or where it said that the statements must be made with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bod little harm or death. where it talked about intent for many pages. so you might have taken away the impression this was a subjective intent test but, you know, it is not clear that is actually what they were focused on in that case. . .

next i'm not going to be as likely to speak out. but you might wonder whether intense is the stand that's necessary to avoid chilling effect problems. maybe recklessness is enough. maybe negligence. you should've known people think this was threatening. so it's not clean it from a chilling effect perspective, and if it's from some of the perspective the court hasn't made clear why our what that is. arguably their decide this question before but arguably they were totally focused on it. when they decide it and hey, they're the supreme court. if you want to decide it twice, they can certainly do that. the other case is read versus town of gilbert involving a town in arizona the past a sign utah, lots of towns maybe play with your own town silos about permanent signs, kind of signs can be up and where they can be up and how long they can be up and the sort of thing. it's all those review of local

government. account of gilbert has a law that treats different temporary signs like campaign signs, campaign posters for different kinds of tempered signs differentdifferent ly. and that's one set of rules for political signs, one set of rules for ideological signs. been other rules for other essentially. there's a church, the good news converted church has signs, they qualify as directional under the town of gilbert's sign law. that is, they show people where to go to come to the services, pull in here to go to the service. those site are treated differently from the political signs and from the ideological signs. they have to be different sizes. they can only be out for a certain amount of time. this implicates an area of first mmo called content discrimination. the supreme court said, famously, above all those the first amendment means that the government has no power to restrict expression because of

its message, its ideas, its subject matter were content. the question is is that's what's going on with this sort of sign law? in previous cases, any type of classification based on subject matter, anything that restricts free speech based on subject matter like different treatment for political things or ideological things or other things, the supreme court has frowned upon. by frowned upon i mean ridiculed and invalidated. when it comes to sign into law there's this issue because it seems like probably towns are ot trying to discriminate against certain types of messages. probably what they want is to be able to regulate the us that the quality of the environment while also giving room for campaign posters and other things they think are important. which the supreme court has said is important. the question here is, is what matters this law treats different things carefully based

on the content, or is what matters kind of the motive behind that and the risk that there's some sort of discriminatory motive involved. so that is a very messy supreme court case they might be trying to clean up. >> you were polite in quoting directly the facebook post. are any of you familiar with them? have you seen them? what you know then is the language is not ambiguous or unclear. in a certain context it's clearly perceived to be threat, and what makes it more complicated and he's going to be an artist. is claiming these are rap space he claims these are rap lyrics, which i think of them more as free first maybe, but what ever artistic medium he came after he claims be a part of, i respect that. so there is this kind of question floating around where one way in which this type of problem could arise is when people are involved in artistic

expression where they don't intend to convey a serious threat. what they're doing is something that's created. so this is a particular application of this larger question of what type of intent is necessary in order for this speech to be unprotected. and although the statements themselves are pretty disturbing, the fact that it does remind the court, welcome any rule you make is going to implicate artistic media, that's an important aspect of the case. >> janai, please. >> it also is innovation in terms of an evidentiary standard when we're dealing with criminal defense cases, and this is, already in a number of cases and most jurisdictions have actually held that it is admissible to bring into the record violent rap lyrics, artistic expression that seems threatening. and so this is not deciding that

issue but i think it is broader of applications that this is, in fact, protected speech and there's a stronger argument to say that information is not or should not be admissible in a criminal defense trial. however, if it isn't, then i guess you go in another way, in more jurisdictions. >> that's a very, very interesting issue. this is the closest the supreme court has ever gotten to that evidentiary question. >> in these cases the court seems to playing a can you top this game. i mean, the funeral protests days would've been a law professor's worst nightmare for the hypothetical. you don't want the supreme court to be deciding free speech along on the horrible facts of this case. and not this one, and what's next? >> i shudder to think. >> well next up, the eloquently in my notes, faq for terrific

briefing. welcome to the club. you are our newest panelist year on the docket series. i have listed here, steve, other cases. because we decided we could put these into any type category but there of the cases worth highlighting and steve graciously volunteered to go -- to be the go to guy. you were up. >> the first one want to talk about, and one talked about how same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of this air or this generation. sadly one of the cases i want to talk about is the civil rights era of about 40 years ago. it's a case involving pregnancy discrimination. in 1976, the supreme court ruled that discrimination in the workplace against pregnant women was not sex discrimination and, therefore, was not covered by title vii of the 1967 -- 1964

civil rights act. congress amended title vii in 1978 passing something called the pregnancy discrimination act to say, to try to change that and basically say that discrimination involving pregnancy should be seen as gender discrimination under title vii. fast forward not quite 40 years, peggy young works as a driver at a ups facility in maryland. her job requires her to lift packages up to 70 pounds in weight. she takes a leave in order to undergo in vitro fertilization to try to become pregnant. she succeeds and becomes pregnant, and when she tries to go back to work, her doctors tell her that she cannot lift packages more than 20 pounds without risking her pregnancy.

so she asks ups, which is covered by its own collective bargaining agreement, she asks ups for an accommodation is called a light duty assignment. she would continue to work, but she would be in a job where she was doing a lighter job that didn't require her to put her pregnancy in jeopardy. under the collective bargaining agreement, ups said no, you're not eligible for a light duty assignment, and since you can't perform your regular job requiring 70 pounds, you basically can't come back to work until your pregnancy is over. she eventually lost her salary and medical benefits under the circumstances. so what ups says it is our policy is that we are complying with the pregnancy discrimination act. we treat everybody the same under particular work conditions.

we are not discriminating against people on the basis of pregnancy. they say we will accommodate people with light duty work under three circumstances. wine is that they have been injured on the job. to is if they have lost their department of transportation eligibility for a trucker's license. and 30 is the they are required or entitled to accommodations under the americans with disabilities act, meaning they have a disability. well, ups says pregnancy is not a disability under the ada. she hasn't lost her eligibility and she's not injured on the job. so we're not discriminating against her. we are treating the her the same as we would treat anybody else. she doesn't meet those qualifications. so they refuse to hire her. she loses benefits. she gets permission to sue from the equal employment opportunity commission. the case goes up on appeal to

the fourth circuit, and the fourth circuit upholds ups's policy that this is nondiscriminatory. and so she has taken the case to the supreme court. the justice department, the solicitor general was asked by the court a year ago to weigh in on this issue before the court decided whether to your the case or not. it's a very interesting briefed by the solicitor general's office. it basically says virtually all of the federal appeals courts that have considered cases like this have gotten it wrong. including this one. but you, the supreme court, could probably wait for another set of facts or another set of circumstances before you decide this case. you don't really necessarily have to take this case. and furthermore, congress was amending the americans with disabilities act to make it

clearer that pregnancy could be considered a disability in some circumstances, and the eeoc might adopt regulations that would make the case moot and resolve the problem. well, none of, congress did them in the americans with disabilities act law but the regulation didn't seem to solve the problem, so thi visibly cout has agreed to hear the case. one added a note about it, there are always a couple of cases that make wonderfully strange bedfellows, and this is one of them. there are all kinds of coalitions of civil rights groups weighing in saying that she should be entitled to be treated as if she were discriminated against on the basis of gender, that our her treatment violated title vii. there's also a coalition of pro-life antiabortion groups that have weighed in in her favor on the premise that discriminating against people

who are pregnant provides economic incentives for them to get abortions and, therefore, that's not what congress intended when it passed the pregnancy discrimination act. it intended to facilitate childbirth and pregnancy, and so they've weighed in on her side as well, which makes it kind of a fascinating friend of the court brief. my other case, that one is called young versus united parcel service but by other cases called old versus hobbes, also a civil rights case of sorts. gregory hold is a prison inmate in arkansas who as an inmate is no and outduel malika mohammad, ma it says that his muslim beliefs require him to grow a beard at least half inch in length. the arkansas department of corrections says no, thank you. they allow mustaches under their

corrections role and they have a narrow exception for quarter inch beards for people have, the logical problems. they have accommodated him in many other ways. he is allowed to have a prayer rug. is allowed to have it copy of the koran. is allowed to have a special diet. is allowed to observe muslim holidays. but they say that half inch or longer beard is a security risk. you can hide drugs in the beard. you can hide contraband, weapons, razors in the beard. and they make what seems like a fairly compelling security argument. the problem with the argument is that, according to the justice department and other briefs, more than 40 states have figured out how to accommodate this kind of request, as has the federal bureau of prisons. so it's a little hard for arkansas to maintain, you know,

we don't know how they do it but we can't do it. it's too great a security risk here. they say that one of the extenuating factors is that the person in question is a prison farm where the inmates are not in individual cells. they are in barracks like settings, that's great -- that creates a greater security risk. and also they go off the ground to work on the prison farm, meaning it might be easier for them to bring things back in to the prison here again, one of the counter arguments raised in the briefs is they don't seem worried about the inmates smuggling things in their clothes. they just seem worried about their inability to keep them from smuggling thanks in the beard as a security risk. so it seems like a kind of strange argument to be able to maintain. .com and this is all brought under a federal statute which i have to say the name of just for

the sake of saying the name of it. it is, its acronym is rluipa passed in 2000 the the supreme court has on at least one occasion said we need to defer to the expertise of prison officials when they say they are trying to maintain security. that could be a counterweight year in the way the court looks at this case. it's a legal standard and i will stop. under the statute the state has to have compelling reasons for adopting a policy that burdens of somebody's religious freedom. they need to maintain prison security might be considered to be compelling reasons. but the second part of the test is a state has to do in the narrowest possible way. the least restrictive means, and the argument here is the state

can't possibly meet that burden. they can't meet the least restrictive means so that kids will be argued early in the term in october. >> when it comes to predic prote belt of what the court might do, how does this case compared to the hobby lobby, the last religious freedom case the court decided on? >> i think hobby lobby raised spitters in terms of predictability? >> i don't like to make predictions but if i had to protect i would say it's going to hard for arkansas to overcome the fact that 40 plus other states and d.c. have all figured this out. >> one more thing about the present context but sometimes we think of the justices with the nine people who were removed from daily life. prison is one way think they're getting it. they understand that prisons right now are operating with so much discretion and getting away with so much if states can do something they will do it,

whatever it is. if you haven't been to a prison, i would encourage you to go see what it's like. justice kennedy served on a california prison commission. he cares deeply about this set of issues. i think this one is, you do, i feel comfortable arguing almost anything but this one i would not want to argue on behalf of arkansas. >> but you would encourage people the easy way? >> absolutely. >> with an open door. >> we think about a couple of the cases we talk about gilbert and holt, looking at the degree of discretion the court is either for prison officials or local officials about the signage that will go up in a town or the safety concerns but it will be interesting to see if there's any inconsistency in how much deference is given to any state official depend on the context. of course, prisons to present something of a thornier context. i agree the court has dogged the

fact that her presence it is so highly dysfunctional. so we may actually see what i think is the right decision here. >> the inmate in this case will have a solicitor general's office arguing on his side. the government, the agency maintains the bureau of prisons and i think that's pretty powerful. >> any other thoughts? we will soon come to your questions and comments. comments on the briefs i. and even questioned on the precise. -- breathes sigh. please don't start speaking into the microphone firmly in hand. before we come to that a little more discussion. i would offer the opportunity for indie to bring up something to either pop into your mind during this segment that you

didn't get a chance to say, this might be a chance to say. also if there's another case you'd like to briefly highlight. janai, back to the voting rights cases. if you look at the political landscape, it seems like maybe where into a period where we're going to be seeing a lot more cases make their way to the court. could you comment on that? is that you expectations? >> i think we're going to see a voter id case go to the cord coming out of the either wisconsin or perhaps the texas where we're living id case we just finished closing arguments in challenging the voter id laws which are some of the most strict in the country in texas today. i think that's probably the next frontier. redistricting is owed something to makes its way to the court. i don't know how much new ground there is to tread but the change is because section five is, you know, for all purposes defunct at the moment. we may start to see different challenges come to the court

that are now -- from the voting rights act which could be troublesome. >> janai mentioned the case called shelby county. i think it's a very good case, a counterweight to what open up my remarks with today, the court acting with anonymity. that was a case that struck down a kind of landmark provision of the border rights act that had been around since 1965. i argued the predecessor case for years before which the supremsupreme court had let a professional standard in 2013, they struck it down. they struck it down on this notion that something they called the equal footing doctrine, certain states or discriminate against more than others. it basically is made a. you can find in the constitution. you can find in the precedent. it's an interesting example of how, when i went to law school, it was the conservatives who preached judicial restraint.

legislation is unconstitutional. over the last 15 years we've seen a role reversal and it's the conservatives are flexing their muscles and using the courts to strike down a lot of legislation in shelby county is example a., a landmark statute passed 98 to zero by the senate and something like 421- 3 in the house, reauthorize in the house by those numbers. yet the supreme court struck it down. >> judicial activism is like gerrymandering. it depends on who's doing it. >> i think we had to mention a good likelihood the supreme court will get some abortion cases, one or more this term. they have not agreed to any abortion cases yet. there are several variations of statutes that have been ruled on or are being rolled on in the federal appeals courts. i don't know whether i would say it's a certainty but i think there's a least a good

possibility that the court will have to decide one of these abortion cases maybe this term, maybe next term. >> in the spirit of looking ahead, since what we have is a partial supreme court docket, there will be more things added before the term is up. just a couple things. i think they will continue with the first amendment the attraction but we might see more cases been granted that are transport related. one is looked at by the court and the september 20 conference. this is about a person was convicted for providing material support to a terrorist, terrorist organization, largely on the basis of ideological writings that he posted online which gets a different aspect of the same question about how much can we are words constitute a crime. it's a very unusual and very interesting case that brings up some classic first amendment

precedents. a lot of stuff happened in the lower courts involving commercial speech or speech by commercial entities i think would be the better way to put it, particularly rattling around in the d.c. circuit. claims by commercial entities that very subtypes of the closure requirements that are subject to such as country of origin labeling, that he's violate the first amendment and that the d.c. circuit decided, went on bomb this summer decide a case of the kind for the american meat institute but it's not or what will happen in that specific case on the supreme court level or if the supreme court will choose to look at any of this but there's a lot happening in cases that resemble a little bit on the speech aside kind of a hobby lobby was light on the free exercise side. it's possible we could get a very, very important that the first amendment case showing up with the next couple of years on the supreme court docket spent we'll come to question. if you want to get the microphones in play, i'll give

you a moment to do that. go ahead. raise your hand if you have a question. give our directors a little help. somewhat on this site. will get you enemy. let me quickly ask a question before come to you about the court staying relevant to i remember the technology cases like the cell phone case and now have a facebook case of is working the technology is not the focus. generally speaking how is the courtroom in keeping up with changes that change the way we live and perhaps the way we decide cases? >> i had the case last year about the company that allows you to intercept over the air television signals and watch them on the internet and so on. that just as it did get a fair amount of criticism at the argument, after the argument for people saying they didn't understand the technology and so. i just find that frankly wrong. i think the justices spent a lot of time trying to get the technology right.

i remember i court for justice breyer during the first internet case in 1990 something i was feeling at the forefront of laptop connected to the internet in the court, and so they would come to my office and in the ultimate went to the library where there were two internet terminals. they worked their tails off to understand it. it was a great opinion that the rotunda think that's true today. i think they're spending time getting technology right and most important i think 15 in technology cases is they often have gone slow and not done too much because they know what they don't know. in technology case after technology case we see that the the big exception of course is the cell phone case where they felt like no way, if you get arrested, the government can search everything on your cell phone, every picture, every medical record, every contact, every bank account, no, that's not like the old search winner of the crumpled up a cigarette content and maybe of the weapon

or something with it. the government said, the court said you could do but this is a roving work to do whatever. >> so they're keeping up to date. >> they have the law clerks keep them up-to-date on the technology. >> they are not too up to date. >> violent, californian violent videvideogame. justice kagan wenches expressing concern about the breadth of the ban and a statue. she made a comment, my law clerks are back in a chamber playing some of these games. so they can get educated. >> justice sotomayor has mention she's a fan of technology and she has more than one device that uses. i think having that degree of diversity on the bench, and i mean technological experience diversity is an important one. >> they watch a disney hd, whatever it's called.

let's go to this gentleman right here, first question. if you're just introduce yourself. tell us if you have any affiliation and ask your question. >> thank you. i'm an adjunct professor at georgetown university law center. i would like to ask professor kendrick, could you please tell us how this got to the supreme court? what's the procedural history? >> this is a case that arose in the third circuit. he was in the process of splitting up with his wife or moving out from the family home and he made some threatening statements on facebook about a coworker and got fired for that and was continue to make more getting statements online. most of us through his facebook account. so he eventually is charged mostly it's about the statements about is why. although there were some of the statements.

there's one about how many can the gardeners are nearby destined on getting into -- with one weapon how much damage he could do with a kindergarten the only question is which one, these sorts of things. >> and the fbi agent on facebook. >> yes. as people begin to investigate him he began to pile on a bit and find some new targets in the speech. eventually these arrested and is brought to trial, it's a pennsylvania case. the instruction is given at trial is the standard that i was mentioning about, or the reasonable person, what a reasonable person thinks if these were threatening statements. and that standard was upheld by the third circuit on appeal. ..

