>> the second thing is to announce new u.s. goals for afghanistan. and the first of these would be the creation of a government of national unity that includes representatives of all the insurgent groups and, therefore, in the risk of a new round of civil war when foreigners leave. government of national unity,

government of national salvation, different countries after cease-fire has been made come up with different races, but basic point is the same. secondly, the goal would be the establishment of a sovereign independent and nonaligned afghan state. thirdly, that u.s. would see pledges by the new government that it would not accept any al qaeda activity in afghanistan. so those are the two main things, change of course and the highlighting of the need for creation of a government of national unity. from the flow of the things. firstly, obama should suspend immediately the current talks on a strategic partnership agreement between the u.s. and afghanistan, which would authorize just as i've been

describing the indefinite basing of troops. talks must be immediately suspended. number four, the bounty on head of mullah omar, which is several million dollars, should be looked. and all the other taliban and insurgent leaders must have the bounty on their heads lifted. and the u.s. should shipboard the opening of a taliban office so that taliban leaders can freely travel without fear of arrest or assassination. next, the obama administration should offer, offer to suspend the u.s. policy of assassinating taliban local commanders in return for the opening of discussions with local tribal leaders in southern afghanistan on creating mutually agreed cease-fires by taliban

commanders as well as by u.s. and afghan government forces. and experience of years ago when he did try to demilitarize the british made contact with taliban commanders through the tribal leaders and achieved a cease-fire which lasted struggle months, is was the kind of model but, unfortunately, the americans at this stage didn't like it and they by assassinating one of the taliban leaders in the area, and the taliban therefore said the agreement is off and we entered the town, which had been demilitarize and both sides had gone that. but that is really the model to try and get mutually agreed cease-fires using tribal elders between local commanders and the u.s. rather than the current policy which is to do these constant night raids assassinating every night, a dozen raids on taliban, suspected taliban, because many of them and end up killing

civilians. next, the administration should support the appointment of united nations mediator to stop the talks with all the afghan groups as was with the regional powers, exactly on the same pattern they were trying to do during 1980s. and as you probably know, the report which came out in march this year advocated exactly that, the appointment of a high ranking u.n. mediator who can start these talks. and the final point is the conference plan in november and december this year should be delayed indefinitely. because at the moment the agenda of these two conferences which the administration is playing is essentially to try and isolate the taliban, call on their surrender essentially and to

support the garrison strategy, which is the current policy. so these conferences should be delayed until we've had real progress on the talks. at some point yes, we do need international conferences to ratify any international agreement that is reached, for the regional powers to make pledges that they accept neutrality and afghanistan will no longer try to interfere. various conferences must come at the end of the process, the talks, not now where there are propaganda attempt by the administration to further isolate the taliban. thank you very much. [applause] >> so may things from this book that i love, and one of them, you pointed, you made this, it just amazes me, that, and i think it's true, what you make,

the point you make is that the soviets, the soviet military did not pose the civilian decision where's in this country, the civilian leadership, i mean, friends of mine covered this, cover this very closely for the "washington post" to the white house wants out. all they want, as you said of russians, all they want is to get out without defeat, something to dignify that. it's my wife who covered the military insisted they don't like to lose wars. the military has huge influence in this country. but it's gotten to the point where, again as we said earlier, the deficit. one fact a lot of republicans,

most of the republican, presidential contenders are also calling for a speedier exit. >> well, they have as far as i understood, said that they support talks. the republican candidates were saying not only do we want out, but the layout is through talks. because just to lead the u.s.a. we want out is a bit like exiting in 196 1968 sink i havea plan and its foil. hubert humphrey did have one. we have five more wars under nixon. [inaudible] >> what does it gives, in a sense it gives obama the political power to change course without being called something. maybe, listening to you, i have been listening to matt the last year and he's been telling me the very same thing. and, of course, on our trip dish matt, do you want to say

anything? >> the senior civilian -- [inaudible] said we made a lot of mistakes about the war. one of them primarily being, as you described, the political alienation exclusion of southern pashtuns from the political process, which has pushed them to the 14th insurgency. the very same thing was out in iraq, our exclusion, our alienation of the sunnis, we gave them no choice. several comments follow up on the previous ambassadors, he said the biggest obstacle to peace in afghanistan over the last decade happens to be the american government, and that backs up my time being in

