>> now i booktv david lesch talks about the rise of bashar al-assad and syria that he would implement reforms in this country and the syrian rulers repression and violence in recent years. this is just under one hour. >> we have a program with david lesch. david is a professor of middle eastern history in san antonio texas and david has been going

to syria for at least 23 years. >> since 1989, 23 years. >> has some experience in that country but most interesting in them reason i most excited to have him talk to us tonight, unlike a lot of people have lots who have lots of opinions about syria david cutugno bashar al-assad which is a pretty unique expected for an academic in particular and david wrote a book in 2005 which held up great hope for the future of syria under bush are. if you recall there is some sense that bashar would a reformer of syria after his father died and we have now discovered that is not the case and he is now written another book called the fall of the house of assad. we are going to talk a bit about that tonight and my first question is going to be, when

did you first meet assad and what was your impression of him? >> i first met him in 2004. i wanted to interview him because he was the atypical middle east dictator. he was a licensed ophthalmologist. he was not groomed to be president and only was brought back into the grooming process apparatus when his older brother who was to succeed his father died in a car accident. bashar within london getting the equivalent of an advanced degree in ophthalmology and he was brought back and raise the state apparatus until he became president when his father died in 2000 so i thought that was a very interesting story that he was different from the typical middle east dictator that i studied in history. so in 2002 i contacted a friend of mine who happened to be the

minister of education and he was in academia and when traveling to syria for years i met him accidentally being in academic myself. bashar brought a lot of these people to government and that was i guess a good or bad thing. many people saw that at the time as bringing academic technocrats and maybe he would take the country in a different direction so i contacted him and he contacted bashar. two years almost to the day later, the ambassador to the united states at the time, he called me up and he was also a friend that also an academic in the past at damascus university prior to becoming ambassador and he said david. i had long forgotten about this whole thing. i said what phone? he said the president wants to meet with you. and so i met with him in may and

in june of that year extensively i interviewed his life and the other syrian official. see what was the first meeting like? >> well after i explained why it wanted i wanted to do this, i went, my first substantive talk with him was mr. president you know i'm not an apologist for syria. i'm writing this book when you and i'm going to criticize you in this book and he said that's fine. i know you will criticize me. i know that because i'm not perfect and i know that in the past you have criticized my father's policies but you were always fair and objective from their point of view. and then i told him that you know mr. president one of the worst things you ever did. he goes, what's that? you let it know that you liked

phil collins, the rock star from england. and he goes, yet a puzzled look on his face and he is probably thinking here he is asking me this stupid question. he said why? i said it does in the west this information contributed to this profile of him being a modernizing pro-western reformer. he liked western is again he was an ophthalmologist and studied in london for 18 months. he was going to be completely different than his taciturn father. this created perhaps too high of an expectation in the west exactly what you want to do and what you're able to do. >> where were your meetings held? >> they were held in various places. usually called the presidential building. is a very modest building in the district of damascus and i mean very modest. it's a typical kind of

middle-class residential apartment building that was transformed into what they call the presidential palace. that is where he mainly works. the street is blocked off but we also met in what is called the people's palace which was built by his father, this grand structure in the top of mt. overlooking damascus. it's a palace and then somebody hardly ever goes there and he only needs dignitaries there. the only reason i met him there one time was through his meeting with mock moot ahmadinejad the iranian president and i bet met with him just after, and i think i can say this now considering the current circumstances but i asked him, what do you think of mahmoud ahmadinejad and he just rolled his eyes. basically. and he said thank god the ayatollah makes decisions.