>> chargeed with a crime and fine r what? >> yes. so there's a federal statute under which he was charged, and he was arrested and charged under that statute. and it's also not clear from that statute what state of mind you need, which is part of why this whole thing has become a first amendment issue, because there's not a lot of clear direction from the statute about what's necessary. but, yes, there's a federal threat statute under which he was charged. >> as our first questioner

graciously demonstrated, i also ask you, if you could, to stand when you ask your question. if you're able to stand. we're not going to ask you to lift 70 pounds, but it gives the camera an opportunity to see you. this yesman with the microphone is next -- gentleman with the microphone is next. yes, sir. >> hi. gabriel hopkins with public justice. i have a question, a lot of the topics that the panel has covered are kind of hot button issues, and i'm wondering if there are any sort of sleeper cases, maybe procedure issues or, i don't know -- >> boring cases you'd like us to -- [laughter] >> that might have some larger impacts that people might not be anticipating. >> sure, of course. thanks. anything that comes to mind? >> well, i've got a bunch of those. [laughter] i think the one that probably will have the most significance for the nation's economy is a

case called learjet v -- [inaudible] which is basically about whether states can regulate the energy markets or whether or not it's only federal law that controls. at stake are many billions of dollars, and the question in the case is can states protect consumers with antitrust laws, or do the federal laws preempt all the state laws? the federal law is supreme p over states, and the federal government, congress, has regulated the energy markets for a long period of time. the question now is have they, have they occupied the field, basically, have they pushed away any state regulation, or can states regulate. and the energy companies say if states can regulate, then we have to play by the lowest common demom anytimer and operate -- denominator, whereas if it's a national rule, we have more certainty and predictability. again, kind of dry, but manager

that's going to matter -- something that's going to matter to each person's energy bill each month. >> there's another case, i don't know that it will necessarily have broad import, but it's relevant if we think about the economic crisis and the number of homes lost through foreclosure. this case comes under the eighth circuit and asks whether a homeowner who has a mortgage who wants to rescind that mortgage in writing within the statutory period can contact the mortgage lender in writing or must the homeowner also initiate a suit to officially rescind the mortgage. the more likely you're going to find folks finding themselves facing foreclosure, and so the economic impact of that case is something that we should probably pay some attention to. >> i wanted to follow up on one thing that neal said. of just generally speaking, you know, when you asked the question what are the boring cases --

>> well, boring wasn't your word, just to be fair. >> no, sorry, i'm putting words in your mouth. neal immediately brings up a preemption case, and i just think preemption generally is an underappreciated part of a supreme court's docket. i think partly people don't put all the preemption cases together because they arise under so many different subject matter areas, but it's a hugely important question of who gets to decide questions, the states or federal government. and everything from products liability to energy regulation. they're doing lots and lots of preemption cases, and it's important to keep an eye on them. >> we have time for plenty more questions, but i have to do a little business here. neal, it is 6:7, and i know -- 6:17, and i know neal needs to leave, so if you see him get up and leave in the next two, three minutes, it's not anything you said. [laughter] neal, thank you. we'll probably be in some discussion, thank you for coming.

[applause] and as we continue, i just have a quick question. all of us up here have, either currently teach or have taught. steve has some students in the audience. could you identify yourself if you're part of steve's class? some students here from my penn state class. let's get a look at you as well. [laughter] we are penn state. [laughter] it's not a competition. >> there's a former student here. >> a former student. okay, well, we're honest. [laughter] and the teacher evaluation forms will be available -- [laughter] after the program. okay. who is next? i had a -- well, the woman here has disappeared, strangely enough. i think she followed neal katyal. we'll go to you. >> hi. megan schuler, i'm an attorney in the civil rights division. i'm interested in the pregnancy discrimination act case, if you have an outcome, and whether the supreme court will address at all whether the aba amendments

act does, in fact, protect pregnant women. >> um, as i said, i hate to make predictions, but it's -- if i had to guess where the court is going to go with this, it looks to me like the court here and the other -- this is the fourth circuit, but other courts that have wrestled with this are getting it wrong, that this is not consistent with what congress intended when they passed the pregnancy discrimination act, and at least to the extent that the 2008 amendments to the americans with disabilities act should have at least boosted that argument, that that doesn't seem to be helping either. so i would guess if i were going to predict that the court will rule against united parcel service and for peggy young. >> thanks. who's next? right over here on the side. yes.

>> i'm aria, this ne -- arianne -- >> can you stand, please, so we can get a better look at you? want to make sure we check who we're talking to. >> i happened to be looking at facebook, and i think -- i have no idea, but i saw there was a man with the same name, and he's posting on facebook. i wanted you to talk big picture. either way the court rules, what is the impact on the average person who posts on facebook? what's sort of the big picture impact of this case? >> you're talking about current posts. >> i can't say for sure that -- but i just thought it was interesting, and i thought what's the bigger picture in. >> were they over the top? [laughter] >> well, so, you know, i think the law professor in me resists the idea that what this case is about and what we should think it's about is the law of facebook. you know, there's a kind of risk of creating what we like to call the law of the horse, right?

the law of an inanimate object or a particular medium or something like that. and the first amendment area, by and large, the supreme court has resisted doing that. they want rules here that are all-purpose, that apply to people who are speaking face to face, who are publishing in a newspaper, who are publishing in facebook, who are tweeting, whatever. now, that doesn't mean that they aren't sensitive to the fact that our chosen media change and that this is probably not a standard that's going to get played out through facts very much. it's going to get played out through facebook and twitter and other things. they want manager that's not -- something that not medium sensitive, that applies across all media. and whether they're thinking about facebook or just people speaking or whatever, partly they will be concerned about the question of is our standard something that's going to chill people who engage in speech that's borderline but is,

ultimately, protected? they, by and large, historically in the first amendment they worry about the impact that their rules for unprotected speech will have on protected speech. the question is, what kind of rule would you need to have to make sure people feel comfortable posting on facebook, to make sure people feel comfortable engaging face and face. and that's not something -- and, by the way, that's not the only thing they could be worried about here, but it's the type of emotion your question raises. what they won't be trying to do is make the law of the facebook. >> and i think, i don't know if you would agree, leslie, i think if they opt for an intent requirement, either they say it's in the statute or they say the first amendment requires it, then i think that gives you a lot more leeway in all realms of speech. you can say things that if the

requisite intent is not there, you probably can continue to say. if i post on facebook and say, you know, if you don't take that picture of me down, i'm coming after your family, if it's a reasonable person standard, i may be in more trouble for that post than if it's an intent requirement. i think it would be fairly clear that you can't tell that i really intended to make a threat in those circumstances, but a reasonable person might have felt threatened in those circumstances. that's sort of a simple version of the difference between the two standards. >> although -- oh, sorry. you know, but i think, so i do think, i do think that's exactly right, and people proceed on the understanding that a subjective intent requirement would be protective of more speech, it would be harder to prove that someone had the requisite intent to say that their speech was

unintended. but it's a tricky thing, and ultimately juries are going to be deciding it or it's going to come down to evidentiary questions about what do we read, what gets let in by the judge and, you know, contradicting a jury's assessment of what someone is' intent is -- someone's intent is, is kind of a hard thing to do. it depends on if they say anything on how to implement that. if it's a question for judges, what types of evidence -- >> well, and if it gets a new trial -- >> right. >> -- in which intent is required, i'm not sure he wins. >> that's right. >> that could make this case pretty interesting because they could get both outcomes. they could use this as where the language is too strong. >> okay. thanks. who's next? yes, ma'am. hi. >> hi. my name's brianna, and i'm a

politics, policy and law scholar at american university. and just a general question. so what does the court's recent decision in american express mean for the future of class action lawsuits, and do you see these types of lawsuits diminishing in number due to this decision? >> are you one of professor vermeil's students? >> no. >> we'll find out who her professor is. [laughter] i'm not a civil procedure expert -- >> [inaudible] >> i mean, the court has been really hostile to class actions in recent years, and there has already been a significant reduction, i think, in the number of class actions in the courts. the requirement by the court that the commonality of interests of the parties in the class has to be much more rigorous than before the sort of spate of rulings in the last few

years. i think it's made class actions more difficult. have you had some experience with them? >> no, i would say that's just absolutely right. that's just one in a line of cases that make it difficult. you think about walmart a few years ago that also narrowed it and, you know, preceding that there's been a huge attack on the ability of lawyers to get attorneys' fees in these cases. what i think we often ignore is how these procedural rules have an impact on vindicating rights. so we talk about the substantive cases quite a bit and the rights that are at stake, but they're only enabled by these procedural rules. and so they are as consequential in many ways as the substance, because you'll never get to the substance if you don't have the right procedural entree. i'm glad that you raised that, that's a great question. i don't know of many cases on the docket this term that raise those issues or even that are pending, but who knows? >> i think we have time for one

more question if someone has one. yes, sir, right there in the middle. thank you. >> hi, thanks. phil elia, i'm an attorney on capitol hill. just had a question about the alabama redistricting case and wondering if section two of the vra was in play there? >> that's a great question. >> could you explain for the uninformed what that is? >> i talked about section five already, and that is part of the voting rights act that's limited to specific jurisdiction, that was limited until shelby county v. holder where the court, basically, put that on hold. what is still in full effect is section two of the voting rights act which, again, prohibits any voting practice, procedure, policy that has a discriminatory impact on minority communities that lessen in any way the ability of those communities or those voters to elect a candidate of choice. to exercise their voting power on equal footing.

so section two was raised in this case. it hasn't been the focal point. the defense was compliant, section five. section two has been less developed. of course, those of us who care very much about section two are concerned that the court may decide to reach into section two and talk about it, and there are lots of concerns about whether it may, there may be arguments about its constitutionality. i don't think this is the case that's really teeing that up squarely, so i don't think the court's going to reach that far to get to it, but that's always a concern because that really is, at this point, the last piece of the voting rights act that's currently in effect to really provide the broad protections against race discrimination in the political process. >> earlier neal had said same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of our times. hearing you talk about voting rights, the civil rights issues of pastimes are still unresolved. >> i might push back on that

one. both of them them, there is no hierarchy. there are just, sadly, too many to deal with. >> i want to say a couple words of thanks to our friends from the american bar association here in d.c. with us and kathy hock back in chicago who couldn't be here today. also if you want any more information from the wilson center or the aba division for public education, please check our web sites. that's where people who are joining us via webcast or c-span can get a copy of this useful publication. i want to thank the audience here, the audience watching on c-span and also via the wilson center webcast, and then i want to ask all of you to join me with one final bit of business which is thanking our outstanding panel, the three still with us and neal -- [applause] thanks for coming, thanks for watching. that's all for tonight. [inaudible conversations]

>> and turning now to u.s. military strikes against isis that started for the first time in syria last night, targeting isis training camps, bases and checkpoints in at least four provinces. president obama made remarks earlier today saying we're going to do what is necessary to take the fight to this terrorist group. the operation included five other countries, the president announced; saudi arabia, jordan, the uae, qatar and bahrain. the new york times also reports that u.s. central command says 14 targets linked to isis were hit. the pentagon will hold a briefing in about 15 minutes. we'll have that for you live, 11 a.m. eastern time, and that'll be here on c-span2 the. some reaction from members of congress including the chair of the house armed services committee, buck mckeon. he issued a statement saying:

>> and ed royce, the chair of the house foreign affairs committee, says: >> we'll bring you related briefind updates on the c-span networks. president obama made a statement this morning about last night's airstrikes in partnership with five arab countries before he departed for the u.n. climate change summit in new york city. he'll be speaking at a number of events today in new york including at the summit. we'll have live coverage at 12:50 p.m. eastern time and at 2:00. the president will address the clinton global initiative. we'll have live coverage of that also here on c-span2. in just a few minutes, live at the pentagon for the dod briefing. before that gets underway, he's some information about -- here's some information about tomorrow's u.n. security council meeting which will be led by president obama. >> joining us now from new york

is jay solomon, foreign affairs correspondent for the wall street journal. thanks for being with us this morning. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: i want to start this morning with isis. the president, of course, will be headed to the united nations general assembly. what can we expect to hear from him on the topic? >> guest: well, he's giving both a major speech this week and also chairing a special session of the u.n. security council looking at the flow of foreign fighters into iraq and syria to support the islamic state. so i think you're going to hear the president keep building on this idea of a united coalition against the islamic state, that this is not just a u.s. war, this is a threat to the entire region and europe, and that's why you've seen secretary of state kerry and others put such a focus on building arab participation in the airstrikes which started last night in syria.

we saw the uae, saudi arabia, bahrain, jordan and qatar to some degree take part in the military action. three of the nations actually were involved in the airstrikes. and i think this was a big diplomatic coup or victory for the white house, if you will, because there was a lot of fear that if you went in this alone, the u.s. would be seen as launching, you know, another war in the muslim world, another war on the arab world. and to have these key arab states participating was a big deal for the white house. and i think you'll hear the president build on this, build on the idea of the threat posed by isis and the need to cut off the funding of the organization and the need to cut off the foreign fighters moving into the organization. so i think that will really be the focus both of his u.n. speech and his address at the security council. >> host: we've talked a lot about this idea of coalition building when it comes to combating isis, and so i'm

curious for your thoughts on, you know, we put up the list of those nations that partnered with the united states for these airstrikes that happened overnight. but there are no western countries involved in that. is that something that you expect to change? >> guest: well, the french have been involved in the attacks on iraq in recent weeks, so there has been western european involvement. they've been, the brits, the germans and the french have all been very heavily involved in providing weapons or humanitarian aid through military, you know, drops and air drops to the kurdish forces, to the iraq -- some of the iraqi people who have been targeted by islamic states. so there is western or european involvement in the military operation. you're right, though, last night there were no other european fighter jets involved. the french have cited their

fears that by taking out isis, you could end up strengthening syrian president bashar al assad. the french have been very aggressive in trying to remove him from office. so the syrian component of this air war has been a little bit more tricky. it's still very interesting that so many arab states were willing to take part in military operations against sunni muslims which is, basically, what is the body of the islamic state. so it's unclear if you might see more french, british, australian participation moving forward. that's definitely a possibility, and i think you'll see president obama, secretary kerry continuing to try to build and open up this coalition to more countries. one of the key countries that wasn't involved as well is turkey which is a nato member and is neighboring these countries. that, i think the turks are starting to feel even more

isolated for not being involved. they had nearly 50 of their diplomats kidnapped by isis in mosul, in the iraqi city of mosul who were recently released. turkish officials had cited these hostages as the reason they were reluctant to be more heavily involved. but maybe that will change now. i still think there's skepticism, but i'd like to turkey as another important cog of this emerging coalition in the days and weeks ahead. >> host: our guest is jay solomon, he's the foreign affairs correspondent at "the wall street journal." now to join our conversation this morning, you can reach us on the phones. democrats, 202-585-3880. republicans, 202-585-3881. and dependents, 202-585-3882. jay solomon, i want to take a step back now and talk about news meetings in kind of a broader context. what's on the agenda for tomorrow and, specifically, what are you looking forward to?