afghanistan, the short five months out there, we were against negotiations. we are against -- it was after our policy was not involve. we were told, and that's our direction. can you comment on why were saying the string of british diplomats, senior guys, with several years express in the country over this last year now saying will come is a just coming out of frustration or does this lead into a desire for the brits to find some of the solution out of afghanistan before we get the 2014 when we're supposed to be out of there? and i guess as we continue with this current policy we're just going to be in the same spot we are now three years from now, and even worse. >> i'm not sure why he changed his line. he just saw the hopelessness of what was going on in helmand.

he was causally visiting and giving these upbeat assessment by british officers and just officers he was meeting. he just didn't seem to match with what he was seen with his own eyes. he couldn't believe, just thought they were prisoners of their own rhetoric. and he came to the view that there should be talks, and he persuaded david miliband who is former foreign secretary to make that speech in march 2010 in mit what he actually said, using the northern ireland analogy, sometimes you have to start talking to the people who are shooting at you, and there's no other way. however, pace may be. and i think at the time the speech was completely ignored in washington, the state department can pick it up at all. and, of course, the government fell, new government in britain. i don't know why mark said, i

know cooper quite well. he used to be rather gung ho, so it is not change maybe has come to the same sort of you that it is hopeless. in some ways the british, military are more keen to stay there than the u.s. military because the former head of the army after iraq, very -- defense cuts, and he told, in his book, you know, it's a question of use them and not listen to it i suppose if we don't send our troops to afghanistan they will just because. the defense budget would cut and we won't have any true. it's complete cynical, complete line. if you say that 30,000 u.s. troops coming out according to the obama plan, which is just

under a third of u.s. troops, that's actually over the next two years, that's 18 months i think, that's quicker pace than a british withdrawal. the british are only withdrawing 500 at almost 10,000 we have to. so we are actually reducing proportionately less. >> i want to follow-up on your point of the media. in your travels and in your talks, do you see a bloc of nations or different groups, or individuals who would be appropriate for that role? certainly it can't be, you know, u.s. or brits because where on one side of the conflict. i tend to think the u.n. lacks some credit in afghanistan, particularly with the insurgency that a u.n. brokered talks would be difficult as well, because of credibility problems. so are there any groups or institutions or nation or individuals who would speak some

would say it would have to be muslims but i think that would be artificial. and i think the outline of our youth part as a way of saying he has to be demand. i think he is coming up to 75. i think is very active and quite ambitious and so he probably would quite like to have a job. but i'm not sure whether everybody would agree with that. the former e.u. representative has been mentioned as well. he's a younger, mid '60s i think. and he's very active and extremely knowledgeable and as always been an advocate for talks. [inaudible] >> and he showed lots of the u.n. and cambodia and elsewhere, so he would be good. and. >> thank you very much for the very, very interesting

comparison between the soviet expense and what we are going through now. i think you're right about many points. and i happen to believe that once fully switch from a counterterrorism strategy to a counterinsurgency, we enlarge the political complexity by exponentially, and that's what we will deal with now, based on this counterterrorism, counterinsurgency strategy which brings all the complexities, afghanistan, pakistan, and other countries. and i was surprised, and glad you mentioned this, of the afghan army, is -- >> again, that is the goal. >> in reality we are talking about --

[inaudible] >> about 45% of the population. >> okay. and the additional issue is of course the pashtuns are afghanistan, and pashtuns -- you have to see the complexity of the issue. and now to the key question, and i thought it very interesting that you believe it is possible to create this national unity goal, including pashtuns. the bonn conference in the summer in 2002, 2001, sorry. 2001. was of course no inclusion of the taliban, and that was mostly northern alliance. and then what you got was, you know, a problem from the

beginning. and still we did a better job i would say than any empire before, right? you can start with alexander and go to the soviet union. we did create a constitution, created in islamic, and that has never been done before. and so far, you know, you would have a starting point. but how to create this national unity approach, that's the critical issue here. and how to include the pashtuns in a meaningful way? that, you seem to be optimistic, and i would like to a little more of a reason, why you think it's possible, and why it is useful to reach that goal, to drop, let's say, the bonn conference in december which will try to make an effort to stabilize and demilitarize the

