michigan last week and it can be over the years as the examples of the students. it seems that hatred just has a life of its own, and i think that we need to be looking at our tolerance education and our messages to make sure we are changing as the world is changing, and that we are making sure that we are not just using communication tools that are different, but i think people here messages differently now. and they hear so many messages that they can get confused. the good side of the technology is it can reach people and it is

free. the bad side is hate speech can be used, and we don't want to in any way say people don't have a right to say things. people have a right to be stupid and hateful, but it isn't good enough to protect their rights to speech if we don't condemn it. and so, when your are on a listserv or you are on a tweet or whatever the technology is, and you see bad messages coming through, you have to realize that part of dedicating your time and pledging your time to 2011 hours against hate or whatever campaign you want to call it that confronts hate, you have to condemn that speech. there was a time that i can remember, i am bold enough that if somebody at a dinner party or a comic on a stage told a joke at someone else's expense, that person would have been

marginalized. they might have lost their job for intolerance as a comic, and people confronted it. people were uncomfortable with unacceptable to tell the kind of jokes or make the kinds of comments we are seeing made on campuses. we are seeing it made by government candidates and leaders and it is something that needs to be condemned. so you know, the work that we do on the ground is overseas and my mandate is to work on a people-to-people level. everything i do is grassroots so my work is community community globally so i engage with muslims in muslim majority countries and muslims have lived as minorities some parts of the world. as somebody who is an american and is a muslim and i understand obviously there is no contradiction between either, i also understand very clearly the values of our constitution and what our constitution has given us and the equal rights under

the law. now as americans, we can understand what is taking place. we have the filter and the know-how to understand when a preacher has 50 people in his church says something it doesn't reflect all of america. we get that. we are americans. but when you go overseas it is very hard to frame the issues that are happening in our country because they don't have the experience of living in our nation. many people have not read our constitution. many people don't know that the man who did something bad in one part of the country or the woman that said something horrible doesn't represent all americans. it makes my job to answer your question extremely hard. the amount of time that i spend talking about our country i am very proud to be an american and i have a lot of really wonderful things to say about our nation. i have to spend time, however, speaking about some of the challenges our nation is going

through right now and you talked about in your speech is not just being about religion. it is not about what color of skin you have or what color of eyes you have, what color of hair you have, do you pray to or what your gender is. it is about what is happening inside and what we are bringing outside to make communities around america and then reflect to the world what they believe america to be. we are better than that. our nation is stronger than that. we have gone through incredible hardships in the students in school today brought up one of the many challenges our nation has gone through. but it is unbelievably hard to try to put forward partnerships and dialogues and relationship building on a wide range of things. yes i happen to be the special representative to muslim communities but my colleagues at the department of state also have to deal with being able to try to explain how what one

person is doing and is being carried by the media all day every day as if it is the only thing that is happening in our nation is extremely hard and it prevents us from doing the kind of work that we have been asked to do. >> i want to just add one thing and that is, another thing that we do here in america so well is we know how to build coalitions and partnerships, so that if people are interested in citing poverty you have representatives of many many religions and many community groups together and where we travel people don't do that i am staying. and so a lot of what we do, if a community says i am very concerned, i mean obviously when i travel i am dealing mainly with the jewish community and if they say people don't believe this anti-semitism is a current event, they think it is way back in history, how do we deal with this? i say well have you gotten together with a local church?

and the answer isn't because people aren't smart. they go, what a good idea. it is and how that culture thanks. i think it is the most important export we have is our ability to build partnerships and build coalitions so people are speaking out on behalf of people who may be voiceless. i just wanted to add that. >> i don't see a long line at a microphone yet. >> the microphone. it is in the middle. >> if you could just say who you are please. >> i am with the state department actually in u.s. information agency, what used to be a sia, public diplomacy. i have been doing this kind of thing for a while. i have a lot of issues i work on. one of the things i've noticed

is the common trend to getting people to change their behavior is, and this is going to sound crass and i'm sorry, but it is economic managed. yeah, you can stop discrimination because it is the right thing to do and yes it is but it is also economically beneficial to do so. it is economically beneficial to stop using police or army to fight wars. it is economically beneficial to use that money in other ways. it is economically beneficial to listen to the input of all kinds of trains. we have finally starting -- started to listen to women at least need to start -- other countries need to be told and there ought to be a message. not only should you do this because it is the right thing to do. part of the reason america, even though we have our problems, is strong is because we listen to input from all kinds of people, ugly people, pretty people, fat people, thin people muslims,

jewish. it doesn't matter. you know that it makes economic sense to listen to everyone and i'm wondering if there has been a study that george washington university is done or the peace institute has done or somebody asked him that talks the economic and effects of not discriminating? is that -- has that been looked at all? does that make sense? >> yes, it doesn't actually there have been some studies interestingly done it is the schools which is appropriate, to talk about how quickly teams, management teams that consists of a diversity of perspectives can come up with more creative solutions to problems than groups that tend to be monolithic in their outlook. so yes, there have been studies to back up the push to diversify. it is not just that.

it is nice and we should all hold hands but yes there is kind of an economic incentive as well. >> yeah, i wish that was more publicized. i wish that was more known instead of just this is the right thing to do and kind of a lecture circuit, that as well you can take advantage of everything your society has to offer if you, you know, if you are little more peaceful, if you listen to people, you can take advantage of the ideas he pulled have. it is just more of her positive message than such a this is the right thing to do. it is more than the right thing to do. you can help your society grow. you can help the economy to grow. >> i think there is nothing wrong with making an argument out of enlightened self-interesn when we are making arguments it is the right thing to do and we talk about whatever our background is, the moral values that we have been given what

fight for ending poverty or whatever the issue is, but we also need to make the argument out of enlightened self-interest because you are absolutely right, it helps build the political will and it also is an argument that has merit. thanks for bringing that up. >> good afternoon. verse i want to thank you for giving the opportunity for -- really inspiring words. the activities of the bsu here speaking as a former director for the bsu and i am always glad to see those organizations taking the lead especially for a diverse group of communities to help expand this notion of pluralism and participation in our country. two questions interrelated.

one, this is 2011 so we are approaching very much the fifth anniversary of 9/11 so i'm wondering how a lot of organizations are already planning? we take the perspective of the lowest common denominator and what could happen and how civil society and ngos are working together to protect communities, the message communities and to organize. it is a part of that process which is important but how specifically does 2011 against ours against hate going to coordinate around that? i know you are really looking at civil society ngos to really take hold and interact with each other but communication and organizing around that particular debate and event and with that being formerly the government staffer responsible for devising congressional members on engagement i know they take that information back which is really important. how can we be of assistance to you which in your context of the state department and president

obama with the right information, to write stories that you need for that informational need? >> thank you very much for that and for those of you who don't know jihad he has build coalitions and doing a lot on capitol hill and working with young people who are interested in issues of pluralism and democracy and i want to thank you for your work. let me say to you also a big thank you for your offer to be of help and i say this to everybody in the audience. we are looking for ideas. we don't know everything. we don't know every group we need to be out there communicating with. because their job is to communicate overseas, we have a very robust relationship with their embassies and we have moved this campaign out overseas and so again if you go to the facebook page you will see many of our embassies that have taken it on and really brought it as hannah said, there is no state department logo on here because we really want to make it a campaign for people by the people for their future and we

are sort of a catalyst to get it going. so if you have ideas here in the united states or groups that you think we should connect with, that we should engage with to tell the more about this campaign. >> or you should engage with. >> or you should engage with, yes, that would be really terrific. vis-à-vis the comment about 9/11 now, look, i want to be very very clear about something. the way in which our country has amazingly been thinking about this anniversary to honor the victims of 9/11, to spend some time reflecting about the pain and suffering of those families, to think about ways that we can build coalitions worldwide to talk about issues and mutual respect, lots of things are happening organically. they are not happening because the u.s. government is telling people to do it and that i think is the strongest possible message that they are happening in every state of the nation.

there are many ways in which we could hope to see organic organizations and individuals use this campaign as they think about issues of pluralism and mutual respect but to be absolutely clear with you, there is in some sort of goal setting that we are putting out there to make sure that this is married and with 9/11 because it isn't just about the tenth anniversary. this is a variant port in and here in many ways but let's remember very clearly that while our country was attacked on 9/1a has affected countries all over the world on different days in different years. and that is very important so it is not just about america being the victim of the a few ideology. it is bali, it is oman, it is the u.k.u.k., despain and that happened in different ways at different times.

