we help them? how do we get them get it for them? not looking at those that do have and say let's take it away. that is un-american. that is unpatriotic. the people who say that, that we can't create jobs, have given up on america. we haven't given up on america. and the workers in this country haven't given up on america and the vast majority of people in america haven't given up on america and we resent those who say the best years for america are behind us. that we can't give our citizens a good job. we can't give our citizens health-care. we can't give them a secure retirement. that we have to scale back the american dream in the richest nation on the face of the earth. we refuse to accept that. [inaudible] >> just to follow up.

what is your scenario for creating those jobs and what is at stake for workers? what is at stake for workers in this election? >> we are leaving this event and going live to the national press club in washington for an all day forum on lessons learned since the september 11th attacks hosted by the homeland security department national consortium for the study of terrorism and response to terrorism. during the day we expect to hear remarks from senator joe lieberman. this is live on c-span2. >> we are going to flip the agenda to keep events of the day pretty much on track. we will hear briefly from president well after words. i should probably remind everyone to put yourself phones and beepers on silent mode and that out we have distributed a

brand new copy of our new research review. it should be something you got this morning as well as a packet of information about the program supported at the s.t.a.r.t. center to give you some idea of the kinds of research you will be hearing about later today. alisha point out we will be tweeting, the cards are on the table in front of you. we will ask you to participate in that. also you will have an opportunity to vote electronically for the winner of the debate this afternoon, are we safer? information is on your table. i want to thank the co-sponsors of this event at the university of maryland. this includes pat o'shea, the vice president who is right here. john townsend of the college of arts and science -- behavior and

social science right beside pa.c we couldn't have done it without your support. much of the research you are hearing about is supported by the science and technology director to the department of homeland security and the center of excellence program. we worked closely with dhs and the behavioral science division from the sand and technology directors. we have quite a few people in the audience here from dhs. we have experience relating to 9/11 and also to the work i have been doing s.t.a.r.t. over the last ten years. during those years i have been the lead researcher on an intensive unclassified source of information on terrorist attacks called the global terrorism database or gtd which includes 100,000 terrorist attacks around

world going back to 1970. in collecting and analyzing the data over the last week in years one theme that has come up repeatedly is held very small number of terrorist attacks can have a huge impact on attitudes and policies towards terrorism. policymakers referred to these as blacks one events especially rare events that are very difficult to predict but end up having an enormous impact on human affairs for years to come. a great example of a black swan event is the subject of today's summit. a coordinated attack on the united states that occurred on september 11th, 2001. the 9/11 attacks had tremendous impact on the political, social and economic structure of the united states and the world and its impact continues to reverberate ten years later but while a black swan event like 9/11 captures the public imagination and has an impact on public policy it also is

incredibly rare and unusual. the major purpose of my brief remarks this morning is to use our gtd terrorism data to put the 9/11 attack in context by showing how it differed from thousands of other tax that took place around the world since 1970. i thought i would organize my comments by looking at a series of what i would call myths about terrorism that were greatly influenced by 9/11. i want to talk about nine such myths. number one, terrorist attacks were rapidly increasing in the years leading up to 911. the tragic events of 9/11 had an immediate dramatic impact on level of public concern about terrorism in the united states and well beyond. accordingly many might assume terrorist attack and fatalities were up sharply just before 9/11 but in fact the gtd data telling different story. according to our data terrorist attacks reached their twentieth century high point not in 2001 but in 1992 just after the

collapse of the soviet union. total attacks the year before 9/11 were about the same level as they had been in the 1970s. in the four years prior to 9/11 worldwide terrorist attacks were at less level for 20 years. i might add total attacks increased considerably since 9/11 so that in 2010, total terrorist attacks are nearly as high as they were in the early 1990s. myth number 2. terrorist attacks reach every corner of the world. the ubiquity of modern communication systems means that individuals are constantly bombarded by images of terrorist attacks from around the globe. if you ask yourself how many times you have seen the iconic 9/11 image of a full loaded jet plane crashing into the world trade center this blanket media coverage leaves the impression that no location on the planet is safe from terrorism. but in fact our analysis of the

gtd indicates terrorist attack are highly concentrated in space. for example the top 20 countries in terms of terrorist attack account for nearly three quarters of all terrorist activities in the world since 1970. about 10% of all countries account for 75% of all terrorist attacks. only 5% of the world's countries account for half of the world's terrorist attacks. myth number 3. the u.s. is more frequently targetted by terrorists than any other country in the world. the devastating impact of 9/11 lead to many observers in the united states and abroad to assume the u.s. is the target of an inordinate number of terrorist attacks. however when we use the gtd to examine the frequency of attacks and fatalities by countries we find a u.s. ranks about 20th in terms of total attacks and fifteenth in terms of fatal attacks. the most frequently attacked country is columbia --colombia.

90% of to the world terrorism fatalities in 1970 accounted for by the four coordinated attacks of 9/11. if these attacks were removed from the estimates u.s. fatalities from terrorism are similar to fatalities in canada or lafree -- or grease --greece. most terrorist attacks involved terrorist disgruntled groups in one country carrying out attacks on other countries. a tremendous impact of 9/11 and urges us to think of terrorism as mostly being about unhappy individuals from one country attacking innocent civilians from another. to examine this issue in more depth we looked at the total attack patterns of 53 foreign terrorist groups identified by the u.s. state department as posing the greatest threat to u.s. security. based on gtd data we found 90% of the 17,000 attacks carried

out by these groups were domestic attacks. more than nine times out of ten these groups operated at home against local targets. this means groups located in for example pakistan were far more likely to use terrorist violence against non u.s. targets in pakistan than they were to attack u.s. targets in pakistan or to attack the u.s. homeland. myth number 5. terrorism is unrelated to judicial political grievances. because of the seeming irrationality of the al qaeda inspired 9/11 attack it is easy to lose sight of the fact that a large number of terrorist attacks in fall fairly rational political disputes over territory. when we use the gtd data to identify the most active terrorist organizations in the world we found a large proportion of them involve group organized around dispute having to do with political control over territory. although there are major differences in their orientation

this explains in large part virtually all of the top 20 most active terrorist groups including the shining path, the i r a, hamas and the ltde. most terrorist attacks are legal. because of the terrorist attack of 9/11 is easy to suppose most terrorist attacks are incredibly lethal. from the gtd we find half of all terrorist attacks since 1970 and false no fatalities. many incidents are directed at property. many other cases terrorist groups provide warnings to civilians before they strike. this has been the common practice for eta and the ira and used to be a common practice for the weather underground. 30 years ago these considerations led brian jenkins to suggest terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead. it is still the case that more than half of the attacks in the gtd produced at least one fatality and especially

troubling are the attack that produce large numbers of fatalities. nearly 2% of the attack in airdate a base, over 1200 attacks produce more than 25 fatalities and brian jenkins recently revisited his earlier statement after reviewing the facts from today that instead many of today's terrorists want a lot of people watching and the lot of people dead but nevertheless half of all terrorist attacks in the database produced no fatalities. myth number 7. most terrorist attacks rely on sophisticated weaponry. the coordinated attacks of 9/11 involved long-term planning, split-second timing and innovative use of existing resources. the sophistication of 9/11 pales into insignificance compared to the diabolical sophistication of the enemy's jack bowers, bruce willis and other television and media heroes routinely face. these images no doubt encourage us to think most terrorist

strikes depend on sophisticated weaponry but contrary to the view of terrorism we get from hollywood the vast majority of terrorist attacks rely on non sophisticated readily accessible weapons. according to the gtd database 80% of the tax rely on explosives and firearms and for the most part the explosives used are relatively common especially dynamite and grenade. similarly the most common firearms are also widely available especially shotguns and pistols. fortunately sophisticated weapons including chemical, biological or radiological weapons are the rare exception. myth 8. most terrorist organizations are long lasting and difficult to eradicate. given the persistence of high profile long lasting groups like al qaeda, the camel tigers or the irish republican army there's a perception most terrorist groups have long life spans. gtd identifies 1700 separate terrorist groups. we gauged their longevity by the amount of time from their first

strike to their last known strike. we found 75% of the terrorist organizations identified in the gtd lasted less than a year. most terrorist groups are like most business start-ups. very likely to disappear during their first year of operation. forming and maintaining groups is not easy despite impressions to the contrary. why do we have the impression terrorist groups are long-lasting and difficult to eradicate? probably because we hear so much about the groups that are successful. for every al qaeda and e t a. there are many short-lived groups such as the entire capitalist brigade and the revolutionary flame. myth number 9. terrorist groups are impervious to governmental counter terrorist policies and rarely make mistakes. we could call this the myth of the superterrorist. the advanced planning,

conference and destructiveness of 9/11 contributed to the notion that terrorist groups are infallible. my colleagues and i have been involved in several research projects using gtd data that suggests otherwise. in a recent study we used the gtd to examine targeting strategy of the armenian secret army for the liberation of armenia, a group that has been very active in turkey in the past. we were interested because after mounting a long series of deadly terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 80s it disappeared very rapidly. after modeling many plausible explanations for their sudden disappearance our conclusion was the most convincing explanation was a strategic shift in terms of its targeting strategy. before the early 1980s it was careful to target church and -- non turkish and armenian casualties. starting in the 1980s they became less discriminate in

their targeting methods. that was an especially brutal attack in paris. an explosive device detonated prematurely in the terminal area by the turkish airline and killed 20 people and wounded 50 more. the increasing reliance on random brutal violence created a polarized and hostile environment among the former supporters of asala. this undermined its legitimacy especially among its supporters in the armenian diaspora and its supporters in the west. there are plenty of other examples of incompetence among terrorists. for example less than 90 minutes after detonating a massive truck bomb in front of the murder of federal building in oklahoma city in 1995 timothy mcveigh was arrested for driving without a license plate. similarly in 1993 a group of islamic extremists drove a bomb laden van into the underground parking lot of the world trade

center complex and using a timer set the bomb to detonate. when the bomb exploded it killed six the planned linda thousand more. a chilling precursor to 9/11. remarkably, three hours after the explosion one of the chief conspirators in the plot, mohamad solema went to new jersey to get his deposit back from the rented van. when the rental company refused to return his deposit without a police report, he went to the police to report the van stalin. his desperate attempt to get his $400 deposit back unravel the entire conspiracy. just by way of conclusion the originality and indiscriminate violence of the 9/11 attack is directly connected to the smith. terrorist attacks are highly concentrated in geographical space. they rely to a large extent on readily available and sophisticated weaponry, frequently involve few or no

fatalities. the typical terrorist group disappears in less than a year and there's ample evidence that terrorists frequently makes strategic errors. attacks were declining just before 9/11 even though they have gone up dramatically since then. very few attack involved disgruntled groups from one country attacking civilians in another country. the members of the s.t.a.r.t. consortium believe research on terrorism is critical because policy in this area is likely to be driven even more than with common acts of violence by exceptional cases. we need to guard against what nobel prize laureate thomas shelly described years ago as, quote, a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely. thank you and i will leave my comments right here and i see that our official welker -- welcom welcomer, thomas lowe has made it. he will say a couple words by

greeting. let's give him applause. [applause] >> good morning. thank you for participating in this conference. thank you, gary for organizing this. i must say, you have certainly debunked the myth ology i have been carrying around in my head about terrorists. that of course is the value of doing research. ever since the day of infamy we know as 9/11, our nation has been involved in this war on terrorism. our men and women in uniform have been on the front lines. our defense and intelligence agencies have mobilized against this threat to our national

security. homeland security and other agencies have invested significant resources to help us understand this surge of terrorism. we are very pleased that one of the many efforts in universities around the countries and think tanks to understand this problem is headquartered at the university of maryland. having some 30 different universities from around world participating in this consortium known as s.t.a.r.t.. i am reminded of the words some 200500 years ago from the chinese warrior scholar sunsuit --sun sue when he wrote know yourself, know your enemy. a thousand battle, a thousand victories. those words are very appropriate to war on terrorism. we are to prevent, reduce the

frequency of terrorist events around world, we need to know our enemy. this is where the tragedy of 9/11 have led to the mobilization of researchers, social scientists of all stripes to understand why we have terrorism, how terrorists are formed, how people are radicalize or the consequences, and how we counter this. i am very pleased to see the number of colleges and universities around the country that have expanded their curriculum, offering new courses and programs and majors and minors and even graduate degrees on the field of homeland security. i want to thank the department of homeland security for funding

these efforts and i want to thank all of you for participating. i know there are many of you here from federal agencies, from the military, policy researchers, policymakers, staffers, division directors and from many embassies. i do want to say that i am very much looking forward to hearing the presentations. you have some outstanding panelists, distinguished scholars and researchers and journalists who are going to be commenting on exactly where are we after ten years. after ten years of research, do we have a better understanding of the radicalization process, of the causes and above all, what can we do, we as citizens and communities to become more

resilience and counter the threat of terrorism. thank you for coming and thank you, gary, you and/or your colleagues in s.t.a.r.t. for organizing this conference. [applause] >> okay. we are off to a good start. the moderator of our next panel stepping in on cue. i will turn the floor to dr. peter glennan of the center of radicalization and political violence where he is a senior lecturer in war studies. peter will moderate the first panel of the morning, the terrorist next door. we will need a couple minutes to get this set up so give us about five minute and we will move into the very first panel this morning. thank you very much.