whole country, that's what we have to do. demilitarize the whole thing. the military can only achieve so much. and the issue, you know, was much more of a civilian effort, and maybe some other forces, regular military. demilitarize the whole country, and so i don't get the point of using we have to drop the one conference, because, you know, suppose we would be able to make a real push for demilitarization and reduce the role of western powers to a nonmilitary effort. i would see that as a contribution to creating, and you know, the kind of national unity afghanistan. >> well, let me deal with that, at least three points. first of all i wouldn't say i'm

optimistic. i would not say i'm optimistic. unit, quite pessimistic because of the complexity of the issues, the degree of hostility on all sides, and the history of negotiation. look what happened in the 1980s when they tried to form a government of national unity. look what happened when the mujahideen finally got control in kabul and than start a civil war among themselves it without they were all elected on the same side. they have been fighting it together against the pashtuns and the other regime. so i'm not optimistic. and i'm not even saying that the government, a can of national unity is possible. i'm saying it's desirable. the point is to know where you're going or where you want to go and do everything you can to try to get it. so i think it's the only way, desirable way, is for talks. now, if the bonn conference in

the center is to have an agenda, which is to support 100% the united negotiations, you know, my seven-point plan, the u.s. president sometime in the next few weeks says this is a complete change in policy, were going towards this, and then bonn, the regional conference, bonn is the wider one, support that, that's fine. but i mean, i don't see that that is the current agenda of the conference's. i think they just had a new obstacle is to pursue the current agenda. so i would rather have no conference then one that makes things worse your so by all means use whatever influence you have to change the agenda of the bonn conference and get them to come up for talks. but i'm afraid because it is literally 10 years after the 2001 december bonn conference it will be a self-congratulatory thing, over 10 years we have achieved this that and other things. good government, how may schools have been built and all this, in

a huge jamboree bond. but that will be part of it, self-congratulation, we are doing well, stick in there, we're building up the afghan army. plus this isolation of the taliban which i mentioned before is a second part of the agenda. so, you know, i see it as not, unless it radically changes its agenda in the. [inaudible] >> no one has even invited them. they specifically said they would not be invited. >> and. [inaudible] >> you can't tell them and tell you start trying. when the british negotiated with the ira in ireland, nobody really quite and who to talk to, secret contacts and so that it did take 25 years which is another reason why i'm not very optimistic.

it to 25 years, 23 years actually from the opening of the first secret talks between the british government and the ira to reach the good friday accord in which in itself, 1998, it was signed, you know, only been partially implemented. 13 years later. one other point to make in the book, it's about american exceptionalism. unfortunately, you know, our point of view today, every war the united states has been involved in has ended with victory, including the civil war. one side. korea and vietnam are really the only two almost that use has been not what it was negotiation. korea i put to one side because that was a u.n. operation essentially a vietnam was bilateral, u.s. with a vietnamese. to were negotiations.

henry kissinger achieved agreements in paris in 1973, and then two years later it was violated by the north vietnamese. i mean, there were some charges the u.s. violated certain aspects, south vietnamese had violated certain aspects, but the dominant violation came from the northern side, sent troops across the dmz into south vietnam and captured various cities, including saigon. so i think for a certain generation of u.s. policymakers, there's a feeling that negotiations are a sign of weakness, we don't quit, we don't give up, we fight, we prevail. plus if you do negotiate, the supporters, the day goes, the watts, what if you want to call them, can't be trusted because you see they will tear up the paper we signed and the arches. we are not quitters, they are

cheaters. so that i think makes it much harder politically for the obama administration, 100% for the day she sent unless we get the public to come in behind the idea but it doesn't become another childish juvenile thing, you're quitting, nowhere not, yes, you are, and so on. gimmick other questions? >> i'm a little bit of a negotiation -- within a couple efforts in the last 18 months. we have gotten burned. we tried to reach out to pakistanis and media arrested him. that's a bad idea. we tried to reach out, bad idea. another one in berlin because people, supposedly in the presidential palace leaked it to the press and that was that. so how do you convince skeptics like me that this is really