>> hi, i spoke earlier. my question is, we understand that hatred now amongst our generation excess, but how do we counteract the hatred that is learned that is taught in homes of children across america? they are so young and impressionable and we all grow up to the people who are going to bleed the country forward and how do we influence that generation? >> you influence it at home where children receive their first messages. you pay attention to what the schools are teaching. i finally remember quizzing my girls when they were young for a history test, and we got to a point on the history test, the inquisition in spain. and i'm looking at it and i said this is all you learned on the inquisition? the word jewish is not even there. since 1492, jewish and muslims

have not been there because they were kicked out. excuse me, you know, i am telling this to my kids like they are going to know the difference. [laughter] so i marched into the school and they said this is unacceptable. now of course there are people on the other side who want to remove scientific lessons from schoolbooks, but to show how important textbooks are and the training of teachers and we have to make it important. schools are run by local school boards. they are not run by the federal government. and it is a way of grassroots organizing that can make a difference, but sometimes we become paralyzed because it seems so big and so bad. that is kind of what was behind also 2011 hours against hate is don't be paralyzed, just given our.

just spend a day looking into textbooks to how are teachers, how are universities are training the teachers. that becomes really important. it becomes fundamental and nevermind also how educational television, how that is sending messages to kids. is tolerance something that the value as important as learning the alphabet or learning algebra and i think it should be. i think it should come back to being fundamental lessons that kids are taught as children. the minute they hit school it is put out there as a fundamental important value. >> i just want to say two quick things. i want to go back to what tad said earlier about communities come together about different things so whether you are picking up trash in the neighborhood or you are working with different groups on a different project, making those connections in a multitude of ways helps on the issue of

diversity anyway so you are not just approaching somebody who is different than you to say hey we have a problem with pluralism or mutual respect but we are talking about other things that we as a community can do together. the other piece that i just want to touch on is lexicon. how we speak about each other. what are the words we are using and what do we allow society to find acceptable. i can't. >> for every group out there but i have heard all kinds of interesting phraseology and descriptions being used of different ethnicities in different races and different religions that i think to myself i don't think that would be a nice thing to be called, and you have to be -- as the secretary just said stand up and. >> out. you can't let things like that slide. when somebody uses a term or says something negative that is the time you stand up and say in a nice way, listen that does not work and this is why.

>> i would like to add to that. there has actually been studies that have shown that the most important thing that you can do to encounter racism and discrimination in young children, because children pick this up so early, is that you as a parent or as some other moral authority in this young person's life is to address it directly, and the studies are fascinating. you can have children in diverse school settings. you can have them watch sesame street episodes but if no adults actually engages with the child in conversation to talk about racism and discrimination, then the child continues to harbor these beliefs. so again, candid and frank conversations with young people from the earliest ages is vital. >> and children of course pick up a lot from their parents by osmosis and from other people

around them. you can certainly engage them in activities very early on. yes, please. >> hi, we are actually taking questions live on line so we have one question off of twitter which is from ruben esp. that is his twitter handle. the question is should the u.s. have diplomatic relations with nations that support the killing of minority groups? >> can i say something about the person that just read. the logo is not appear but it is on your toolkit and the person who came up with that logo is this wonderful young woman right there so she is very talented in many ways. do you want to take that? >> i think it is great that twitter is following it. thank you whoever you are and however you found this. [laughter] we have diplomatic relations with 194 countries. none of them are perfect. some of them, their human rights records are horrific and we do a

very good job of documenting that it make a now public through our human rights report, through our international religious freedom report and through statements that are government leaders make here and abroad. there are times when it is more important to engage when countries are doing bad things than before, and there are times when breaking off a relationship is vital because it signals, it is a sanction and it signals not only disapproval by the united states but by the international community. it is a case-by-case basis, so it can't be answered broad stroke. but i can tell you we work in a department where there are entire bureaus that all day long are debating that very issue on a given situation in a given country. i work in madero, human rights,

and so it is what we do, and we sit at the public policy table and make the argument that human rights and frankly as ted said, hatred is a fundamental abuse of human rights. and, we sit at the table saying there should be the first thing we talk about and somebody else says this is the first thing we should be talking about so on a case-by-case basis it is raised during our relationship and relationships are very confiscated. ..

>> you are in your computers all the time anyway. that's globalization really is. it's a way of saying you are going to use the things that you do normally every day to do something to advancing intolerance. so motivation is making things easy, simple, and doable. >> the other thing is, frankly, in the work that i do, i spend most of my time overseas, last count i was more than 40 countries around the world. no matter where i am, whether it was a rural place or it's an urban place, whether it's an affluent country or not, whether it's an audience that's well

educated, or not so much. whether it's men or women. no matter where i am, i talk to the generation under the age of 30. i hear in the voices their commitment and desire to do something bigger and bolder than what's happening around them. they need to have their voices lifted up, platforms in which they can speak, and we as government must do as much as we can to be the convener and facilitator and intellectual partner with the ideas that we hear on the ground. when we hear people respond to president obama talking about mutual respect, and when we hear people responding to secretary clinton talking about her belief in this next generation, we must do all that we can to find ways to actually activate their interest and their ideas to build a stronger world. i'm not being pollyanna here. i believe in the generation.

i could not do my job. i could tell you in looking at the audience and people going like this and the responds that we've gotten in our work, especially on the campaign, people are looking for ways to channel their interest in their future. and this is one of many ways, and so on the issue of responsibility, it's the issue of action. action forward. i think this is our last question. yeah? okay. >> i just wanted to add. one the great things about the internet, it connects you immediately with all of the things that are already going on. there's no -- any number of things out there for people to connect to. >> hi, i represent south americans leading together. we sistered an american for all of us where we are dealing with the similar ideas. >> give up the web site. >> faald.org. please do join the campaign.

it's for community engagement and things like that. one aspect that we're trying to address also, i feel i should get your input on that is that a lot of division and the culture of hatred that's been created in the u.s. has become worse in the past few years and a big chunk of that is because of what we have allowed our elected representatives to get away with. so, you know, peter king saying there are too many mosques. these kind of statements have create add complete division, you know, within the country. and whereas like getting the community and getting the youth to sort of talk about, you know, creating unit and, you know, harmony, i think there's a big need also to sort of get some accountability from our elected officials. and tell them to just stop. stop the complete ridiculous thing that's going on where you can get away with saying the things that you have. i mean if you have any input on like how your campaign can

address some of those things. >> well, i just want to say amen if i may. i totally agree with that. i think holding people accountable who spew hatred is everybody's responsibility. elected officials really listen to their voters. and they read their letters to the editor. and they monitor the phone calls and e-mails that they are getting. and so it takes a second to let an elected official know that that was unacceptable. and it takes a second to let somebody in your class know that what they said is unacceptable. and it takes a second to stop yourself if all of the sudden you find yourself thinking a hateful thought. i mean we all -- we were born not hating.

somewhere along the line, we were all taught to hate. so we all battled this. because people different than us are different than us. but we need to battle it and take the time and say it's unacceptable. >> i just want to say one point. you are seeing this from the american perspective of americans, you called out a couple of folks here in our country. but understand that publicly elected official around the world are saying hateful things about other religions and races. i'm seeing the increase, you are absolutely correct. you know, if you look at the number of swastikas being spray painted on, you know, the sides of street and cemetery, it's appalling. when you see the kind of vile things that being said in other parts of the world on gender issues. it isn't a knife place out of planet at the moment on the issues. but it isn't just okay to see we are seeing the data points shift and there's an increase. what hannah said is correct.

you have to call out. i want to turn this just flightily. you are seeing organic responses to the kind of negativivity by the kind of campaign who said that isn't enough. they are calling out on their elected officials because they don't think it's acceptable to do that. >> i just want to add that i have two ground daughters who often ask me, doesn't this depress you? you go around the world learning about hatred of jews. you know like don't you get depressed. i said i get to do something about it. i get to do something about it. and this campaign, this global campaign when we travel to these countries and we meet with young people, it's frankly inspirational. they get it. they want a different world. they are committed to do something about it. and in five minutes, they are going to be the majority of the population on the globe. so as depressing as -- comments

that go unanswered and events that go unanswered is -- there are actually some people who are pushing back and they happen to be young and they are going to take care of me in my old age. [laughter] >> okay. so i think we're out of time. i want to thank everyone again. hannah, farah, and everyone in the audience for coming today. >> thank you so much. thank you. ♪

[silence] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> president obama has announced a number of changes to his national security team with current cia director leon

panetta replacing robert gates and general david petraeus to head the cia. track their appearances online. search, watch, clip, and share. it's washington your way. tonight on book tv prime time at 8 eastern here on c-span c-span2.

>> joint chief of staff chairman admiral mike mullen gives his thoughts now on military leadership and developments in the middle east, northern africa, and asia.

he spoke earlier this week at an event hosted by the national event club. >> welcome admiral michael mullen, chairman of the joint chief of staff who is here for the 5th consecutive year. thank you very much for being here. it's early. earlier than we usually start. and so a double thank you for this full run. i was thinking that we could view this as, you know, good practice for tomorrow. and we have to get up even earlier for the royal wedding. we may not offer as much glamour as the royal wedding, but i'm going we're going to have a lot of interesting substance to deliver here today thanks to admiral mullen's being here. admiral mullen has served our country in uniform for 43 years. ever since graduating from the naval academy in 19 68 and

going off to fight in the vietnam war. he has been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff for the past three and a half years and before that was the chief of naval operations. he has served as the very top of our nation's military leadership under two presidents, democrat and republican alike. which says something about how they view him as being a straight shooter and a very talented man. it is also been a period, a decade of continuing war, endless war, so he has had the job of running those wars. the world is not a very peaceful place. today the embers are hot in north africa, middle east, iraq, afghanistan, north korea, iran, and we're keeping an weary eye on china as well. that's not to mention the continuing threat of stateless

terrorism. or the invisible threat of cyberattack. since these are some of the worries that admiral mullen has from day to day. he's also concerned with the health of the institutions he leads, the forces stressed by deployments and the nation's fiscal problem putting pressure on many faucets of our defense establishment. these are some of the topics we'll address with admiral mullen, again, welcome and thank you for being here. >> thanks, it's good to be back. >> before we get to the hot news of the day, today's headlines and yesterday's headlines in recognition that you are about five months, i think it is, from the end of your terrific military career, i thought i'd start with this question. in your long service and especially in your tenure as cno and joint chief of staff chairman, what have you seen as the u.s. military's principal