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

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

>> okay. without further interruption we will go to our first set of panelists. it is moderated by peter onyman. is titled the terrorist next floor. >> thank you for coming in. i am the director of the international center for the study of radicalization in london. if you want to learn more about it, high am saying that partly -- mostly because i want to advertise the center but i am also saying that because i think it is a testament of the past decade to stretch out beyond the

united states and construct something that we want to be possible. i am happy to be part of this. i am also saying that because i want people to understand i know how contentious this concept of radicalization is. if you define radicalization as the process by which someone becomes extremist that raises the question what kind of extremist? extremism of the mind or the word or deed or violent extremism? depending on what kind of outcome that process has, has important political and research implications. for the next hour we will be talking about some of what we have learned in the past ten years as far as what that process involved and what we know and don't know and where we will take this field in the future. there is no better panel to talk

about this than the three panelists here, distinguished members of the research community. to my left is arie kruglanski, professor of psychology at the university of maryland college park. to his left is john horgan legal director of the study of terrorism at pennsylvania state university and to is left is jarret brachman, who used to be director of research at combating terrorism center at west point and is now heading up one of those start ups that i will not say in -- in operations. a casualty terrorism consulting firm. what we agreed is i would start you off by answering that question. what do we know about radicalization now that we did note ten years ago? maybe arie kruglanski wants to

have the first stab. >> i believe in the recent decade we have learned a lot about radicalization. some very good people have done some very good work. john horgan has done some important work on leaving terrorism behind. clark mccollie has done work and mechanisms of organization. scott mcswan has done work and sacred values and how they enter into radicalization and leaving radicalization behind. we have done work -- empirical work -- facilities with insights into radicalization. there is a very important work that has not been done before. the challenges at this point are

twofold. one is to bring together these various pieces of research carried out from different perspectives in different parts of the world with different terrorist organizations and integrate them into a coherent theory of radicalization, to understand the general principles radicalization represent. the second challenge is to take this theory and apply it. after all terrorism is not merely an academic pursuit. we want to combat terrorism and exploit our knowledge in order to reverse the process to minimize the damage terrorism is causing so the challenges to understand how these general principles manifest themselves in different groups and different locations at different times and translate them into a

coherent set of qualities. the purpose of summarizing or integrating a want to make a few points on radicalization as i understand it at this point. first of all what is radicalization? i would be fine radicalization as the process of coming to support or personally embrace a collective cause. ..

>> as morally legitimate and desirable. where as criminality also involves extreme means, it lacks the moral ideological bases that is the mainstay of radicalization. criminals typically do not perceive themselves as heroes or martyrs, and they carry out their extreme activities without the pretense of doing so far altruistic reasons. point number four is, we know now that radicalization is often drowning in perception that once sacred values are trampled, and the balance against the perpetrator is the way to restore the honor in human significance of one's group and one's self. this is personally rewarded and that's the motivational part of it by a sense of game and one's personal significance for standing up for the defense of one's group sacred values.

point number five is that whereas radicalized individuals might perceive violence as argument only ineffective and even counterproductive, in terms of advancing the groups concrete goals, they may still make it highly worthwhile because of the honor of empowerment and significant gains that it bestows on its perpetrators. as one example, our opinion polling data from the web, most palestinians view the second intifada as unlikely to advance the interest. and in this sense it is futile yet they passively supported it because of its perceived effectiveness in bringing about empowerment and honor and injured and humiliating the israelis. and the last point, point number six is that there exists a great radicalization from your ideological support and legitimization of means all the

way to personally embracing the extremism deciding to personally participate in violent activities. the important extension that john horgan and others have made with this engagement, with radicalization belongs in this degree of radicalization continues. and the psychological sense of motivation is beginning to shed some light as to what it takes from extreme support, and involvement in radical behavior. and i think i will stop your. >> thanks very much, arie. john, same question to you. what do we know that we didn't know dangers ago? >> thank you very much, peter, and to s.t.a.r.t. it was a very kind invitation to come here this morning. i want to preface my remarks by saying that i'm someone who spent a lot of time as a psychologist conducting research

on terrorism thinking about radicalization and deradicalization. and i've been asked to be a little bit thought-provoking, so hopefully i won't disappoint. i actually have come to the view in recent times that i'm not entirely convinced that we should have allowed radicalization to take center stage. i think, perhaps our preoccupation is not an obsession with radicalization has come at the expense of increasing our knowledge and understanding of terrorist behavior. in some ways, serving from my perspective it represents a fundamental acknowledgment of the challenge we have had in reconciling attitudes, beliefs and perhaps most of concern here, behaviors. i think these are certainly not new problems, problems editing going on for a considerable amount of time, but our failure to make progress on waging to get between us critical issues

has actually let us to seek referees in the concept of radicalization. 10 years ago we're having discussions about what makes a terrorist. i don't think we're talking about radicalization. we were talking about the same kinds of processes in very, very different sorts of ways. i also believe that if our ultimate objective is to stem integral to growth of terrorism, a central continued focus on radicalization may ultimately prove unnecessary. complementary, yes. but necessary perhaps. there are three reasons as to why i'm dissatisfied with our progress. the first i think is a lack of transparency around what we actually know. despite what i would completely agree with my distinguished colleague here, despite the enormous amount of effort and energy and research that's gone into this topic in recent years,

radicalization put very simply remains very poorly conceptualized. they're having some very, very admirable attempts, for most of these in recent times have been the work of clark mccauley. they distinguish radical vision from activism, equating the latter to a sort of readiness to engage in legal and nonviolent in action. radicalism for clark is the more dangerous problem. however, i don't think these distinctions are sufficient enough. and these are not just academic issues. i think there are issues that have profound implications with policy and the development of practical counterterrorism initiatives. i would level -- at whatever level they are right. the popularity of radicalization has resulted in widespread agreement on what it actually means. because it's something that can continue to be understood in a bright of different ways, to quote mark sedgwick, they can't

imply different, differences for policy implications. for some, the term radicalization is synonymous with terrorism. for others it's a type of shorthand. but analysts will often agree in private that, well, when you talk about radicalization we're not really talking about terrorism, but a big issue from which terrorism arises. closely related to this is my second point, and that is the relationship between radicalization and terrorism remains very poorly understood, as you said. within this i think there are two absolutely indisputable facts. one, is obvious. the other less so. the point i think that is less obvious that ultimately is going to give us more pause for thought as we progress. so first the obvious point. not every radical becomes a terrorist. i don't really have to say that. the extraordinarily low base rate for involvement in

terrorism remains as a defining terroristic of the terrorism problem. and maybe intense politicalization that we see a red issues to deal with terrorism that radicalization we tend to use -- lose sight of that. there will be far more radical standard ever will be terrorists, yet we tend to assume a kind of unidirectional relationship. in other words, if you become one, the chances are you'll probably become the other given the right circumstance. prevent someone from becoming a radical, then we prevent someone from becoming a terrorist. the less obvious point is kind of thing during what i just do. not every terrorist necessarily holds radical views. now, what i've seen in recent times is that there is increasing evidence for this. recognizing that evidence has to make as pause and concentrate what seems to be and already intuitive and commonsense

relationship between radicalization and terrorism. and i think they very closely related to this is the very questionable goal of deradicalization. again, i say this as some of us do a lot of research on deradicalization. let alone the fact that deradicalization programs continue to remain resistant to evaluation of any kind. if there are fewer radicals and terrorists in the rank of terrorist groups, we really have to wonder for whom precisely the idea of the deradicalization might actually be applicable. and the third broad point that i want to raise is that the reason why we need to regain a focus not on radicalization, but on terrorist behavior, is that we are dangerously lacking in our knowledge of some critical stages of the art of terrorist involvement. and by that i mean the trajectory that takes someone from becoming involved in terrorism to remain involved in

terrorism, to eventually disengaging. in our preoccupation with radicalization, we know far less about recruitment and we really should know by now. we know virtually nothing on the social and psychological dynamics that propel individuals specifically commit acts on behalf of of groups. moving further down the different amalgam of metaphors and frameworks and processes that we have, we see similar problems at the other end of the spectrum. a focus on deradicalization with all of, i think, naïve expectations that go along with that has meant we have missed very by the opportunity to explore the process of disengagement. we've lost sight of terrorism which is just like there are floods or recruits of terrorism movements, it happens on a daily basis where people leave terrorism behind. yet this is a process that we can fundamentally ignore.

in practice, and in the words of my colleague, conor lynch, some ostensible's view of radicalization programs as essentially focus on ascertaining disengagement, perhaps an implicit acknowledgment of the fact that it's much more difficult and challenging in a practical and philosophical sense, to change individual belief systems. now, in conclusion none of what i've just said should be interpreted as a call to ignore the processes that give rise to radicalization. not trying to say that for a second. i probably would make it out of the room alive if my colleagues believe that. i'm not saying that at all. nor am i suggesting for a second that we haven't anyway wasted our efforts. but the problem i have is that social scientist looking at these issues is that there are some great deeply problematic assumptions underpinning the structure that we draw on on a daily basis. that are very often predicted on a causal link, however implicit,

but a causal link between radicalization in terrorism. i do believe, however, we have lost focus. we have lost specificity, and as result i think we've lost the ability to prioritize our problems as such. and i think as a result of all of that, and unless we try to regain that sense of prioritization quickly, i think that i'll of the practically oriented questions that we see out there that i think are well within our ability to answer conceptually, practically and otherwise, are going to continue to remain out of reach. so thank you. >> so, jerry, you have left to pick up the pieces now. well, thank you, peter. thanks to everybody who is here today at the s.t.a.r.t. said for putting this on. i thought i would channel al qaeda in the conversation. one of the most brilliant insights i've had over the past 10 years is that i don't know as

much about al qaeda as al qaeda knows about al qaeda. and so i figured i would kind of just, one of the things i tried to do with throughout my greatest listen to what they say about their priorities, about the strengths or weaknesses or goals. and the u.s. government spun up, and media spun up in the mid-to-late 2000s about a fellow named abu i'll sort. he put out a major book, 6-under page book in '05 and he was grabbed shortly thereafter. we finally got around to reading it around '07, '08. and we realized this guy is really smart. redundant but pretty smart. we made a really big deal about his influence, although we weren't actually seeing a lot of influence. we just knew that he was bored. what's happened in the past two years is he actually has become influential or his work as. so i've gone back to the story, i thought i would start to answer his question by

channeling suri. here to imagine you've got a vacuum cleaner. this vacuum cleaner is hardwired to accept 120 volts of electric current. i don't know what that means. i'm not an electrician but i imagine that's one set of current, rydquist let's say the country upgrade to 240-volt. you've still got the same vacuum cleaner. that i can clear still works brilliantly, but when you plug it in you burn of the motor. it doesn't work. he says this is what's going on with the methodology being employed by the global jihad is moved to our methodology has been and workstation century. he sought to recruit people to come fight, open conflicts. around the world. the problem is the world has changed around us and we keep trying to plug this vacuum cleaner in to a socket that keeps bring us out. so we need to fundamentally rewire the vacuum cleaner in order to figure out how to move forward to be successful. and so suri says the only which basically rewire we can try to tweak it in the margins. we can use adapters and things

but unless we go back to the foundations, the way we understand what the issue is, whether problems are, the we are, what the challenges are, who the enemy is, why things haven't worked in the past, we will be successful. and so suri present a series of works on this topics. and for him, he said the problem with the global jihad movement, if you want use that term, is that it's been organizationally, it's been an organization, not a system that al qaeda was never meant to be an organization that al qaeda was never designed to be the end-all be a. you should want to join al qaeda. you should want to join the islamic global resistance. those -- there's no need to radicalize. it's only about giving you the proper knowledge about what's going on in the world. and so you go through a 1600 page book to radicalization doesn't appear once. it's all about education. he is a theory of education, a theory of mobilization.