possible? >> well, i mean, you are echoing what i was in a minute ago. that's why i think the crucial thing though is the u.s. to change policy. u.s. has 100% we are for negotiations now, do everything we can to reach out to the different groups. will not assassinate him. were lifting the ground on its own. then the message goes down the line to all western embassies, to karzai the pakistan government, to everybody. then it has to be followed up. it has to be followed up by the full weight of the negotiations. gimmick is karzai among afghan, the karzai group is much more inclined to negotiate that a lot of the other people in government, particularly the opposition. i think that's going to be a real speak he is a very emotional person, karzai. sometimes he is said publicly i'm going to join the taliban if it goes on like this. and he calls them my brothers,

my disaffected brothers. he has repeated that phrase several times. taliban -- so that, of course, makes it suspicious because they thing at some point there'll be some secret deal our side will hand the whole thing over to the taliban because he is . so yes, massive suspicion on all sides but i still come back to my basic point to which is or is not working. so you have to find an alternative. and you have to, the cut and run argument, u.s. just pulls out. perhaps that maybe what happens happens, that's why i'm so pessimistic about that. perhaps what may point is the u.s. may pull out, leaving few troops behind as trade. and an afghan civil war continued and the kind of comforting psychological line for every year to adopt, then we are, okay, we were there for 10, 12 years whatever.

and then these people left. they're just fighting each other like they did in 1992. gimmick is it possible that we could pull out, support karzai or whoever is in kabul, maybe it will be someone else, and he could survive at least in the near-term, i think as you depict in his book, if the soviet union had collapsed speedy's i don't think the taliban and capture kabul again like they did for. people have a record, they have a record. when it came in 19 in sixth they were kind of new and people didn't quite know what they represented in which they were fed up. but now they have lived under the taliban so they know they are not wonderful. so they are more suspicious pics i think we much harder if they tried to capture kabul.

side don't think that there needs to be too strong. i did see some afghanistan's you have it. let me ask you a question about dates. one school of thought is that the taliban want to things. they want us out, and negotiating that date is he. that's the one thing, one bit of leverage that we have. and they also want passion a i think that is negotiable. but the ones out. that's it. david harrison argues that the real problem is with the guys, these guys are really, really rich. the moment they cut a deal with the taliban, this money, this gravy train is going to stop, or at least slow down. so there so many people getting so rich in afghanistan. some of them are outside right now. and so the question, look, what we need to do is we need to set a date of our own, such and such

a day, we're going to be out, kerry. three years, all our troops, five years, gone. at that point everybody knows they have some sort of deal. and karzai and all the people around him at that point they will say okay, reach out to our brothers, reach out to support. we're not talking china, soviet union. they start cutting deals which is what afghans do. so and to put a date certain they which is a stretch this on for ever. they are getting very, very rich. all you have to do is go to dubai and see what all the money goes. >> i agree with it. as i said, gorbachev wanted talks among the afghans and he also want the soviet troops out. and he didn't condition one on the other. was very careful not to be trapped by that.

soviet troops would've so been there. so he had to say ultimately, this was a unilateral decision, we are pulling out. we will sort it out ourselves. but he did use the intervening time between taking a decision and end date for when the soviet troops would leave to try to broker this deal, to in the civil war. so that's what i was saying. obama should make it quite clear that all troops are coming up by the end of 2014, not leave behind any presence. and use the next two years to negotiate is possible through the u.n. mediator to end the civil war. >> was there a class of soviet, the soviet regime, that they had said -- [inaudible] >> it was a fascinating, fascinating sort of thing, because during the research of

this, i located three former ministers who are living as refugees in london. they came in after 1992 when the regime collapse. they got the british government to call them refugees to live in britain. where do they live? they live in public housing states, you know, on the fifth floor, tensor, the third floor your very modest too, three room flats, apartments. and quite, you know, they didn't have a lot of money. these women who want them was to furnish a finance. another one was mayor of kabul. one was the prime minister. these women who either access to enormous amounts of public money and other living moss as refugees. and.