accomplishments and strengths and on the other side of the coin, what has particularly concerned you about the military, it's operations, it's representation, and the country in the world. >> well, from the the -- from is accomplishments, i guess i'd put at the top of the list having started to go into iraq in 2004 and assuming the job of cno in 2005 and 2006 were the navy at that time was putting thousands of sailors ashore and then coming in as chairman just as we initiated the surge and remembering very well, actually as if it was yesterday, how bad things were then. and i was in iraq last week. and it's night and day. it is truly -- it has truly been

an extraordinary shift change and the creation of an opportunity for 26 million people that just didn't exist a few years ago. that came at a great price. obviously. and that is a reflection, i think, of our military's ability to adapt and change from the classic conventional force to i call it the best counterinsurgency force in the world. also it's a reflection of the extraordinary young men and women who served 2.2 million men and women, active, guard, reserve, who serve in a joint way many of us could not have imagined just a few years ago. and it's -- i'm very proud of them. they could not have succeeded without the extraordinary matchless support of their families over the course this

decade. families are obviously critical, always has been critical, but from my perspective, what's happened in the last decade, they become integral to the our readiness, because of the repeated deployments, because of the lack of time at home even when you are back from deployment, the stressors that they are under as well as those who are actually deploying. some believe even more. because of the worry every single day when you have your husband or your wife in the fight. so probably the single biggest area that i am most proud of and just privileged to serve for every day are those young men and women who make a difference. >> on the other side of the

join, while you perhaps started to answer this question, what is concerned you about the military and the status of the military? i know you've talked about the isolation of the military if that's the right word only one percent of the families who are actively participating in the military. but there maybe other thing as well. >> well, the worry -- two immediate thoughts. first of all, i've spoken consistently about the need for the military to stay apolitical in what is an increasingly politicized world. not just the united states. a lot of that has to do with the 24/7 news cycle and the flow of information. but the need, i think, to ensure that we are absolutely neutral. and we serve the civilian leadership, and we need to be

very mindful of that in how we speak about it, and how we engage, whether it's -- whether you are active, or whether you are retired. so that's something that i think we just have to constantly keep out in front of us to make sure we are not coming off track there. i've been in too many countries where that was not the case. it's a fundamental principal for us as a country. i think we need to make sure that that is very clearly and cleanly sustained. and then secondly is what you mentioned, tim. i do worry about the contact we have with the american people. the connection that we have with the american people. whether less than 1% of the population come from fewer and fewer places in the country. and i worry about the things that we don't do anymore. we've -- we've moved out of

neighborhoods all over the country. we are no in the churches, coaching the teams, in the schools, living in the neighborhoods. so the relationship or the understanding is often created just by what's in the media. and so -- i don't expect that's going to change in terms of physical size. we're not going to move back in. i think we have to recognize that as a challenge. the reason that i'm so concerned about it is america's military must stay connected to the american people. and if we wake up one day and find out that we are disconnected, or almost disconnected, i think that's a very bad outcome for the country. we all have to work on that. that's part of what military leadership must do, and also i think to -- in the -- being a two-way street connecting with leaders and the american people throughout the country. and one the great avenues for that are our garden reserves who lived throughout the country who serve obviously out of

communities, locale communities, and i think we can do a better job connecting there to ensure that that's very important connection between the american people and our military is helping. >> just a follow up with one more question on this. it seems to be at least here in washington a great deal of support for in particular wounded warriors and people who are coming back from having served and getting out -- getting out of the service. is that something that is on the surface? does it go deeper? do you think that sentiment exists across the country? >> i think it does go much deeper than just here. i have traveled fairly extensively over the course of the last year, year and a half to meet with local leaders in

big cities and in small rural areas. about a month ago, i was in boise, idaho, for example. i find that one, the american people support our men and women in the uniform and their families. two, that the local leadership that i meet is they are passionate about connecting with our veterans as they return home and their families. and i've tried to work to be able to better make that connection the way i describe it here in washington is our yellow pages in the pentagon is still about four inches thick. those of us that work in the pentagon don't understand it. if i'm out in rural america and i have a good idea, how do i connect with someone in the pentagon, or the va, to try to get that idea across the goalline to help and support our young men and women.

and they are by and large their most of the young men and women are going to not stay in the military and make it a career. although we have a substantial number that do. they are returning at a time of a very robust g.i. bills. tens much thousands of them are going to school. i think they are a generation that is -- i call them wired to serve. they are in their mid 20s. they've seen some very difficult times in some cases, clearly. but i they offer a great potential for our country. with a little investment, which i believe it must be, because i don't think dod can do it, i don't think the va can do it, i think the three of us, dod/va/communities throughout the country working together can focus on employment, health, and education. and i think with a small investment there, they are take off and provide decades of service.

they, i find, while some of them, in particular wounded, their lives may have changed, but their dreams haven't changed. they still want to go to school, start a family, put their kids in good schools, typically two incomes, and they'd like to own a piece of the rock. i've tried to connect with community leaders in ways to be able to create of knowledge of those who are coming home, who they are, where they are going, and what the opportunities are with those who have given so much. part of the -- this focus has also been for families of the fallen. those who have paid the ultimate price. and sometimes we have to be more active in pursuing them in terms of support because their lifelong has been that military member. so their services are all very focused on that.

and i know in community after community after community, there's there's -- they all want to say thanks and to make a difference in their lives so that they can literally put food on the table and take off for the next chapter of service whenever it might be. >> at the same time, you've also expressed concern about homelessness, you've referred to what happened after vietnam in that record, and we have the new effort by michelle obama and stan mcchrystal to support military families. what's the beness of that if you see it? >> the military and their spouses have been raised to the level of the president and the first lady.

the vice president and dr. biden and dr. biden and mrs. obama have come together in the initiative calls joining forces. it is to support our military families. one the things they do, they give the great voice. it's back to the connection piece. so i'm very encouraged by that. it's focused on the needs of our families. and raising the awareness and the opportunity to reach out to them. they are a wonderfully military family. wonderfully independent group. they won't ask for help. it's part of what gets them -- you know, allowing them to be as strong as they are. and yet there are -- there are -- we live in a time that has been particularly stressful, at war, multiple deployments, we see see -- my wife debra seeing spouses who have post-traumatic

stress, kids, children who are exhibiting the same kind of thing, and again it's back to this connection. so i really do applaud the effort. there's been a lot of work that's gone into it. i'm very thankful that the president and mrs. obama and the vice president and dr. biden has taken this on. it really is a big deal. >> let's turn to the top of the news here. we've just learned that leon panetta will succeed secretary gates and general david petraeus will be cia director. you've worked with both closely. i understand that your policy is not to comment on nominations before they are made by the president. but hypothetically -- [laughter] >> -- are there tea leaves to be read in the appointment of the a military man to head the

cia in the particular point in time. >> actually, even hypothetically, i can't answer that question. again, you said it very well. obviously the policy is before anything official is announced, i really can't comment on it. suffice it to say i've worked very closely with leon panetta as well as with david petraeus. in dave's case, since 2004, i have great admiration for both men who are wonderful public serve haven'ts. and their service in their current position has been extraordinary. we'll see what happens. >> okay. i won't ask my second question on that. [laughter] >> let's turn to the budget. the budget trends today and what they pretend. you have said that the greatest

long term threat to america and america's national security is america's debt. you've also have said, i believe, that the flush years of pentagon budgets, including the off budgeting of the wars has destroyed budgetary discipline in the pentagon. budgets already tight. personnel reductions has been taken with senior officers and sbs positions as well. i know that you are concerned and many military leaders are concerned about the claim of personnel on resources and the defense department and a health costs, benefits costs associated with that. how do you view the budget going forward? what are the key challenges as you key? if you do see a period of declining defense budgets.

>> i do see that. and the reason that i talk about the debt as the single biggest threat to our national security is basically not very complex math. i mean -- i think the worst situation that we are in as a country fiscally the likelihood of the security requirements continuing to go down is very high. this is the third time i've been through this. we did in the '70s and the '90s. if you look at the data going back to the '30s, this in our defense of budget goes up and down. and it does so on the fairly regular basis. so certainly this is not unexpected from my point of view. what i've seen though, and i've been in the pentagon most of the last decade, the increasing

defense budget which is almost double, it has enforced us to make the hard trades. it hasn't forced us to prioritize. it hasn't forced us to do the analysis, and it hasn't forced us to limit yourselves and get to a point in a very turbulent world of what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. and so i see that on the horizon. we need to be paying an awful lot of attention to that. i have said the defense needs to be on the table. and i'm comfortable with that. that said, i'm required to articulate our national security requirements and certainly advise the president and others, but particularly the president about how we best can achieve them with the force that we have. and we find ourselves at a particularly difficult time for let's say remodernization in the air force. we are running out of life in

those assets that we bought in the '80s under the reagan administration. at a time where i don't have to tell you or this audience where our national security requirements continue to challenge us. if we'd have been sitting here a few months ago, i don't -- and you'd have asked me what do you think is going to happen in the next couple of months, i would not have put japan and libya at the top of the list of countries that i'd be spending the majority of the time on for the time that i have. and that just speaks to the unpredictability that's out there. the tragedy, the loss of lives in japan, and while there was great focus on libya, at the same time, we had almost 20,000 troops and i think 18 or 19 ships in support of that humanitarian assistance and disaster relief for weeks at a time. so the demands, i think, will continue. we just have to be pretty measured about what we're going to do and what we're not going

to do. i've been in a hollow military before and i won't lead a hollow military. i know what one is and what it can and can't do, and i think it would be particularly dangerous in the world that we're living in now to hollow out. so we have to -- whatever we have, however we get to our future, it must be whole. you talked about cuts in personnel out in the 15 and 16 time frame. when i was head of the navy out of my budget, it was 60 to 70% of my budget every year. and that's active reserve, as well as civilian. the person until cost were about that percentage of my budget. and i've said it this way, i need every single person that i need, but i don't need one more.