i can say that now. [laughter] i'm probably never going to see him again. fortunately or unfortunately. >> how long did that relationship go on? >> i got to know him very well and from the beginning and this is one of the sad things. i actually got to personally like him. it's very difficult as you know, then you establish a relationship with someone like that and you want to get to know that person but you try to remain objective and keep your distance. sometimes that is tough and i'm not a professional such as you are and doing that sort of thing. even for the professionals i know it's sometimes difficult and sometimes to maintain that you have to establish a personal relationship. so that's a little difficult than i tried to maintain objectivity but we develop a

comfort level to the point where you know, i got snippets of him as a person. when you interview these figures like this, i mean especially political figures, presidents or whatever, 90% of what they tell you is scripted, will appear in the newspapers the next week. it's just stuff i've heard that goes in one ear and out the other, not really interesting at all. it's about 10% or 15% of what he tells me is really dynamite and that is when the guard is down perker think we developed enough of a relationship and he was always welcoming and gracious and sometimes self-deprecating in the beginning. and to the point where he did let his guard down at times. i didn't meet the kids. i met her several times in all

of the interviews i had were two or three hours. soot covered a wide range of topics and she is very impressive person, classic english accent. again, someone who people had high hopes for from the beginning. she was different. the first couple was different than in the past. usually the syrian precedence wife stayed in the background and no one ever saw them. but she was out front. she was a champion of women's rights, champion of trying to create civil society organizations although they were toxic to the government and not really dependent and they broke off just before the uprising. which they were very embarrassed about and that was one of the questions.

where has that person can't? people had high hopes just like bashar al-assad. where did that person go and that is one of the saddest things about them because they really did -- they really did develop a level of popularity in the country that wasn't insignificant. syria's difficult to engage popularity because sometimes people will, out in support of bashar al-assad in the government because they don't want to be seen as nonsupportive of non-supportive of the government because security is all around so it's difficult to see how genuine the popularity is but having been in the country quite a bit and gone around all over the country and talk to all sorts of classes of people, i really did think there was genuine popularity and for me he didn't leverage that popularity to implement true change that was really needed particularly at the beginning of

the uprising. >> what did he talk to you about? >> you talked about -- he talked about his upbringing and we talked about many different aspects of his life, his upbringing which was fairly normal considering he was the president. in fact one of the things that i did was interview his elementary schoolteacher, primary and secondary schoolteachers and they were not afraid, which is very telling. they were not afraid to tell me he was not very good at math. he wasn't very good in this particular subject and in fact the parents have to shift schools because he was probably being a distracted by girls. if you compare that as i did in his first book in 2005 with saddam hussein's son have basically threatened their teachers to give them aid. if they did not give them a is

they would kill them or put them in prison or something like that. at least that's a story we get and i have no reason to doubt that. so you know, this was one of the things again that contributed to this profile that was hopeful. i'm sure it was a privilege family and you can't be the son of the president not have a privileged lifestyle to some degree but a number of different people i interviewed and it wasn't orchestrated. it was pretty genuine but they were telling me. this was a pretty normal guy. he liked having friends and he enjoyed music. they liked to go out in all these things that profile that he was a fairly normal guy, good family man, all of these things and that is what they try to re-create. they live in a very modest upper-middle-class, middle-class upper-middle-class family apartment building. they live on one floor. the father lives on one floor

right next to the building and they have to pull down the shades because people next door can look into the bathroom. they tried to re-create a fairly normal, as normal as you can, upbringing. so again i'll of these things i learned in the beginning that were impressive to me and many other people which is why i think we had some hope in him that he would augment some real change. >> when did you start to see him change? >> personally in 2007. i think dramatically. i think i started to see it as early as 2006 and the reason is this. after the u.s.-led invasion of iraq which syria opposed, and syria was turning a blind eye to cross into iraq to kill u.s. soldiers and allied soldiers. there was a reason why they did

that. they wanted the bush doctrine to fail and they thought they were next on the hit list so they would do anything they could to help make this happen. one high-level syrian official told me later on, he said of course they were helping iraq. we wanted our guys to kill them. that is why we went into iraq. we wanted to get them out and get them through and you guys would kill them. and when he survived, particularly after the assassination of former lebanese prime minister in february 2005 that was blamed on syria by most of the international community and the pressure just escalated exponentially after that against syria. people in late 2005 for counting the days when the assad regime, there were syrian expatriates and organizations that were just waiting to move in. but he survived that and i think that really created in him a