[inaudible] >> can i just come back, i think, there was never much national unity in afghanistan in the first place, right? it was all regional. can you see a way of integrating these regional forces in afghanistan itself by changing the constitution may be, or maybe, you know, changes so that we could in the early stage in a great these local forces that have been so strong in the past, and will as i understand always be in the future, to. that would be i think an important ingredient. >> i agree. >> no other international organizations tried to bring peace to that country. >> know, i think the change of

constitution is probably essential, and it would ideally involve some devolution of power. kabul has never been very powerful in terms of collecting taxes are running much. so you would have to some kind of devolution of power to the provinces, and/or groups of provinces to nominate a certain region or whatever you like, but certain devolution. in the taliban will probably end up as the dominant force in the southern -- provinces. the tajiks would remain in the northeast. and kabul would be some kind of -- i think you probably have to do that. on the question of what do you do about the so-called warlords and private armies, that is very complicated, how you would do that. i mean, i think that was one of the failures after bonn that

they didn't demobilize those armies properly. they were allowed to remain as they were. and then in the first elections initially anybody who is head of an armed group were not allowed to be a candidate. the u.n. sort of drew up the rules and for parliament, very last minute such pressure on the warlords that the u.n. changed its own rules and said no, after all anybody can be a candidate. so all these terrible people got into parliament. >> you wouldn't go as far as to say, you know, we have created a separate state in southern afghanistan? >> i wouldn't go pepfar, no. i make him afghanistan is actually amazingly held together. you might have thought when you look at the map they would want to join, especially now in the early days, soviet, but and

uzbeks have shown no interest in joining. so somehow there is something, some sort of glue that holds the country together even if it's only anti-forum to keep the foreigners out. we were all together we can fight happily among us. >> a big worry when edward and i was there, how do you avoid a civil war when the americans move out. there's a real worry that once the americans to withdraw people in the north, uzbeks and tie sheikhs, warlords are arming themselves. and there i think there is to i don't think it's most likely hood, but there is a question that there is a real chance of another civil war which is a horrible thing. , just awful. i think afford to talk of some kind of united nations, just with kabul.

of state would've been madness within to try to occupy the whole country and we would be back to square one. it would be the bangladeshis and the jordanians and the indonesians, norwegians. but i mean, just to protect kabul, because that's where most is strong, and perhaps logistically, maybe some international force. [inaudible] >> and if for nothing else just to give conference -- confidence to people who cut these deals. >> might be necessary five years after summit agreement to guarantee. >> with regards towards a shift towards negotiations, when you talk to policymakers and you listen to what the u.s.

politicians have said, they tend of one '02 challenges. in coming to a position of four years. one is that a lot of them just don't see military, when you have active efforts -- [inaudible] efforts to slash budgets at non-pentagon foreign policy, there's a real, a kind of capacity problem there and if you that permeates a lot of policymakers that is a real impediment. the second thing that has taken hold of a lot of the big challenges, that they will agree that its negation that is required, that they have to believe you can only negotiate from a position of strength, and you can only get to the position by bringing the taliban to the

negotiating table. [inaudible] >> they don't want to come to the table so you have to basically eat them to the table. that's a very widely held position, and it's one that permeates a lot of the decision-making that takes place. >> no, i think that's an accurate description of reality, and i don't you. i don't know how you deal with that exactly. because as i mentioned, this american history of ending wars is victory always. the british have had come into, lots of humiliations. would negotiated at the end of so many words, king and cyprus and palestine was a very successful. cyprus, so, you know, in northern ireland recently. so, you know, and south yemen, aidan is one spot. unit, so people just sort of say that's one of the things, you can't always win.