so -- and often times that becomes the, you know, the -- almost too easy to say, okay, let's immediately do away with force structure. there is a lot of money there specifically. but we must evaluate that against our overall requirements. i've talked about the health care explosion that we've had in our costs. i think 19 billion in 2001, 51 billion this year, 64 billion in 2015. it's just -- that's not sustainable. so i think we all have to sharpen our pencils and make sure that every dollar that we have is being spent well. and we need to be good stewards of the resources that the american taxpayer gives us, and i think we are going to have to do the hard work to get that right. we've got to come through the cycle. and we will. we've got to come through in a very strong fashion. back to what i said in

testimon -- terms of the demand of the national security environment. >> do you see the ratio changing to 60 to 70% in the payroll and associated cost going to claim a lesser share of the budget going forward as you see it? >> i don't know the answer to that. because i don't think we've resolved that. we need to have that in front of us and recognize that investment. as secretary gates and i have focused on the future and how -- and how we have talked about that is in terms of if we get it right to our people we'll be okay. if we refrain our military right now this most combat -- this is the most combat experience force we've had in the history. if we retain the right youngs and junior officers who have been through this. if we retain the right young ncos in all of our services, we'll be just fine.

if we don't, no matter what the budget as we come out of the wars, and i believe we will over the next decade or so, then we're going to struggle. we need to focus on the leadership aspect of it, the retention aspect of it, but we should not be blind to the cost and the investment that it takes to make sure that we get it right for the overall defense resource account. >> let's talk for a minute about i think an interesting question is the military importance of the uniformed services and whether or not the army's role in that relative scale will reseed somewhat. secretary gates has said that in his opinion and i'm quoting here, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big american land army into asia or into the middle east, or africa should have his head examined. you have told young cadets they will be faced with leading a

garyson force. how about the army? any? and b, what are the most important roles in the army and air force? we could talk about that for a long time. why don't we start with the aftermy? >> -- army? >> i love the army -- my army. one the reasons for wearing the uniform this long. part of the reason is it offers me an opportunity to grow in every single job. certainly this job has afforded me that opportunity. i don't think i've learned more about any single subject than our army who i didn't noel. i knew a lot about the marine corps because of the navy-marine corps relationship. but again i've learned a lot more about our ground forces. they are -- they truly have been heroic force. both the marine corps and the

army. i watched them change and go through the counterinsurgency, develop the capability in ways and speed that many of us could not have anticipated. when we get in this -- what i do worry about is when we get in the environment, there's just an awful lot of old saws that people pull off of the shelf. we have been through it before. we went through it in the '90s. i think it's really important as we think about how we move forward here, we recognize we're living in a different world than we were the last time we went through this or the time before that. that's why the wholeness of this, the comprehensiveness of this challenge in terms of how do we adjust is really important. i think, you know, a catastrophic adjustment, a massive change in the world that we are living in right now would not be very prudent at all. i certainly take secretary

gate's point. my expectation is most of us -- most of the senior leaders in the military think we live in the time of quote, unquote persistent conflict. we don't know where we are going to be used, or when. we need to be ready. i think all four services, they are wonderfully unique and joined in ways we hadn't as i said before envisioned. we need the talents and capability of all four services. i think the future is very healthy for all four services. there's a tremendously important role for our navy and our air force along with our ground forces. it's really been that combination over our history that has served us exceptionally well. one the immediate saws, let's just divide the pie up differently. i think the total budget.

you think you have to do that very carefully. as difficult as it has been historically, and it has been when we see these pressures, i think we need to lead as the president has laid out and as secretary gates and i have talked about, we need to lead with the strategic view, a strategy before we just start taking out the meat ax and the scalpel to just use the budget and figure out how to meet that number and then after that, what are we going to do with it? that's exactly the wrong way to do it. and i think a very dangerous way to do it now, given the world that we are living in. >> so you just talked about the need for a strategy. do we have one now? >> we're working -- well, i think that -- the frame work against which we review our national security requirements has really been the qdr.

it's fairly current. a lot of us worked on that and i'm very comfortable with that framework. i think we need to given the intensity of the fiscal crisis, the reality of it as well, we need to reassess that, not and throw it out, but look at it as an adjust it and then say given that adjustment, this is where we ought to go. >> let's engage on a tour of the horizon of the worlds hot spots, arab spring and beyond. let's start with libya. can you talk about how you thought the hand off to nato has gone and how nato has performed? obviouslying there has been some problems from some countries to undertake, the missile,

complexity of command and control, how do you think the nato deal has gone? >> i've commanded in nato twice, once in the fleet commander for the nato striking fleet, and again in naples, italy, where i commanded all forces in the south. which included forces that were assigned to the nato training in addition in iraq and 2004 when nato took that mission on as well as the forces in the balkins. i think someone said it very well the other day. we've done in 18 days when it took 18 months to do. command, execution, and i think that speaks volumes about nato's agility in these times, certainly compared to where it used to be. i've been very impressed with how nato has grabbed this mission and education cuted -- executed it and executes it today.

yes, 278 -- 28 countries are not participating on the combat side. the majority of countries are participating in one way or the other. it's not all about combat or military capability per se. there's humanitarian assistance, there's the kind of support that we need in the maritime environment. so i've been very, very pleased with how nato stood up to this and executed it. when i first game into the job, secretary gates and i were fairly beat up by critics that said can't you get more in afghanistan? over the course of the last two years, nato stood up to that. just like this mission. i think nato is in a much better place than just a few years ago. more adaptive, more flexible,

more capable. that said, there are some thing that is have to be addressed that we will learn from this libya campaign that we -- that i think not just individual countries, but nato as an alliance will have to adjust to or adjust having study those lessons. but i think that's really for the future. overall, i'm very pleased. >> what you just said suggests that you have not yet concluded this maybe a new model where the united states is willing to seize leadership on in military campaigns to the allies? >> well, i think it's -- i think the assertion in the is like it's black and white. i think just because we've done it once in terms of -- which is something actually we've asked other countries to lead more aggressively in previous times, and they haven't.

so to say this is it for the future, i think almost across the board, whether it's nato or the united states, it is -- we just can't be that certain. it's working now. they are leading well. we are in very strong support. the mission is executing well. i fund the tally -- fundamentally believe we prevented a massive disaster, that gadhafi would have reeked on his citizens in ghazi. we protected the libya people. the combination of us going in over, them leading, hasn't worked very well. >> various people, including retired general dubec has called for more advisors, preparation for u.n. peace keeping force of some sort.

and i'm wondering what you think about that. and also whether you think that we are following the weinberger doctrine that says you don't go in unless you know how you are going to get out. >> i think long term clearly the strategy is, and that is really the political strategy is gadhafi's on -- is going to be out and needs to be out along with his family. clear of the initial limited mission on the part of what we participate in and participate today in is to ensure as best we possibly can the protection of the libya people. there are many, many ideas on what we should be doing, what nato should be doing, and how to do this. i can only say being on the inside this is -- as every single operation is --

extraordinarily complex. it is not when asked about when does it end, how does it end? those are unknowns right now. there is an extraordinary amount of political pressure that has been brought to bear and financial pressure that's been brought to bear. i think that will continue to be both just not exist, but ratchet it up. the arab league has pitched in against a fellow arab. gay -- gadhafi is a praia. i believe his days are numbered. if you ask me how many, i don't know the answer to that. i think the political pressure will continue to be emphasized and focused in a way that sees

him leave as soon as possible. with that said, he's a survivor. there's no solution staring us in the face here. >> all right. let's move on to -- i'm grouping the countries in the interest of time. tunisia, egypt, and yemen. talk about that for a minute and particularly with regard to secession issues. we've had strong military ties to egypt and also to yemen where we have trained counterterrorism forces. we don't know what kind of regimes are going to open -- to emerge from the turmoil. al qaeda is powerful force in yemen. my question is our own security, the united states security compromised by the turmoil in these countries. >> no, i don't see that right now. we've had a 30-year relationship with egypt. and very strong relationship and

quite frankly, i've been incredibly increased with how the military leadership in egypt has handled this crisis, and continues to handle it. and what is a constant in all three of those countries is this about the people in those. these are internal issues. we have military, military relationship with yemen. it's not been that long. we've worked hard to train them. in that regard, it's vastly different in terms of both strength and depth and breath than it is in yemen than it is in egypt. and at the same time, it is internal. it will continue to evolve there as well. your points well take opinion it is, i think the most viral strain of al qaeda that live there is now in the most dangerous strain of al qaeda