sense of triumphalist and survivalism that very much informed his view of the world, and response to the uprising in march 2011 because it instilled in him this sense the sense of destiny and righteousness. he survived the best shot in the west had taken at him and he was on the right side of history. they really believed it. they have what i call a different paradigm of the world. it might be off but it is completely different. it's based on their own history and based on their own experiences. they just have a different view of the nature of threat and it's a very paranoid few, very suspicious view of the outside world. that is hard to imagine because there has been just enough imagination by great powers from

the outside over the decades. certainly after syria became independent in 1946 and became upon between the british and the french and regional powers, a pond between the superpowers during the cold war so that is their heritage. that is their experience and the israeli -- and the efforts by the u.n. is very suspicious and they see the arab league is controlled by saudi arabian allies with united states so they very much few the outside world is out to get them and bashar absolutely feels that way. ever since 2005. nothing i can do that will satisfy you so why even try? i think this is why syria and the united states and the west before the uprising were talking past each other with different views of the world.

you had to be in damascus and you had to understand i think in order to engage with them at a level that they understand and respect. it's a shame because i think as an american -- for a long time i was an advocate of u.s. relations. i love syria and the syrian people. it's a wonderful country but i'm an american. so that they could cooperate cooperating keeping jihadists out of iraq and develop an air of israeli negotiation that might lead to arab-israeli peace. one of the biggest missed opportunities in middle east history and i lament the move every day. syria and israel came so close in a peace agreement of 1999. they were this close, this close

and bashar died in the rather problems besides the suspiciousness and mistrust that cause problems but they were this close and that had occurred, syria was the key at that time for a comprehensive arab-israeli peace and i think the world would be much different. iran would not have the influence they have with the heartland of the middle east and i think obviously the israeli palestinians perhaps may have been resolved. some say the palestinians would have lost other leverage of syria went away. by the way. on the other hand they would have been willing to make concessions. so that was one of the great missed opportunities but for all of these reasons, i would hope -- and bashar was very serious and

he did do it on his own vis-à-vis the turkish mediation in 2007 and 2008 they keep came very close again. the problem is the negotiations take so long ago that is something in the middle east, something happens. if they are not done in two years time or years time something happens in the middle east. in this case the israeli on the gaza war at the time. so this is another reason why i was hopeful that this person, and he had people around him who are pro-left, who not everyone was, who abdicated with united states. [inaudible] this is a military security solution for the entire problem. >> as you saw the change

becoming more truncated how was your relationship with him developing and changing? >> not so much. again we had established a rapport. i think when i really saw him change and when i noticed it, was in 2007 in a quote unquote election for the referendum, reelecting him for another seven year term. he came to power in 2008 were election. except he was the only one running in the referendum. and when i arrived in damascus during the election, when i arrived into damascus i saw something i hadn't seen previously and that is the personality had arrived again. he issued the personality from

growing up around his father. he had the pictures taken down in most places now the banners and so forth and so one. he wanted to be the normal president who had the personality cult. in 2007 it all -- and then some. that told me right then and there that he had changed, that the arrogance of authoritarianism and the arrogance of power -- the power is an aphrodisiac. he had become much more comfortable with power and that's not a bad thing but in an authoritarian country become an authoritarian ruler. he is becoming more and more comfortable with that particular position working within that system instead of changing the system. and when i met with him, and we had a very -- most of the time it was just me and him and we had a very personal emotional type of talk and i said mr. president what he

think of all of the banners? i half suspected him thinking about the old bashar that he would say the people are going and they have a parade and all the other ministries save we do this as well so it just kind of mushrooms so i have expected him, i really did expect him to just pooh-pooh it. but instead he said they love me. they loved me and at that moment i remember thinking to myself and writing about in the book, he had what i call call a sally fields moment. sally field in her second oscar stood before the hollywood theater and said you love me, and he really loved me and this was an affirmation. for him it was tough going over

the previous years but it was a cathartic response and it was a real response. it was that 10% that i was looking for and at that time i said to myself, you are really absorbing this. you are believing the propaganda of. you are believing that the wealth of the country is synonymous with your wealth and in you have been this prophet and at that moment i remember vividly thinking to myself you are president -- aren't you? that was the most dramatic and vivid representation of the change i saw in him which again i think happens in most authoritarian systems. he was the most well-intentioned well intentioned off their -- of the authoritarian leaders. speech he went one more step. mubarak believed he was the savior for the egyptians when they had the entire square.