history is not always good to you. but to negotiate from strength is really particularly pernicious argument because then you try to have it both ways. we carry on fighting but, of course, were want to talk once we got them down here. but, you know, that's what i think it really would be important to get the message out that the war is a stalemate. may be instead of 50/50 it could be 55-45, but ultimately neither side can win. i'm sure there's people on the taliban side who say the americans are leaving, why do we have to negotiate when they have to pull out? because domestic pressure in the u.s., the election campaign, there's always that argument. ultimately, you know, the world

history is that negotiations are the best way. in fact, most wars do and that way. [inaudible] >> well, you know, the other point is they keep saying well, we are getting stronger. the reality is you mentioned -- [inaudible] he makes the point that, in fact, we are in a weaker position now than we were three years ago, and we're likely to be in a weaker position next year. china is not on our side. we're not getting into a stronger negotiating position. matt pointed out, certainly edward and i saw, the taliban now has a presence in every single province. there's no sign that they are facing defeat. and, of course, they do realize that we are withdrawing. you have to create some incentives in it has increased

enormously. [inaudible] and then the assassinations of afghan government officials have gone up, i think figures show. they moved to assassination. and then the sad story a new chunk of it about the network. [inaudible] the taliban say to people, you know, cell phone companies. unless you shut down we will blow up your mosques and so on. so companies of a that. so that you shows you the economic power, simple little thing like blowing up a mosque and undermined, everyone tries use their phones, it's not working because the taliban has

that sense of power. >> we have a room full of people, the problem is in washington, you mentioned, as i was listening to you mentioned the cia is the one sort of -- my have the insurgency program bring the cia. that's going to be very interested to see how that plays out. but it's clear the white house wants out of this. [inaudible] >> the president, all has to do, read obama's war by bob woodward. you sort of dragged into thinking they're really looking for a way out. >> the polls show most americans are against a war, one out. and what is stopping obama from following the mood of the country? >> the military, there's a wonderful piece in the post today to talk about sort of militarism. nobody wants to do all want to spend more money on military and

they want to be tough, and it's tough to say today that we're losing or even that there is a military solution. what's going to happen, i predict within the next year, i mean, by withdrawing 33,000 troops, you can't win a counterinsurgency when you are drawing down. so the handwriting is on the wall. they started the withdrawal but they haven't changed the policy. they have to. that's our job. stevens job, edwards job. deeter, you have to change those germans. yet to get the germans on board, to. >> they try to be good. i have to say that they want, they don't want -- [inaudible] that's an old vietnam story, right? kissinger created the price by saying at a point of time, everything was going in a different direction. and it cost many, many lives. and that's the issue here, how to make the transition to a

necessary civilian process, about the west appearing, you know, cut and run. >> we have to have a measure of military here in order to justify your own withdrawal. and we all know withdrawal is going to come. and so, how can we find a moment, the right moment that at least doesn't appear to be defeat? >> and yet in your country, in france, the u.k., is a very unpopular policy. >> i am joking by saying germany public opinion is 70% against and 30% not in favor. [laughter] >> canada has already gone.

>> if you have the situation, it shouldn't be the end of politics and the end of -- i would give obama the benefit of doubt he wants to get out, but he can't show weakness in an election year. again, republicans would say i won't listen, right? so, you know, you have defined a smart way, and also from the benefit of afghanistan, to be honest about that, too. if you let the taliban come down right now, a lot of people would suffer, women and children, everybody who wants to catch up, and if you have to provide the ground for a decent way of helping which the resembles the

right direction, i always thought the constitution was the way to do. take it and implement it. >> modify it. >> absolutely. modify it, but ownership. you have to establish, i would also hesitate just to pick up, and the soviet model is a little bit like this, right? in a different way. i mean, you're on your own though. >> right. that leaves a lot of issues behind. >> tell people, no, you're on your own, fine. down the line that's what we wanted. but if it's a chance at the same time given mullah omar a chance

to reestablish what he tried before, don't do that. >> during negotiations on various things, including cease-fire, the constitution and solar, then you find that exact or the taliban want, and they would be forced to compromise, to. everybody has to be realistic, and it's not a question of handing over to the taliban. as he pointed out in his speech, it's not deceptive out but nevertheless he has made a public speech. they hear it's a very different kind of noise, though one taliban was making 19 and six, et cetera. it subject to change. >> i think the soviet experience was very impressive from my point of view. when i was there i was reading a lot of documents, if anyone here is interested, george washington

university national archives has a ton of stuff on lies. those archives you're talking about, all online. it's very, you see gorbachev in 83 saying we need to get out of afghanistan becoming, a couple years before he becomes premier hillary knows, so when you look at in this sense that what's against him is this mindset, this ideology that pervades soviet foreign policy thinking that you have to have a for present and we have to defend our borders. some of that right comes from their experience in world war i and world war ii being evaded, some are afraid that what happened in 70 comes the ninth two out the middle east will explode into the muslim areas, et cetera. but a lot of it is this idea, one of the things you see in those documents, go into afghanistan, the americans were going. over and over, and when you're trying to get out in 86, 87, we can't get up because if we get out, the americans were coming.