that lives there, and that we all must be mindful of that in yemen as well. and then just briefly in tunisia, that's another country that is -- this is principally driven from the inside. and so not that the national security requirements of the u.s. aren't -- i mean we clearly need to keep an eye on if it moves to affect that. out of the three countries, probably the al qaeda threat in yemen is one that is most concern. although that was a very high concern before recent events in yemen. so we'll continue to stay focused on that. >> uh-huh. let me see. let's turn to another groupings of countries. saudi arabia and bahrain. some experts say oppression of

protest will lead to further revolt, including possibility even in saudi arabia which has been a long-time key ally out there. are we concerned about that? and what are the implications of what is happening in bahrain for the 5th fleet, which, of course, has a major insulation there, is headquartered there. do we have contingency plans for the 5th fleet if things turn bad in bahrain. >> i traveled in that area several weeks ago at the height of the bahrain crisis specifically. and a couple of things really struck me. first of all, how strongly the gulf cooperation council had come together. all of the countries and the message to me was that bahrain is a red line. very specifically. secondly, there was a belief

that iran is behind it. i don't believe with that. all of the information and intelligence that i've seen, iran had nothing to do with what happens in bahrain. like the other countries, it was an internal issue. i do worry about the extent of the crackdown in terms of potentially opening the door to iran. and i have now seen, and this doesn't surprise me at all, iran try to take advantage of the situation. not just there, but in other countries as well. which is no surprise. the -- we all continue to be extremely concerned about iran. i can tell you -- i want to reassure everyone that we haven't taken our eye off of that ball. that iran still continues to try to destabilize, they continue from my perspective to develop a

capability that gets them to nuclear weapons, and that the arabs still the leading sponsor of terrorism from a state perspective of any country in the world. they are more active now in iraq and one the things that i have been concerned about is the relationship between the instability in bahrain and how that's impacted our capabilities or what's going on in iraq as iraq continues to go through transitions. so it's an area of great focus and great concern and certainly -- i don't see anything right now that would jeopardize our presence in bahrain, -- our 5th fleet has been there for a long time opinion in fact, the u.s. navy has been in bahrain since

the late '40s. we have a long standing relationship there. it continues to be a very strong relationship. certainly it's important that we never get to a point that it never gets to a point in bahrain where that fleet or that capability is so important in providing the kind of security and support given iran's threats which none of us would certainly ever want to see us get to the point where that would be jeopardized. i don't see that right now. >> admiral mullen, you recently returned just a few days ago from a trip to iraq, afghanistan, and pakistan. let's spend a few minutes on the issues there. iraq, there's been something of an arab spring arising there, which maybe a concern. i believe your focus during your visit to iraq was on -- i

pointed question: do they want us there? does the iraqi government want us there? our military there past the end of the year? we have 47,000 troops there now. and i believe that there's only something like a three-week window where the -- in which the maliki government must tell us, or we'll be moving out of the country and gone. >> as you said, we have 47,000 troops there. the current policy is we will be completely out of there by the end of december. i wouldn't give this -- i wouldn't limit it to or constrain is to three weeks. what i aid while i was out there, we have weeks, not months to address the issue. if the iraqi wants to address it. and so general lloyd austin and ambassador jim jeffries and others are working this

extremely hard. and will continue to do that. we think there are great opportunities with respect to the future of iraq. the challenges that are there now are principally political. and the arab spring demonstrations there have earnly not turned into the kind of demonstrations that have existed in other countries. the security environment is good. that doesn't mean we don't have the channels or that the iraqis -- the iraqi government doesn't have challenges. because there's still a level of violence. but it's the lowest it's been since 2003. i'm comfortable with the development and the leadership of the iraqi security forces. they tell me that they will have some gaps should we leave 31 december, in intelligence in aviation, in, you know, logistics, maintenance, and

support. we're aware of that. we'll have to see what the political leadership interact does. >> are you not concerned that the governance structures and the civilian governance structures are -- have not kept pace with the advances in security forces and so the people of iraq aren't seeing, you know, real results in terms of their own daily lives, their own economic and social lives? >> well, the iraqi government certainly has some challenges there. although i think think -- and te improved and will continue to improve. they have -- they are rich in resources. i think economically, fiscally, they will in the next few years, they really will be in pretty good shape. from a security stand point, again, i think the security forces have performed exceptionally well. so in many ways, it's up to politicians to kind of get all

of this organized. their ministries have developed a great deal from a few -- have really improved over the course of the last few years. they are in much better shape in terms of delivering goods and services than they used to be. but they still some -- they still have significant challenges. >> great. let my say i'm going to ask our tour to rise and ask two more countries, although it could have three or four. i'm going to ask you if you'd like to ask questions in about five minutes here if you would please come to one of these two microphones. pakistan. i believe there is tension in our relationship with the pakistan leadership. i believe that when you travel there, just recently, i delivered a pointed message about the pakistan intelligence service, the isi facilitation of the haqqani network of

terrorists which are dedicated to -- who are dedicated to killing our people. what is the status of our relationship with pakistan and could it deteriorate to a point where the key supply routes that supply our troops in afghanistan with the needed equipment could be compromiseed? : those lines of communications where we bring an awful lot of power supplies and support for the efforts in afghanistan. that said, our relationship is one that continually work on. and right now it is pretty strange. it is straight in great part recently because of the raymond davis? he was the individual that was taken by the pakistanis after a very serious incident where he

shot two individuals who >> we worked our way through that. it really did strain the relationship. so that's what i -- this was a routine trip in the sense that i go there about every three months, but certainly it was no routine in its nature because of the strain, the relationship that had been so badly strained as a result of the davis case.s and so it's something i've invested a lot of my time in because i think it's important we stay connected. it's an extraordinarily complex country extraordinarily complex country, and actually it's an extraordinary complex region. i've talked about our engagement in that part of the world. you can't pick one country or another. it's afghanistan and pakistan. and you have to take the region, put the region into context, if you will, in just about everything that you are doing. so, we've been through a rough patch. we've been through before with

pakistan. and i'm actually hopeful that we can, that we will continue to be able to build on the relationship. we understand each other much better than we did a few years ago. we are still digging our way out of 12 years of mistrust with no relationship from 1990-2002. that's just not going to be solved even in a few years we've been working with them. it's going to take some time. but i think a partnership, a strategic relationship with pakistan in the long run is absolutely vital to the security, not just in that region but because of the downside possibilities for security, global security. >> afghanistan, neighboring country, as you say you can't consider them together but with 100,000 troops in afghanistan, and many, many thousands more

contractors. i want to ask you, and i believe the drawdown is supposed to start happening this summer in july, is that correct? and so, what do you see as the pace of the drawdown plan? are we in there for the really long haul? what do you think speak with we will start to withdraw troops this summer. general petraeus has not made a recommendation to the present yet so there's no decision with respect to that. but no question that we will. we just don't know how big it will be, or from what part of afghanistan per se. it does speak to a very important message of transition. president karzai i think the 22nd of march identified seven provinces for transition over the course of the next year or so. and then we are focusing on getting to a point by the end of 2014 with afghan security forces have a responsibility for their own security.

and we think that's doable. we think we can meet that goal. i, on this most recent trip, which was out in these which is a very tough fight as well as down and helmand, was encouraged by what i've seen from security, improvements over the course of last year. so what you hear about that, i can just verify having been there, that said, visual be a very, very difficult year. it's already started out to be a tough year. we have tragic losses yesterday. we had eight of our airmen who were killed by this afghan airmen who was inside. and every loss is tragic. we know that. these are particularly difficult because it comes from an insider threat. we are working very hard to eliminate that. not just we had been working on

this. so this'll be a very difficult year. it's a tough year for the taliban last year. it's going to be a very tough year on the talibans issue because they are by and large out of their own safe havens in afghanistan, and they're going to come back and try to take them. and i think they will meet a force that is more than ready for them. we are starting to see signs of reconciliation and reintegration on the ground there. i'm concerned about, one thing, not that i'm not concerned about security, the governance peace, the corruption peace for the governance in a few areas. and i would add rule of law to the. those are areas that have to really start to take traction. and we need to improve in those areas in order to get where we need to get to over the course of the next three years. >> it's an interesting story in the paper the other day about

people in rural afghanistan who feel that they cannot trust the government or the united states forces there, trying to help them because if they do the taliban will target them and go after them. and on the other side, they don't like the taliban either. and so, what's the answer? >> the talibans are still i think the numbers i've seen, they are in the nine or 10% at that level in terms of how the afghans feel about them. i think most afghan citizens are on the fence to see how this will go. and i'm hopeful that with another year, similar to what we had in 2009, will have much more clarity about what it looks like once we get through this fighting season. so into the october, november time frame, and we're starting to see some good signs copies of

local leaders, local governments starting to function in certain places. so, i'm cautiously optimistic at this point, but i don't want to understate the very difficulty over all, the challenge we have in front of us. >> please come if anyone has a question, come to the microphone. and let me see. thank you for coming to the microphone. we shouldn't ignore one more country. i'm sorry, north korea and korea in general. very high tension levels there. what are our key concerns? i know you're concerned about that. >> we work very closely with them. it's a critical part of the world to ensure stability. obviously, the proximity to china, the economic engine that china is, our relationship with the country, et cetera so awful

lot of people focused on keeping that part of the world stable. we do that and great support of the south koreans. and there have been provocative acts and we were a great deal about those. there's also this guy, kim jong-il is not a good guy. and has acted in ways that have been very dangerous at times. the word is competitive secretary gates said this very well, the word is in five or 10 years, he's looking at a nuclear capability which threatens the united states. this is not just about local security, in the not too long run. that potential exists as well. and he is by and large starving his people. we know that. and, in fact, his army which is pretty unusual, is having a pretty tough time beating food this year as well, or through this winter. so it's a very, very tough, complex situation and an awful lot of us are focused on a.