bashar has gone to the dark side now. he has become the butcher of damascus. where did that come from? was set directly from his dad and was it a coincidence which is that when he was threatened he ordered immediate attack on hamas and they killed about 20,000 people in one attack, as you know which leveled -- [inaudible] they had no more problems. bashar was different. he engaged in this machiavellian calibration of violence. they killed about -- people but still 20,000 people dead. mubarak didn't kill 20,000 people. it was nothing like it so how did bashar make that final step

over to the dark side which is i will kill until i'm no longer challenge. you must know and everyone in the alawite community must know there's no going back or good they are minorities in syria. they would be slaughtered. so how did he make that final step to the dark side? >> you hit on a think many good points which is they see this as an existential conflict. they see this as something that there is no turning back on either side right now. for me, the answer to that is twofold. one, i think he really feels, believes from day one that he is saving the country, that he is protecting the country from chaos. even though his policies are in fact doing quite the opposite. but i really believe he thinks that way. and that is just from knowing

how the syrians think and how he thinks and how righteous they believe they are in their particular policy. in fact i had believe it or not, had one well-placed syrian tell me that they feel they have actually been restrained, that they really -- if they really want to unleash the dogs they can and a half and that is again part of the different conceptual paradigm. and secondly, this is just things -- not how things are done in syria. i write in the book, they have a pushbutton response to the unrest and this is where his biggest failing is, this whole thing, is that he has allowed the security leeway on autonomy throughout his time in power. i write writing a write in the book about an episode later on

in 2007 where i was stopped at the airport and interrogated for three hours, passport confiscated. i was told i was on the syrian blacklist which is a list you don't want to build be on, with leave me. the colonel twirled the gun in front of of you and all this other stuff. whenever you are in the middle east you have guns pointed in your face so i don't want to make it sound as threatening because i did feel somewhat threatened but -- you have had some guns pointed in your face. anyway i got out of that and i was going to see the president. but the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing and i finally convinced the colonel who was twirling the gun, a so-called office of the president please.

i finally convinced him that it would be worse for you if you didn't call and i was further interrogated or roughed up or whatever and sent back out. he called and he turned 50 shades of white. he was appalled. he had this vision of the dumbest and he became my best friend after that. he wanted my autograph and he gave me the sheet of paper that had my name on the blacklist. [laughter] but i went to see the president the next day. i said other than a three-hour interrogation it was fine. he looks surprised and so forth but i said at the end, here i am, someone who was in the united states advocating better u.s. syrian relations and here i am trying to present syria and a more favorable light and when i came back i was giving testimony in front of the senate relations

committee and i said mr. president after that incident would have something worse happens? forget u.s. even relations. and i said mr. president, politely as i could, you have got to get ahold of these security forces and that is exactly what happened. been the circumstances of the arab spring, the security sources acted like they usually do with graffiti on the walls and the other syrian city. they roughed him up. that is what lit the fire for the uprising in syria. and was that hubris of the security service that he allowed and he knows that. he admitted to me that yes they have access. but you know he indicated that it was a necessary evil in a dangerous neighborhood and that

is somewhat true that it's easy to maintain the regime in power. so i think it is a combination of those two things. he and his supporters, three things protecting their position as an alawite force to protect their staff. they really do believe it's as for the good of the country and they are saving it from chaos. i think they have lost it because of the policies and have done quite the opposite and four, three it's just a tomas of pushbutton response business as usual and there is domestic unrest, zap it out and that is just how things are done. he went along with it. >> we have questions from the floor and we have a microphone here. go right ahead. >> i would like to ask you the

shiites versus the sunnis figure into this relationship? >> that is a complex question, and it has become regionalized. this is where someone asked me if i could talk about iran. someone asked me to talk about iran and one of the complicating factors in the conflict, the crisis have become regionalized and internationalized between diametrically opposed groups. at the regional level iran and its allies hezbollah and syria and assad empower. they are afraid of losing this conduit into the middle east and the conduit of arms and the important funds of hezbollah but they bring to lebanon. saudi arabia, qatar, sunni countries, as well as united states and some others of course