>> guest: well, tomorrow, you know, the rhythm of the speeches by the major world leaders really take, takes off. president obama speaks, egyptian president mr.al sissi speaks. what i'm looking for is some of the stuff we've already talked to, a sense of how this air war, this conflict with isis will be, you know, touched on how it will be described. we have arab support at least from some of the arab states, but how will the iranian president, president rouhani describe it. countries that have traditionally been hostile or skeptical towards u.s. power regionally, some of the developing countries whether it's india, south africa, brazil, how will they describe it? and the russians are going to be very key, because the

russians -- as the closest ally of syrian president bashar al assad -- have been pressing the u.s. to get a security council resolution in order to do airstrikes inside syria. they've been, basically, demanding that the u.s. coordinate any military operations with the syrian regime, something the u.s. says it won't and hasn't done, although the syrian regime overnight put out a statement saying that they had been tipped off that the air campaign against isis was going to start. so i think as these speeches start to gain momentum over the next few days, i'd listen to how this is being defined. the u.n. often is, you know, a real voice for developing countries, third world countries, and they often are historically very hostile or suspicious of u.s. military activities no matter where there was, whether it was in afghanistan or the first iraq war. so i'd look for that.

i think outside of isis you're going to see a lot of focus on climate change. the secretary's been giving speeches about that. he's going to be heavily involved. efforts to combat ebola virus in africa is going to be another major theme. i mean, this u.n. general assembly, i think, is particularly interesting because many dip diplomats, world leades think the world has not been this unstable in many ways since the late 1970s with the isis threat, with russian president vladimir putin's push into ukraine, with, we were talking about the ebola virus, continued instability in afghanistan, concerns about china making territorial gains in the south china sea. so there really are just so many issues that are facing the global community at the same time and how they're going to address them, is going to be dominating talks throughout the

week. >> host: let's go to the phones. first up in birmingham, alabama, gwen on the democrats' line. >> caller: good morning. i'm calling because i am so proud and thankful that president barack obama is the president of the united states at this time. and i am glad that he did not go it alone for the republicans to, quote-unquote, obama's going alone. he got the arab nations to come in and help strike isis. that was very, very smart of him. and president obama, i mean, he get a lot of criticism, but i love this man that takes his time. he's patient. he don't rush into anything as the commander in chief. he has to give the orders to do whatever to the military, so i think it's very smart of him. wewe got qatar onboard, i know saudi arabia from when i was looking at the news last night, the breaking news. but i'm glad that president

barack obama is the president because john mccain, oh, my god, we might have been at war a long time ago with many people dead. thank you and have a great day. >> host: your thoughts. >> guest: it's been interesting to watch president obama's kind of evolution on striking syria over the past year. as many viewers probably remember last august, president obama basically committed the u.s. to launching airstrikes against the assad regime after u.s. intelligence, european intelligence concluded that he had used gas, serin gas on his own people, killing more than a thousand people in a damascus suburb. he really set the ball rolling, and then he didn't do it, and that really caused a lot of irritation amongst many of america's allies, particularly in the middle east. they felt that, you know, if the u.s. set red lines like he did and didn't enforce them, that

was only going to kind of encourage hostile countries whether in the middle east or elsewhere to sort of test the u.s.' will, test the west's will. and by not going forward with that, he sort of gave them encouragement. and throughout this year there's been this continued hemming and hawing and sort of questioning of whether, if the u.s. waited too long, was the rise of isis basically a factor that the administration didn't back more moderate elements inside syria against the assad regime, didn't weaken the assad regime to help these more moderate syrian rebels, because they didn't do it, it allowed isis and the more extreme group toss move in. and it's still been very unclear whether the policy would change until these horrific videos came out, you know, over the the last month of american journalists being beheaded by islamic state. i think at that time you really saw a shift in u.s. public

support for a conflict. there's opinion a lot of war weariedness -- there's been a lot of war weariness, but i think these horrific images of these americans being executed by isis really did seem to galvanize public opinion. and i think president obama, you know, responded to that in some ways. he has been, as the caller said, he's been pretty methodical over the past four or five weeks of working to build this coalition which is, you know, key to helping the u.s. moving forward. but i still think like almost all military activities the u.s. has been involved in in recent decades from bosnia, kosovo, libya, if the u.s. military is involved, they are going to be doing the majority of the airstrikes, they're going to be in control of the command of these missions, you know? if the threat to u.s. airmen

will be high as this operation goes ahead, so it's very early days, and u.s. officials are really excited that they brought so many coalition members onboard so far. but at the end of the day, it's still going to be u.s. air power that's going to be leading this charge and still at risk as the strikes comet. from what we expect weeks, months, this is not going to be over anytime soon. >> host: let's go to maryland where ray is on the line for independents. you're on with jay solomon of the "wall street journal." >> caller: ing good morning. these airstrikes, i don't feel, are going to be fully effective. i've been in the military, and they're only going to give you so much effectiveness. you're going to have to put boots on the ground. there's only so much targets you can strike. after that, what do you do? you need boots on the ground. i don't have a kid going to war,

but i don't think this has been thought out very clear, and, you know, i just don't like the strategy. i don't know where he gets his advice for, but we are going to get involved with boots on the ground. you can't rely on training, you know, the iraqis and the people of that country. i'll take my comments offline. thank you. >> host: jay, your thoughts. >> guest: i think the caller makes a good point, because that is one of the main questions, the main issues now as this war goes into the next stage; whose troops are really going to go in and clear out isis after they've been weakened by these airstrikes? there's reports from the ground that isis was moving assets ahead of these, of last night's air campaign because they knew it was basically trying to protect themselves. so the u.s. officials themselves acknowledge there's going to have to be boots on the ground to clean this out, to push back

isis once they're weakened by the airstrikes. so far the plan, basically, is the iraqi military and empowering more of the sunnis within the arab community to be a front spear on the operations against isis. the kurdish forces, the kashmir per herring georgia in the north -- peshmerga in the north to be a force in this battle and the moderate syrian rebel forces in syria, on the other side of the border, to push back isis. most of these fighters have -- >> good morning, everybody. as you all know, last night and early this morning u.s. and partner nation forces began undertaking military actions against terrorists in syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and tomahawk land attack missiles. our strikes were against two particular groups; isil and the core zone group. the decision was made by the

u.s. central command commander under authorization granted him by the commander this chief. these strikes were taken as part of the president's comprehensive strategy to degrade and, ultimately, destroy isil and to protect the united states and its partners. our coalition partners in the fight against isil -- which in these strikes included jordan, the united arab emirates, bahrain and saudi arabia with qatar in a supporting role -- continue to be a critical part of our strategy. secretary hagel appreciates their partnership and in particular the hard work and the strong leadership shown by our central command commander, general lloyd austin, who gave the secretary an update on the operation throughout it. we did not coordinate with the assad regime. while the united states did inform the syrian regime through our u.n. ambassador of our intent to take action, there was no coordination and no military-to-military communication. in terms of the corazon group, these strikes were undertaken to

disrupt imminent plotting against the united states and western targets. these terrorists have established a safe haven in syria to plan external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit westerners to conduct operations. the united states took action to protect our interests and to remove their capability to act. in a minute i will turn it over to the joint staff's j3 director of operations, lieu innocent general -- lieutenant general bill mayville, but before i do, i think it's important to note just a few things. first -- and while i'll let the general get into the details -- our initial indication is that these strikes were very successful. second, while it's not our policy to discuss future operations, i can tell you that last night's strikes were only the beginning. for this reason, there may be some tactics, techniques and procedures that we just won't be able to address here today to preserve options that we may

want available to us in the future. and finally, we're going to leave it up to our partner nations to detail the specifics of their involvement. i think you've already seen statements by the jordanians and by bahrain as well acknowledging their involvement. and i'll also just note that secretary hagel's immensely proud of the u.s. personnel who participated in and supported the strikes, and he deeply appreciates their service and their sacrifices. with that, i'll turn it over to general mayville. >> yes, sir. good morning. last night at the direction of the president of the united states, u.s. military forces under the command of united states central command in conjunction with coalition partners in the region executed a series of strikes against isil and other terrorist targets in syria. coalition strikes targeted isil training camps, headquarters, command and control facilities, logistical nodes, armored vehicles and leadership. u.s. military forces also

executed unilateral precision strikes against the corazo to n group, an aq affiliated terrorist organization located in northwest syria. intelligence reports indicated that the group was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against western targets and potentially the u.s. homeland. last night's strikes were organized in three ways. the first wave began around midnight in syria or 8:30 eastern standard time. i draw your attention to the map. the first slide, please. in the first wave of strikes, the uss burke in the red sea and the uss philippine in the northern arabian gulf launched more than 40 tomahawk cruise missiles in eastern and northern syria. it is the target area around aleppo and araka.

the majority of the tomahawk strikes were against corazon group compounds, workshops and training camps. the second wave consisted of f-22 raptors in their first combat role, f-15 strike eagles, f-16s, b-1 bombers and drones launching around 9 p.m. eastern standard time against targets in northern syria. targets included isil headquarters, training camps, barracks and combat vehicles. the final wave occurred shortly after midnight eastern standard time. f-18s from the uss george h.w. bush in the northern arabia gulf and regionally-based u.s. f-16s, among others, attacked targets in eastern syria to include isil training camps and combat vehicles. principally in that circle to the far east around darzar.

coalition partners participated in both the second and third waves, supporting with a range of combat capabilities that began with combat air patrols to actual strikes on targets. the preponderance of coalition support was in the third wave. 96% of all the delivered munitions were precision-guided munitions, and i'd like now to show you several before-and-after pictures that highlight the e -- effects of these missions. the next slide. next slide, please. this is, this first picture shows an isil finance center in araka. it's a before and after. on the left is the before and on the right, as you look at it, is the after. it was engaged with tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the

uss philippine sea. now, the intended target was the communications array on the roof of the building. the tomahawk cruise misis sills detonated as air bursts with the effects focusing on the communications array. and as you can see on the right-hand side in the picture, the after picture, the rooftop communications is haley damaged -- heavily damaged while the surrounding structure remains largely intact. if i can go to the next slide, please. this second picture shows an isil command and control building in araka that was targeted by u.s. air force f-22s during the second wave of strikes. and this strike was the first time the f-22 was used in a combat role. the flight of the f-22s delivered gps-guided munitions, precision munitions. targeted, again, only the right side of the building. you can see on the left-hand side the before shot, and then you can see as you look at it on

the right-hand side the after shot. and you can see that the control, the command and control center where it was located in the building was destroyed. if i can go to the third slide. the third and final picture is a residence near the town of ab cue -- abu ca mall, and it's along the border between syria and iraq. this was a residential area that had been used for a training site and for a logistics site for isil fighters. it was engaged with multiple gps-guided missiles, munitions fired from f-18s launches from the uss george h.w. bush. and as you can see, the aircraft targeted location within the boundaries within the fence line of the residence. there's a video here that shows exactly how that was done, so give me a moment here to switch the video, and i'll let you look

at that as well, of this same target. [background sounds] >> again, you'll note that the effects of the strike were containment in the boundaries of the target area. as these pictures in the video highlight the strikes involved multiple aircraft and cruise missiles from several countries. it was through the careful planning and coordination of u.s. central command's combined arms operations, combined air operations center located in the region that these strikes were successful with minimal collateral damage. last night's strikes are the beginning of a credible and sustainable, persistent campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy isil. our immediate tasks are to continue the degradation of isil in syria and iraq, to build and

strengthen regional partners and to build a regional coalition. to assist in placing will be key security portion -- iraqi security forces and peshmerga forces, to support the broader diplomatic efforts in the region, to implement a train and equip program and continue to work with iraqi security forces and min cities. and with that -- ministries. with that, we'll take your questions. >> [inaudible] general mayville, when you talked about the mission continuing, you did not mention the corazon group. can you tell us at all if you expect more against them, should they assume this is it? and do you have any battle damage assessment against them? do you believe it's possible you killed their leader? do you have any sense of what you accomplished, anything you're able to give us of what you accomplished -- >> as i'm sure you probably know, we're till assessing the effects -- still assessing the

effects of our strikes. we've been watching this group closely for some time. we believe the corason was nearing the execution of a phase of an attack on europe or the homeland. we know they have attempted to recruit westerners to serve as operatives or to infiltrate back into their home lambeds. the corazon group is clearly not focused on the syrian people. they are establishing roots in syria in order to advance attacks against the west and the homeland. >> do you have any assessment of what you did accomplish in those particular strikes last night? >> it would be premature to comment on the effects. we need to do a little bit more study. >> >> [inaudible] >> is it going to take you a year to train the free syrian army, the 5,000 troops on the ground, are you going to put ground forces or need forces in syria between now and then and, if not, how is in any different from 12 years of war in iraq and

afghanistan? why is in any different from what can a mole? >> no, we have not put and we will not put ground forces into syria. the syrian train and equip program is, as you said, we're in the beginnings of implementation. it'll be a multi-year program. it is a necessary component of the overall strategy, but as you point out in your question, it's not sufficient. >> are you concerned about not putting ground forces in? >> i think we're appropriately sized for the task that we've been given. >> [inaudible] >> general, were any leadership targets included on last night's hit list, and what results did you get? were any leadership, isis leadership taken out? >> no, we did not target individual leaders. we did, however, target command and control nodes. and we looked over time as we developed those targets for patterns of life where leadership would routinely go, and if they were there, that

usually was an indication of a command and control node. but we did not specifically target individuals. >> can you talk about credible and sustainable campaign? what does sustainable mean? how long can the american people expect these airstrikes to continue, and what shape will they take? strikes like tonight or targets of opportunity? can you look forward for us? >> what you saw today and what you saw last night were a disruption to isil forces that were enabling their strikes into iraq. and the way i would encourage you to look at this is look at what we're trying to do regionally. we are focused, first, in iraq because we have a partner in iraq to work with, the iraqi security forces, the iraqi government. but we are striking through the depths of is is il's formations -- isil's formations because we are trying to disrupt their support bases while we

enable in iraq their iraqi security forces with the help of partners to dislodge and ultimately remove isil from iraq. >> [inaudible] >> i would think of it in terms of years, yes. >> i'd like to follow up on the corazon group. you said there's evidence they represent an imminent threat to the u.s. homeland, to europe. is it your sense that the threat has been contained within syria, or is there evidence that there are operatives already outside of syria to plan for attack? >> i would want to walk away from that and not talk about intel matters here. >> well, but you did say they represent an imminent threat to the united states. people are going to know, has that threat been deterred at this point? >> let me, let me -- let us, give us some time to assess the targets and the effects we thought we had last night before we can answer that. >> [inaudible] >> you talked about these strikes as hopefully having an

effect. i wonder if you could assess a little bit, obviously, the iraq end of this campaign has been going on for a while. do you think you had an effect so far with those strikes, and what more is going, is hoped for from this wave? >> the most important thing is to create some space for the iraqi security forces to reorganize and replace leadership that needs to be replaced, to allow them to reorganize their equipment and rearm, to get their ministry connected to this newly-formed government and to allow them to get on the offensive. what we have been doing over these last couple of weeks and what last night's campaign was about was simply buying them some space so that they can get on the offensive. >> [inaudible] >> general, you talked about the

overall plan along the iraqis, peshmerga to go on the offensive, won't these strikes in syria benefit assad? you're hitting the corazon group, the isis, this benefits him, doesn't it? >> right now the task at hand is countering isil, that's job one. as you mentioned last night, we not only were doing strikes this syria, we did several strikes this support of peshmerga forces in iraq. but the principal focus right now is countering the threat to isil first to iraq, then to the region. >> but as a result of that, it's benefiting assad, isn't it? >> i wouldn't characterize the effects we had last night as benefiting assad. it's certainly causing isil to address the fact that there now is an air war against them. >> you said the syrians were informed through the u.n. that this was going to happen. we've heard a lot about their air defense system being very robust. were any of your aircraft

painted with radar coming in? was the radar turned off? anything you can -- >> yeah. the target acquisition last night, radar acquisition i would characterize as passive. >> they turned it off or what? >> i won't get into specifically what we know they did, but i think it's fair to say to assess last night it was a passive radar. >> [inaudible] >> general, can you talk a little bit about the decision to use the f-35? the f-22? >> what we were looking at was the effects we wanted to see on the target areas and what platforms in the region would be best suited to do that. we had a large menu of targets to strike from, and then we, and we chose from there. so you just, really it's less the platform than it is the effects we seek, and then it's what platform can deliver those effects. that's really the job. >> general, can you give us a sense of what percentage of munitions were dropped by arab

allies or partners and what percentage of the strikes against -- [inaudible] >> yeah. i'd -- let me let the host nations of those partner nations that provided capabilities to us last night to speak to their level of effort. >> jim. >> general, could you talk to what level of coordination there was with the moderate opposition and whether there's been any movement on the ground either on the part of an opposition force to capitalize on a strike or, in the case of the syrian government, forces? >> the reach to moderate oppositions is, rightly so, in the hands of the civilian instruments of our national capabilities. so i'll deflect that and let our state department colleagues address that. >> james? >> have you seen isis take any actions post-strike?