we need it to be stable. we need him to stop the provocations. and what i worry about his as he continues to propagate, as we look at the succession plan for his son, that the potential for instability and miscalculation and escalation their is pretty high end of great concern. we continue to focus great aunt ensuring as best we can that it has to goes in the other direction. >> and, of course, should a war erupted we are involved, right, because we have a mutual defense treaty with south korea. >> six to one is the ration of contractors or civil servants. yet civil servants continue to endure public -- what is your position on the total force structure and who should be doing the work for the government speak with civil servants continue to endure

what? >> a lot of civil servant bashing. >> i've worked with our military for a long time. and as i talk about the investment when i was ahead of the navy, the total force, if you will, includes our civilian workforce. they have been extraordinary. and will continue to be a vital part of our force in the future. there's no question about it. they bring a level of skill and continuity, and actually dedication and patriotism that equals that of any of us who wear the uniform. that said, all of us have to be realistic about the budget environment in which we exist, and then look at the best way to

move forward. one of the things that i worry about on the civilian side is the rules, when we get into a tight situation like this, the tendency is last in first out. and we've got to pay attention to refreshing our workforce, our civilian workforce. so we have to figure out a way to reach our goals, whatever they might be in this environment, while at the same time not sacrificing our future. i think the average age of our sibling workforce is about 47 or 48 years old. and we have to recognize that. so leaders have to be very creative and cognizant of this to ensure that this isn't just about, this isn't just about the next 12 months or the next 24 months, but it's a long-term requirement as well. but we wouldn't be anywhere without the great civilian workforce that we have. >> do you think there'll be a shift in that ratio to more

civilian is asian? >> i think that -- were that is going on in the acquisition workforce right now. it has been over the course of the last two or three years, for example. i -- in terms of the overall budget pressure, i think that ratio certainly has potential for changing, but i don't know. i mean, it's natural. many of our contractors are what i called in direct support of what we are doing as well. secretary gates has asked all of us to look at this to see how much of it we really need. i think that pressure is going to grow. >> we will take one hit and then the of the microphone is over here. making, we have -- take that question expect i'm captain ed sector i think you work for my dead years ago. we'll be entering him in arlington in two weeks. >> i'm sorry to hear that.

>> the question of going to raise this morning is not new. my sister and brother-in-law both served in the army in the early '80s. my son and daughter-in-law are both active duty now. my son and marine intelligence officer just came home from his third tour in southwest asia. my daughter-in-law, a service worker officer has been doing drug intervention off the south america. they have been married for six years, and this month they will have been in the same town for one year total. you know, when i was on active duty we paid attention to the joint service couples, and we made promises about allowances in this regard i understand the operational exigencies of our time, but i don't see that anything has changed in the last 30 years in terms of really making the rubber meets the road. literally, my son just deploys, my daughter get some.

my daughter just deploys, my son gets home. it's happened again and again and again. is anybody paying attention to this in terms of retaining people that are critical? >> well, in the mid '90s i was in a position of leadership in the assignment world, and we actually initiated steps to assign dual military couples in cross services it and i believe we've got to extend that outside, outside the military. i think we have to pay a lot of attention to dual careers, whether a family has one in the military and one not, not so. i will do two things. one is, i would love to take turning into some research in terms of how much this is --

where exactly we are. i know that we're much better than we were in the mid-nineties with respect to that in terms of those assignments. but you overlay that with demands of the war and the repeated deployments and it's much more difficult issues to manage. i know there is a great deal more focus on this from a leadership perspective than there used to be. and goes to what i said earlier about guaranteeing the future. if we don't get young men and women like her son and daughter-in-law to stay in, we are not -- our future will be somewhat problematic. i have been struck, it goes back to the dedication and extraordinary young men and women who served right now, i have just been struck by their willingness to do this, to pursue the career. odyssey to meet the needs we have from the national security standpoint, and in many cases even surprised that they will

continue to do it because of the kinds of percentages that you just laid out there, one year in six. and yet we have lost -- i have talked to more than my fair share of said i want to get a life, start a family. we just got to slow down. and it's something that i have addressed and people have addressed very, very closely in terms of not just dealing now, but how does this affect our future. i don't think it is my own take on, i don't think it is deliberate. i do know -- i have run into so many, many couples that have been assigned or detailed very specifically to make it work as opposed to what's odyssey going on. so i would be happy to take your name and e-mail address and get back to you with what exactly we are on that. but i know it's a focus of all the services, and i'm very

comfortable we have improved. it's not where we were 30 years ago, but that doesn't mean we don't have work to do. in the long run, i believe we're going to have to assign people, we'll have to put people at the center here as opposed to the institutions. and i think if we do that, really, no kitty, do that, and assign people accordingly, that this will be well taken care of the. as opposed to the institutions, we are protected of the institutions, face the institutions needs and put that up front and in sort of figure out where people go after that. i just don't think that will work. >> good morning, sir. truth in advertising, retired military, retired air force them former defense contractor, current air force civilian. that being said, libya is maybe

a one off but maybe a precedent, and i'm concerned if this precedent would be applied to syria. i came through bosnia, and my personal belief was that, we can fly over all you want but until you put boots on the ground things don't change much. that was my personal belief and i'm a little concerned about possibly applying the pariah killing his own people through syria, which i perceive to be a significantly greater threat than libya was at the time that we begin this. >> the president has made it very clear that he decries, and we all do, the violence in syria. it needs to stop. i talked about this trip that i took up through the right at the height of the bahrain challenge. is one of the things that struck me, and i think we just have to be very careful about this come

is you can't broadbrush this. every single country is unique. every single country is obviously in the region as well. and i don't think we can disconnect a country from its region. i think we have to be very careful about how we address each one, and there are differences and reasons for differences in each one. and so, the question of, okay, libya, why not burma? i mean, there are, for instance, and i've actually, i have actually heard that question as well. i think it is too broad brushed. to your point, said he is a different country. it's in a different place. and while we certainly deplore -- implored the violence and for the killing, i think whidbey remain full of the uniqueness of syria in both its history, its location and what the potential is, and where we are in that, where they are in that crisis.

so, i just don't think that we can say because, you know, one, because one leader was doing something that is absolutely translates to an intervention that involves another leader. i think we have to be very, very careful about that. my comment about how much the limit of air power per se, but would reemphasize what the president has said come and i assure you, he has no intent that i am aware of how he made very clear to me, no boots on the ground in libya and that's what we are today. >> we are counting down. we have about three or four minutes left. yes, sir. >> good morning, admiral. thank you for your service and your example that you not on a sacrifice your generation but generations to come. thank you. my question is, how effective

are civilian, our workforce to our military leadership? >> its evolving to our civilian expeditionary workforce is evolving. i was in kandahar in afghanistan a few months ago and sat down with maybe half a dozen young foreign service officers who had come from lima, london, paris, and rio and found themselves in kandahar excited got every bit as excited as young officer in the military, about doing what they were doing. and i was very taken by them in terms of their dedication and their service. and the excitement that the generated in terms of making a difference in peoples lives. so i think it's improved. i think we need to continue to focus on this because we are living in an expeditionary world. we are not going to be able to

just deal with it from the washington perspective for the future. so, all the agencies come and it's going to be harder now that the budgets are tighter, have to continue to focus on a. but i think we're in much better shape than we were a few years ago. that said, still a long way to go. >> i'm being signaled that our time has just about run out. so, admiral mullen, i'm going to ask you, if you have any final thoughts for this audience before we give you a round of applause for being here. >> lastly, i would just say thanks to all of you, many of you in the audience have served and make a difference. when i think about the challenges we have been through, this is what we're going to do for the next 10 years, we're going to deploy this many times, when you ask these sacrifices, of our people. and we should be mindful we lost almost 6000 young men and women,

and tens of thousands physically injured, and hundreds of thousands with invisible wounds like pts. they have been the best i've ever seen, we just never forget their sacrifices. we are blessed to have them. we are a great, great country for many reasons, and one of the underpinnings of that is this extraordinary force of young men and women who serve today. and again, i'm privileged to still be in uniform and still be [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> tonight on booktv prime time at 8 eastern here on c-span2, juan williams talks with ruben "hurricane" carter about his book, "eye of the hurricane." author edward glaeser on the importance of cities, and "a covert affair. booktv prime time starts at 3 -- 8 p.m. eastern. and c-span will be live as potential republican presidential candidates talk about spending and job creation. they're in new hampshire for a summit. speakers include mitt romney, former minnesota governor tim pawlenty, former new jersey senator rick santorum and minnesota republican congresswoman michele bachmann. see live coverage tonight starting at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span.