have been supporting the opposition to varying degrees. saudi arabia in many ways take the lead because they are afraid of what they view as the shiite presence developing in the middle east from iran through syria, which is 75% sunni but the alawite's are an offshoot of the shiites and then in lebanon where the most powerful group in lebanon is hezbollah, the shiite organization. so they wanted break that up. the u.s. wants to break that up in israel wants to break that up so the fall of assad is honorable in that sense of the day don't want syria to implode altogether and break off the free-for-all surrounding powers. that is the danger in all of this and inside syria it has become very very sick carrion. the longer this conflict goes on the more sectarian it is.

because the alawites, another minority, 13% of the country and christians 10% support the assad will regime because the assad regime is very secularized and the alawites aren't and therefore will be a buffer against any sort of conservative suny state from developing in the arab regimes and sad as you said earlier in the aftermath the fall of assad if that should happen there would be much revenge against these minority who had supported the assad regime so that nature of the crisis has become very sick. whereas the opposition is almost entirely sunni-arab. they will put out an alawite or christian in some of the protests early on to try to show that it's not sectarian and it's

more nationalist and therefore democracy and all of that but it becomes much more sectarian, almost all of that it in fact is sunni-arab from the leaders of the various military councils and militias and the free syrian are all sunni-arab and they are being supported by sunnis and turkey and qatar and saudi arabia. [inaudible] >> the prudently so. they been quiet during the whole arab spring because they are waiting to how it plays out and if they voice a position on one side or the other they could delegitimize the very groups they want to see rise in power and some of these countries so they are waiting and seeing it and syria gets a big dilemma. have the israelis -- he mag israeli leadership, this has been this way for years.

they have had this diametrically opposed view of assad for a long time. on the one hand he is the devil we know. he hasn't shown that he wants peace with us. he is controlled the country. we don't like everything he does but he is predictable. we have carried out attacks and assassinations in syria although they haven't admitted they have done it and assad doesn't respond in any way because of the asymmetry of power between syria and israel so you have half the israelis deigning, well maybe we want him to, we would rather have stability on the border rather than chaos or even worse have a sunni, radical suny state of power. the other israelis, the other half who perhaps never like assad and particularly really was his support of hezbollah

over the years. they felt that they will take the chance of a chaotic situation on their border but more importantly it will emasculate hezbollah and it will be a blow to iran's position and that was more important and i think the israeli leadership had come around, especially once the international community, once united states came out officially last august 2011 saying that assad must have down. the israeli leadership has slowly come around to thinking that he has to go at some point and you might as well accept that and try to do anything we can, not much, to prepare ourselves for the aftermath or ultimately it will undermine iran. >> we have a question right here.

>> i have two questions. one, can you give any insight into tony blair's comments with george bush when they are caught on the microphone saying -- is like honey. what were they talking about and why did they have such a favorable impression of him and why do they like him? >> i don't recall that one. i recall the expletive. are you referring to the g8 meeting g8 meeting in 2006 when during the israel hezbollah war and president bush leaned over to blair and he said blair's ear or whatever used to call him, if we can get the syrians to stop this four letter expletives, then that will colmes a situation and what was interesting about that comment and bush did not like it particularly after 2003 in and 2004. i asked assad buffett commented

i said what did you think of the comments i've president lush? again half expecting him to say oh typical this, he said i love it. i loved it because that means they are thinking about me. they are worried about me, which that is part of syrian foreign policies is having some sort of -- is a fairly weak countries militarily. the leverage they have is the support of hezbollah and iran and the support of hamas and the palestinian territory. that is their leverage. that is why there were no negotiations from the beginning. and so, that whole thing was very enlightening. is important that syria has more leverage. >> don't you think he is

fulfilling his fathers dreams, but he went in and ruthlessly got rid of people. we now have the same thing going on which seems pretty silly. it's almost a psychological thing with him. >> that is a good question and i remember responding to a question recently in an interview with a similar type question and it got me to think. i wondered. the question i would like to ask assad bashar, mr. president, so do you think you understand why your father did what he did? i think if i had asked him that question and in some ways i did earlier on. the kind of avoided it but tried to go down a different path. i wonder today, now he

understands in the face of domestic uprising supported by forces from the outside that are working with unwitting accomplices on the inside, that this is necessary. yes it is bloody, but this is a necessary evil, the necessary thing to keep the country together and long term and i think that is probably how he sees it. and it's a shame. >> do you think that they would use chemical warfare -- [inaudible] >> yes, you have answered your own question. absolutely, president obama has gone on with her as saying that might be the thing that activates a more aggressive western response.