>> look, isis is a very well organized and very well resourced force that is an adaptive and learning force. it is -- we have -- it's too early to characterize precisely what isil has done in result of last night's attacks. but they are, they are very well funded, they are a learning organization, and they will adapt to what we've done and seek to address their shortfalls and gaps against our air campaign in the coming weeks. >> tony? >> >> question, what was the rationale for striking the financial center, specifically its electronics? was that to to disrupt electronic funds? >> principally, to look at this basis of support as well as command and control. so we saw the -- we characterized and area and the

activities going on there and decided that disrupting, striking at that would have a disruptive effect. >> going forward, does cent come now have -- centcom now have a license to strike without going through the secretary of defense for prior approval of targets, or is hagel still in the chain of command in terms of fleeting targets going forward? >> both the secretary of defense and the president are in the chain of command, they'll remain in the chain of command. smarts what targets and future -- smart what targets and future operations, i'd like to not comment other than to say that you are seeing the beginnings of a sustained campaign. and strikes like this in the future can be expected. >> can they be expected fairly quickly though? if centcom sees an opportunity, can they strike unilaterally without -- >> the operational pace, the tempo of this thing will be dictated by the facts on the ground and what the targets mean in terms of the effect we seek, which is to disrupt. it would be difficult for me to

today to kind of lay out some sort of lockstep process. it's driven by the opportunities that we see. >> could i just -- general austin had the authority, to continue to conduct strikes where and when he needs to do it? >> yeah. >> i think that gets at what you're asking. >> the report that isil is already dispersing its people to mix with the population and hide. that is going to make airstrikes extremely difficult. how are you going to maintain their effectiveness, and isn't that going to require something like -- [inaudible] maybe are you going to pretrain the syrians in this? >> you're point about the isil adapting to the airstrikes is a good one, and we have seen evidence that they're already doing that. we've seen that now as a result of the air campaign thus far in iraq.

there are other ways to deliver precise munitions than putting a jtak forward. it obviously is something that we prefer to do when collateral damage or concerns about precision in a closed environment, in an urban environment, when there is a convergence of forces is, is in play. there's obviously a desire to put something on the ground. but we don't always have to strike with jtaks forward. we've been doing this very successfully thus far in places, not only the rural places that like you saw in mount sin item jar and as we moved to support the iraqi forces as they went to mosul calm dam, but also in the he divot that area, we've been able to provide air support without putting forces forward.

and i think we will continue to look at how we do that as we move forward. >> time for just two more. erin? >> general, just to ask an earlier question a different way, what percentage of the total munitions last night were by u.s. forces? >> yeah. [laughter] the preponderance of the force was, came from u.s. platforms. >> 90%? >> i, quite honestly, will have to get into the numbers and actually count the types of munitions. it's a little bit misleading because we used different types of munitions. so we might have available to us a very precise munition that can serve as an effect with only one rocket, one missile, and others may have to serve a couple of times -- >> the vast majority of the strikes were carried out by the american -- >> the math supports that, that's correct.

>> were there any plans in support of the syrian kurds who have been fleeing now because of isis similar to what happened with yazidis? >> the supports last night in syria were in support of countering isil targets that u.s. central command developed and has been developing for some time. >> [inaudible] any kind of strikes that supported helping these syrian kurds trying to get out the way of isil? >> we haven't ruled out anything other than to continue to focus on what it's going to take to counter isil through depths of both iraq and syria. right now the way our partnership, our coalition air campaign is working is we've got the ability to find and to fix and finish, if you will let me use some military jargon there, with the assets that we have. those assets, by the way, include partners in the region. >> you've been very patient. you get the last one.

>> the syrian service -- [inaudible] and other rights groups have already said that citizens have been killed this these strikes, and they're claiming they were american strikes. do we have any confirmation that civilians have been killed, is there a way to get that tally, and how do you differentiate if it's the united states that caused that or if it's other nations? >> yeah. we are unaware of any civilian casualties. but, obviously, limited civilian casualties is a top priority for the united states. if any reports of civilian casualties emerge, we will fully investigate them. >> thanks, everybody. appreciate your time. >> if you missed any of the briefing, we'll have it up for you online shortly. video library, c-span.org. the defense department released video of tomahawk cruise missiles bombing isis targets in

syria. here's a look. >> 440, forward -- >> group seven.

>> forward. [inaudible conversations]

>> that was video provided by the defense department from last night's strikes against isis in syria. and president obama talked about the strikes earlier today from the south lawn just before he left for u.n. meetings in new york. >> good morning, everybody. last night on my orders america's armed forces began strikes against isil targets in syria. today the american people give thanks for the extraordinary service of our men and women in uniform, including the pilots who flew these missions with the courage and professionalism that we've come to expect from the

finest military that the world's ever known. earlier this month i outlined for the american people our strategy to con front the threat -- confront the threat posed by the terrorist group nope as isil. i made clear that the united states would take action against targets in both iraq and syria so that these terrorists can't find safe haven anywhere. i also made it clear that america would act as part of a broad coalition, and that's exactly what we've dope. we were joined in this action by our friends and partners; saudi arabia, the united arab emirates, jordan, bahrain and qatar. america's proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with these nations on behalf of our common security. the strength of this coalition makes it clear to the world that this is not america's fight alone. above all, the people and governments of the middle east are rejecting isil and standing up for the peace and security that the people of the region and the world deserve.

meanwhile, we will move forward with our plan supported by partisan majorities in congress to ramp up our effort to train and equip the syrian opposition who are the best counterweight to isil and the assad regime. and more broadly, over 40 nations have offered to help in this comprehensive effort to confront this terrorist threat, to take out terrorist targets, to train and equip iraqi and syrian opposition fighters who are going up against isil on the ground, to cut off isil's financing, to counter its hateful ideology and to stop the flow of fighters into and out of the region. last night we also took strikes to disrupt plotting against the united states and our allies by seasoned al-qaeda operatives in syria who are known as the corazon group. and once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against america and try to do americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who

threaten our people. i've spoken to leaders in congress, and i'm pleased that there is bipartisan support for the actions that we're taking. america's always stronger when we stand united, and that unity sends a powerful message to the world that we will do what's necessary to defend our country. over the next several days, i will have the opportunity to meet with prime minister abadly of iraq and to continue building support for the coalition that is confronting this serious threat to our peace and security. the overall effort will take time. there will be challenges ahead. but we're going to do what's necessary to take the fight to this terrorist group. for the security of the country and the region and for the entire world. thanks, god bless our troops, god bless america. [inaudible conversations] >> americans in danger living in the united states? >> and you heard the president mention congress. we heard from speaker of the house john boehner. he released a statement this morning saying:

>> i wish our -- you can let us knw what you think, share your thoughts on last night's airstrikes against isis is targets at facebook.com/c-span or send us a tweet using the hashtag c-spanchat. still to come today, president obama will address the united nations' climate change summit here on c-span2 at 12:50 eastern time. and later today remarks from the clinton global initiative. we'll have that live also from new york. yesterday cbs' bob schieffer led a panel that included former state department near east specialist john jon alterman. here's their conversation. >> well, our topic today is

entry had 3.0, and -- jihad 3.0. most of you will know dr. jon alterman, holds the brzezinski chair here at csis, he served in senior posts in government, part of the iraqi study group chaired by james baker and lee hamilton, teaches at johns hopkins and george washington and has lectured at more than 30 -- in more than 30 countries. juan ya rat today, also part of the team. senior adviser on transnational threats, homeland security and counterterrorism here at csis. was deputy national security adviser in the bush administration, a form or federal prosecutor who worked on terrorism cases, including the investigation of the uss cole. and finally, juliana goldman who i'm proud to say is our newest cbs news correspondent. she is based here in washington. she came over from bloomberg in

august and has more than a decade of experience covering international news. she covered both president obama's presidential campaigns, went with him to china, got the first one-on-one interview with the president after his re-election and reported from the white house on the night that osama bin laden was killed. so jon alterman, let me start with you because you recently wrote that after trying hard to downplay policy in syria and iraq, the obama white house has dived in. you said the recorded beheadings of two americans had crystallized the whole new policy approach by the administration, and you said while the new policy is more than merely military, it is more military than it should be. so it seems like a good question to start this off is, what do you mean by that? >> well, i think that the next 800 words i wrote tried to,

tried to capture that. [laughter] it's on the csis web site, i encourage you to read it. i think for a long time the administration was extremely cautious about being drawn too far into syria in particular, and we saw that caution manifested when the president a little more than a year ago hesitated to use military action. there seemed to be a confluence of forces, and we pulled off. when i spoke to people in the white house, what people in the white house kept saying is, well, we're not sure what we can do in syria that wouldn't open the door to further involvement. and in many ways, our policy was defined almost as much by what it wasn't as what it was. and there was a keen desire to avoid getting too suched in. what happened -- too sucked in. what happened having isis spread into iraq where you have a government which is welcoming of u.s. involvement, where you have

kurdish allies of the united states who are desirous for american involvement was it took it out of this very, very messy how do you attack a hostile group that is in a hostile country, and you're in some ways trying to work with a group to take down this government, on the other hand, you don't want the group to win. it seemed much clearer in iraq. it provided an opportunity in iraq, and the american public -- which had been very hostile to getting sucked into a mess in syria -- suddenly said, yes, we should be active against people killing americans in iraq. we support military action in iraq. the problem, it seems to me, and the problem that the piece talks about is all the things that are worth doing, very few of them actually have military components. the harder parts -- the diplomacy, the economics, the politics, the intelligence sharing -- are, maybe have a military role in convincing

people you're serious, but you really have to accomplish them away from the spotlight with much more qualitative kinds of actions than merely bombing things from the air. after all, the issue of bombing things from the air, it just comes down to physics and chemistry. but changing the situation on the ground is much more complex. and i was worried, i remain worried that we are doing what we can but not doing what we need to be. and we have to focus more on doing what we need to do. >> do you think the policy, one, is too focused on military? what is your assessment, and what do you think the policy is right now? >> well, that's a great question, bob. and i think in part that's the challenge for the administration, what is our policy not just vis-a-vis isis, isil, whatever we decide to call it, but what is the regional strategy, and how does this fit into the other things that we care about, things like what

happens in damascus in the asaws regime, what happens in our -- assad regime, how are we postured for the long term. and i think what is lacking in all of this regardless whether or not you think we're robust enough or not in the military context is how does this fit into a broader vision for the region. what it feels like is it's very reactive. we're reacting to the videos, to the sense of threat, to the reports of thousands of foreign fighters that now potentially threaten the west. and that then lends itself to a whack-a-mole approach. and to jon's point, i think jon is right that military solution is not the only solution, but it has to be part of changing the landscape on the ground. because at the end of the day, this is about the laws of physics and geography. this is a group of men, material, money, and it has established the largest and most robust safe haven of any terrorist group that we've seen in modern history. and you have to dislodge a group

like that, and that takes military force from the air and on the ground. and i would say one criticism from a military stand point is that to execute a long-term strategy like that, especially in a complex environment like syria, is going to take perhaps more than just proxy forces hoping that you can build these forces over time to take on the fight in a place like syria. that's the real danger, i think, for this policy, that it becomes a half-hearted attempt to dislodge the group, and at the same time we're distorting the policies that matter to us on things like iran and syria. >> juliana, and i know you have done some work on this, i was surprised yesterday when ambassador samantha power called it isil or something like that -- [laughter] and i know the president calls it isil, i think, and some of us call it isis. >> right. >> you think where is cole porter when you need him? [laughter] you say toe mat toe and i say

tomato and on and on. [laughter] what's the deal here? what is the name of this outfit? >> well, we can confuse it even more because isis actually calls itself the islamic state after it rebranded itself in june. in the air rick world it goes -- arabic world it goes by -- [inaudible] but isis doesn't like that name for itself either. and the problem for the government is it's been trying to -- it wants to refer to this group, but it doesn't want to validate the idea that it is -- >> by calling it the islamic state. >> right. so if we want, if we drill down at the name, the real -- in arabic, the rub is the last word which either refers to syria or greater syria. so the is at the end of isis is this al l sham, it's not

necessarily syria, and the greater syria refers to the levant, and to that's -- so that's why there's the eye sil -- isil version of it. there are some who want to come up with other ways to talk about it differently, and the french last week announced that they're going to be using -- again, not to validate the name islamic state. i don't know that that's much clearer, but -- two did we ever -- >> did we ever come to closure on -- osama bin laden the government had a whole debate as to whether it should be obl or ubl. >> but this question about lexicon is very important for two reasons. one, the group itself is trying to hearken back to history and to the lore of the movement that they are trying to now lead. and so this group in establishing itself as the islamic state is pronouncing itself as the new vanguard of this global movement, in essence, giving life to the imaginings of ubl or obl, bin

laden, and really trying to give life to that inspiration. i think one of the dangers of this group is that in its inspiration it's not only establishing territory in the heart of the least, but it's inspiring others to imagine what is possible in terms of an islamic state. the other thing about lexicon that's important is from an american standpoint we go through all these contortions to make sure that the terminology we use doesn't inadvertently aggrandize groups. we had this debate, in fact, josh brennan gave a speech -- john brennan gave a speech here talking about not using the term islamic extremism and not using the term jihad because jihadists, you know, use that term to validate themselves. and so lexicon in this actually matters quite a bit. the problem is we end up contorting ourself quite a bit to describe the enemy. >> let me ask all three of you, secretary of state said last week there was a part for every

nation to play in the fight against -- and i'm going to just call it isis today. in this war against isis and terrorism including iran. what is the role of iran, and how, how do they fit into this, jon? >> well, iran is in an interesting position, because on the one hand they hate these guys as much as anybody partly because isis is attacking their allies in iraq, it's attacking their allies in syria. it's attacking their allies, some of their allies in iraq are actually the kurds because the iranians have a very constructive historic relationship with them, despite the kurds have a constructive relationship with the united states. but iran also fears u.s. plans for the region, and iran doesn't

want to give things up to the united states without getting something in return. and i think where that leaves us is the challenge of how can we work in parallel with the iranians without coordinating with the rain grabs? -- iranians? certainly without cooperating with the iranians. it seems to me whenever we ask the iranians for something, the next part of that conversation is, okay, so what are you going to do for us? and so the challenge, and i think our diplomats are up for it and our excellence people and others, is -- our intelligence people and others is how do you see what it is we're doing, what it is we have an option to do but won't do in difference to them, what it is we might do that would annoy them, but maybe we won't in case other things happen and keep that in a constructive direction and not fall into the trap of if you do this, we'll do that because on a whole series of levels that would put the in a much more -- >> do you see iran in all this,

juan? >> i think it's perhaps one of the most difficult of questions here because the iranians have, over time, learned and played a great game of due wallty -- duality. they've been able to where there's commonality of interest work with the united states or work with other adversaries while at the same time undermining and attacking those interests. for example, u.s. and iran were aligned in interest in attacking the precursor to isis, al-qaeda in iraq, the islamic state of iraq. yet at the same time, the revolutionary forward was fomenting attacks, some of the most vicious attacks against u.s. forces to create instability in iraq. the same thing in afghanistan. working in some ways on counternarcotics and other issues with the u.s. and nato forces while at the same time supporting elements of the taliban. being opposed to al-qaeda and taking steps to, for example, put senior al-qaeda leaders under custody, but at the same time allowing al-qaeda facilitation networks to operate in and through iran.