this weekend on booktv on c-span2, panels on science, american history, climate change and the constitution. and call-ins with larry flynt, sally pipes and walter mosley. just a few of the highlights from our live coverage of the los angeles times festival of books. get the entire schedule online at booktv.org, and get our schedule sent directly to your inbox. sign up for book the a-- booktv alert. >> congratulations again to all the winners of this year's student cam video documentary competition. view all the the winning videos anytime at studentcam.org and continue the conversation at our facebook and twitter pages. if you'd like an early start on next year's competition, the theme is the u.s. constitution. create a video about why it's important to you. look for details at our new student cam 2012 web site starting august 1st. >> a member of the syrian opposition who's here in washington says the assad regime

would eventually be brought down by protests sweeping the country. more than 200 members of the syrian parliament resigned this week in response to the violence. at this hudson institute discussion on syria, we hear a critique of the obama administration's response. this is about an hour, 45 minutes. >> good afternoon and welcome. i'm the director here at the hudson institute of the center on islam, democracy and the future of the muslim world as well as editor of a journal on political islam called current trends in islam's ideology. it's my privilege to introduce our speakers and chair this meeting.ll and to welcome all of you both here at hudson, and our c-span audience. for approximately four months, the arab world has been thethe

scene of dramatic events. especially dramatic in tunisia, egypt, yemen, the gulf and, of course, libya. there have been many, many differences between these -- among these events, but all share in common, it seems to me, two things; dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, the status quo, a status quo which in many cases has been around for 40 or even 50 years. and the desire for some new beginning. and this desire for a new beginning has, i think, led to the popular name given to all of these events, the arab spring. this movement of this general movement both of dissatisfaction and hope has now come to syria, a country which, if i might say

so, is especially distinguished by the unchanged character of its situation and regime.hed it has an exception exceptionally long time under the same regime and the samelo family. it is an important touchstone of this movement. it raises the question, will the arab spring move forward, moverf forward to follow the metaphor a to summer, or will it revert to winter, to the past or a t continuation of the status quo? now, this is important generally for people in looking at the whole phenomenon of the arable l spring, but also, of course -- and most particularly -- it's important to the people of syria as well as, i might add, to it neighbor and its people,

lebanon.eopl it is also important to the united states. the current regime has been, to put it mildly, no friend of ours. quite the contrary. so the events in syria and especially the most recent events are terribly important, and we are very, very fortunate to have today three people who o can guide us through these events. describe them, analyze them and perhaps even predict the way in which they may be going forwardb our first speaker is ammar abdulhamid, a native of syria who is, however, been living in this country for quite a whileav owing to his activities in that country and activities on behaly of change and liberal democracy

in particular. ammar? you can speak from there or at the podium. >> thank you very much for having us here. thank you for organizing this. we want to find a clear message about what is happening in syria. basically, i think i will sort of tried to speak about three points briefly so that i can allow more time to my colleagues and also for your questions. the first point is how we got started. the second point is the transition we're looking at right know and wea role that we hope as activists and opposition

members and with the army will play. and the third is what are we organizing? what sort of alternatives are there in this regime and would keep people will play a role in that? the first thing, the whole thing got started when the shot himself came to power. from the very beginning, people saw an opportunity finally to begin to challenge the system. the opposition was divided at the time between people who were completely against the family tradition and the minority. but most people in the opposition accepted the transition and made it conditional >> made it conditional. and they used bashar's own speech, you know, when he accepted the presidency and he accepted the nomination by the bathe party for that position,

he will implement some reforms and indeed sort of change course for the country. now the inability of bashar assad to implement anything is the problem and created the crisis in his leadership. the -- after the promises were made, there was a period called damascus spring that lasted for a few months. and it witnessed a lot of activities on the grassroots level that created and trying to reach out to the grassroots and form new parties and new movements. they immediately called for social reconciliation. realizing the issue needs to be addressed. they tried to track the the kurdish problem and get a lot of kurdish to take part in the process so that the national unit on the grassroots. i think once they realized it was a serious development, immediately the crackdown started. the key figures in the movement

were put in jail. the usual acquisition of foreign -- you know, being possible of foreign conspiracy, embassies or interferes, whatever, foreign funding, all of the issues that are the usual accusations that always used in this kind of situations to justify oppression. so the fact that you are now being accused of foreign conspirators is nothing new. we've been under this accusation since we were born, i guess, in syria. it's as simple as that, regime is a conspirator. >> even in the womb. >> even in the womb, yes. it's something we have in our culture. that movement, damascus spring was short lived. afterwards, the syria community realized that we have to be somewhat more confrontational and organized. and there was different sort of paths on how to do this. there was a group people,

people, you know, like me and others who believed in activism, rather than the traditional political sort of activities. which that we wanted to create networks of activist on the ground. apolitical -- not apolitical really but not affiliated with any of the usual political factions. our message was by creating a greater awareness among the young people of the needs to bridge the sectarian divide, the role that this will play in facilitating the transition, the need to actually just do something on the ground, rather than socialism and communism and imperialism and this was the driving force behind the activities. we've managed to actual he create networks, you know, that in due process time into the kind of situation that we see today. not wanting to dwell too much on this past. but, you know, this is how the

germs were sort of spread. after 2005, the assassination of prime minister hariri and the fact that all eyes were on syria at time and the syrian forces were adjourned from lebanon, bashar's position in the country became somewhat weakened and the trouble -- the battle lines formed for that moment really were sort of shifted and became purely inside of syria. syria can still play a regional role in affairs or whatever. they needed to use proxies more and more. the international community was focused on development inside syria. bashar had to make again some promises of reform and change inside the country that he, of course, did not deliver on. everybody realized now bashar really needed to maintain the syrian base. having lost the umpire that you can say. ever since that time, the situation, in fact, became difficult for activist.

because bashar needed to make damn certain that he had complete control inside of syria. whatever divisions there were in the regime, whatever there was in the regime, his main thought was to actually fix them and to make sure that he had full control. from the party of view of the opposition, also there was an opportunity for us to prevent that from happening, to get our acts together, and to see if we can feel the greater challenge inside of syria. obviously, we didn't do a good job, as you can see with the -- at the end of the period in 2007, 2008, he emerged once again as a person in charge of the country, and we sort of despite attempts at unity and the packets, we came off of separation, a major document that sort of unified and united the syria opposition for a while inside and out of the country. it was heavily endorsed by the international community. we still couldn't really move beyond that and the

organizational capacity and rally in the street to our cause. so in a sense, you can say that we lost another battle. but we also won something, we won experience. a lot of people after that realized that we need to focus more on activities on the ground. high end politics and involvement and sort of political alliances and forming political parties and coalition is not sensual if you don't have it on the ground. this is where the action should be. now quietly, a lot of activist began short of working on the ground trying to short of communicate the message of change, trying to create support networks in defense communities for the change, trying to articulate the message why we need and why the local communities need to be more politically active, how is this relevant to them? and we tried to do this by

creating sort of youtube videos on the need for change, on reality in syria, we created foundation. we created -- we made the tv program called first step in which we articulated sort of the message on the need for democratic change and on the impact of authoritarianism on our way of life. why we have, for instance, child labor, why we have poverty, why the problem has not been resolved or addressed effectively in many, many years. on bashar and after bashar. all of that was linked through the discussion, common sense discussion that you have a system that's not accountable in any sense to the people. we have people in the regime like assad himself and his family. and there were comrades and arms in the bathe party and the military whatever and thinking themselves above the law and not really, you know, we cannot -- if you can't hold them

accountable, there's no way we can do any kind of -- implement any kind of reforms. we tried to articulate as clearly as possible and in a variety of ways. also we relied on feedback from people on the ground to articulate this message. and for a two-year period between 2009 and 2011, really, we've had the message on youtube, we've had it on the opposition channel called [inaudible] and we replayed it over and over again. we really had very limited resources. we've managed to produce on very few programs. the message was very clear. we were hoping that by simpling repeating it it would get concern it would seep through. now we found out that actually we are pretty successful at that. because many of the matters as we hear right now on the ground and coming seem to have reflected the kind of dialogue and language that is used this

kind of programs. but we cannot, of course, -- the elephant in the room is the incident in tunisia. had it not been for that young man and incident that took place and that spark that started in tunisia, we wouldn't be talking about the syrian revolution. a lot of people began to talk to us, reach out to us, send out e-mails, communicate via social network sites like facebook and other channels was when the tunisia revolution happened. even as it unfolded. and even before ben ali. people did not know. we later on discovered it was in the late teens and early 20s saying we can do that. we have been saying it can happen. we never believed it. we can see it happening. we can do it here.