and i'm pretty sure there was no american plan to ever go into, in the we lost all of our listening post in iran and everything, our bases in iran, there was no plan. i mean, so what you see now coming to is the same thinking within the united states foreign policy establishment, whether they be democrat or republican, this idea of forward present but i think the bases will be the biggest issue force going forward. i think the white house in washington, d.c. can live with is withdrawing from afghanistan afghanistan collapses. car bombs go off in baghdad nearly every day. more civilians are being killed in iraq than are being killed in afghanistan by terrorism attacks every year. we don't care. we go on. we don't even reflect upon the fact. we don't even tie into the fact that we're pulling out of iraq. the biggest bomb is going to be bases. because i think this idea that we have to have the bases because he can we have this

mindset that they are contained in a foreign. and industrials nation to them in people with a couple dozen clients can will now use that against al qaeda, and the problem is unique people, you need a gorbachev type who is able to lead and able to break those contained, those ideas, those foreign policy standards or base assessments that are not present. yesterday in rolling stone, michael hastings had a very good piece on obama's decision-making for libya. very instructive. and you see how this strain of humanitarian pervades and that's what one, that's what pushed the president to intervene in libbey. and i think the same thing is happening right now and juicy not his concern the soviet

collapse in afghanistan but concerned that we will lose basis, we lose forward present and we lose our ability to maintain power in iran or pakistan which is the two places where people get a little upset. so i think that will come back to is how to crack that and how do you other folks into the white house who are advising the president to think differently, who are not tied into this, this strain of foreign policy thought that we've had for the last five or six decades. i think that's the real problem. and that will get us into other problems in the future unless we break the cycle of thinking that we have to be forward deployed. we have to do what we did against the soviet union and against, you know, groups like al qaeda and others. >> ipaqs agree with you. and i think it is china, too. if you want to project power, give it to china.

>> so jonathan, we all have to read your book. how do we get it? >> amazon. i ordered mine from amazon. >> i highly recommend it. it's wonderful. we really appreciate -- how long are you going to be in use because we are going to a conference of tomorrow. >> good. i hope you get widely reviewed and i wish you enough to move into the security council. more likely you, jonathan. >> rolling stone or something. >> but thank you very, very much. we really appreciate it. [applause] >> you're watching the tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors

and books every weekend. >> could you give us kind of an epidemiology for people who may not sort of know the blow-by-blow of conficker? just the first half of the how come you did talk about it showing up, i think it was john to talk about it. but anyhow, sort of described it here? >> the worm itself popped up on sr eyes, honey pot, honey and it actually and he was on his monitor. what happens is when the new piece of malta where trips into his space, a line will pop up on his monitor work because all these readers defining what this is but one of which is a column which indicates how will recognize this virus is to the major antivirus industry in the vendors but and this one was recognized i none. that's the first thing he got his attention. the next thing that happened was

replicating so rapidly that within 24 hours it was shoving every other piece of malware out of his honey pot prefilled readout on his screen was conficker, conficker, conficker. he said i literally have nothing else to work on at that point. what they discovered that as our eyes when they began to dissect it was that it was very, very sophisticated piece of malware, highly encrypted. one of the things they did was kind of trees was to check was to check to see if the computer it was about to infect had a ukrainian keyboard and it would self-destruct if the computer did. but basically of course what a worm like this does is penetrate to the core of the operating system and replicate itself, send out and affect every other person -- and you on a network and also began calling to a remote control. the remote controller, the way would ordinarily kill a botnet is viewed top of its head.