and so iran is a very curious animal in this game because they have learned to play multiple games at once, they can feed from one hand and bite the other. and i think that's what makes iran very difficult to work with. and i don't think we're going to find sort of those sweet spots of commonality in this context. i think if you're going to see activity happen, it's going to happen organically and in parallel. it's not going to happen in coordination. >> but if i may, i think in a middle eastern context being able to play two sides -- >> absolutely. >> -- is seen as a sign of sophistication. >> of course. >> do you think it'll be seen that way in israel, juliana? >> i think the challenge for the administration, why kerry is making the distinction between coordination and a role to play is because they're trying to assemble this coalition of arab countries. they want to bring saudis onboard, and if they bring them onboard, what are they going to say about coordinating with

iran? the white house announced today, you asked about israel, the president will be meeting with netanyahu when he comes next week, and so, you know, the israelis have long voiced their concerns with the u.s. engaging with iran on these nuclear talks. >> and, of course, the iranian and saudi foreign ministers met this week. >> juliana, do you have any information -- samantha power said yesterday on all three networks that, yes, we have gotten commitments from some arab countries to join in airstrikes on syria. do you have any idea who they are? >> when i talked to an administration official earlier today, what they said was there will be multiple arab countries lining up and joining, making these military commitments. >> did they tell you one, the name of one? >> well, they wouldn't be going out on a limb to say the uae and also congressman mccall told you last week that jordan would likely be among those commitments, and i was told

again jordan would not be going out on a limb either. >> jon, do you have any reaction on that? >> i mean, look -- >> i mean, are we to take that seriously? is that really going to happen, do you think? >> i think it really will happen, but it really won't be terribly decisive. >> but don't you think it would be important? >> it's important the same way that having the uae and qatar and other countries with us in libya made it seem like there was a broader coalition. it doesn't necessarily get you better outcomes down the line, as we've seen in libya. you know, there are lots of roles people can play. you can be the refueling guy, you can be the logistics guy, you can fly surveillance. i think we're likely to see different roles. i think that one of the things that will be discussed is whether the egyptians signal something visible in support as way to try to limit some of the hostility that we just announced we're giving them ten attach

thinks that have been -- apaches that have been in the u.s. for repair. so i think that one of the characteristics of this is there'll be lots of -- you can contribute at many different levels just like in your church, synagogue, school, right in there are different levels, and i think we're going the see a lot of different -- to see a lot of different levels. the challenge, i think, from a u.s. perspective is how do you make it add up to actually mean something? if you have a strategy, you need all these pieces, and you're sort of going to rummage sales. how does that actually turn into the concerted, sustained military campaign that the administration has committed to doing? and not just for a month, but if you're going to do this and you be serious, this is a multiyear commitment long after people have lost interest in the headlines. >> the, what's the latest number, about 90 airstrikes -- 190 airstrikes that we have flown so far in this new

campaign? >> yeah. >> has that made any significant difference, juan, that you can tell? >> i think in the, the notion of degrading the group, remember, we've got two goals in the strategy that's been announced by the president; degrade isis and destroy it. in the context of degrading it and certainly defending the interests of our friends and allies, like the kurdish peshmerga, the airstrikes have been very effective. the release of isis control of the haditha dam and other infrastructure, very important. the beginnings of hitting depots and other supply lines, probably important longer term. i think the real question is, you know, we can do this in iraq. you can imagine what the scenario in iraq looks like with the iraqi military butt threated by -- buttressed by u.s., perhaps iranian support. but what does it look like once it crosses the syrian border? and i think that's the real

tricky military/political/social conundrum here. and i would say, too, that in terms of the coalition, yes, it's important symbolically to have these cups involved militarily -- countries involved militarily, but also critical to have particularly the sunni raich states countering the narrative, countering the funding to the extempt possible. this is -- extent possible. this is where turkey becomes important, the qataris, kuwaitis, and providing a patina of legitimacy for what is to happen. as jon said, this isn't going to be just a monthlong effort, this is going to be years in the making. >> two other important pieces or for the sunni states. one is helping persuade some of the sunni tribes to come back over -- >> right. >> -- and the other is create incentives for the government of iraq to be more inclusive than they have been. they have been very much ostracized from their neighbors, and one of the things that is

attractive is the sense of, you know, you can be, you can be closer, you can be in a better environment. and that's something like that a country like saudi arabia or the uae can offer. >> this is a real moment of opportunity in part for the u.s. to rejuvenate some of the strained relationships it has had and to serve in a leadership role that the region's been thirsty for. not that we put thousands of troops on the ground, but that the u.s. actually serve as a quarterback, sort of aligning forces to go after this group in terms of it's the military, the support, the ideology, the region and the world, frankly, is hungry for u.s. leadership. the question is, can we do it credibly and do we have staying power. >> juliana, you have covered the president very closely. you've interviewed him numerous times. you've been with him in the good days and the bad, as it were. it took him a while to get to where he is right now, isn't it -- didn't it?

talk a little bit about that and , i'm amazed to hear him in his recent speech because this is, he's come a ways here. >> so i went back and i looked at the david rem nick interview from last january, and one of the key takeaways was something obama said about how we're swimming in the rapids of the river of history and that he thinks, he takes the long view. we're really in the middle of just -- he's writing the paragraph now. that's how his presidency will be seen, as a paragraph. so when it comes to the middle east and the sectarian divide, he sees this as these respect going to go away -- these aren't going to go away with my presidency or in the next presidency, so he'd rather take his time and take a more cautious, deliberative approach. now, i think particularly when you look back in august, some of

the messages, some of his statements have really hurt him now and hurt the credibility of the this administration whether it was saying we don't have a strategy, whether it was in the same press conference saying, you know, our goal is to degrade and defeat isis but also then saying there are manageable problem -- they're a manageable problem. and when i look at that, it reminded me of sort of the attitude and issues obama had before that first debate with mihm and what one of -- mitt romney, he was kind of going through the motions and checked out a little bit. and so it seemed like through the month of august that was kind of at least the rhetorical approach that he was taking to isis. and for him and his advisers, that prime time speech and his speech at nato, they knew that they had to change the language that they were using and to come out much more forcefully and send a much stronger signal to

the international community, to congress and to the american people. >> you know, one of the things that i find interesting -- and i've seen a lot of administrations -- you know, you get into the second term of every administration, and there's always one or two people who leave, and and they didn't like what happened, and, you know, they write these books and so forth, but i can't remember when as many people in the national security area, i mean, yesterday on "60 minutes" you heard leon panetta say, look, i advised him to arm the syrian moderates. you've had gates come out, hillary clinton has said she disagreed with the president. we know that martin dempsey, jim jones, the former national security adviser, hasn't been all that complimentary. what do you all make of this?

>> so in defense of the president just because something isn't working doesn't mean anything else would have worked better. and i think, certainly, we consistently have that problem in the middle east, because there are lots and lots and lots of stupid ideas -- [laughter] and sometimes we do the stupid things. but it's not to say anything other than the stupid idea would have turned out better. that being said, this is an administration which even to people on the inside, people complain this is a very, very, very tiny circle of people who make all the decisions. it's not visible, that there's lots and lots of debate, debate, debate that people get tucked into these endless meetings, and then the decision is made when nobody else is in the room, two people are in the room. and i think that has created an environment -- >> who do you think is the president's most influential adviser on foreign policy right now? >> i have never been in that small meeting.

i've never met the president unlike juliana. [laughter] i can't tell you. you know, what people say is that the president remains close to dennis mcdonough, that valerie jarrett weighs in on a whole range of issues, that ben rhodes, the speech writer, has sort of a mind meld with him. ..

you also see this in the stories about the split between the military and leadership and the president and i think part of this is that the president in his inner circle have been captured and trapped by their political narrative. political narrative not wanting to be the bush administration, overlearning the lessons in iraq. being that way captured by inaction. to jon's point not all action is advisable. they have really been captured by inaction and i think there has been frustration at the top levels there has knots been more strategic vision. for example, the red line debate with respect to syria, i'm not just sure the president realized how strategically relevant that moment was. to your point about john kerry, john kerry went out, basically issued an indictment against the

assad regime for using chemical weapons and issued justification for going to war, quickly and soon for the purpose of key, core national security issues of the president went out and countered his own red line and undercut his secretary of state and i think began a cycle of growing mistrust and lack of confidence among his senior team. i think you're seeing reflections of that in exactly what you described. >> julianne that. >> when it becomes to the decision not to arm syrian rebels, they are digging their heels in, even now. there was a story in the "times" last week quoting some off the record sessions that he had had with journalists and columnists. even then i said, you know, look, he was, he defended the time it took them to vet, to vet the rebels. and, they look at this and they say, in hindsight this isn't the

silver bullet. they can't say this but it was a few months later that, the u.s., whether it was covert, i mean through covert operations, began arming moderate rebels and so they said it was important to take that time to vet them. but to jonathan's point, i mean, this is a tight, tight, inner circle. when they do reach out, one of the biggest criticisms there is never any follow-through. so the president has a bunch of former, former national security aides, advisors, who came to dinner i think a couple nights before the prime-time speech and, the real, it is not just a matter of having them come to the white house to listen but whether or not there will be any follow-through and follow-up. >> do you have any disagreement with jon in who or the people closest to the president and who would you say are most

influential in foreign policy? >> i think he named them. i would put susan rice in there and probably samantha power. but again, in the white house, to day, i would probably say denis mcdonough, ben rhodes. >> let's talk about little bit about this new growth we're hearing about, khorasan. how do we say that? all of sudden this name surfaces. who are these people and where do they come from? >> this is the al qaeda senior leadership caravan that moved from afghanistan and pakistan into syria in part to take advantage of the chaos and breeding space that existed there. and in part to try to plan from syria attacks against the west. and so great reporting from bob orr, c about s news that broke the story. the reality is the group in most some ways lethal and focused on

the west is not necessarily isis as we've been talking about though that's dangerous. it is this al qaeda group which not only is focused on the west but is linking other elements of the al qaeda constellation. linking master bomb-maker, and part of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula in yemen and linking other parts of the network. these guys are becoming a operational and strategic corps for the al qaeda universe and that is why the officials are worried about them. >> is the reason that the president is so circumspect i guess or so focused on listing what we're not going to do, i was thinking what juan zarate just said, they just don't want to be the bush administration? is that what is going on here? >> i guess partly they thought that getting involved in iraq in an open-ended way was probably one of the largest strategic

mistakes they made in the last half century. there is probably increasing consensus in washington that's true. but, again, what is the alternative to it? and, how should we think about terrorism? and what is the threat and what is a distraction from what is truly strategically important? i think we're still working through. one of my concerns about the way the administration approaches this is often times they want to get the language right but i'm not sure there's the same commitment to the policy follow-through on the language. there is a way you need to set the language so you can make the policy rise to meet the language. need to set the bar. elliot abrams is probably the best person i have ever seen in government being able to set the language and move the policy once you've gotten the language right. but what feels, to me to be happening in a lot of cases there is a lot of focus on just

exactly what the language is and the policy doesn't always follow through, to it. we've had a lot of good language. we had the president's drone speech 18 months ago at ndu. in many ways intentioned with the speech on isis. and, i'm not sure that they are doing as well as they need to on understanding strategically where they need to go. they had a year ago, a big middle east policy review and notably, nobody involved in the middle east policy review was from outside the white house and nobody, to my judgment, had ever lived in the middle east. >> that is very interesting. you know, we are talking about the communicating. and juliana, you've done a lot of work on this i'm glad better you than me. juliana has become kind of our expert on jihadist social media.

>> i have a lot of new twitter followers. >> and it is just a amazing how sophisticated they are in using social media. just tell us a little about this. >> so isis has its own media arm. it is called ah-hayat. they are behind a lot of savvy, well-produced videos that we're seeing. they just released last week a 55-minute video, shot in hd. looks like it is straight out of hollywood called, i think shrinks of war. -- slings of war. one thing the intelligence community took note of, it had an american at the end, an american isis fighter in syria, overseeing syrians dig their own graves and he killed them. but, they, part one of the reasons why they have this sophisticated and savvy media operation, one it is to, it is propaganda. and for recruitment and to

terrorize. as me brought more westerners over into the fight they bring their knowledge as well. so you have, you know, french jihadists reaching out in french, in videos to french individuals. germans to germans. brits to brits. i had a crazy experience last saturday. i was, two saturdays ago when i was in the newsroom and we started to get word that there was another isis beheading video. that was about to be released and in one of my stories i had covered this twitter handle called jihad matchmaker. yes, it exists. >> they have a -- >> a twitter. i went to see anybody who had been meggsing jihad matchmaker and i clicked on somebody and i saw they were teasing out a new video that was coming and within a few minutes they posted a link to, a link to that video. and then a few minutes later,

they posted a link that said, now it is up on youtube in all caps with exclamation mark and the link to youtube. so the other side of the story is that you have youtube, facebook, twitter, and what is the responsibility of these companies, to try and crack down on their use of social media, to get their message across. the facebook has done a better job of that but then they went to a russian competitor of facebook called vk.com. over the last couple of weeks, vk.com got a little better cracking down as well. there is a counter argument that the intelligence community makes which is, well, we don't have the intelligence on the ground. so this is how we're able to track these guys and get more information about them. but it really is remarkable to the see the advances they have made and how they might be going about editing these videos. they're clearly shot with very sophisticated cameras. somebody throws out the

possibility they could actually be in chat rooms and talking in the chat rooms about how to be editing these videos. >> well, duke, do these people actually meet people on these matchmaker -- i could see this, jihadist who likes to cut people's head off would like to meet girl who likes -- >> we asked very same question. we weren't, so, we were tipped off to this site. we didn't have it completely verified. however, then, when you go on, and you see that these guys are actually using jihad matchmaker and, mentioning, i mean there was this one guy who said something like, hook a brother up and sent, you know, other twitter handles for other jihadists. but you know, going through that twitter handle took us to the video. they're honest.

they're using it. >> this is a group that employed sex you'll slavery. this is movement that is organized and knows how to support the soldiers. this is has been one of the most open campaigns of any terrorist group. a report of over 400 pages laying out over their deliverables, all the attacks for a particular year, where they have done it, broken down by region. they put out videos, not just of beheadings and brutality but also how they're trying to govern. they're trying to demonstrate legitimacy. how they're engaged in patrols in mosul. this is all-out multimedia effort to gain legitimacy and as juliana said, to legitimatize their battle. >> as she suggested, in unprecedentedly unsophisticated way, not just on a chat room.

really reaching out to you, to wherever you are, in whatever language you speak, wherever your mind is and bringing you on board. >> so, for example, they have these 60 second videos called muja tweets. one of them showed, i think a belgian, a belgian fighter in syria going around and giving out, handing out ice cream to little syrian children. so it shows, a softer side. it is a way to say okay, we're not all beheadings and blood and guts. come over and join the fight as well. >> let's step back a little bit and talk about iraq right now. the new prime minister trying to put together a new government. how's that going? >> slowly. >> slowly. >> it is iraqi government negotiations which are slow, which are full of threats, which are full of uncertain progress and failure to put things together and, i mean, i wish, i

were more surprised, but it seems to me that the normal of politics in iraq is the kind of messy politics we're seeing. >> do either of you think that this new government can actually be more inclusive, that it can actually be inclusive enough that you could feel the -- field an army that could provide a, you know, a browned forces, ground combat operations that we could support with airstrikes with any kind of success? what do you think? >> i think you can rejuvenate iraqi military force. i think that is duable. i think real question for the new government and for the political process is, can you reverse the sense of embitterment and disillusionment among the sunni tribes that bought into the idea of putting their lives and communities at risk to fight the al qaeda of

old and felt very much abandoned by the mall canky government? there is lingering resentment and disillusionment there. even after the new government was formed you heard sunni tribal leaders and others talk about, that is not being enough. so the question is, can the government not only be inclusive but can there be a rejuvenation of the sons of iraq so that you begin to see an organic counter movement and fighting force, especially in western iraq especially among the sunni tribes. keep in mind, bob, those tribes also sort of crossed the border. isis has erased border between iraq and syria. some of these tribes exist along those boarders as well. it is important to have them in other places. >> follow directly on what juan is saying, spectacular sense of entitlement people have. that we are, therefore we have to get this much. you have to sharing 300% of the pie because everybody says i get 40%, i get 70%, and there is not

enough pie to go around and getting people's expectations down to size is a real political challenge and that is part of why you can't rush this because everybody, everybody comes in with a absolutely stratospheric sense of entitlement. >> you know, yesterday on "face the nation" we had a roundtable and joe lieberman was there and he said we should just go ahead and attack assad and get it over with and disable their air force, crater all their airfields. just do it. what would you, if you were sitting in the, two of you were sitting with the president and one of the advisors suggested that, what would you say? >> la, la, la, la. [laughter]. >> my reaction would be a little different. >> i don't think you open the gates of damascus to islamic

marauders basically, but i think you can triangulate here. to jon's point earlier, the middle east is known for the ability to do multiple things at once. the u.s. sort of approach to things often very linear, binary, either do one thing or the other. we can weaken assad or what we do doesn't legitimatize him and his rule long term while also attacking isis. keep in mind he made accomodations with isis in the past. he traded with them. allowed them buffers. attacked free syrian army versus isis. i think you can do strategic things. not all-out bombardment, things like, let's attack the airbase outside of raqqa, taken over by isis where they got military weaponry, fighter jets, et cetera. blow it to smithereens, neither isis has it, nor the syrian army for later. let's defend the free syrian army installments around aleppo. that is the sort of the last

bastion of where the free syrian army has held territory. they're under assault from both the syrian government and isis. hit artillery the syrian government is using to hit our allies, free syrian army. you can do some bank shots without opening up all-out war against the assad regime into i'm wondering what legal pretense justification for doing a lot of things? if we were to take down the assad government, we would then be thinking how do you prevent the slaughter of two million alawites who certainly would feel vulnerable. they would be slaughtering sunni. this idea that we're sort of one step away from breaking the logjam and they all come together. sometimes you break the logjam and all hell breaks loose. >> and sometimes you do nothing and still hundred of thousands are killed and refugees flow across borders. >> i agree. >> you have our worst nightmares

emerging like a terrorist safe haven in part of the middle east in part because we haven't done anything. >> there are multiple bad options. >> that is the art of national security. bad options and worse options. >> and have options really changed that much from a year ago when obama was trying to, was faced with the chemical attack and deciding whether or not to go in and try to take out assad that way. i mean, reason, one of the reasons they did not, they didn't know what would come the next day. that question still exists, no. >> i want to go to questions in the audience but while you're thinking, tell us why is isis different from anything we're confronted here to now? >> they have more men, materiel and resources and have established safe haven in the heart of the middle east. in way that, al qaeda is only imagined and in a way that we haven't seen before. and the danger there is, they can not only inspire and deploy foreign fighters. we've seen plots in australia,

attacks in belgium, other plots disrupted around the world but can foment inspiration and global platform for this movement and that is what makes the guys dangerous. they continue to hold territory. we saw the kurdish refugee problem because they're pushing northeast into syria. they overran some iraqi military installations in western iraq. they are not stopping. they're extremely well-financed. >> they're well-financed because they run a war economist. they use the same oil-for-food smuggling routes once operated. they have tapped into some of the baathist resentment so al-duri who sits in damascus probably funding some of this and they are flush with money. >> all right. please in the back right there. yes. please tell us who you are. >> good evening, ladies and gentleman. actually i'm from syria. i moved recently and like a

couple of months ago. i witnessed the whole thing. i want to be like -- i want to be like a devil's advocate. i'm here. i'm lucky to know the american's point of view but i actually want to tell you what is the syrian's, usually the most of them say. for america, they are helping the war. they are getting rid of terrorists but for rest of -- there is country attacking muslim people. the problem is, the u.s. army or u.s. government are treating with, let's say symptoms, not the roots of the problem. now they did that in afghanistan. they did that in iraq and now they are doing that in syria. and the problem will continue. and instead of seeing people just fighting in the mountains, now we're seeing them on social media. i'm very educated. i can understand the reason

behind american intervention but the rest of the syrians are not and regime is using that in his propaganda. what, my question is, i not taking so much time. my question is, what is the american government policy in terms of media or justifying this intervention? for the rest of islamic world are or in general, they believe in the beginning that isis is created by cia. and this theory is very dominating. it is like, you open-air a big website and you see that. the same thing with al qaeda. the same thing with other radicals. those radicals i want to say something. my background is arabic islamic. those radicals are not monsters. they are driven by ideology. this ideology, like if you kill those people, you will see those people. they have ideology.