why not? we began talking about preparations. for a long time, i really believed that we should push it until august if we wanted to do something. because i felt that, you know, the development on is going to be extremely important in a country like syria where there is limited room for mobility of foreign media and, of course, the press is going to be completely negative and is not going to play any role in covering the event. i felt that we needed more time to make sure we are covered in the entire country and we have, you know, what it takes to actually be able to cover the developments and the events on the ground in the international community in a timely manner. but i was outvoted after a period of discussion, basically, and a lot of people inside syria felt if you don't start now and end soon, because of what's happening in libya, the violence, people would be afraid of actually joining any kind of a protest movement. and also we have already seen

some sparks in some attempts like -- in the 17th there was a spontaneous demonstration in damascus that caught the attention. the syrian people will not be humiliated. when a traffic violation led to a confrontation between the policeman and sort of a local community and immediately people pours into the streets. this was something that was a slogan that was raised by the protesters at the time. so i think this kind of spontaneous events and several others that happened afterwards really indicated what kind of language and what kind of slogan needs to be raised. the people are finding their voice. >> the revolution wouldn't wait for you. >> exactly. so basically we had to go with the flow of events inside the country. this is really where the difference between the official line accused on the outside of events and organizing it, and

actually we're in a sense being led by people on the ground, new generation of activist, very young, youthful, and they took out advise, they wanted some advise and ideas on how things can be done. and they looked to us to also be their mouthpieces basically outside of the country. but the reality is it's -- they are the leaders. and -- >> maybe you would also say something about where you think the situation is now. >> exactly. i think this is a good point to transition to. because right now we're talking about the self-organizing movement. collective leadership. new generation, new flesh blog in the situation. which is why if all of the kind of tracking down that's happened by the regime to the point of the deploying tanks and to the point of using heavy artillery in the city basically, and

arbitrary arrests, unprotested, lying to the people and saying they are infiltrated and all of that sort of tired really accusations that you've repeated and reiterated in egypt and libya and elsewhere yemen. so that kind of development has sort of led to movement to become more adamant. led the protesters to immediately raise their level of demands to reforms in the first few days or freedom, freedom, freedom, which the syrian people will not be humiliated. people wanted to toppled the regime. down with assad. send your troops to the goalline, times, you know, it was a sign of war not necessarily as people think, they want to go ahead and open the fronts with israel. it's more like a taunt. you are killing us, and we're supposed to have an occupation. you know, it just doesn't make

any sense. so this is the kind of situation we are in right now. protest movement that's still alive and well, despite the heavy crackdown by the regime. i'm hoping that tomorrow will prove that point by when people take to the streets, hopefully in mass numbers again to show that despite the violence, they are still willing to risk their lives in order to fight for freedom and for dignity. we -- the army for us has an important role to play. one the slogans that was raised by the protesters, similar slogan to the one that was raised in egypt as well is that the people and the army are one, or one hand. now in a country like syria, the sectarian divide that we have and the fact that the minority community, all of the communities playing a key role in the army and is used by the assads basically as their support. that slogan is not naive. that slogan has people think. that slogan actually is meant as

a reassurance to the community. if you are looking for guarantees on what's going to happen if assad is out of power. we are telling you you are going to have a lot of say for the army. no one has challenged in the legitimacy of the army. no one is asking for them to leave the army. in fact, if anything, we want them to stay and we want the army to play a role as the safeguard of the secular nature of the state of the stability of the state and help ease the transition and protect the minority rights to where we are right now to a period. we realize that the army has a really important role to play. we want the army in it's current leadership. many of the leaders and many of the high ranking officers are otherwise, to feel that there are definitely part of the process. and to realize that their stake in the political future of the country will not change as a result of our push for democracy. we want the political process to

be open. we want the political process on a day-to-day basis to be free from army intervention. but at the same time, we want the army to be there to guarantee the civility and it's not dominated by any extremely elements. not on the side or whatever, the bogeyman raised by the extreme. this is the other extreme. people want to to treat the country as their own private system. that doesn't work anymore. we want the army to realize there is a lead to transition from this kind of a system where we have a family treating the entire country as their own private system into the country where there are political processes and political parties and there is some measure of accountability to the people. we want them in that transition from a to z. so this is basically where we are right now. we keep issuing that message. we will continue to issue that message. we are hoping that at one point

the army leadership will get it. as a result of all of the developments on ground and the pressures of international community, this is the last point that i'd like to make before yielding the floor, we have been asked about an alternative. what is the alternative? are they going to come? muslim brotherhood? sunni revolution? it's always been diverse. this is a revolution by activist, the leaders on the ground are in syria are really getting into the decision making process. and you know, all communities are represented. if you look at the damascus declaration, people at one point you will get an idea of what we are talking about. many of -- there's a similar structure almost emerging. but it's very people are not joining, however, as representative of their parties, but as independents. this is now -- we are trying to

fuel the alternative not only to the regime, but also to the tired, old traditional parties. so this is not a muslim brotherhood thing. it is not the communist party thing. this is not a bathe party thing. this is a movement of independence, hoping to lead a transitional process that will lead to the formation of new party that is can run in the elections and then you find out once these elections happen, the truth or the nature of the political system. meanwhile the transitional figures are all independent, arabs, kurds, sunni, shiites, christians, jews, mostly young people. most of the population are 30. most of the people that died in the movement, 92% are below the age of 30. we are talking about very young population, very young movement. and now we're talking about the very young coalition that you have just, in fact, announced two days ago. the coalition is called the syrian national initiative for

change. the -- most of the leaders inside the country and you can probably get some of the names. we are not reveals. a lot of new figures emerging that has been elected on the local level and emerged in the last few weeks as key figures in their communities. outside of the country thereby people like me and my colleagues and in london and a lot of other figures, basically who's names will be providing on a list in the days to come will be sort of like spokes people or country representative for this movement. we will continue, of course, to organize the diaspora around the movement and hopefully get populous support communities to make the movement more transparent and more diversity of the syrian movement outside the country. this is where we are right now.

the alternative is being formalized. we are hoping that with a key role played by the army, international community, also through sanctions, travel bans, asset freeze, and potentially also going to the international criminal court if the repression is going to continue will be able to pressure the assad into accepting a scenario and exit strategy. >> thank you. >> as i mentioned in my opening remarks, a country and people that has an exceptionally strong interest in what is going on in syria is the country and people of lebanon. for whom what goes on in syria has had for a very long time, a powerful affect on -- i could say for better or worse. but it's always been for worse, more or less.

but -- and such serves them -- >> foreign occupation. >> for such circumstances that generally concentrate come to mind. and they generally lead to insight and clarity about what's going on in the neighboring situation. that has been true of many lebanese, but, it is, i think, especially true of the next speaker hanin ghaddar. the new kind of journalist, the organizer, most important web publication in lebanon today, called "now lebanon." i forget if you have an alternative site, syria or --

>> it's part of the same site. and it was created before the first friday in demonstrations of syria. it's a live blog feed. >> as interesting enough, it is often the case that you can kind out what's going on in syria from what's going on in lebanon. >> definitely. [laughter] >> and we'll be telling us both what's going on in syria and what's on in lebanon. thank you. >> thank you very much. unfortunately, it's definitely lebanon and syria are linked to some extent that we cannot today talk about lebanon than syria. the link is very obvious, watching hezbollah's reaction today will tell you and also syria's allies. >> can you pull the mike closer? you are a lovely soft voice. i wanted to make sure -- >> thank you very much. is this better?

>> yeah. >> watching hezbollah today and how hezbollah is reacting by not pushing for the formation of the government by also creating certain incidents that would actually show you that they are marking their territory inside of lebanon. for example, i'll talk about two incidents that happened after the syria appraising happened. hezbollah, speak up, okay. is this better? hezbollah two weeks ago started a campaign in the city in south lebanon where they forced the -- some shaabs to stop selling alcohol. this is not a big deal. it's not like they are closing liquor stores or anything.

but it's kind of inside their community, they are telling people we are the authority. marking the territory inside the community. but at the same time, they created a few incidents where -- and news was leaked to us, hezbollah created newspaper, that published the first news about hezbollah here in the south building on state-owned property. this has been going on since 2006 after the war when the reconstruction started. of course, people started building on state-owned land in the south. but -- >> naturally. >> naturally? well, it wasn't that obvious before. after 2006 it was very -- the money comes from iran and hezbollah taking care of the reconstruction. they became a phenomenon. why not? why it was leaked to the news now? i think because they also wanted

the isf to react. so that a message can be passed. the isf, of course, when this head the news, reacted and they went up to the south to stop the illegal construction on state land. many other villages and towns turned into a war zone. the isf, people's shot the isf, and the isf had to react. and they unfortunately shot at some people. they killed a guy, another palestinian guy. during the funeral, also there was other problems. it was close to the southern suburbs also, they were burned. why this is happening now? why is hezbollah reacting that way? hezbollah not their fighters shooting. it's always the innocent people who attack. the people that attack the stl investigators in gas -- ghazi,

it's always the people at the front that's leading the people from behind. this is also i think another sign of marking the territory in the south. this is our state. these are our rules. you cannot sell alcohol. people are allowed to build on state land because according to the people who were interviewed by reporters, these are lands that we paid for with our blood. they have the feeling they have the right to build on the land. the state has nothing to do with the state land in the south. this is not the property of the state. this kind of marking territory, i think, it's a big sign of fear. that hezbollah is experiencing now as what's happening in syria. because hezbollah knows what's happening in syria now is going to influence it's power in lebanon. and on many levels. syria is key to hezbollah, syria

is key to hamas and every organization that's similar in the region. whatever happens in syria is going to influence hezbollah. whether it's logistic when it comes to arms smuggling, it will influence that, whether politically inside of lebanon, when it comes to majority, minority, march 8, march 14, also if syria is weakened and the regime falls or even if the regime doesn't fall, serious allies in lb. -- allies in lb. nonare going to be recant. they cannot talk to the government alone. they cannot influence government and parliamentary decisions alone. so they are feeling this concern. and they definitely want the syria regime to stay. obviously, they organized the big conference where every single politician in syria and iran and ally and lebanon attended and made statements. where a lot of double standards

emerged to the surface by hezbollah and other lebanese that supported the egyptians, bahrainy uprising. definitely when it comes to syria, this is a different case. for them, this is a conspiracy. they made statements about protecting the regime, because the regime protects the resistance. and for many people who are not like hard core hezbollah supporters or members, they tend to be more liberal, leftist communist people. these double standards do not make sense anymore. for them, the syrian uprising is genuine. sending the people and sending the syrian people who are being also genuine about the demands. they know exactly what they are asking for. hezbollah's existence is more important than people's freedom, demands, or reforms. the killings that the regime