and so what he's saying is we've got all these little spotty reactions, tactical reactions, operational level reactions. what we are missing is the strategic framework. and the framework can only come if you design a system that transcends itself, that transcends al qaeda. so brothel to bin laden for 9/11. he would say, but on 9/12 when you claim credit for on behalf of al qaeda, and not the local islamic resistance movement you just in the worst thing possible because now you've made it about a man. you've made it about an individual, said of individuals and it takes enlivens death to free up the gears. right? so, in fact, i think when bin laden dies in many like suri was probably happy to some degree. he said constant pragmatist because bin laden out of the way allows al qaeda to start transcending itself. i think this recent strike has really kind of double can

everybody in the sense that maybe this is possible to destroy the senior leadership. i've been skeptical but i think the global movement on the forums are starting to say we really have to rethink what a post-al qaeda looks like. and so when you go back, you know, al qaeda has been fully aware of this. for several years that has been promoting this important, the importance of individual jihad. he said we've got attacks such as the guy who stood outside of cia headquarters in early '90s, mohammed boyer he, the dutch filmmaker stabber, adel hassan, the fort hood shooter. he said these were al qaeda attacks. that's precisely what al qaeda is. you can be al qaeda by not being al qaeda. all they did, they didn't radicalize. all they did was just he was going on in the world around him and did something. and suri goes back to afghanistan he said people came to afghanistan for all different reason. some wanted to fight.

summer board. summer social pariah said know what else to go. some people were true believers. you need a theory that can encompass all these people, some were really smart and want to sit there and read a thousand page book. others want to go out and kill. we need to create a system that's inclusive enough to bring this together but i think this has been one of the inherent schizophrenic kind of attributes of al qaeda is that it was built to be an exclusive elite is organization. and they realize you can't sustain that because human organ stations according to suri always feel. humans make mistakes. they get captured, they get killed. organizations built on hierarchical tendencies always feel. what you need is a decentralized social movement that is inclusive and welcoming. this is why he was so angry about the role of within al qaeda. it's too exclusive. it turns people away. we need to open up our arms and make this a global influence of the movement.

time. >> can i ask you one question because i know that you are following what happened on jihadists web forms. if you compare the role of these forums to where we were 10 years ago, how would you assess that very broadly speak which broadly, i would say around 2000, they didn't understand the power of the internet. it was kind of a novelty. 2001, 2002, as we went in, kind of decimated training camp structure, they migrated online out of necessity. '03-'05 with iraqi start to realize this propaganda, headings, explosions, cyberattacks, this gets a lot of traffic. it was at the same time that the rise of these discussion forums started to appear. bandwidth start to increase. so this became not just a one way repository information.

you can go download a video budget and ashley hang out there and talk to people. build communities. build networks, relationships. you could actually live online. and so i think that's when you saw '03-'06 you saw this massive spiraling, let's look at the websites with all the literature we've ever written. let's translate as much as possible, consolidate, let's make the jihadi online community as robust as possible. and so that's what a lot of u.s. government efforts uncovering jihadists websites really went through the rough. they have tactical manuals that they stole from us. they have bomb manuals. they got all this stuff. the fact is the jihadists movement has been there. they check the box to their ideology is found in their heads. they got all the books that's in the libraries. people who need to read it have read it. they bypassed all of that. so now it's about how do we get people to actually go do something. that's what they're going back to suri. we also get the point. we all understand that we're in

this together, but we are too scared to go out and act. so that's why the english land which magazine, not necessary of a radicalizing you, it's about prompting come inside you to action. mobilizing you. that's why suri has appeared in five or six inspired magazines because they understand suri is a great architect of mobilization. >> before i open for questions from the audience, a couple more questions do you. john, is it the term transit and you object to, or is it perhaps what is associated with the term? a lot of the things we're talking about the coming a terrorist, what makes a terrorist, some of the social and ecological processes would be things that i wouldn't actually assume under the idea of radicalization. so i don't necessarily see how that contradicts the idea of

studying radicalization. >> again, i'm not trying to say we shouldn't be studying what we're calling radicalization, but the other issues are far less worried about. we're always going to have those kinds of issues. although i'm seeing now violent extreme is becoming the new radicalization. so we start the same issues. the problem i have is that there are, we are failing to clarify the links between the acquisition and process that governs the acquisition of extreme attitudes and beliefs, and how that might lead to action. i think we are far too implicit in what we are certainly as academics sort of even suggesting to policymakers, the link. so the question that started off my concern is what i'm actually trying to do? are we trying to prevent people from having, from acquiring radical thoughts, our week -- in the assumption that if we can

somehow bring that kind of process under control, we reduce the risk that they might be in full -- they might be vulnerable to involvement. if that's the case i can understand that but i don't see that assumption and logic underpinning much of the research and radicalization. >> so building on that, arie, that seems to be one of the central questions. any radicalization research interested in the belief, what would you say we know about that? >> that's a classic question of the relation of social psychology studied for generations of the relationship between attitude and behavior the attitudes do not particular -- but they do so under some circumstance. the study of motivation and social psychology has identified what the circumstances are. so an attitude, attitude is a process of evaluation of an

object. and attitude has to be translated into a goal, a personal goal, and that personal goal than contrite behavior to the extent that those goals are not over ridden. what are alternative goals? alternative goals that are not radical behavior, the goals of a personal development, of professional careers, of having a family. to the extent these individualistic goals can be enhanced, to the extent these alternative paths to personal contributions for significance can be enhanced, then that path of the goal of terrorism may be overridden by those alternative goals. so to summarize, and attitude is important to behavior but it has to be translated by the goals. and these goals have to be important enough to override concerns. personal concerns, development

and so forth. >> with your permission i like to react to john and jarret just a bit. >> absolutely. >> i think that, you know, you're radicalization is more cementing to me than actual. because you both agree that behavior is grounded, it's anchored in believes about the ability of this behavior. one doesn't behave -- one has reasons to engage in actions. when you, john, talk about mobilization this is a personal persuasion to do violence is a good thing. and why is it a good thing? because it serves a collective cause. it serves justice. it's her sky. this is what radicalization means, the embracement of these beliefs. and i think clearly behavior is very important as the end

process of radicalization but it is grounded in attitude that are produced by the persuasive process, by suri and others. one more point with your permission. radicalization -- >> i like how you are all different to me. please go ahead. with my permission. >> that radicalization is not only important in order to understand the actual engagement in violence, because attitude in one community supports terrorism in other ways than through recruitment. no terrorist activity can exist without the broad base of support. difficult support, financial support, organizational support, safe houses, transportation, finances. and it's the attitudes of the communities that provide that kind of support without which

the actual violence at the apex would not be possible. so, yeah. >> before i give john a chance to respond, as far as i understood john, he said it's not necessary in edible for someone who's radical beliefs to become a terrorist and violent, equally for someone who is a terrorist or violent, he does not necessarily have to have radical beliefs. so presumably you disagree with that. >> yes. well, the question is what does one mean by radical belief. if by radical believe one needs a very intricate philosophy of art ideology of violent, extensive knowledge of the koran, extensive interpretation of the koran then i agree. but if by radical believe one means very simply that assumption that terrorist behavior is worthwhile, that it serves the community, that it serves the cause, and i would

venture to say that every person that engages in radical behavior, every person that commit to a suicide mission believes in something, the least that this is an important thing. that this is going to gain the respect of the community, going to serve the cause. and this is what i mean by radical belief. >> john? >> i'm not worried about anyone's radical belief. i want to figure out why does it separate the radical from the terrorists. so my focus is on what goes on there. i'm not, well, i'm not as interested in the process that led to the acquisition of those particular in the first place but because that i think, let's stop kidding ourselves, i don't see it ever, it's not even appropriate to talk about doing things to prevent the acquisition of those concepts. and this is what i needed i think we have lost priorities

about what it is we actually want to do. so let's problematize this a little bit better, let's focus on what it is specifically we are trying to do, which for me presumably is making that distinction more clear between a person who has or is acquiring radical believes, and maybe expressing those believes in any number of different ways, but what i'm interested in trying to displace is the mood into political violence. >> so let me ask jarret income and then i promise i really do open it up to questions. but jarret, from following a lot of these discussions and jihadists web forms, when some case some forums more than 10,000 people are registered and presumably most of them are what we call cognitive radicals. they have extreme attitudes. in your experience what distinguishes the people who go a little bit further, or even the people who then tipped over into real-world violent to

activism, from those who don't? >> i -- >> that would answer the central question. >> i've been trying to find this magical algorithms that i can apply to the formula, check off three boxes and we will operational. and it just doesn't work like that. usually you don't know the screening of the user until after they've committed an operation and then their buddies will brag hey, by the way, this guy went out and did something. then you go up is -- you go and pull of archived post and you look for that magic moment and you can find. but for me it's all about, so you remember the jordanian physician triple agent known as imam. everybody in the forms to him as out of. he was a writer, and ss is a top 10 list of every major foreign. this guy which a legendary of my. although he was an anonymous writer. eventually pull the jordanian intelligence and us and commit a really horrific act. against number of rc at the

officers. after he completed his operations andy was announced that tranninety physician was this legendary ongoing pundit, the movement freaked out. they were so excited because somebody who finds looked and smelled like him on the forums of these lurkers actually went out and crossed the line and went operational. so the whole mood of the forms change. now it's not okay to sit and type it is now a theological convention to the forget me to get you, they're posting until you can go conduct an operation. i think i was a dominant logic for the past couple of years until things like this letterman threat have cut out. we have a random post making a post on this scary arabic language from al qaeda forum same thing i'm going to cut out his tongue and he better shut up in every major news outlet in the world covers it. for days and days. and then the for and look at

that and said maybe we don't actually need to go out and do something. maybe we can just post a scary threat because they taken seriously enough now that we've gone and done something. now it's almost coming full circle. and this fits directly into suri's mind. how to get more people invested in doorways. you empower them with skills that we have shown it's possible, and you give them more avenues of entry, lower ways. so anyway i think that's where the forums are headed. >> thank you. solicited that let's open it up for question. please raise your hand if you have one and we'll take as many as we can in answer. yes, the gentleman here. could you please introduce yourself as well. >> paul, tnc state university. to dr. kruglanski. the model begins with moral outrage. and what i hear, i think way to think about this is what dr. horgan is saying is it is

not essential to have radical -- [inaudible] in order for them to behave, right? >> correct. >> so sharia-based law our focus on -- [inaudible] that's one way to go. [inaudible] [inaudible] is the necessary condition for both. so you think the moral outrage leads to radical believes, certainly.

krasinski, mcveigh, ramzi yousef, they are coldly pragmatic. segments work is very good i think you. you can't think of a terrorist is not morally outraged. you can't think of the radical is not morally outraged. the question is, why, what are the roots of muslim rage? an essay by bernard lewis in 1990. big question. and for you, dr. horgan, i'd -- i like your work a lot but i respectfully disagree that we should not address the bible propaganda -- the bible propaganda that is used to incite on the bases of absolute jubal like fabrication when you look at how iraq was used for our involvement in somalia, the 1 million dead, the 2 million dead, the 3 million day. these have never been encountered officially with the

facts. >> let's get -- >> moral outrage. >> would any of you like to respond? >> i would like to respond. of course, it's very important, moral outrages are important but it should not be seen as distinct from belief. moral outrage is grounded in believe that the tremendous injustice has been done, that a tremendous value of central importance has been trampled. and when you talk about moral outrage, it's the emotional consequence of realizing that something has happened. that is unjust, unfair and harmful to the group. so it's this kind of mobilization of emotions that can under some circumstances override alternative concerned and turn this attitude, supported attitude into a personal goal. i'm going to do something about it. >> of course we should be paying attention.