if you compare al qaeda with isis, both are having same goal which is islamic caliphate or something like this. the product they are competing who is the worse. if you ended isis or eliminate isis you will see much worse people because in order to, new group to earn legitimacy, they need to prove that the previous people are not doing enough to support islam. so just i want to know about the media or what, you are doing to address the arab world in terms of this intervention? thank you. >> jon, juan, want to -- >> i, first i don't think we're very good at, at persuading people that, you know, we come in peace to the muslim world and it is partly because there are some well-developed operations and so many deeply-held feelings that the u.s. really does come

with an agenda against islam. i also think that we shouldn't want to be loved in the muslim word. i think we should explain what we're doing. we should explain why we're doing it. and we should demonstrate that sincerity of our actions. if people want to say that the united states created isis, if anybody created isis, bashar al-assad was desperate for an enemy like isis because that creates precisely the opponent wants to fight against. he wants to come and say, who do you really want to win? side with me against these monsters. as juan suggested, i think there is a lot of money either coming directly out of damascus or implicitly permitted by today most discuss to allow these guys to have traction. you can talk about it. i'm not sure you persuade people. i think the united states as a government, is miserable at keeping secrets and absolutely incapable of having a secret strategy. we can't do it. and so i think we should just be

clear about what we're doing and ultimately, not get too involved with, approval rating of the united states in a country like egypt 7% or 12%? talk about what you're doing and you leave it where it is and i think part of our goals should be if people are deeply, bitterly, violently against the united states and you can make them neutral and grudging, try to capture that as success. they can go bitter and violent to annoyed and begrudging? for a lot of people that is big success. >> you want to add? >> i heard a counter narrative as well. deep resentment in the syrian population for what is felt to be abandonment from the west. so there is a cross current of that as well. so it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't approach in the u.s. often the case in the middle east policy of the that is why the administration put so much stock on coalition building, on the narrative of legitimacy, legal legitimacy and

international legitimacy. to jon's point i think we are terrible at trying to counter extremism and ideology. we're not very good at it and frankly the most voices don't sit in washington and new york. they sit in baghdad, and beirut. >> yes, sir. i'm with the pakistani spectator by question about the khorasan organization. a couple months ago there was news in pakistan media got a couple of billiondove lars to saudi arabia and all those troublemakers that pakistan used to send to kashmir and to kill americans are being directed into the syria area. if that is true, if you're specialist in financial transactions, i asked to question to the a, he said this is all propraganda. we've been telling americans for a couple of decade they're not going to get anything out of --

if you talk with christine, she will tell us pakistani killing our american troops and who made us back out of afghanistan. my question is, if pakistani armies are really -- why dent which two after them? if they're not and we didn't attack them, maybe we learn from them, because they spend one penny equal to our $100 and a lot more effective to deal with these things. i hope you understand the question, thanks. >> absolutely. there are complicated relationships across the board here. pakistan is a great example of this, where clearly the isi and pakistani intelligence and military have seen defense in depth in context of afghanistan and the use of proxy forces as part of their national security and part of their interests. that has been in direct opposition to u.s. interests at times. the same time pakistan has been an ally against al qaeda in

certain cases. same thing goes with qatar, which is an ally of the u.s. hosts one of the most important bases in the middle east but also supported extremist causes. so there is a balance in the relationship and part of it is having open and honest conversations in quiet and holding these regimes to ask the where possible but also realizing we need them. we can go it alone. >> this lady right here who has been very patient. you. >> thank you very much. formerly with the state department. focused on iraq and my question to you is, juan used the term dismiss. but my question is, what is the role of the clerics in terms of discrediting isis in i read the koran and nothing in the koran says you can rob banks or behead people without sharia law or trade women for sex trade.

what role do you see in terms of the organizing the islamic clerics like is islamic scholars to make public statements and discredit them? they're criminals. >> we've seen a lot of that already and this is one of the things that started in saudi arabia in 2003. when the saudis were themselves victims of terrorist attacks in may and november and really deban -- began to line up the clerical establishment against jihadis. we've certainly seen more of that. i just spoke to somebody who was in saudi arabia last week. he said the government is scared. the clerics are lining up because people are not so, not so hostile to the islamic state but the government and clerical establishment certainly is. i think if you look at the defeat of al qaeda's ideology, and remember, in 2001 there really was genuine fear that

this, the germ of jihaddism would spread throughout 1.3, 1.5 billion muslims around the world and it really didn't. we systematically underestimate the role of states, the state's relationship to their clerical establishment and the clerical establishment systemic rejection of jihaddism which contains that. i totally agree with you, there is a role for clerics to discredit this, what i hear from people who know much more about islam than i do, is, that, the theology of isis is somewhat more mainstream than other jihadist whyed have been but it is not so easy to discredit. but the defenses of slavery of women and murders, all those other things there is ample

within islam that is absolutely atrocious and we'll see and continue to see as part of this effort of legitimatization. >> sorry, jon. thought you were done. . . it's going to take the syrian fighters, it's going to take more than one year to train them

and there are thousands of them. the iraq ease that you illustrated we are not sure how long it would take them to organize and get enough credibility to convince the sunni tribal leaders to come on board and really reengage in another surge if you wish in 1970 through code 2008. so given all this, there is an endgame. no boots on the ground, no forces committed. we don't understand who's on our side at the moment. the allies may come. who's going to fight about more bridges and a bore as we are calling it. if yemen and so malia is not a conflict no american boots on the ground and so far 190. >> i think it's an excellent

question. [laughter] >> the execution is half measures and you are right especially as you move across the borders in theory a. of this is a president that has based his claim on ending the war, the board receding and he hasn't wanted to invest in the lexicon of the war and he hasn't used the term war in his presentation to the nation. and not wanted to connect with on the ground other than special advisers and spotters so i think at the end of the day we are going to have to degrade and hope that the allies come along with us and are willing to fight and die on behalf of the cause understanding what our own limitations are. this is great to have to be close to the last question. a

>> having been a senior adviser and instructor to the u.s. marine corps on counterinsurgency in both iraq and afghanistan, one of the things that struck me most is we say the right thing as one of the gentlemen on the podium said we are very rarely seem to be doing the right thing. very often that's manifested in all the so-called experts we've sent to particularly iraq but to some extent in afghanistan as well where there are lots of experts with no expertise in the mega- basis in the cities and don't really know what we are dealing with. we need to be in a community that have grudges and grievances and frustrations against their own establishments and sadly however we are either being unwilling or unable to tackle health community is think and feel and the vacuum that's being created has been taken over by

the extremists and fanatics that we are now having to deal with so that has been the bane of my existence existence in 12 and a half years in iraq and afghanistan, and i don't know how anyone is going to be able to address that since that has been across the board under the two different administrations. thank you. >> it comes down to this issue that we are comfortable with physics and chemistry and what you're describing is an incredibly nuanced psychology and politics at all these other things, and i have yet to see a bureaucracy that's very good at institutionalizing, understanding the knowledge of that and i think one of the problems that u.s. intelligence community has a large is that you can know lots of facts but how do you know what to do with it as an institution?

i see my boss there. think tanks are about letting people do things with the idea people do different things and somehow out of the middle you end up in the right place but no individual decision is absolutely the right decision. i think what your experience suggests to me is we have to think how deep into this can we get? we know the outcome we want, but outcome can we produce? and if you become too reticent and a lot of my era of tv to -- arab friends think that it is too reticent and you become less relevant. as a country i think we have to do better at figuring out where we can do things. there is physics and chemistry involved at times we have to be

precise about applying via their kind of things and times when you say that it's just too delicate we can't do that and be best off compensate and go in another direction. i think this is about a world that will become much more complex and the democratization in which a lot of individuals can have a global reach that wasn't possible even ten years ago and i think we are still trying to swallow what it is we can do and i think it is going to take a while to get there but your experience to me not only highlights what we were not able to do in the narrow sense what you are encountering in afghanistan and iraq but as you know better than anybody in this room to get a really smart bureaucracy, and all of my time working in the u.s. government i

haven't seen really smart bureaucracy. >> i think we did get this right in to surge into the outland bar outline bar of weakening. the surge was successful and it worked. both administrations admitted at the end of the the day that it worked. >> we are going to have to close that i have the rare opportunity to call on someone who's been in washington longer than i have. )-right-paren here he was here during the johnson administration and he raised his hand. you may ask the last question. you didn't need to call on me that way. [laughter] >> i'm only kidding. i went to the university of texas and if i see your purple socks and said with schoolbus fuchsia clacks [laughter] i actually got these at a supply

store in rome. [laughter] here's my question the president has said and it's been repeated by others that isis constitutes an existential threat to the middle east, to the region, to others who adhere to the religious. 71% of the american people in the last poll believed our country should do something. it's been very interesting, genuinely interesting to listen to the analysis and good questions. here's my question i would like a few to comment. what should the president have done and what should the president do? >> juliana, we will start with

you. >> you want me to go? >> go ahead i feel less comfortable. a scenic george bush in the last four years of his administration had a very difficult time where it felt like we were losing iraq and felt like we begin to lose western pakistan and at a certain point the president and the country have to commit to a sacrifice and a fight if that is what we are up against. if not we can leave it for others and maintain or contain it but if we are going to fight a group that has global ambitions that want to reach and touch the west and attack us and it's giving life to the global jihad movement we have to be ready for a fight and that means not taking things off the table so the thing i would say the president should not do if he were listening but he's not is stop saying what we are not going to do, start to be leaving

in what we say we are going to commit to because then our allies will really follow and then we can quarterback like a good university of texas quarterback you call the play, it gets run and you were going to have been otherwise we are going to be caught in a broad quagmire and i think the danger for this president has all the things he's wanted to avoid are coming to fruition for the lack of action when it matters. there are moments of reflection and there are moments of action and strategic windows where action matters more than most and we are running the danger of missing the strategic opportunity. >> i think that the administration should recognize the war on terror is not over. yes osama bin laden is dead and the general motors is alive but the war on terrorism is still there and it won't be over until the terrorists say it is over

and i think that is simply recognizing every alley. i don't think that is going back on your word. they are there trying to kill and we simply have to recognize that and i think when the americans are murder on television i don't think it calls for a measured response. i think you have to hit back if i were advising the president, hit back hard and then step back and talk about the long-term strategy. >> along the lines of what you described, i thought last august and september the president should have done demonstratively humiliating to be sure all aside not launching missiles of the mediterranean that something that says we can do whatever we want to do when we want to into the reason we are not as because they don't want to come about because we can't.

and put everybody on notice that there is not a predictability to u.s. action or inaction. i think as we look at isis we have to think about what happened in the awakening and we have to understand that this is a lot of our politics. it's a lot of our resources. it's a lot about people feeling very vulnerable. and we have to work to shrink the area where isis can operate and you do that by bringing people over and making difficult deals with those people and ultimately moving towards making them dry it up for a smaller number of people to capture or kill him a lot of people will say we are going to deal with this new environment and i don't see us thinking through through this needs to go strategically. where it needs to go strategically is some sort of deal whereby the people who are

letting these guys operate and who are buying oil say we are going to stop and we see a better way. i'm not sure that we understand where that's going and we keep trying to pound them into the ground but as long as they have a place to operate in both keep out their. >> the messaging is going to be very important. americans are scared and they see see people being beheaded. the response should be one of reassuring the american people and being honest as american people and not necessarily getting into the rhetorical semantics. the question of whether or not there will be boots on the ground. there are essentially boots on the ground and it's going to be up to the president to be honest and to admit if they need to recalibrate the strategy as it's going into not automatically rule things out and to welcome a

transparent debate in congress as well. >> thank you on behalf of the sis. a possible should [applause] thoughts from viewers on the air strikes against isis in theory. airstrikes will do nothing. these people can't be defeated without people on the ground. and it's about time, praying for our military. now can we close the border click the conversation continues online. you can add your thoughts at facebook.com/c-span or send us a tweet at the hash tag c-span chat. next we will go to remarks by president obama at the un climate change summit hosted by secretary-general ban ki moon to start ten minutes before 1:00

eastern time. until then remarks on climate change by treasury secretary jack lew who spoke yesterday at an event hosted by the hamilton project on the economic effects of climate change. we will show you as much of this as we can before president obama's appearance. >> good afternoon. on behalf of the hamilton project, thank you for joining us this afternoon for the public discussion of the economic cost climate change. it is our privilege today to host u.s. treasury secretary, jacob lew who will give remarks on the climate change. these will be followed by a roundtable discussion among secretary lew, for u.s. treasury secretary robert rubin and professor of economics at the university of chicago, michael greenstone. before i turn the podium over to

secretary rubin, i'd like to give a brief introduction to the hamilton project and our interest in this issue. the project, house of the brookings institution that is named after alexander hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary secretary who laid the foundation for the modern american economy. so, it is fitting that today we welcome to u.s. treasury secretary's. the projects the shame and intent is to promote evidence-based policies that work to secure economic growth, shared prosperity, and economic security. our goal is to foster innovative, nonpartisan ideas and ultimately to introduce new and effective policy options into the national conversation. we at the project acknowledged that the defining feature of the nation's history is that succeeding generations of americans have enjoyed standards of living high here than the generations that came before. but looking around us today, we see that america is failing to make critical investments in

areas that would contribute to the nation's economic growth and security. within this vision, we recognize climate change as posing real and present challenges to the nation and indeed the globe economics teacher. climate change is fundamentally about risks to the safety and our economy. we need serious policy conversations about what actions to take to address those risks. that is what we are focused on here this afternoon. again, thank you for joining us. i now invite secretary rubin to introduce the featured guest. [applause] let me apologize for starting a little bit late. i had to fly in from laguardia and if there's any doubt there is any doubt about the desperate need for infrastructure, take that flight. the second question is how we pay for it but we believe that aside for the moment.

the subject is climate change and i will make the substantive comment and ask jack to join me. i've got a pretty involved in a state of the reason i go to the involved as i realize one, you have not only the most likely scenarios, which are pretty serious and in many cases of severe over time, but you also have the real possibility i think unfortunately maybe even a fairly high probability that what ultimately happens are consequences of the vast multiples of the case and that the effects in addition instead of just being in addition to being severe in the long run they become catastrophic. and i think that we can expand a little bit on that in our conversation. i said to a friend of mine there

are a lot of pressing issues and you are right but we can do with this decade down the road and i said no. and many of you may know this the rate in the atmosphere is hundreds of years and what we do today is going to affect us for hundreds of years. the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are accumulated and reversible and as a consequence, this is an issue that cannot wait it has to be dealt with now. if you look back over the last ten years that the projections they've made, they are periodically bringing forward the times when they think they are more severe and at least i think quite possibly catastrophic effects occur so this is an issue of urgency and it's an issue that we have to deal with now. in that context would mean by the secretary of the treasury jack lew and michael greenstone.