my fear like president quayle said during the crisis, he said something similar. some people suggest why some -- saddam held back on the chemical weapons triggering a more violent response. as was mentioned earlier, i write about this machiavellian calibration. from the very beginning i think the assad regime, they did not want the 1982 massacre. that would galvanize the international community and in fact they know, the international community does not want to go into. they know the united states doesn't want to go into it and for good reason by the way. we don't understand the landscape and the opposition is fragmented and divided. before we went in a bit wind we have supported the opposition groups in afghanistan in the 1980s because of the soviet

occupation and what happened with the taliban that came back to vita bite us so we have to understand certainly anything like that. and it's just a different situation than libya, completely different. syria is a much tougher nut to crack, much more complex in so many different ways. and so he knows that and so as long as there is no chemical weapons and i don't think they would use it and must it's the last regime about to go out. they want to elicit's saddam tried to do in that 1991 gulf war with rockets in israel trying to turn a persian gulf war into an arab-israeli one shifting the loyalty. that is the danger and that is something that the israeli u.s. policymakers and others are concerned about. the only problem with that is

that when you unleash this blood lit you cannot carefully calibrated. especially the so-called paramilitary groups that are fanatically supporting the assad regime most of them alawite, most of them protecting their communities and it also gives the regime deniability that in large measure would carry out the worst -- and you can't control them. you know, so i think something could happen. when you unleash this type of situation that's getting more violent. the syrians are starting to do things they hadn't done and they are starting to use the helicopters and that just and bomb indiscriminately to the point where you know, it doesn't become -- in the western media. unfortunately it has in many

ways and the news cycle cover something else or go the elections, the convention what happened in libya than libya and so forth. >> if something happens and the humanitarian world level that compels international community to act, that is when it might happen but he knows they are reluctant to do that. >> david thank you very much for a very informative presentation. i think you brought out some very important points about what is happening in the middle east versus the west interpretation of how we see it. assad definitely realizes or at least he feels as though it's the outside people. we as a country and america have said we are going to asia, which leaves the bad guys to come in

and say that their territory and it seems like that is what is going on. that leaves that in yahoo! in israel feeling pretty isolated. how do you think that plays out? >> in terms of arab-israeli? [inaudible] >> well we are in a situation with the arab spring, the lack of progress in the arab-israeli issue. this is a very tumultuous time obviously. i think that it's going to take a generation to play itself out. i think there are going to be convulsions for the next 10 or 20 years. we are going to have to deal with them at some level. unfortunately, there are these types of convulsions, there are not -- there's not much incentive for peace and you know i have always thought that for an arab-israeli

comprehensive arab-israeli peace you have to have all of the important players, leadership, a single leader to be committed to it. .. >> i see a lot of

convulsions, a lot of unknowns. u.s. policy adjusting, readjusting, asse ssing to the unpredictable situation. in my view there is a lot of opportunities in the wake of the arabs bring. we're worried about what groups are coming to power with of muslim brotherhood. i would be less fearful of

that. this is new. i talked to about what happened with the islam film and the reaction to it. of this different conceptual paradigm looking at the reactions, but it was a horrible film. $5 million budget? really? somebody pocketed a lot of money. it was insulting. but no reason to kill people in response. in the arab muslim world world, there was genuine outrage comment social leaders taking a vantage. it reminded me of the hostage crisis where revolutionary guards capture the 52 hostages in the embassy. that was a of political gain to outmaneuver other forces