we can't allow this kind of stuff to go unchecked. the empirical evidence tells us that they're very different kinds of things that happen in terms of how moral outrage becomes apparent and important as a behavior for the individual. put in plain english what that means is that some individuals acquire moral outrage first and that propels them further to seek out opportunities to get involved in terrorist groups. the evidence is increasing, however, that for most it's not actually the case. for most who into terrorism, whether, begin if you want to stick to mark work, which is very, very powerful here, you know, the risk factors we're starting to get a bit of a handle on. whether it is through kinship or the presence of a radicalize or whatever, but the acquisition of those kinds of beliefs follows involvement. it's a byproduct of involving but it's hanging around with

people getting exposure to some of the more inter- circle the. that's when moral outrage develops in an attempt to justify what is otherwise pretty low-level and tawdry activity that you might have engaged in after that point. so again it comes back to the same old issue of policing behavior. one sometimes perceived other but not necessarily. as we see from some of the speakers this afternoon. there are examples of people, again across the board different kinds of movements, people who disengaged of terrorist activity without necessarily having to change their core beliefs. >> let's take a few more questions. maybe we will take this right here. >> is this on? thank you. i'm on the faculty of national defense university. dr. neumann, with your permission i'd like to ask this question -- >> granted. >> thank you. [laughter] why is it that radicalization as

a concept or even a term is rarely if ever used for terrorist movements or terrorists, other than al qaeda or islamic related terrorist movements, for lack of a better word? you rarely hear it talked about with respect to the i.r.a., ltte, and the list goes on. and it seems to be a concept and a term that is only being applied to one type of terrorist movement. >> who wants to respond to that? >> i have an impression about it. it's not based on research. it has to do i think with academic goals. the fact that it's now in fashion to talk about radicalization, and now the group, the focus of our attention is al qaeda, but now when you talk about ltte or i.r.a., you in retrospect use the same term because it's the here and now have discussions. so i think it's not for any profound reasons other than the fluctuations of academic

terminology that now is focus on the critical term. >> and i have a theory, too, arie. i think it's a new term. you will not find lots of literature on radicalization pre-9/11. and so i think it has come up in the context of 9/11 and of al qaeda, and it wasn't used -- we were using different words for it, in the case of the i.r.a. we are discussing root causes and how people would become involved. i would call that radicalization today. but it was called something different before. i'm pretty sure that if we see a revival of, for example, the type of attack in europe we will talk about radicalization. and in the context of that particular attack, lots of people have talked about radicalization. so i think it's a function of time also. >> and john horgan persuades us

we might -- >> it's over from today spent i have given up on you. but i have a different answer. [laughter] i think much of it has to do with hypocrisy. i think much of it has to do with our inability societally, kind of talk of issues. this term has become so politicized i think in very, very dangerous kinds of ways that are affecting our ability, our ability to bounce back from even this was kind of events conducted by opportunistic individuals. we are seeing, to take the example you mentioned, we are seeing a very worrying resurgence and escalation of violent dissident republican terrorism in northern ireland right now. nobody is talking about radicalization. we are seeing children as young as 10, 11, 12 years old being crammed for activity in these new kinds of splinter groups. but if you were to talk about

radicalization in northern ireland people would laugh at you. it's not something that would even enter into the discussion. i think there are some deeply problematic issues around why we didn't associate it with one kind of group, but it seems to represent almost an acknowledgment of implicit failure that we still lack the ability to make informed judgments about risk, that we've taken refuge in trying to address the one thing that we know is practical, and that is at least let's look at the expression of the bleak and maybe to try to change that but i think that's where ultimately our problem has started to come from. >> more questions. the lady here. if you would stand up so we can bring you the microphone. and there was someone else in the back, yes. and we will take you right aft after. >> university of maryland from india. and my question or comment relates continuation of what professor said about i

understand it's 9/11 10 years after, we are tied to al qaeda and jihadists and that kind of terrorism most. but when the u.s. department of state or foreign policy makers talk about terrorism they talk about the war on terrorism, global force of tidbit but they also, global terror is elsewhere. whether it's in india, indonesia, elsewhere. it just we condemn it and we are sorry about it. so unless we are concerned starting various kinds of terrorism, how can it be a global water test? >> and we take the other question in the back. >> hi. i'm a doctoral student at george mason university and former student of peter neumann when he was at georgetown. [inaudible] >> don't let me down now. [laughter] >> okay. hopefully this'll be a challenging one for you, peter.

okay. we are talking about political violence, and i think that we all agree that sort of the bigger topic. and we are talking about terrorism. at the same time, we're not talking about how the west for example, -- [inaudible] in africa, or ignoring violence by reins while saudi enter it. so my question is isn't the bigger topic you're clinical warfare? and sort of the elephant in the realm? and why is it that on the one hand we applaud gadhafi's failure, and on the other hand we forgot that he was supporting the african union troops in somalia who are fighting against al-shabaab? >> i'm not entirely sure we can get to the bottom of all these very global questions today.

maybe jarrett, maybe you can -- [laughter] you can tell us something about how the recent events in libya were perceived on the jihadists front. that would be interesting. >> yeah. i mean, i think they are confused, right, because there's been a lot of al qaeda messaging figure two very prominent libyan senior members of al qaeda, one who was just killed, the other one, and it been quiet for a while and then libya started -- a blitzkrieg with videos, with statements and it was all the be all the time. so why came out and said that he is a new ground zero for us. all hands on deck. and so i think there's a lot of excitement at first, and so there's a question, well, do we have troops in place, to have guys on the ground, do we have jihadists brigade there? and is kind of a collective letdown. we're not really a part of it. and so you see a lot of like

hey, maybe we can make this more jihadists, but not really. it's kind of, it's petering out almost. and i think, so there's a lot of excitement. but that's kind of what's been going on. with the entire arab spring. like this is our chance, i guess not yet. [laughter] and al qaeda says just wait, just wait, just wait. people's expectations and hopes were dashed. and become more resonant to what we are pitching, just not quite yet. consolidate your strength, stay underground. build your weapon caches, work with the shakes, violate. we'll get there. and i think the movement might start to be like let's go, let's go. i think is a collective letdown. >> getting a response from one of the two of you, especially on the first question, do you sense that there's sort of an al qaeda fatigue perhaps, people sensing that this is declining and

perhaps we are more interested in other kinds of movement in the future, maybe in other parts of the world? do you see that happening? >> i think the s.t.a.r.t. center from the very get-go was interested in terrorism globally. historically, globally. and for two basic reasons. one is that if we are to if all profound understanding of terrorism we have to understand it in all its manifestations across time and space. and a second reason is that it seems to be the case that some general principles are emerging. when i look at the work that was mentioned here by clarke and others, on radicalization, they draw examples from across the spectrum, from the russian of the 19th century all the the way to al qaeda, the weather underground in the united states and so forth. and these things come of these

phenomena resonate with what john horgan has been telling us about the i.r.a. and what has been done as about others' pics i think scientifically there seems to be emerging settled principles, and that was what s.t.a.r.t. was committed to from the very beginning to understand terrorism in all of its inglorious manifestations. spent maybe we have time for a couple more questions year and i will take the three of you. and i will take you because you are special. but we will start with you. maybe, maybe not. john, yes. >> good morning. turning to chair its comment, your point about this model, if you will, inclusivity, it

reminds me a lot of organizations in the '60s. have we learned anything, just a blast to the past? related to this, i know this is leading to the next thing in terms of countering that, to what extent have we learned about can we talk about moral outrage and other preconditions seems to be inability, the particle system because of a lack of justice or whatever, to resolve that problem, which can be seen in our own history pics i wonder if you comment on the real relevance of the market isn't anything new? and secondarily have we learned anything from the past in terms of necessary condition? >> could you hand the mic over? >> jeff lewis, john, this is for you. i guess my question is, is some of your unease about radicalization or could some of your and ease about radicalization be directed

towards how it might obscure context? i was thinking about northern ireland. you can think of a situation in which you have republican views, that's fine in the 1960s. early 1970s you have paramilitary activities acting up. you don't trust the police but you don't trust by troops. you may not be radical but violence make sense. and then all right, the troops leave. the paramilitary stance do. you trust the police. as you said all of a sudden you're not a radical any longer, so does the focus on radicalization basically privilege psychology over context? either in the the past year britain about you have to examine events and soy. site is the basic question is, is part of your concern about radicalization radicalization the extent to which it might obscure context? >> we have two more questions on this table. the lady first. >> hi. my name is angela king. i'm a speaker. i'm here.

i'm a speaker, consultant, correspondent. i'm hearing a lot that we maybe need to go back and redefine or refocus our efforts, our thoughts. given our age of technology, special networking, how technology is being utilized by different people, no matter what you call them, terrorists, radicals. i'm kind of wondering if some of this redefining and refocusing, to be quite frank and with all due respect to all of the academics here, there's a wealth of resources out there that can be tapped into that can give us, you, information that you're not going to find in a book. and i'm speaking about defector some such group. so what i'm looking for is kind of some opinions on maybe utilizing some of that knowledge to move forward. >> and just give it to your

neighbor. >> i used to work on counterterrorism. mostly for jarret brachman. if you're participating in the government conversations, given the significance of the internet on radicalization about more aggressively shutting down sites and chat rooms, legal and sort of civil rights issues aside, what would you say? >> now everyone gets a minute or two to respond to all these questions. and we will start with jarret. >> rapid-fire this puppy. so to markham is this new? certainly is not a new phenomenon but it's new for the al qaeda movement. just focus on individualized jihad. from each according to their ability in this case, right, to the global al qaeda movement wherever you are, whatever you have, you know, for suri i think, you know, he grew up in afghanistan where you had, one of the things, one of his

mentors was the importance of afghanistan as a place that people can come and march under the banner of the prophet we can smell them us in the air from all these guys getting together. it was just a really great social event. mosque to them is something that is very good. las[laughter] we have to be altogether in this. and suri say no, you can do this on the comfort of your own home. you don't even need to go meet anybody. go to an operation but it's kind of a lonely enterprise. i think that's the most difficult thing culturally or at least a generation, whatever 3.0 of al qaeda to go with. in terms of the important, some of the best insights i've gotten word from the doctor was one of the old partners in crime who wrote a bunch of books that nothing al-zawahiri and exposing a lot of his biggest

weaknesses and historical flaws. i've taken a step and run with it. only they have that kind of nuance, knowledge. that stuff is right in terms of fashion that kind of things would drive zawahiri up the wall. he knew his buddy had dirt on him a no one else. i think there's a lot of insights at the entrance of the question of shutting down sites, you know, i was against it early on because that was my only window. but as i've seen just a series of these, they lose steam when you take out a bunch of sites and have to go find and register for a new one. it's kind of painful for them. i think there is some utility and just shutting the whole thing down. and that's the first time i've said that but i think we are to point now where they're in a moment of panic about what the future of al qaeda, what's my future, you know, are these forums secure. i think sort of shutting them down, sowing seeds of distrust, they have your password and

e-mail now. you know, that's the best way to do it. [laughter] >> john. >> very quickly. to answer mark and jeff these questions in one fell swoop. it's new but it's different. and context is what -- as result of that our conceptions of how we form risk and develop risk assessment has to change it the meaning has changed and the opportunities afforded, the opportunities afforded for people to engage in different kind of ways has also changed. year 100% right. the context is absolutely everything. h. h. h. cooper uses the 20 years ago terrorism is a product of its own time and place. there is a sense in which the groups, the context change much faster than the kind of perspectives that we bear in this problem. -- process.

we don't do enough. and on that don't actually, on the issue of defectors, and i would even go broad as it's not just defectors. its people are disengaged whether they have defected or not. i would sort of gently dispute the fact that if we don't as academics engaging that. i've been speaking to former terrorist for 15 years now, and the fact that i've been able to establish between disengagement versus deradicalization has come from speaking with people who have left their movement. i realized that, there's a very, very low risk of re- engagement for the individuals but they don't necessarily change their views and offer -- in order to get with or. but the context around this change. there's quite a lot of work on that right now on speaking to people who have been involved. i think wasting academic experience has shown that it's

not just possible to do this work rigorously but more importantly for our perspective as academics. we can do it ethically and we can do it safely. and we are not thrill seekers. we don't, you know, put ourselves in harm's way but it is actually possible to do the stuff in ways that 10, 15 years ago we wouldn't have even dreamed up. >> arie? >> as individual jihad, there is a sense in this notion of individual jihad, is the retreat, very clever retreat from the former weather was an organization behind the airports. including organizations having a strong organization, with training camps, with logistical bases is a precondition for launching sophisticated far-reaching operations. so in a sense this idea of a logistic jihad is testimony to the success of the war on terror, that they now are

retreating to propaganda. the second point with respect to that is it cannot be totally individualized. humans do not act alone in very, very rare instances. you have the unabomber, as exceptions to the rule. but they work in groups. they are affected by social realities around them. they are affected by their leader. so, you know, maybe suri is trying to replace bin laden as the leader, as inspiration behind the ideology that prompts people to engage in terrorism. but to think that it's going to be totally individualized is flying in the face of understanding what the social processes are all about. with respect to context, yes, context is very important but i don't think that context is at odds with principle understanding of the psychological and social psychological processes that

they underlie the effect of the question is how do these profound general principles play out a specific context? how does one met on the theory to a particular person? and finally i couldn't agree more with john horgan, at least once, that there is a great deal of work that in. award that is done now with former terrorists. we have done now 9000 interviews with former tamil tigers. we are talking to the group in the philippines, whatever we can gain access we engage as deep, in. of research in order to understand them in their own words, and their own context. so you're actually write but we are aware of the need to get down to nitty-gritty and talk to people who are actually

involved. >> thanks, arie. and thanks to the other two panelists. i think that these 60 minutes of course could not give you more than a small window into what we have learned over the past 10 years, and i encourage all of you to look these guys up and read some of their writings, as i think it's really worthwhile. before you get up, i have three quick points. first of all, i couldn't agree more with arie and john. in fact, one of the most academically gifted, almost, former extremes is a guide who is here, and who works for us now at center, and i think this afternoon talks a little bit about his experience. and he was good friends with the glasgow bombers. so that's something really to look forward. but other than that, you will get a coffee break now of 20 minutes, and at exactly 10:50, i will see you back here -- i