i'm going to uninvited michael and i will invite jack is the secretary of the treasury. i will not go into his resume. it's in your materials in place or another but i will say when he was in the clinton administration he was a pleasure to deal with. he is substantive as you note and also very sensitive to the politics of the issues that he deals with and he knows washington and also how to work with all of us cabinet members as we dealt with the issue and it's seldom that you will find a cabinet member who will say something nice about the cbo for that matter which is even worse. but anyway, with that i introduced the distinguished secretary of the treasury, jack lew. [applause]

>> thanks for that introduction and for your strong leadership on the important issue of combating climate change and thank you for the hamilton project and the booking for hosting this event. this is an issue of great significance to our economy and the nation's future. i want to talk today about the economic implications of the changing climate. but before i begin, i would like to say just a few words about the u.s. economy. the u.s. economy emerged from the financial crisis pushing our economy to the brink of a second great depression. the effect of policy responses responses and beasley and the economy is now 6.6% larger than when the recession began in 2007. gdp increased at a 4.2% annual rate in the second quarter of this year into the private sector created 10 million new jobs over the past 54 months. the longest stretch of growth in the nations history. while more work remains confident in the future is strong at home and internationally something i sold last few days in australia at

the g. 20 finance ministers meeting. in addition to discussing the needs to take decisive action to grow the economy and create jobs we discussed leveling the playing field on tax policy so that we were to stop the erosion of the tax base and the race to the top of international tax policy. later today i will have more to say about the ongoing efforts to address the loophole in the tax code and unfair practice which they required foreign businesses and then switch the citizenship outside of the united states to avoid paying u.s. taxes. in addition to the leadership of a host of global economic issues the united states uses the g. 20 20 essay for him to drive progress on climate change policies. the need for action is clear. the world can either choose to ignore the challenge today and be forced to take more drastic action, further down the road at greater cost, or we can make sense of all of the modest gradual changes now and in the process, create jobs, reduce business and household expenses

and drive innovation, technology and new industries. this choice should also be clear. as an economic matter, the cost of inaction or delay is far greater than the cost of action. the cost associated with extreme weather events like rising sea levels, drought, heat waves, wildfires, floods and severe storms demonstrate the scope of economic exposure. the council of economic advisers estimates that if we warned about the preindustrial levels increases to 3 degrees celsius instead of two, there could be a 1% decrease in the global household annually. the economic cost of climate change is not limited to one sector of our economy. it threatens our agricultural productivity, our transportation infrastructure and power grids and drives up the incidents of costly health care problems. we are facing his work levels of extreme weather from a range of conditions. some parts of the country face extreme flooding and other states drought.

they are facing a potential loss of up to 50 to 70% of the average annual crop yields and livestock productivity is threatened as well. nowhere is the economic cost of climate change more clear than in the area of infrastructure which is fundamental to the economy's productivity and competitiveness. the fact is the water and sewer systems, power plant and power grids and roads and airports were not designed or built for the extreme conditions that we are facing now and expect to face in the coming decades. the storms and he closed every tunnel and bridge leading into new york city. while a large part of the subway system below 34th street and putting all of the tunnels under the east river were flooded. increased healthcare costs associated with pollution and extreme heat are well-documented. very high temperatures, for example, threatened the health and safety of construction workers, farmers and others who works outdoors while putting entire industries like housing

and agriculture at risk. extreme heat will also lead to more heat related illness illness, dangerous air pollution creates the risk of similar negative consequences for the health and safety of americans across the country. on the other hand, much less has been said about the impacts of climate change on the nation's fiscal situation. in the federal government has to step in and do things like provide disaster relief come across insurance, protection from wildfires, healthcare, taxpayers pay the cost. already the national flood insurance program has had to borrow $24 billion from the treasury department because of payoffs resulting from hurricane katrina, rita, william and sandy all of which occurred over the past nine years. if the burden from climate change continues to rise it will create a budgetary pressures that will force trade-offs, larger deficits or higher taxes. and these trade-offs would make it more challenging to invest for growth company to the needs of an aging population and provide for the national

defense. as the former secretary just said, whatever your public policy views, whether you care that the national debt and deficits or tax rates or government investing everything from national security to job creation, you should care about the cost of coping with climate related damage. in short, we must do what we can to limit the burden and to manage the fiscal risk. president obama understands what is at stake and after years of talking about facing up to the challenge of facing climate, he's taken action by reducing the carbon pollution from increasing energy efficiency and investing in american energy including natural gas cost over and wind power. i know that some of you combating climate change is a choice between investing in the future and growing the economy in the near term but that's a false choice. making the right investments amid the economy stronger today, creates tens of thousands of new jobs and position the united states to lead the world and technologies and the industries of the future. and we've already seen this

work. our new fuel economy standards will double the distance the cars will go on a gallon of gas by the middle of the next decade. and we've doubled the amount of renewable energy that we've produced. this means cars, trucks and renewable technology will compete effectively in the world looking for energy efficient become a lower cost and lower emissions. the fact of the matter is over the past few years, solar installations increased by 500%, and now every four minutes a home or business goes solar in the united states. at the same time, the president's better building initiative the energy efficiency of america's commercial building is unfolding. making buildings more energy efficient creates jobs, lowers business costs and reduces pollution. so far this initiative at the $300 million of energy organizations and businesses. to be sure, changing how we cover the country is good economic policy. today the fastest growing source of the generation is renewable.

which already accounts for one fifth of the generation globally. indeed, renewables now produce as much electricity worldwide as gas and more than twice that of nuclear. in the coming years and expanded world will depend more and more electricity and renewables are expected to be the fastest growing source to meet that demand. so the more we do at home to encourage low carb and the better the workers will be to take advantage of the new business opportunities. to build on what we have accomplished is part of the administration's climate action plan, the president announced new roles for existing power plants. these rules represent the most significant policy to address climate change in the united states today and will help us cut carbon pollution and increase clean energy production the lecture remains to be done and the policies represent a commitment to meeting the challenge of climate change head-on into tomorrow the president will join more than 120 heads of state in new york to mobilize global action to address climate change.

because this is a global problem that requires collective action. global action is imperative and it's a good investment in global economic growth. first making the changes cost effective look at the power plant will that i just mentioned that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power generations by 30% relative to the 2005 levels and meeting these standards will cost a fraction of the benefits associated with the coal power plants and greater use of renewables in the natural gas. the health and climate benefits producing more clean energy and reducing the use of dirty energy is expected to be worth between 55 to $93 billion in 2030. second, if we fail to make changes now, it will be much more costly to deal with the problem later. in some options it may be closed entirely. the right approach is to use market forces that balance the cost of reducing emissions with the latest science tells us we need to keep the temperature

increases below dangerous levels. the alternative of allowing the greenhouse gas emissions to reach increasingly dangerous levels will require extensive and more difficult actions later. in the recently released report, from the council of economic advisers found for each decade of delay the cost of having the given climate target goes up on average by approximately 40%. we must adopt a risk management approach to climate change. we must do what we can to substantially lower the risk of the most catastrophic climate impact and that means reducing emissions. as a former secretary of the treasury hank paulson wrote recently. the time for weighing out the evidence at a time for acting and if there's one thing i've learned is to act before the problems become too big to manage. the fact that the secretary has taken leadership positions making the case to address climate change_the economic urgency of action. with me close with two points.

the first is that we cannot do this alone. we must work with the rest of the world to address the challenge and other industrialized economies so that everyone is cutting carbon pollution and a sustainable way. the g. 20 discussed the importance of the issue and agreed to continue its work to mobilize resources for climate finance and we must work with developing countries many of which are the fastest growing carbon emitters so as they grow they move to cleaner energy production. that's why the treasury made the case to finance -- >> we now take you live to the un climate change summit for remarks by president obama. [applause] >> please wait just one minute. [applause]

>> mr. president, mr. secretary general, fellow leaders cover all of the immediate challenges challenge is that we gather to address this week, terrorism, instability and a quality, disease, there's one issue that will define the contours of the century more dramatically than any other and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate. five years have passed since many of us met in copenhagen. since then, our understanding of climate change has advanced both in the deepening science that

says this distant threat has moved firmly into the present and into the more frequent events that show us exactly what these changes mean for future generations. no nation is immune. in america the past decade has been the hottest on record. along the eastern coast city of miami for that high tides. in the west west come up with, while the fire season stretches most of the year. in the heartland, farms have been parched by the worst droughts in generations and drenched by the wettest spring and history. the hurricane (-left-parenthesis great city dark and underwater. in some nations are left with

far worse. worldwide, this summer was the hottest ever recorded. with global carbon admissions still on the rise. so the climate is changing faster than the efforts to address them. the alarm bells keep ringing. our citizens keep marching. we cannot pretend that we do not hear them. we have to answer the call. we know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm. we have to cut carbon pollution in our own countries to prevent the worst effects of climate change. we have to adapt to the impact that unfortunately we can no longer avoid. we have to work together as a global community to tackle this threat before it is too late.

we cannot come condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair not when we have the means, the technological innovation into the scientific imagination to begin the work of repairing it right now. as one of american governors said, we are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it. so today i am here personally as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second largest emitter to say that we have begun to do something about it. the united states has made ambitious investments in clean energy and ambitious reductions in the carbon emissions. we now harness three times

electricity from the wind and from the sun as we did when i came into office. within a decade and our cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas and already come every major automaker offers electric vehicles. we've made unprecedented investments to cut energy waste in our homes and buildings and appliances all of which will save consumers billions of dollars coming in we are committed to helping build a climate resilient infrastructure all told, these help create jobs and grow our economy and draft the carbon coalition to the lowest levels in two decades proving that there doesn't have to be a conflict between the sound environment and economic growth. over the past eight years the united states reduced the total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on earth.

but we have to do more. last year i issued america's first climate action plan to double down on our efforts. under that plan my administration is working with states and utilities to set standards to cut the amount of carbon pollution or power plants can dump into the air. and when completed, this will mark the single most important and significant step the united states has ever taken to reduce our carbon emissions. last week week week alone we announced an array of new actions in renewable energy and energy efficiency will save consumers more than $10 billion on their energy bills and cut carbon pollution by nearly 300 million metric tons for 23. that's the equivalent of taking more than 60 million cars off the road for one year.

i also convened a group of private sector leaders who agreed to do their part to/the consumption of dangerous greenhouse gases known as hsc 80% by 2050. and already more than 100 nations have agreed to launch under the montréal protocol. the same agreement was to phase out the depleting chemicals. this is something that we have worked on together. just a few minutes ago i met with the vice prayer and reiterated my belief that as the two largest economies and emitters in the world we have a special responsibility to be. that's what the big nations have to do. [applause]

dot this year or the year after that, but right now because no nation can meet this global threat alone. the united states is engaged more in allies to cut promotion for the impacts we cannot avoid. all told american climate assistance reaches more than 120 nations around the world. we are helping more nations get past using current technologies, not duplicating the same mistakes and impair mental degradation that took place previously. we are partnering with african on jupiter is to launch the us to launch the clean energy projects in helping farmers practice climate smart agriculture and more durable props. they are going to drive action from the methane emissions, pipelines, to launching the free trade agreement for environmental groups.

we've been working shoulder to shoulder with many of you to make a green climate fund a reality. but let me be honest none of this is without controversy. in each of the country there will be resistance to action. in each country there's a suspicion that if we act and other countries don't, but we will be at an economic disadvantage. but we have to lead. that is what the united nations and the general assembly is about. the truth is no matter what we do, some populations will still be at risk. the nations that contribute often stand to lose the most. that's why since i took office

the united states has expanded the direct adaptation of assistance eightfold and we are going to do more. today i'm directing the federal agency to begin tackling climate resistance into the international development programs and investments. i'm announcing a new effort to deploy the unique scientific capabilities of the united states from climate data to early warning systems. as of this effort includes a partnership that will draw on the resources of expertise of the leading private sector company and philanthropies to help vulnerable nations better prepared for the weather related disasters. and better plan for long-term threats like the steadily rising seas. yes, this is hard but there should be no question that the united states of america is stepping up to the plate. we recognize our role in creating this problem, we embrace the response ability to combat it. we will do our part and we will help developing nations to do

theirs. but we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing a light. nobody gets a pass. the emerging economies that have experienced some of the most dynamic growth in recent years have also admitted rising levels of carbon pollution. it's those emerging economies that are likely to produce more and more carbon emissions in the years to come. so, nobody can stand on the sidelines on this issue. we have to set aside the old divide. we have to raise our collective ambition. each of us doing what we can to confront this global challenge. this time we need an agreement

that reflects economic realities in the next decade and beyond. it must be ambitious because that is what the scale of the challenge demands. it must be inclusive because every country must play its part and guess it must be flexible because different nations have different circumstances. five years ago i pledged that the marriage would reduce the carbon emissions in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by the year 2020. america will meet that target. and by early next year, we will put forward our next emissions target reflecting our confidence in the ability of our technological entrepreneurs and scientific innovators to lead the way. so today i call on all major economies to do the same. i believe in the words of doctor king there is such a thing as being too late for the sake of

the future generations. our generation must rule towards the global compact changing climate while we still had. our children deserve such ambition. if we act now, if we can look beyond the swarm of the current events and some of the economic challenges and political challenges involved, if we place the air our children will breed into the food they bleed on the hopes and dreams of all of prosperity of our own short-term interests, we may not be too late for that. while you and i may not live to see all of the fruits of our labor, we can see that the century ahead is marked not by conflict but by cooperation, not by human suffering but by human progress and the world that we needed to our children and children's children will be healthier and more prosperous and secure.

thank you very much. [applause] i think his excellency -- >> we will be live again speaking at the clinton global initiative on its tenth anniversary here on c-span2. we will take you there at 2:00 eastern. tomorrow the president will be back to lead a security council meeting on combating terrorism. you can watch live coverage on our companion at work, c-span. again, tomorrow at 3:00. ahead of tomorrow's meeting we took a look at global terrorism and the u.s. resolution that seeks tighter laws to prevent the records from being able to cross borders. this is from today's washington journal.

>> j. solomon is a correspondenn for "the wall street journal." thanks for being with us this morning. is jay >> today is a busy day so i want to start this morning with isis. the president of course will bee headed to the united nations >>neral assembly.hear? what can we expect to hear on gr the topic click >> he is giving a major speech this week and also chairing a special session of the unouncil. security council looking at the flow of the foreign fighters into iraq to support the islamist states.i thin so you arek going to hear the o president keep building on this idea of a united coalition against the islamic state that isn't just a u.s. war.at to thee this is a threat to the entire region and europe, and that'sth why you've seen the secretary of state and others that such focus on building the arab participation on the strikes which started last night in

serious. we saw saudi arabia and jordan and qatar to some degree take part in a military action. three of the nations actually were involved in the airstrike. and i think that this is a big diplomatic coup or victory for the white house if you will because there was a lot of fear that if you run at this alone, the u.s. would be seen as launching another war in the muslim world and on the arab world and to have the states participating was a big deal for the white house and i think that you will hear the president build on this and on the idea of the threat posed by isis and the need to cut off the funding of the organization and the foreign fighters moving into the organization so that will be the focus for the un speech into the address in the security council. >> you talk about the idea of coalition building when it comes to combining isis so i'm curious

for your thoughts we put up the list of couple moments ago on the nations that partnered with the united states for these air strikes that happened overnight. but there are no western countries involved in it. that's something that you expect to change? >> welcome well, the french have been involved in the attacks on iraq in recent weeks. so, there has been western european involvement. they've been the birds, the germans and the french have only involved in providing weapons or humanitarian aid through the military drops and airdrops to the kurdish forces, to some of the iraq people that have been targeted by the islamic state so that there is western or european involvement in the operation. last night though there were no other european fighter jets involved. the french had cited their fears that by taking out isis you

could end up strengthening the french who are very aggressive in trying to remove him from office. so, the compliment has been a little bit more tricky. it still is very interesting that so many of the states are willing to take part in military operations against the sunni muslims which is basically the body of the islamic state. so it is unclear if if you you'd like to see more french, british, australian participation moving forward. that's definitely a possibility. and i think that you will see president obama, secretary kerry continuing to try to build and open up this coalition to more countries. one of the countries that wasn't involved as well is turkey which is a nato member and a neighboring of the countries. i think they are starting to feel even more isolated for not

being involved. they have nearly 50 of their diplomats kidnapped in the iraq e. city of mosul who were recently released. turkish officials had cited that the hostages as a reason that they were reluctant to be more heavily involved. but maybe that will change now. i still think there's skepticism but i'd like to turkey as another important cause of the coalition in the days and weeks ahead. >> our guest is j. solomon the foreign affairs correspondent at "the wall street journal." if you join the conversation this morning you can reach us on the phone of the democrats, (202)585-3880, republicans, (202)585-3881, and independent, (202)585-3882. i want to take a step back and talk about the broader context what is on the agenda for tomorrow and specifically what

are you looking forward to? >> the rid them of the speeches by the world leaders really takes off. president obama speaks, the egyptian president speaks. a member of the other key leaders. what i am looking for is some of the stuff we've already talked to, how the conflict with isis will be touched on how it will be described. we have arab support, but how well the president described it and how well some of the countries that have traditionally been very hostile or skeptical towards the u.s. power regionally and some of the developing companies whether it is india, south africa, brazil, how do they describe it and the russians are going to be very key because russians as the

closest ally of the theory and president bush are al-assad has been pressing the u.s. to get a security council resolution in order to do the strikes basically demanding that they coordinate any military operations in this area and regime and something the u.s. says it won't and hasn't done. they put off a statement saying it was going to start so as the speeches start to gain momentum over the next few days i would listen to how this is being defined. the un is a voice for the developing countries and third world countries and they often are just oracle8 the activities to matter where it was.

you will see a lot of focus on climate change. the secretary has been giving speeches about that and has been heavily involved. efforts to combat the ebola virus is going to be a major theme. interesting many diplomats world leaders say that it hasn't been this unstable in many ways. they are pushing to ukraine and talking about the virus, continued stability in afghanistan, concerns about china and making territorial gains in the south china sea so there are so many issues that are facing the global communities at the same time and how they are going to address them is going to be dominating the talks thrghout the week.