you can effectively kill the botnet. so to prevent that, the worm had an algorithm that generated randomly 250 new domains every day. so that the botnet had to be behind only one of those 250 doors on a given day whereas in order if you want to cut this thing off you would have to shut down all 250 domains every single day forever. and so, you know, one example of the cunning nature of the thing. and rick, who may be here tonight, tj mention in a moment ago, as a began buying up all those domains and putting them on his credit card which gives you a sense about ad hoc this as it was to try to stop it. >> before go farther down the path of the worms evolution, i just wanted to get back to that question of what kind of straight we're in to a a question for p.j.

i have a very old e-mail address and i have a filter in front of it. get what is that? [laughter] >> most of the people here know. >> and since malware i take it is distributed by botnet's, in the form of, well, the level of spam is some rough correlation after in the world, the level of malware infection. so i remember about a year ago a large botnet was taken down, and for a while spam fell off. but i have to say that if you look historically at the number of spam messages, it looks like it's probably 10-20% worse than it was before that happen. and i a good indicator of the state of -- >> it's a perspective situation, right?

the operation you are referring to is operation b. 107. we can sit back and we laugh at some other ports that were coming in. one of them was zero impact on spam. one of them was 5%. one was 10% and one of them was 30%. so it kind of looked, well, what's the real number? we determine its a perspective things we called her friends over at hotmail and said did we do anything good for you guys? they said we see a drop off of spam of like going to 07%. oh, i was hoping for a bigger number. upon is they have a lot of webmail providers, non-known mtas. so really they have been blocked a lot of the spam that was hitting already so we had a small impact without the. was and other organizations, particularly private companies they saw a huge drop off because the big spammers wouldn't be seeing enough to hotmail because

they knew we were blocking, i'm assuming gmail does the same thing and yahoo!, same measures there. so toxic hotmail folks and they said they largely managed to stand issued by the things that we were watching our honey pot attempt to send spam outcome losing out to a whole bunch of different domains. so we saw hotmail spam leave but that spam would never make into an inbox because of the filtering on our side. i don't know what the real number is. i know when we start to look at these things going back to your original question, i look at how many millions of my customers are being impacted by this malware. if it is running that it is run something else just based on our testing. we look at it differently. span gives us cause in a courtroom to say hey, they are harming us. i'm also looking at how me of my customers are being impacted. when we start to look at woodstock in particular it would reach out to a piece of our infrastructure that we could track. so it attempted to download a patch or download center in

every specific ways we were able to think up and that's when you how many machines, how many wishing we were dealing with. one of the criteria we look at in the conficker case, it was a big botnet, how many of my customers are being negatively impacted by this negative malware? so i think the state is not great on the internet, but the past couple years have really seen a surge in internet service providers, technology companies taking more of an interest knowing that private companies can do more to protect folks. so i think, i think the dark days are behind us. [laughter] >> i need some type of wood. i think we're getting that awareness but as we start to really understand that, there's more things that we can do, we are kind of coming out of the. our last conference we had about two weeks ago, we have been doing covers for like 10 years

now, we are starting to see more people talking with how can we do more operational but how can my company help, how can my company take down? i would love to see spam go away as a just a vision network. but from a perspective, there's a certain perspective that shows that might be the case, that there might not be any change. we are still i in the infancy so we don't know. >> so, this book is a who done it. except i still feel that we don't know who done it. i just want to check in with you guys your tuna, where we are. your book ends at a certain point that have been a couple things that happen. take me through with a law enforcement aspect is and you guys do that your conclusive sampling of who the authors were or are. >> my suspicion is, and i can't say with any certainty, that the authorities do know who was behind it. and i suspect, i suspect that

difficult in apprehending them has more to do with diplomacy dealing with a foreign government, dealing with foreign laws and police agencies than it does with actually finding them. what we do know about the authors of the worm without having caught them yet is that they are tremendously sophisticated programmers, and the reason i use the word, the poker is that it's almost certainly not one person because the worm, conficker, demonstrate such a high level of proficiency in so many different areas that it's literally impossible to imagine that one person would have that level of ability and that level of knowledge in so may different areas at the same time. so the likely culprit is a group, well-funded, probably funded by an organized crime syndicate, who set out to create a very large, very stable botnet which could be used as a platform for all manner of