won't see back here but other people will see on the panel. we will continue the conversation. thank you very much. [applause] .. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> so as you heard a short break in this day-long look at lessons learned since the 9/11 attacks. coming up in about 20 minutes at 10:50 we'll bring you a panel discussion. connecticut senator joe lieberman is the luncheon speaker at noon. a debate later on whether we're safer. at 3:00 a former radicals will talk about how they turned away from terrorism the forum is expected to wrap up looking at future

since 9/11. this is hosted by the national press club here in washington and homeland security department national consortium for the study of terrorism and the responses to terrorism. while this break is underway we'll go back to earlier this morning and hear remarks from the director of the study for terrorism and responses to terrorism, s.t.a.r.t.. his name is gary lafree. >> what i want to talk about more personally, a experience related to 9/11 and an learns to the work i've been doing at s.t.a.r.t. over the past two years. during those years i've been lead researcher an unclassified source of information on terrorist attacks called the global terrorism database or gtd for short. the gtd includes 100,000 terrorist attacks from around the world going back to 1970. in collecting and analyzing these data over the past 10 years one theme that has

come up repeatedly for me at least how a very small number of terrorist attacks can have a huge impact on our attitudes and policies towards terrorism. policymakers referred to the attacks as black swan events, rare events that are difficult to predict but end up having an enormous impact on human affairs for years to come. of course a great example of "the black swan" event is the subject of today's summit, the coordinated the attack on the united states that occurred on september 11th, 2001. the 9/11 attack had tremendous impact on political, social and economic structure of the united states and the world and its impact continues to reverberate 10 years later. but while a black swan event like 9/11 captures the public imagination and has an outsized impact on public policy, it's also incredibly rare and unusual. the major purpose of my brief remarks this morning is to use our gtd terrorism

data to put the 9/11 attack in context by showing how it differed from thousands of other attacks that took place around the world since 1970 i thought i would organize my comments by looking at series what i would call myths about terrorism i think were greatly influenced by 9/11. i want to talk about nine such myths. myth number one. terrorist attacks were rapidly increases in the years leading up to 9/11. the tragic events of 9/11 had an immediate and dramatic impact on levels of public concern about terrorism in the united states and well beyond. accordingly many might assume that terrorist attacks and fatalities were up sharply just before 9/11 but in fact, the gtd data tell a very different story. according to our data, terrorist attacks reach 20th century high point, not in 2001, but in 1992, just after the collapse of the soviet union. total attacks the year before 9/11 were about at

the same level as they had been at in the mid 1970s. in the four years prior to 9/11 worldwide terrorist attacks were at the lowest level they had been at for 20 years. i might add total attacks have increased considerably since 9-11 so that in total terrorist at took are nearly as high as they were in the early 1990s. myth number two, terrorist attacks reach every corner of the world. the you big withty of modern communications are individuals are constantly bombarded by images of terrorist attacks from around the globe. if you ask yourselves how many times you have seen the iconic 9/11 image after fully loaded jet plane crashing into the world trade center this blanket media coverage leaves the impression that no location on the planet is safe from terrorism but in fact our analysis of the gtd indicates that terrorist at took are highly concentrated in space. for example, the top 20

countries in terms of terrorist attacks account for nearly 3/4 of all terrorist activities in the world since 1970. 10% of all countries account for about 75% of all terrorist attacks. only 5% of the world's countries account for half of the world's terrorist attacks. myth number three. the u.s. is more frequently targeted by terrorists than any other country in the world. the devastating impact of 9/11 leads many on voifers both in the united states and abroad to assume that the u.s. is the target of an inordinant number of terrorist attacks. however, when we use the gtd to examine the frequency of attacks and the number fatalities by country we find the u.s. ranks about 20th in the world in terms of total attacks and about 15th in terms of fatal attacks. the most frequently attacked country in our data set is colombia. while the u.s. ranks 15th in terms of total fatalities. 90% of the total u.s.

terrorism fatalities since 1970 are accounted for by the four coordinated attacks of 9/11. if these attacks are removed from the estimates u.s. fatalities from terrorism are similar to fatalities for canada or for greece. myth number four. most terrorist attacks involved disgruntled groups an individuals from one country carrying out attacks on civilians in other countries. again the tremendous impact of 9/11 encourages us to think about terrorism as being mostly about unhappy individuals from one country attacking innocent civilians from another. to examine this issue in more depth, my colleagues and i looked at the total attack patterns of 53 foreign terrorist groups that were identified by the u.s. state department as posing the greatest threat to u.s. security. based on gtd data we found more than 90% of the 17,000 attacks carried out by these groups were actually domestic attacks. more than nine times out of

10 these groups operated at home against local targets. this means the groups located in for example, pakistan, were far more likely to use terrorist violence against nonu.s. targets in pakistan than they were to attack either u.s. targets in pakistan or to attack the u.s. homeland. myth number five. terrorism is unrelated to traditional political grievances. because of the seeming irrationality of the al qaeda-inspired 9/11 attack it is easy to lose sight of the fact that a large number of terrorist attacks involve fairly rational political disputes over territory. when we use the gtd date to identify the most active terrorist organizations in the world a large part organized around groups having to do with political control over territory. although there are major differences certainly in their orientation. this explains virtually in large part the most active 20 terrorist groups.

shining path. eta, farc, hamas and the ltte. myth number six, most terrorist attacks are incredibly lethal. again, because of the highly lethal terrorist attack of 9/11 it is easy it suppose most terrorist attacks are incredibly lethal. how far from the gtd we find more than half of all terrorist attacks since 1970 involve no fatalities. many incidents are directed at property. many other cases terrorist groups provide warnings to civilians before they strike. this has been the common practice for eta and the i.r.a. and used to be a common practice for the weather underground. 30 years ago these considerations led terrorism researcher brian jenkins to suggest that terrorists want a lot of people watching not a lot of people dead. of course it is still the case nearly half of the attacks in the gtd, about 50,000 attacks produced at least one fatality. especially troubling are the attacks that produce large numbers of fatalities. nearly two percent of the

attacks in our database. this is over 1200 at produced more than 25 fatalities. in fact brian jenkins recently revisited his earlier statement and after reviewing the facts from today, said instead that many of today's terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead. by nevertheless, about half of all terrorist attacks in the database produced no fatalities. myth number seven. most terrorist attacks rely on sophisticated weaponry. the coordinated attacks of 9/11 involve long-term planning split second timing and innovative use of existing resources. the sophistication of 9/11 appeals intoing significance compared to the diabolical sophistication that enemies, jack bauer, bruce willis and other television and media heroes routinely face. these images no doubt encourage us to think most terrorist strikes depend on sophisticated weaponry but contrary to the view of terrorism that we commonly get from hollywood, the vast

majority of terrorist attacks rely on nonsophisticated, readily accessible weapons. according to the gtd database, 80% of all attacks rely on explosives and firearms. for the most part the explosives are used are relatively common especially dynamite and grenades. most common firearms are widely available especially shotguns and pistols. fortunately sophisticated weapons including chemical, biological or radiological weapons are the rare exception. myth eight. most terrorist organizations are long-lasting and difficult to eradicate. given persistence of high-profile long-lasting groups like al qaeda,ta. miil tigers or irish rerepublican army there are perception most terrorist groups have long life spans. gtd identifies 1700 terrorist groups we gauge longevity from the first strike to last known strike. we found nearly 75% of the

terrorist organizations identified in the gtd lasted for less than a year. most terrorist groups are like most business startups. very likely to disappear during their first year of operation. forming and maintaining groups is not all that easy despite impressions to the contrary. why do we have the impression that terrorist groups are long-lasting and difficult to eradicate? probably because we hear so much about the groups that are successful. but for every al qaeda and eta there are more short-lived, relatively unknown sfwrups such as the anti-capitalist brigades and the revolutionary flames. myth number nine, terrorist groups are impervious to governmental counter-terrorist policies and rarely make mistakes. we could call this the myth of the super terrorist. the advanced planning confidence and detrick tiffness of 9/11 contributed to the notion that terrorist groups are infallable. my colleagues and i at the

s.t.a.r.t. center have been involved in several research projects using gtd data would suggest otherwise. for example, in a recent study we used the gtd to examine the targeting strategies of the armenian secret army for the liberation of armenia or asala. they have been active in turkey in the past. we were especially interested after mounting a long series of terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 1980s it disappeared rapidly. after modeling many explanations our conclusion the most convincing slatation was strategic shift in asala in terms of its targeting strategy. before the early 1980s asala was careful to avoid turks and especially armenian casualties. starting in the early 1980s they became far less discrimenant in the their targeting met thotsds. pivot al event was a

terrorist attack on orly airport. it was detonated in the terminal area by the turkish airlines killed eight people and wounded 50 more. increasing reliance on random brutal violence, on orally, gave polarized and hostile environment among the former supporters of asala. this change in targeting strategy undermined legitimacy especially the supporters in the armenian diaspora and supporters in the west. there are many examples of inept steps by terrorists less than 90 minutes detonating a massive truck bum in the alfred p. murrah federal building in oklahoma city, 1995. timothy mcveigh was arrested for driving without a license plate. similarly in 1993 a group of islamic extremist drove a rented bomb-laden van into the underfrowned parking lot of the world trade center complex and using a timer set the bomb to detonate. when the bomb exploded it killed six people and

wounded over 1,000 more. a chilling precursor to 9/11. remarkably, three hours after the explosion one of the chief conspirators in the plot, mohammed salami returned to the ryder rental agency to get his deposit back for the rental van. it gets worse. when the rental company refused to return the $400 posit without a police report. he went to the police to report the van stolen. his desperate attempts to get the deposit back unraveled the entire conspiracy. indiscriminate violence of the 9/11 attack to directly connected to these myths. in fact terrorist attacks are highly concentrated in geographical space. they rely to a large extent on readily available unsophisticated weaponry. they frequently involve few or no fatalities. the typical terrorist group disappears in less than a year and there is ample evidence that terrorists

frequently make strategic errors. attacks were declining just before 9/11 even though they have gone up dramatically since then. very few attacks involved disgruntled groups from one country attacking civilians in another country. the members of the s.t.a.r.t. consortium believe that objective research on terrorism is critical because policy in this area is likely to be driven even more than with common acts of violence by exceptional cases. we need to guard against what nobel prize laureate thomas shilling described many years ago as quote, a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely. thank you and i will leave my comments right here. and i see that our official welcomer and honored guest, president lho made it through traffic. i could ask president lho from the university of mayor land to -- maryland to step up and say a few words of greeting.

let's give him applause. [applause] >> good morning. thank you all for participating in this conference. thank you, gary, for you and the other gary to organize this. i must sigh you have certainly debunked the mythology i've been carrying around in my head about terrorists. and that of course is the value of doing reserve. ever since the day of infamy we now know simply as 9/11, our nation has been engaged in this war on terrorism. our men in uniform, men and women in uniform have been on the front lines. our defense and intelligence and law enforcement agencies mobilized against the threat to national security and homeland security and other agencies have invested significant resources to help us understand the

scourge of terrorism. so we are very pleased that one of the many efforts around the country in universities and think tanks to understand this problem is headquartered right here at the university of maryland having some 30 different universities from around the world participating in this consortium known as s.t.a.r.t.. i'm reminded of the words some 2500 years ago from that chinese warrior, scholar, the author of classic study the art of war. when he wrote know thyself, know thy enemy, 1,000 bat he is, 1,000 victories. i think those words are very appropriate to the war on terrorism. if we are to prevent, reduce the frequency of terrorist events around the world, we

need to know our enemy. and this is where the tragedy of 9/11 has led to the mobilization of researchers, social scientists of all stripes to understand why we have terrorism, how terrorists are formed, how people are radicalized, what are the consequences and how we counter this, this scourge. so i'm really very pleased to see the number of colleges and universities around the country that have expanded their curriculum, offered new courses new programs, new majors, minors even graduate degrees on the field of homeland security. and i want to thank the department of homeland security for funding these efforts. and i want to thank all of you for participating. i know there are many of you here from federal agencies,

from the military, policy researchers. policy-makers, staffers, division directors, and also from many embassies. i do want to say that, i'm very much looking forward to hearing the presentations. you have some outstanding panelists, distinguished scholars and researchers and, journalists who are going to be commenting on exactly where are we after 10 years. after 10 years of research do we have a better understanding of the radicalization process, of the causes and above all, what can we do, we as citizens and communities, to become more resilient and counter the threat of terrorism. thank you very much for

coming and thank you, garr i are, to you and all your colleagues in s.t.a.r.t. for organizing this conference. [applause] >> if everyone will get their coffee and their drinks and have a seat. we'll going to get started with the next panel. >> we're live again from the national press club with more on this day-long forum on less zones learned since the september 11th attacks. up next -- >> we'll stay right on schedule and happy to introduce our next panelists. the moderator for this panel is gary ackerman who is the research director at s.t.a.r.t.. combating terrorists and building resilient communities. >> good morning, everybody. thank you again for joining us today. now that we just heard about radicalization or rather the fact we shouldn't talk about radicalization in the previous panel, this panel

follows on from that in looking at how do we counter the threat of terrorism or radicalization and it is obviously some standard or traditional ways, doing better intelligence-gathering and sharing and more proactive law enforcement, et cetera, et cetera but there is also other avenues that a lot of people don't immediately think about and that's what we're going to touch on some of those today. one of the issues we're going to look at, can you deter terrorists? can you influence their behavior in any significant way short of actually detaining or otherwise eliminating the threat? and more importantly, can we do this without shooting ourselves in the foot and making the terrorism problem worse? i think is something always to bear in mind. one way of thinking about the deterrents is what some of the academics think about deterrents by denial. this deterrents, preventing terrorism by either making

it too difficult for an attack to succeed and at broader strategic level convincing potential attackers or terrorists thats through their violence they're not going to achieve the goals that they desire. and, this is often by increasing our ability to recover from any attack so it is not going to give the terrorists the goals they desire. and leads us onto the obvious issue of resilience. how can we make american society more resilient to terrorist attacks. not only in terms of physical resilience but in terms of psychological, social, economic effects of terrorism. even from a different perspective you how can we make our communities and individuals more resilient to terrorist messaging? this is sort of completing the circle and sending us back to the radicalization idea of how people become terrorists. these are all issues we're going to look at in the panel now. i'd like to introduce you to our esteemed panelists.