in the revolutionary movement as it with the united states pro lot of those are a part of that that could be more extremist elements trying to make their mark where there is more. the few good things about regimes, i have been in the embassy and syria where they say we are about to have a protest. negative out. they will get the students students, security agency and go to the company's we will go protest the u.s. and spray paint and throw eggs. that there is not that now. these regimes are pretty

weak. maybe and long term that is good bet this is the convulsion happening. with the paradigm, most of the people protesting were brought up in the authoritarian environment. were nothing was produced unless sanctioned by the government. nothing. films, books, and nothing. they look at the world from their viewpoint and thinks it has to be sanctioned because that is what happens. they have not experienced real free speech or freedom of expression. speaking of the revolution when carter boasted the shot of iran. in lafayette park. there were protests.

there are protests of all sorts every single day. these were american and iranians protesting the shock. the revolutionaries conclude an arid -- concluded the u.s. was abandoning fish job because we would not allow the protest. they thought from their own experience this design happened unless it is orchestrated by the government. that energize the opposition to think the u.s. is abandoning them. that is a different conceptual paradigm of the world. >> can you explain the russian position? less to do with russia and america. >> good question.

many different levels. of course, they have the arms relationship, they sell arms to syria and because of sanctions arms syria is that more important very small and not kept up well but there on a port in the mediterranean. these are some of the practical aspects. there's a lot of institutional inertia up. syrians and the soviet union had a long standing relationship. not always fruitful seeing eye-to-eye.

there is a bureaucratic institution was asian that is hard to change at all levels of the bureaucracy. diplomats have ties. you cannot say we will just quit. in addition to eaton is running for policy. there were disagreements between him and medvedev when he was president. he abstained on the security council vote on libya. putin was very critical. there was a flip between the two. putin started to research and self by fall 2011 and foreign policy that russian had vetoed successive attempts to take action against the syrian regime. that was the resolution to

protect civilians that nato and the u.s. used it to unseat muammar qaddafi. also i rio violent tangible issue. they see the protests that occurred in russia earlier in the year against to 10 days see the hand of the non state says why they kicked out the ngo organizations supported by the u.s. and last few days. he sees his position similar. they don't like change in the middle east a few u.s. intervention made the entire middle east worse. they don't want to see it

happen again in syria. but they have to be careful. to bring up the shot of iran but a great example. we incurred the wrath. when you cut ties with a leader who was unpopular in his own country? i know the russians are having discussions about this. how long do we stay? this is an international test of power between the united states and russia as it asserts itself for the response going on for about a decade now. do you know, the regime will change when the russians start to change

their tune. [laughter] >> i have read both books with the interesting metaphor this might go corleone who was not meant to be hit -- the godfather. it was his brother. then he gets worse and worse. to meet that is the most spine chilling watching bashar he is getting worse and worse. >> but now he is michael at the end of godfather ii. he said i will change the family business at the end of part to he is his father. >> thank you for coming. [applause]

>> this book is about liberals, and not democrats. it is dedicated to the peculiar brand of america and that self identifies as a liberal, lives life as a liberal wishing most of us were liberal. think like michael moore. nancy pelosi. [laughter] your local college professor. the driver of a crazy car with bush is hitler bumper stickers. [laughter] think of a check out help with the master's degree of gender studies with the headband at the whole foods store. [laughter] they dominate professions

that leave an imprint in this great country. paternalism, arts, academia, the music industry, and america's fastest growing entertainers cirque du soleil acrobats. who are these people that call themselves liberals? to lose such a big impact? what motivates them? lake in answer these the questions. i have been watching him closely over 30 years like jane goodall studies champs champs -- chimpanzees in their natural habitats without judgment. [laughter] in silence mostly we barely speak the same language. i have been tireless i have broke bread with them coming humored comedies, it imitated and even love to some of them. some of my best friends are

liberals are part of my family. my commitment to understanding the roles some question mental-health. but i read "the new yorker" magazine. i went to see "the vagina monologues." i listened two npr per cryer learned everything by a tune in to all things considered [laughter] i even watched my car been footprint as much has a man who lives in dallas with his air-conditioned home can. liberals to not love many things they endlessly tried to fix, amend, adjust every aspect of everybody's daily life. syncing of america's faults, ills, liberals like