if the previous panel was "the a-team" of radicalization, this is the a 6 team of counter terrorism and resilience here. i'm very pleased on my left, to introduce, dr. martha crenshaw who is a senior fellow at the international security and cooperation at stanford university. as well as a professor of political science at stanford. she's also professor of government at wesleyan university where she spent several decades really teaching the world, one or two decades, teaching the world. martha started at the age of five being a, before i put my more feet in my mouth. she spent several years really educating the world, many generations of students and educating the world about terrorism. so martha, people in the terrorism field know that martha has done so much, contributed so much to this

field. i could go on for an hour about her many accomplishments but i'll just say that she is a very treasured member of s.t.a.r.t. as is entire panel. and martha is also a member of the world economic forum network of global agenda councils for 2010-2011. she edited the consequences of counterterrorism, a recent book of hers, 2010. and explaining terrorism which is a collection of martha's published work since 1972 was published by this year. welcome, martha. next going to look at dr. steven wine, who is a psychiatrist, researcher, writer, teacher clinician in the department of psychiatry at university of illinois at chicago. his scholarly work focuses on the personal familial, social, cultural and historical dimensions of trauma and migration. his books include when history is a nightmare. the memories of ethnic cleansing in bosnia and testimony and catastrophe,

traumas of political violence. steven has a lot of experience with actually engaging one-on-one in addressing angela king's comments further, steven actually has a lot of experience dealing with one-on-one with vulnerable communities. our last by no means least speaker is dr. fran norris. who is community psychologist and a research professor in the department of psychiatry at dartmouth medical school. she's also affiliated with the department of veterans' affairs national center for ptsd, post-tramatic stress disorder and also the director of the national center for disaster mental health research. fran is a former deputy editor of the journal of traumatic stress and is the present editor of the ptsd research quarterly. in 2005 she received the robert lauver award for the outstanding contributions to the field of traumatic stress studies. fran is one.

foremost experts on response to terrorist events and resilience in the face of terrorist events and other disasters. please join me in welcoming our very esteem panel [applause] this panel is set up quite similarly to the previous panel we're going to start by asking our panelists what do you know about resilience in countering terrorist we tend didn't know 10 years ago and more importantly what lessons have we learned if any and what lessons have we not learned over the past 10 years. i will start with martha. >> thank you, gary. while thinking about this question i tried to put myself back in the summer of 2001, say september 1, 2001 and what were we thinking. as all of you know i studied terrorism for a long time so i followed al qaeda closely. worked a lot with government analysts who were also following al qaeda very

closely. i think 10 years now later, how different, what do we really know about how to respond to terrorism? i don't want to talk about what went wrong, why we were surprised but really what we have learned. i look back on that summer and i remember there was a crescendo of warnings all summer. i'm sure many of you remember that as well. there was one foiled attack after another. and we knew something was coming. there was certainly something was coming. we just didn't know where or when or how. and we underestimated the adversary because we knew that their intentions were hostile. we knew that they wished to attack the continental united states. it is not that we didn't know that. we did know that but i think what we underestimated was something that gary freeman mentioned this morning, the level of determination and the level of capability of the adversary. it wasn't a capability in terms of high-tech capability. it was a capability of coordination, planning, advanced preparation.

the effort it went to train people as commercial pilots, the imagination, unfortunately, diabolical imagination of people like khalid sheikh mohammed, ramsey juice -- ramzi yousef who thought up these ideas. we did not see that coming. in the 10 years that followed we probably slipped it in the other direction of overestimating the power of al qaeda. the previous panel, i think that, made the important point that the reason that al qaeda is moving toward this idea of sort of what we used to call resistance something grew up in far right circles in the united states years ago is a sign of weakness. but over these years, over these 10 years we've been lucky in many ways that we've not been hit again but i think we sort of went to the other side of the coin about the ads adversary was much more powerful than it really was. in other words one thing we learned it is difficult to

develop this realistic appraiseal of the adversary in order to craft a response. in terms of the way we were responding to terrorism, what changed, what happened, i think some of the lessons are that we really did not realize how costly counterterrorism could be. costly in every way. costly in terms of the financial burden. costly in terms of the effect on people's daily lives, civil liberties, privacy. costly in terms of governmental reorganization. and costly in terms of unintended consequences of our policies, which are always very difficult to foresee. but we sort of, we all remember this now. we leap understood a war on terrorism out the shock that we felt because of the destructiveness of the attacks, the surprise. the fact we were caught off-guard by them. we leaped into enormous commitment to counterterrorism which really was new. now the idea of using force

against terrorism and using threats of force against terrorism which is the he is essential of deturns was not new in the summer 2001. clinton administration escalated use of force in afghanistan and elsewhere. there was a big debate in the government whether or not the drones should and could be armed. and second, if they were armed, who would control the drones, be it the cia or the military. this debate had in effect hampered a move toward increased use of force. so i see the current policy in terms of the obama administration ace new reliance on drones and special forces as really a continuation of something that began over 10 years ago. so there is very strong continuities. we really underestimated the kind of effort we were going to make and i think one lesson i would take from this we don't want to be caught off-guard again in terms of preparing our response and thinking through what we should do, should something equally or

more devastating happen. and, god forbid, we all hope that all of our strategies of prevention will work but if the other side gets lucky again, then we need all of our powers of resilience. we need all of our powers of preparation. i think for example, that the reorganization of the government that followed 9/11, the result of the 9/11 commission report and other efforts was not as carefully and as wisely thought through as it might have been. some of you have been, been affected by this i'm sure in very real ways in your careers but we did a massive overhaul in the government without really thinking through how it would work, why it would work, out of sort of a feeling we had to do something. so what i would hope looking to the future is first of all that all of our efforts at prevention is success phil and second we're very carefully prepared what we should do if something very bad happens. now one of the policies of the u.s. government that is still in effect, we would

respond to an incident of nuclear terrorism even, the acquisition of nuclear materials by a nonstate actor, by threatening retaliation with overwhelming force. this is official american policy at least rhetorical policy i'm not sure that we know exactly what we mean by that and what we would do. the interest in detering terrorism emerged after 9/11. there has been some discussion among those of us who analyze terrorism before 9/11 but the interest on the part of the government grew after 9/11 and the first evidence i knew of it was that the government asked the national academies to hold, to create a committee to study whether or not terrorism should be the deer ited. i had the pleasure of serving on that committee along with arie kruglanski who was here this morning and thomas schelling himself. that was interesting

experience. we concluded you could not deter terrorism very easily. this did not stop the u.s. government from proceeding ahead with the idea that it could be detered. this has now become over this 10-year period a hot topic when with whether you can deter them through threats of force. whether we detered them being better prepared for terrorism through policies of resilience, societal resilience. the major problem remaining we don't know. we don't know why we haven't been attacked again. we don't know whether they don't have the capability. we don't know whether we really defended ourselves better. i'm not sure we really know how the public would the respond were there another disasterous terrorist event and i myself would like to think there will not be panic. that we are better prepared than we were before but this is something that concerns us and we really don't know whether advertising to the adversary that we are

prepared, we have good security, we have good defenses, we are resilient, whether that discourages or encourages them because we still really do not know enough how they think. >> thank you very much. steven? fran. go ahead. >> i think if we're going to think about resilience as one part of the process of counter terrorism to continue that term we have to first understand what the consequences might be. after the september 11th terrorist attacks there was a great deal of concern and uncertainty about what the potential psychological consequences of terrorism were. although there had been a considerable amount of research on the, on recovery from natural disasters, researchers and practitioners alike just weren't completely uncertain

about the extent to which any of that known knowledge would now apply. largely with one or two important exceptions we learned that the consequences of human-caused disasters are not all that different from the consequences of major natural disasters that cause extensive damage and loss of life. just, for example, with one colleague and i compared the, what happened in, among new yorkers in new york city after 9/11 to what happened in a village in the mountains of mexico after mudslides. and you might think that these are totally different contexts and populations and yet what we saw in terms of the prevalence of problems in the patterns of recovery were far more alike than different. so i think it's important to keep in mind that we, we have a, a history of

knowledge to draw upon in understanding terrorism and its effects. now there are probably kind of four key things i would point to as being that we observed and learned after 9/11 in with this regard. first of all we observed in realtime that most people behaved appropriately and socially in the aftermath of the event. they did what they could to protect themselves and to help others. disaster sociologists far before my time, decades, for several decades have been, you know, talking about that we need to get beyond this myth of panic and that everyone is behaving antisocially and you know, have just tried to make the argument over and over and over again that is the rarity. it is by far the exception rather than the rule in how people behave. second, studies after 9/11

did in fact document that psychological distress was very high and very common initially. i think it's really important that we recognize that symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, of stress and anxiety are normal after major events like this and they should be expected and we should be prepared to address them. now to say they're expected, doesn't mean they don't matter. it just means that we can do, we can respond in ways that help to normalize it but also help to reduce the distress and discomfort and dysfunction that many people experience. third, i would say, now people might argue with me, some people would argue with me about this but you wouldn't, that we learned that public mental health programs can play an important role in facilitating resilience and recovery by providing education about common

reactions and effective coping strategies. the response to 9/11 was as unprecedented as the event. i mean to this day i remain kind of profoundly movedpy what i observed, excuse me, in terms of how the various agencies within the federal government, including fema, samsa, the va, many others worked together with state governments and local governments to do the best job they could of responding to the needs of the population. it really was unprecedented and we learned a lot of both by what worked and what didn't work but in terms of how to respond in those ways. and fourth, i would say that we learned that there is, that there is an important minority of people who are less resilient and do need more intensive or ongoing interventions and it is

always a little dangerous to give a rate but probably we're talking somewhere between 10 to 20% of the population will experience ongoing problems after something like this. i think we've learned a lot over the last few years about who those people are likely to be and how to identify them. i do want to say that it is like, one of the things, i think i'm already starting to hear the theme today, almost like this pendulum notion that we tend to swing back and forth and how we conceptualize problems and in my field, we i think have done a good job swinging from what was once too great a focus on psychopathology to now being so concerned about resilience but at the same time we don't want to go so far over to that side that we forget that we all have a breaking point. there's not a one of us in this room that if exposed to something traumatic enough, personal enough, great enough loss, would, would

experience kind of profound despair. there were some consequences of terrorism since i've been making these analogies that we do know a lot based on decades of work on natural disasters. there certainly were a couple things about 9/11 that were puzzling to the field as a whole. and i would say that the primary one of those is the role of exposure. very much have had these notions that, you know, shown over and over again, that the people who are most affected are those who are most severely exposed. i think that makes so much sense. you probably wouldn't even think about it, twice. certainly that's true, but what we saw after 9/11, this relationships with a lot less clear. that there were many people who were only quite marginally exposed and even quite distant from the event who were highly distressed by it. and that led to increased attention in the role of ongoing appraisals of risk

and threats as elements of understanding the long-term consequences of these events. now moving beyond individual resilience i would say probably the greatest shift in the field as a whole was this increased attention to community resilience when this is term that when it was first starting to be bounced around no one even really knew what it meant t was kind of catchy, and i guess that is another theme, and people started talking about it before there was really i think in depth thought about what does this mean. i would say over the past few years that is now starting to occur and this is an area that is still very much evolving but i think we are learning that our understanding of community resilience rests heavily or community resilience, rests heavily on the preexisting capacities of communities including their economic development, their social capital, their information and communication resources, and their local community

competence, that is, the abilities of local people in the engagement of local people in working together and making decisions and acting. thank you. >> thank you very much, fran. steven? >> thanks, gary. thanks to goethe garies for having me here and putting this great event together. 10 years ago we were not so focused on resilience as, fran says and it would have been impossible to imagine the statements of president obama who has said and his admin has said on several recent occasions that strong and resilient individuals, families and communities are the best defense against terrorist ideologis. so, we're learning from work that we're doing that in, did i as pour a communities in the u.s., such as somal somali-american community in minnesota, there have been

meetings where people are exposed to stories of atrocity and people tried to encourage youth to go and enlist and fight and some have left home. but we have also learned stories where, parents or uncleses or brothers have said to kids who come from such meetings, hey, that is a load of crap. go home, focus on your school work and kids have listened to that. so these are important stories because they are stories of protective capacities that lie in families and in communities. and we need to learn from those but we also need to pay attention to the vulnerabilities and risks which are very real in diaspora communities in the u.s. and are evolving and we know that the risks for recruitment is, real and that recruiters evolve and become more clever and find new ways to capitalize on the weaknesses of the diaspora youth.

now over the past 10 years, as fran was saying, there has been an explosion of interest in resilience in the clinical and in the community and in the family science fields concerning a broad range of adversities, health and social adversitis. the question i ask what does this new knowledge of resilience tell us about detering terrorism? i will make seven points about that. so one, it tells us that young people, especially can be resilient to some risks but not to others. of course we know this. this fits with the fact that many of those who were recruited into terrorist activities were high-achievers. they were not mentally ill. they were not criminals. they were not deviants. how can still their parents and people be helped to protect them, these high-achieving people? two, it sells us that -- tells us that resilience is not entirely individual and, on the other hand it is not

entirely social but it is an interactive combination between those things. so this means that we have to look beyond individual level factors which were to a certain extent a lot of the focus of the last panel i think but we have to think about family factors, about community factors, about media, about institutional factors if we want to think about detering terrorism. three, it tells us this knowledge, that when youth are exposed and young people are exposed to socioeconomic adversity and to sociocultural transition that their family is the strongest buffer that they have against the associated risks. and, so the role of family in terrorism prevention was evidenced in the snapshot i gave you earlier but you can also see it in other media reports of parents who turned their kids in. who have informed law enforcement about things. this is an important fact and resource we need to

think about. how can we better help these families, but more important, not just ordinary families, families who are already struggling because they're new immigrants, because they're poor, because they're ethnic, racial and religious minorities, how can we help them to do this? okay, four, it tells us that in diaspora communities resilience is as much shaped by the homeland or by your experience in a refugee camp as it is by your experience, say, in your new country in the u.s. so in diaspora communities, what we might want to call higher resilience doesn't necessarily mean greater affiliation with american institutions and values. for example, i hear from young somalies that we're supposed to be the generation that fixes somalia, that makes it better. but you could see how that could break in either

direction. so, if we want such an attitude to be more aligned with american values and institutions, then we might have to help the people in the diaspora to create opportunities for doing that such as making peaceful ways to help your homeland and help your community. five, this knowledge tells us that we can do what's called preventative interventions. and preventative interventions are services that help to lessen youths negative actions through effectively enhancing protective resources in families and communities and institutions. now this is, this has been done and replicated scientifically across many different kinds of public health and social adversitis. this is certainly food news. but i think it is also very challenging for those of us in this room because it calls for a shift of traditional ways we approach

thinking about terrorism and i think the shift requires moving away from a heavy focus on risk factors, especially individual risk factors, to an equal focus on what we might call protective factors. it also means integrating two very different bodies of knowledge, one, the whole body of knowledge we have about security issues but then body of knowledge about what i'll call psychosocial issues or family and community issues. and three, it really means working collaboratively with families and communities to design programs and policies that are going to work in real world settings. now, point six, it tells us, this body of knowledge, that preventative interventions true aim is to reduce the vulnerability of a population. so these interventions don't only aim to say, increase family and communities cooperation with law enforcement, as important as that is, but they also aim to try to change basic family and community

processes such that it would reduce young men's entry into violent extremism. so for example, it could help parents to be better aware of recruitment, to be better informed. to have different strategies for talking with their kids. to know how to keep their pass pour safe. point seven, this body of knowledge tells us effective preventative intervention strategies are usually locally tailored, they're multipronged, they're sustainable and they involve more than just information-sharing. so thus, enhancing resilience to terrorist recruitment if it is possible will have to involve more than a briefing, more than a town hall meeting, as important as those things are. so in conclusion, you know, many of us would agree that prioritizing resilience is necessary but i think realizing we should do only puts us on the starting line

and if we really want to go the distance and find ways to help families and communities, then our challenge is to find ways to convert existing knowledge about resilience into the counterterrorism field and actually implementable strategies. i think that ordinary parents and community advocates that i know, who want to protect their children, they know they can't do it alone, and they know they need our help. thank you. >> thank you very much, stevan, thank you to all the panelists. before we open it up to the audience i like to sort of pose one or two questions. first one is a very broad question but i think it is something that keeps coming up and is relevant every day. this is the issue of although some people said that the terrorist threat is overblown, there are several books to that effect, even if it is not overblown the issue of what john steinbrenner referred to is

autoimmune effect. basically in responding to the threat of terrorism we end up doing more harm to ourselves economically, to our civil society, to our value systems than the terrorists could ever hope to do on their own. at the other end of the spectrum there is incentive for us to take proactive measures against terrorism. so, and, any politician would be, you know, potentially using selection if we said, we're not going to prepare for terrorism, it is not much of an issue. i don't see anybody saying that, my question to the panel and, i would like to hear from each of you on this, how do we know when we're investing too much in preparing for and preventing terrorism or how do we know conversely that we're investing too little? how do we get the calibration right? i think we'll, anyone wants to go first? fran? >> i'm going to answer the first part of your question perhaps a little more than the second part because one of the, i think the greatest

advantage of the community resilience perspective on preparedness is that most of the efforts that would build community resilience from terrorism also build resilience to a host of other kinds of social problems, not just including other kinds of disasters which are actually more common, but other kinds of problems. and if you look across the literature on, at least what we think about the factors that influence resilience, you find the same factors coming up. almost regardless of what kinds of factors. it never hurts to build strong communities, regardless of what the, what the reason might be. >> so simplistic answer you would say in terms of developing community resilience, not -- inclusion of that can't be too much because whatever you invest it will benefit the community as a whole so you're generally, doing a

public good anytime you make any investment? >> that probably is a slight oversimplification. you can go too far with anything but i think broadly speaking if we follow the, what appears to be the directions we should go into in terms of building community resilience to terrorism it will have a broad array of positive impacts in other ways too. so i think that just keeps it from being a problem. >> stevan? >> yes, it's a good question, the way i would like to spont to -- respond to it, to say, if we're talking about working in diaspora communities and you ask, will we recognize is that, there's a lot of vulnerabilities there because there's a lot of poverty. there's a lot of marginal institutions. there's also a lot of strengths there but there's enough vulnerabilities that

makes it very easy for recruiters to do their job. if that's what they want to do. now, some of us would say that these are vulnerabilities that should be addressed anyways. i think that is kind of what fran is saying. but i guess we have to be clear about what our aims are and we have to be careful about overly securitizing, addressing social issues such as the social integration of immigrants in ways that might not either address the social concerns or the security concerns. i think that has, and so you come down to which kind of government agencies should be doing what as being an important issue. and i would say it shouldn't be all the security agencies. there are basic needs that need to be addressed from education, social, health

care, employment, housing that in some ways you could all trace to creating some broad vulnerability but we have to be very careful. i think, it calls for some very careful balancing between security and social approaches. >> thank you. there's a lot of critics who have said that, you know, the whole terrorism issue and responses to terrorism has been abused by other agencies but not really in a pro-social way because, an example i know that a local fire department would never get new equipment but if they write a grant to say this is to fight terrorism they will suddenly get new equipment. we need those ladders, we need the hoses we need more funding to hire firemen. it is doing a good job for the community. if we talk about terrorism to get more money, why not?

terrorism is another vehicle society uses for various services. i give a pro-social example. there are anti-social examples people given too. my idea how do we really distinguish what will have, pardon the pun, more bang for the buck so to speak and what sort of superfluous or what should be relabeled as something else? yeah. >> we have to try to do the research in communities to understand that. to understand the causal links, the causal networks. so if you asked people, say in the somali-american community in minnesota, they would say it is a problem of a lack of resources. that parents, the youth didn't have anywhere to go after school. that we need to create more programs like that. and, i would like to see as many programs like that as fire trucks. that would be a good thing. i don't see that's happened. i don't see that anyone

figured out how to, how to use that to build those programs. but i think we should be doing the research that helped to inform, what are the most important capacities in communities? protective resources in communities that are going to catalyze others? it is hard not to believe that, after-school activities for young people is one such positive way to go. it's hard to believe an effective counterterrorism approach that didn't in some way take account of that for youth, but we need to, we need to be looking closely at communities and talking with parents and advocates. so this is an example not just -- i agree with the other comment of talking with the former terrorists but we have got to talk with the terrorists and community activists on the front lines

trying to keep their kids safe all the time and listen to them about what their needs are and try to be responsive to them. government can't do everything but we can work with them and with local ngos to try to help make what they do stronger. . . and so

you can't defend yourself everywhere from a myriad range of possibilities, all of which is very rare as occurrences so the one hand our imaginations could come up with many, many different types of threats, any one of those would be rare and so really how much should we devote to protecting ourselves from 1,000 things that might happen but each of which should be very rare and might not occur and say, 100 years we really have to think realistically about what it is we're defending ourselves against. and second we have to think well, that's the second -- the third would be sort of the harmful side. how many of our defensive counter-measures actually make us more vulnerable? and i actually think of a very practical thing every time i go stand in line at airport security. i'm outside the zone where we're all neatly grouped there in a compact little mass and it wouldn't even take an explosive

to mow us a lot of us down and i assure you think about that when i'm stuck here in that security line and, frankly, i'm surprised it hasn't happened and i think a lot of people have said this as well. so sometimes in trying to have an effective measure we've simply exposed ourselves in a new way. and the second thing has to do -- or another aspect is our perception of the threat so, for example, the threat that is -- that seems most salient to us now is that kind of internal threat like people from the somali community or other communities, immigrant communities within countries. this is not what we saw it right after 9/11. this perception of the threat is a mixed external/internal one really came to us in about 2005/2005, maybe 2004 but particularly with the london bombings in 2005. we began to say people who are

citizens of our obviously country could be the terrorists among us and then we began to focus on community's resilience and counter-radicalization and that way but between 2001 and roughly 2005, the threat was considered to be external in the mode of the 9/11 attacks, people coming from outside of the country trying to get in and all of our defenses went to border protection in various ways and a lot of that was airport security. other forms of keeping the threat from coming into the country from the outside. now, where are we going to shift next? we're talking about a pendulum going back and forth so we went for it, it's external, it's internal. my guess the next event something is bound to happen there and might shift the perception where the threat is likely to be coming from. and, again, we need to sort of look ahead. we need to say, are we always going to respond reactively to the last event and say, ah

that's likely to happen here and that's a pattern here and not respond to a very salient one-time event? >> i want to sound off a little bit what martha was saying because it's one of the most important points. that really a long-standing perspective in the disaster field has been to take an all-hazards approach so i don't think that means that you have cynicism about terrorism but you recognize is that one approach is to have a detailed -- think about having a detailed plan where every community has had to lay out everything that might possibly happen to it and exactly what it's going to do. the alternative approach is to build the strengths within communities that makes them able to get information, that they know where information is, they trust information and that's actually a huge concern, huge concern, about not only having

information but trusting information. and then once they have that information, to be able to use it to make good decisions. and that's -- it's kind of easier to say than it is to do, but that's the -- that's the resilient approach. the resilience approach is that you build those capacities rather than to have some kind of externally different -- externally driven command -- you know, command and control plans for how you would respond to, you know, every particular event. >> thank you very much. we'd now like to open it up to the audience. if you would raise your hand, if you have any questions. yes, katherine. over here. >> again, if you don't mind introducing yourself. >> i'm katherine and i'm a speaker this afternoon and i'm from practice peace. i can't help but note that gang

crime, internal terrorism -- there are two responses, two kinds of responses, two schools to kind of respond of these three threats to people's safety. and one is the social logically sound approach and the other is the control approach that imagines that we could get all the guns off the street, we could find everybody who might potentially be radicalized or anybody who might potentially radicalize people and isolate those threats so my question is, how do you imagine influencing policy with these ideas any more than the people who say the same things about gangs and crime have been able to influence policy? >> i'll try. [laughter] >> stevan in the hot seat.

[laughter] >> i think one of the positive directions has been the community policing approach with respect to gang violence. so there's a different approach of policing, how can police work in a more proactive way and a more preventive way and collaborative way with communities to solve the basic problems of daily life so that when criminal problems come up, there's a better relationship to approach those. so i'm -- i'm -- i recognize that as a kind of policy achievement. i don't think the jury is out yet on the total effectiveness of that. but i'm with those people who are trying to apply that to the issue of counterterrorism. i think that makes sense to me. and the question i would ask --

additive to that would be, how could we take that and enhance that? how could we make that even better? how could we dig deeper into the lives of kids, of parents, of communities through a community policing approach, doing some kind of parenting education so that we get more bang for our buck? but i think that the way -- >> less bang for our buck. we're trying to prevent the buck. [laughter] >> that's a good example of humor that we're trying to use. [laughter] >> i guess as a researcher, you know, i believe it depends on research. we have to build the evidence. the evidence doesn't exist right now to support such efforts. we have to build the effort to document that it's going to work. and to convince policymakers why they should spend their money on this and that's something else. >> okay. we have another question. you sir, over there. and then at the back.

>> tom voight from the national institute of justice. my question is about recovery and resilience. i remember eight years ago, nine years ago talking with folks from the israeli national police and minister of public security about the comparative deficit or the comparative advantage that israeli communities had in the face of terrorist incidents and the recovery from incidents and the resilience to incidents. i wonder whether -- whether that -- first, whether that's a fair benchmark for our own capacity for recovery and resilience in comparison to jerusalem and tel-aviv communities. do we, in fact -- did we, in fact, have a deficit in terms of

our ability to recover quickly and to demonstrate resilience? and if that's a meaningful comparison, how do we compare now to either those communities or to other places in the world that might have a better recovery and resilience capacity? thanks. >> but that reminds me before we go on is that if you look at these -- >> comparative questions are fascinating because first of all, they could be studied with the right kinds of studies and the resources to do those in ways that right now our answers to these questions are almost more anecdotal from reading these studies and reading these studies what might we conclude about the relative effects? there are those that would say that the israeli resilience has perhaps been overstated.

that if you look deeper, you do find there are many people who have quite a bit of -- kind of distress about these events and concerns and perceived threat about what is happening but i would overall agree with you that on the community level, we have a lot to learn from them about how they have both conceptualize community resilience and to work to build it. whether or not we should compare ourselves to that standard when it comes to terrorist events -- it's kind of an intriguing question that i don't know that i can answer exactly because basically i'm sort of glad that we haven't had so much experience that we compare favorably because basically what we see is that the more familiar an event, the better able we are to respond to it. it's why we seldom see a

far-reaching social psychological impacts of like minor floods. they're kind of like everyday life for us. but where terrorism still just really strikes us. so i'm probably talked in circles of your question without answering it but i'm going to stop anyway. >> i'm tim nugent with the fbi and what motivates somebody to insist law enforcement or intelligence, for example, from a point level, like our experience with russia and rampant corruption, what would -- what would motivate somebody in kind of the communities we might be concerned about? >> i'm sorry. to motivate them to do what again, please? >> to assist intelligence or law enforcement. >> okay. >> i'd like to draw attention to

this issue that emerges from research. you know, you have to look at the experience, prior experience, of some of these immigrant and refugee communities with the state that they came from. with men in uniform, with men who carry guns. there's a lot of distrust. and they have to overcome that in order -- think of all the distrust they have to overcome in order to come and feel comfortable talking with law enforcement. what we also hear sometimes in these communities, communities where they come from a totalitarian state is that there's a belief also in the omnipotence of law enforcement in the state, like you should have known what was going on and if you don't know what's really going on and you couldn't stop it, then what good are you and why should we bother talking to you? these are to me ingrained attitudes.

i think in minnesota, the fbi through town hall meetings has done -- gone a long ways towards trying to build bridges, build common understandings overcoming distrust but this is a long project that has to be continued. and deepened and extended to other communities. and i -- you know, back to your question in a way, these things could be studied. they could be studied how town hall meetings -- or what kind of meetings make what kinds of difference in thank you and the effectivene -- in informants and that kind of stuff and we need to build a knowledge base and also how to teach us how to do it better. mike? >> michael dunaway.

i was with the dhs just up until a couple of weeks ago and i was asked by red cross to stand up a new group on community resilience so i want to ask a motivation question that trends from the belief towards action issues that were raised and the radicalization group earlier. so the question is this, if we know something about radicalization and the radicalization of groups and individuals towards behaviors that have negative consequences for societies, many of which deal with the use of violence, have we learned anything out of that study that might be able to enable us to radicalize groups and individuals to do altruistic behaviors for societies? and i'm obviously interested in this now as a member of red cross about how do we get individuals to think positively about the actions they can take to reform late their societies, to have an impact on their local

communities to build resilience at the local level rather than think they have to take radical action that is negative in consequences and take up arms or whatever those other sides of that darker human behavioral motivation might be. can we translate what we know about what we've learned over the last 10 years of looking at this problem from that perspective into how we might tuesday to build a stronger community and a stronger nation in the long run? >> i think we all might have something to say about this from slightly different perspectives. to answer your question, i'm not sure that's the direction i would go in to get there because there's a long-standing body of research on prosocial behavior and collective action that i think directly applies and it's one of the key issues we face in this field. meaning first people have to be convinced that the problem matters. and if they think it matters then they have to be convinced that they actually have the

ability to do something about it. and both of those are pig problems in our area. one of the, i guess, first experiences i had when i started looking at community resilience was trying to get into neighborhoods to just talk with neighborhood people, ordinary, every day people about this problem. and this is when i was still in atlanta. and most of them didn't -- frequently kind of looked at us like we were nuts. you know, they were outlining all the various problems they were trying to deal with and say we don't care about terrorism. i mean, come on! and it's realistic. how do we matter without going to that scary place, you know, that we don't want to take people and then even when you get there, you have to build that sense of efficacy and there's i think lots of way we know to help build both individual and collective efficacy that say there's a lot more research to be done on

that. >> martha, do you have anything? >> yes, there's been a lot of work on this in the social movement literature talks about this a lot relates to what we were saying in the earlier panel about attitudes and actually mobilizing people to go do something and your question is can we do lessons to get advocataries how you get mobilized to act and the advantage we're not asking them to go out and create acts of violence or risk their own lives. it ought to be easier to mobilize people but still it's extremely difficult and there's volumes of literature in the social security movement line approximate how you get individuals mobilized to go out and act for any cause. >> just one more quick question and then we'll go. in the very back there.

>> i'm a graduate researcher for s.t.a.r.t. you said everybody has a breaking point and i think that's crew and how could a terrorist event could be related to ptsd on the part of the terrorist sector? i don't know how to answer that exactly and i'm not sure that i can. there's been some interesting research that -- it's always dangerous to try to cite specific research because i might get it mixed but someone has been looking asthe relationship between having experienced terrorism and developing patrons, basically, that could then perpetuate, you know, kind of social and interpersonal violence and i

think even kind of more broadly we see that there are relationships between, you know, trauma and aggression and so so forth. beyond that -- i'm sorry. i keep doing that and i don't have anything in particular to share on that but, you know, perhaps some of the people who are doing this and collaborate and respond and on the doubt i doubt that. if you say the community and society should think about.

>> since most is in foreign policy, i'm interested how the effect will be on the counterterrorism policy on the forces drones and affect worldwide covert against terrorism at the same time we draw apparently out of iraq and draw down in afghanistan what effect this is going to have on al-qaeda. will it further weaken al-qaeda. will it revive al-qaeda and what will happen because i do think the motivation behind the threat to the united states lies outside of the country rather than within the country. >> stevan? >> okay. i think that -- i'll make three points on this. one, i think this focus on community and family resilience, let's not forget families has enormous promise and it's taken

us 10 years to get here, but it's going to take a lot of work and many more years to deliver on that promise. so let's commit to doing that. how can we -- so one challenge is how can we build on existing knowledge? there's a huge existing body of science and experience and practical knowledge out there from dealing with community violence, other kinds of community violence, hiv, drugs, childhood maltreatment. let's bring together, you know, an expert panel of those prevention researchers with counterterrorism researchers. let's come up with a set of priorities and an agenda and move forward with that. i like what fran said earlier about that pillar of community resilience that's focused on a trusted source of information. in the communities where i am, people would say things like

lack of resources but then none of them seem to have the same story about what's going on. they don't have that sense of trusted source of information. why can't we build that for these communities? that role of government as communicator is something that could be done and here are some good models in the military. the u.s. military has recently developed programs to promote the resilience of the military including families which include online components. why not do something like that. so i'll stop there. >> i can be brief what stevan just said. what to do and how do we do make communities stronger, how do we

engage people in these activities? you know, how do we help people recover who don't recover on their own? all these things we know a little bit about but we don't know about but it's extremely difficult. this is an area of research which is just extremely difficult to do by the standards that most of us, you know, hold for valid science because it involves whole communities and it's difficult to control in ways that we think should be controlled and it's very expensive. so if we think it's important, is there, in fact, the public commitment to really do prevention research which is also always suffered behind. >> thank you very much. i'd just like to leave everybody with a parking lot thought of my own. while we have to calibrate our responses we have to make sure that whatever successes we've had in counterterrorism, it

doesn't make us complacent and we have a lot of work to do and i'll end with a quote who said no one supposed evolution will ever exempt us of our struggles. you get the devil with a chuckle that i've been evolving, too. so hopefully we'll remember that. so i'd like -- please join me in thanking the panel. [applause] >> we're now going to to take a 10-minute break after which we're going to have a keynote address by senator joseph lieberman. please -- when you hear the bell, please return as quickly as possible to your seats because we want to get moving as soon as possible. thank you. ..

[inaudible conversations] >> so a short break knew here at the national press club in this day-long forum on lessons learned since the 9/11 attacks. the luncheon speaker is connecticut senator joe lieberman. he chairs the senate homeland security committee. later we'll bring you a debate whether we're safer since the 9/11 attacks and the wars in iraq and afghanistan of the national security analyst and author, peter bergen and terrorism expert. today veed ross will take part in that.

3:00, number of former radicals will talk about how they turned away from terrorism. the forum will wrap up with a look at the future since "nine" 11. this is hosted by the national press club here in wash and national consortium for the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism. so for the few short minutes of this break we'll listen to your phone calls from this morning's "washington journal" whether or not there should be another government stimulus. >> host: here's a little bit what the president had to say yesterday at the white house. >> we're going to have to have a serious conversation in this country about making real, lasting investments in our infrastructure from better ports to a smarter electric grid, from high-speed internet to high-speed rail and at a time when interest rates are low and workers are unemployed, the best time to make those investments is right now, not once another levy fails or another bridge

falls. right now is when we need to be making these decisions. >> host: and from poe lit co-this morning, president obama urges renewal of transportation bills. president obama wednesday called for congress to continue to pass bills funding highways and air travel saying it would be unacceptable an inexcusable to washington politics to lead to the loss of as many as million jobs. obama accused congress of dragging its feet not only on short-term transportation funding, also on more comprehensive long-term bills. now is the time for congress to extend the transportation bill he said. the president called on congress to begin work next week when they come back into session to pass a clean extension of the surface transportation bill which expires at the end of september and of the federal aviation administration reauthorization which expires in mid-september. the short time frames before the current authorization bills expire have the administration pushing

multi-month extensions, rather than full multiyear bills. obama's remarks yesterday began to set the stage for the job creation plan he is expected to launch next week in a major economic speech as he linked inaction on the bills to job losses in the aviation and construction industry. that is from "politico". this is from u.s. today, this morning. jobs plan may call for rebuilding schools. a plan to boost construction jobs nationwide by providing federal money to repair public schools is picking up support among unions, economists and liberal advocates with direct ties to the white house. president obama himself promoted the plan during his 08 campaign and some money was made available for school repairs in the $825 billion economic stimulus law passed in '09. now supporters are urging obama to invest tens of billions of dollars as a major component of the jobs plan he delivers to congress

next week. another government stimulus? what's your reaction? we'll begin with the republicans. dave in hickory, north carolina. hi, dave. >> caller: how is it going? >> host: good. what's your reaction? >> caller: i'll tell you, don't really know what he is doing. >> host: dave, what do you think about another government stimulus? do you think it will help the economy? >> caller: hadn't worked so far. >> host: all right. bob in bend, oregon on our democrats line. hi, bob. >> caller: how can this previous man say he doesn't know what he is doing. anyway, any smart businessman has got to invest in something in order to get a return. mr. obama wants to invest in america so he will get a return and his return will jobs for hundreds of thousands, if not millions more americans. >>