>> let's go to first in birmingham alabama. on the democratic line. >> caller: i am so proud barack obama is the president of the united states at this time and i'm glad that he didn't go it alone for the republicans to -- he got the arab nations to come in and help strike isis. that was very smart of him. and president obama, he got a lot of criticism, but i love this band takes his time. he's patient. he doesn't rush into anything. he is the commander in chief. he has the orders to do what whatever. so it's very smart of him. regardless whether they did the strikes i know that some [inaudible] when i was looking at the news i'm glad that president barack

obama is the president because my god we might have been in the war a long time ago with many people dead. >> host: your thoughts? >> guest: it's been an co it's been an evolution on striking serious over the past year as many viewers probably remember last august president obama basically committed the u.s. to launching airstrikes against the regime after the u.s. intelligence concluded that he abused gas on his own people killing more than a thousand people in a suburb and he really set the ball rolling and he didn't do it and that really caused a lot of irritation among many of the american allies particularly in the middle east they felt that if the red lion were sacked batch was only going

to kind of encourage the countries in the middle east or elsewhere to sort of test they are well by not going forward with that and he sort of gave them encouragement and throughout this year there's been a continued questioning of whether the u.s. waited too long, was the rise of isis a factor that the administration didn't back more moderate elements in the regime and and getting to giving the weekend the regime to help the more moderate syrian rebels because they didn't do it and it allowed the extreme groups to move in and it was unclear whether the policy would change until these horrific videos came out over the last month of american journalists being beheaded by the state. at this time we saw the shift in

the public support for the conflict and there's been a lot of weariness. we are not interested in another war in the middle east but these images of these americans being executed really did seem to galvanize public opinion and i think president obama responded to that. he has been methodical over the past four or five weeks of working to build this coalition which is the key to helping the u.s. move forward but i still think that almost all other military activities the u.s. has been involved in bosnia, kosovo, libya, the military they will be doing for a majority the majority of the airstrikes and are going to be in control of the command of the missions of the threats to the u.s. airmen

will be high as the operation goes ahead and sue in the very early days u.s. officials are excited about they brought so many coalition members on board so far but at the end of today it's still going to be the u.s. airpower leading the charge and still at risk as the strikes continue. from what we expect years, months, this isn't going to be over anytime soon. >> host: maryland on the line for independent. you are on with mr. solomon of "the wall street journal." >> good morning i just want to see these airstrikes i don't feel are going to be effective. i've been in the military and they will only get you so much effectiveness. you have to put food on the ground. there's only so much you can strike and after that's what do you need? i don't advocate going to war

but i don't think this has been thought out very clearly. i just don't like the strategy. i don't know where we get this from but we are going to get involved. you can't rely on training the iraqis and the people in that country. i will take my comments line off-line. >> guest: the caller makes a good point because that is one of the main questions and domain issues now as this goes into the next stage, whose troops are going to go in and clear out isis after it's been weakened by these airstrikes? there are reports on the ground that it was moving ahead because they knew that it was coming trying to protect themselves. so the u.s. officials themselves acknowledge that there's going to have to be boots on the ground to clean this out to push

back isis once they are weakened by the airstrikes. -- empowering more of the cities within the arab community to be a front spear on the operations against isis. the kurdish forces, the cashmere in the north to be another fundamental fighting force in syrianttle, and moderate rebels for forces in syria to push back isis. most of these fighters have not performed well in recent. said,s why as the viewer there is skepticism that americans themselves and allied forces, air of forces, others will have to come in and do the hard work to clean them out. repeatedlybama has

said there will be no forces on the ground. his generals, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has hinted otherwise in public testimony. general dempsey last week was that ifshy, or hinting these troops can't do the job, maybe u.s. forces will be required. you are going to see a heavy effort over the coming months to train up the syrian army and the saudi government. they said they will open a training facility inside their country for 10,000 syrian rebel fighters. the prime minister, the new leader of a rock and secretary key the prime minister our body the new leader of iraq and secretary of outlined a plan to stand up what they call a national guard in iraq which essentially would be sunni fighters from the areas most under isis threat being

coordinated or brought into the regular syrian, the iraqi military but with a special focus on fighting isis. i think this has some similarities to what the u.s. did in 2007 and later against al-qaeda in iraq, the forbear of the isis where they have gotten close coordination with sunni tribes save them a lot of money to fight back and push back al-qaeda and iraq. it worked pretty well but in the process kind of fell apart after the u.s. disengaged. so you see a very aggressive push to train up these three elements that outlined in the coming months but it is very unclear if they are going to be strong enough and committed enough to push back to isis. then the question raises is who's next if it doesn't happen?

former cia director, general hayden last month, sorry come last week said he expected there to be a 5000 u.s. military personnel in iraq by the end of the year. this would still largely be training and support staff rather than actual combat troops. our presence there is growing and it just depends on if their role is going to be widened because of allies are not fit or able to do the job. that will be a continuing focus as this work to continue host a question from twitter. what is the potential that the coalition we built in the middle east will cause a whole new set of power structure problems? >> guest: well, i mean, that is a good question and it's been a real difficult push to get the arab allies in place to begin

with. you have real splits in the region already. excuse me. between the leading arab states and the leading muslim states. you have kind of the traditional u.s. allies in saudi arabia, jordan, egypt, the united arab emirates of being supportive of the u.s. and also extremely hostile towards islamists, the islamist governments that have come into power or gained strength since the arab spring started in late 2010. use all these countries take part in the airstrikes last night as well as pottering. in your countries like qatar in turkey -- bahrain. muslim countries which have been pretty aggressive in supporting islamists political parties in the region, including the muslim brotherhood in egypt, hamas in the palestinian territories, some of the groups in libya and tunisia. so that definitely been splits

between those arab and muslim countries that also states that in utilities other features, which you see between the shiite government and the sunni government. and here you have iran as the largest shiite country and most powerful and their allies in baghdad, the new government of prime minister al-abadi as images and president assad to spam is an alawite, which is a sec, the event a real block. so asked the caller mentioned you could as this conflict drags on see particularly on the sectarian issue problem, the sunni states, southeast, they've mentioned, raised their concerns that the u.s., by doing this kind of risks being the air force for iran. they're getting sunni militant organization that really is targeting shiites pick their trying to weaken the government in syria and iraq and there is a

concern that the military operation could benefit the shiite government and hurt sunnis. and that is one element of this. on the flipside from the iranian perspective, from the syrian perspective, they are on one and kind of excited or they think a weakening of isis is in their interest. so you have it heard much opposition to it, but at the same time the u.s. stated objective is still removed president a shot -- president assad from power. if these turn or move in the direction of weakening assad come you could see this your regime, the iranian through its shiite militia inside iraq possibly tried to sabotage u.s. and allied military operations. if you remember in the last iraq war, the syrians and iranians played a major role in

undercutting the u.s. military campaign in iraq. the syrians allowed scores of foreign fighters, al-qaeda fighters to go into iraq using damascus and the syrian border as their entry point. the iranians funded and armed and brought in ids and beefed up a lot of the shiite militias that attacked u.s. forces inside iraq. so there is a risk that the u.s. could get kind of stuck in the middle of another sectarian conflict which is playing up everywhere from lebanon to iraq to syria. so that will be a very difficult balancing act for the administration. keeping this coalition on board as the military operations continue, and it's always very difficult once there are pictures of arabs, of muslims in syria and iraq dying from airstrikes, how long will arab

governments remain committed to a coalition if they are facing pressure, domestic pressure at home. so these are all uncertainties that the u.s. knows about. they know this is what's coming down the road, and it's just part of what happens when you fight in a part of the world. >> host: we are talking with jay solomon of "the wall street journal." next caller is byron in louisiana, democrat's line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i'd like to remind mr. solomon that lester would have had the gas problem in syria, the president come he is our president, obama, by the way, he turned it over to congress and they ran like chickens. 80% of the united states people had risen up and said stay out of syria, but john mccain and lindsey graham and "the wall street journal," and fox news stirred this thing until he finally got it the way they wanted it to implement to get us

back into the work in the middle east. i just, i get disgusted just listening to some of these people talk. and you see john mccain with his arms around people over there in syria. yeah, that are over there stirring this thing and it's going to be a very bad war. i'm an ex-between. i know what's coming. goodbye. >> host: your response. >> guest: well, i think the caller is right. there has been in this country a lot of war weariness and a lot of ambivalence to have another conflict in the middle east for the reasons he stated. we've been talking about earlier, that once you launch military strikes there are unintended consequences, and thinks take a life of their own. he's right, he is outlined mccain, lindsey graham have been extremely aggressive for more than one year, for two

years with the u.s. should have gotten involved earlier support the free syrian army and to prevent assad machine to remain in power and from allowing al-qaeda elements, more radical elements to seize control of the battlefield. i do think though there has been a shift. a look at recent polls and public opinion, after the murders of these two american journalists, james foley and the steven sotloff, the public opinion has shifted to supporting military engagements of some sort against isis. and i think that pressure moved the white house. i think that's why you've seen president obama who is extremely cautious about any involvement in syria move in the direction he has. it's so early. let's see where this goes. if we do start seeing u.s. airplanes been shot down or u.s. soldiers being killed or held

hostage, does the public stand by it and how is congress playing this? there have been a growing rumbling in congress that president obama needs some sort of new military authorization to continue expanding this conflict into syria. so far the white house is arguing kind of ironically that some of the legislation passed after 9/11 is sufficient to support, legally, the u.s. conflict in iraq and syria because going against al-qaeda elements. but there is a push from republicans and leading democrats, such as the chairman of the foreign relations committee, robert menendez of new jersey, to push the white house to get new authorization to oversee or get legal coverage for these military exercises. it's a political year. the election is in november, so who knows how that could play out if the white house really goes that way they said the

white house position basically they're happy to work with congress on sunday language but they don't elect me believe they need to do. it's unclear at the white house was wants to go through another congressional battle in an election year. so the call is right. there is a lot of uncertainty and still a lot of war weariness in this country. and the murders of these two americans kind of seemed to galvanize opinion, but that could quickly reverse itself if the conflict looks like it's going to drag out or it's going to be much bloodier than many had originally hoped. >> host: earlier in the segment you mentioned the cooperative efforts and the partnership the united states has made when looking to defuse the threat of isis. i was hoping you could address more of the rule of turkey. it's a very sought after ally for the united states. wasted stand now? >> guest: turkey has been, it's a real, is a difficult nut to crack. turkey right now is not

participating in the military operations. it's a nato member. there's a large u.s. air base inside turkey. that could be one of the staging ground for these attacks. the turks have said they don't want the u.s. to use these bases. initially, they were mentioning concerns about blowback on the isis was going to target these 50 turkish diplomats i was mentioning who were kidnapped and were being held in mosul. they are now free, so the question now is does turkish president erdogan now feel he has more political space, he doesn't have the hostage issue hanging over his head, that he can't engage more aggressively in this conflict. turkey has been in kind of a strange position throughout the arab spring and in the situation with syria. they were first really engage with president assad in

believing that he might be able to reform this. this was early on after the civil war broke out in syria in 2011. we basically reneged on the promises he had made to been prime minister erdogan, turkey really became one of the most aggressive countries calling for the overthrow of the assad regime. and these islamic state fighters, other fighting elements inside syria, rebel elements have really used turkey as the main conduit for money and fighters going into western and northwestern syria over the last few years. this has been the criticism of erdogan. it's come from the u.s. as well that they have there been scrutinizing which fighters have been getting money, have been getting arms, have been getting shelter in turkey. the turkish government seems kind of obsessed with getting rid of assad after he kind of

snubbed erdogan, that they didn't do much quality control on which fighters were getting strong over the border in syria, and now they're sort of paying the price. so turkey, it's still unclear. i think it will feel pressure now to become more engaged now that so many of the u.s.'s top mideast allies are engaged. but erdogan is a very strong and strong headed leader, and it's unclear if now he will move or now he will take a kind of a quieter role, whether the turkish will provide intelligence and take steps to cut off the funding of isis. i think more than anything at this stage that's what the u.s. wants from turkey. isis controls more than six oil and gas fields inside syria, and they're making estimates are from one to 2 million a day from

the smuggling of oil. and most of the oil and diesel is going to turkey. so the turks seal their borders and cut off that trade, i think that more than anything is what the u.s. and its allies want. but so far there's still been kind of a slow lackadaisical effort by the turkish government and usually wants that to change. >> host: i want to read some comments from white house press secretary josh artist on turkey but before i do just as an for our viewers and listeners, president obama is expected to address these strikes ahead of leaving washington for new york today. we will follow those remarks closely on c-span as well. now to josh earnest comments on turkey. he said -- -- all the mayhem and hac

t's back mobile, alabama, cornell is on the line for independents. >> caller: yes. the first thing i want to say is that "the wall street journal" who lists individuals -- who this individual is represent is also owned by the same company that owns fox news. a lot of people don't know that. in other words, news corp. by "the wall street journal" about three to five years ago. so this is just an affiliate of news corp. which owns fox news. the thing i see, this gentleman, mr. solomon has walked through everything, but a year ago the government wanted to bomb syria a year ago, but the congress and

the american people said no. from that point there has been come in my opinion, and elaborate propaganda regime put in place to turn the american public to want to back any kind of war, just like the gentleman a few calls back. because all they've done is show all these videos of people riding in trucks in the desert and then they came up with this thing about isis, overthrowing iraq, then after that it was a yazidis on the holy mountain and old people who could save the yazidis on the holy mountain was america bombing. after they bombed that penny said we got to bomb around the dam. isis has the biggest and in iraq and if they do something to it it's going to flood all of iraq. so then they bombed that. so now what they want to do, and all of this is leading up to

overthrowing the government and syria. that's what the whole thing is all about. and i'm very disappointed in the u.s. government, president obama. he ran and won two elections saying that he was going to end to these kind of wars, and he is reneged on his work. >> host: your take? >> guest: i'm not going to get into any grand conspiracy theory but the call is right. i mean, president obama did campaign twice to be the president, and a large part of his campaign was, you know, we are tired of a decade of war, we need to focus on the homefront. these wars have really drained u.s. resources, you know, really drained to the military. it's time to pull back and really focus on the domestic front. i think that's why you have seen so much resistance from the

white house against getting dragged into this conflict. they have stuck to their plans to pull out of iraq. initially they set the deadline for pulling out of afghanistan this year, and we have laid a pretty small role in the military operations in libya in 2011, but i mean, i disagree in the sense that this was kind of a methodical, you know, propaganda campaign that got president obama involved. i really think it was these murders of the two americans, so viciously, that really caused a firestorm in the u.s. and shifted public opinion. but it could be fickle. it could reverse itself quite quickly. there are democrats who are worried that the president has kind of given in or has been kind of pushed by the public, by these horrific images into a conflict that maybe we can't win

or we can only do so much damage using airstrikes. i mean, the caller is right in the sense that he did campaign on pulling back and he has now been maneuvered into another mideast war. it's just very unclear if they can keep it as narrow as president obama has said, which is basically just airstrikes and support of the iraqi forces, but the u.s. itself won't get dragged him. it can be a slippery slope. it's really early days, but president obama now is owning and other conflict in iraq, and that is not going, not going to be received by some in his own party. >> host: missouri, richard is on the democrat's line. missouri, are you with us? all right, we're going to try to

come back to richard a little bit later if we can't get enough. were going to go instead to mississippi on the line for republicans. >> caller: good morning. my mother is an avid reader and she told me about her research that she read about islam's most reverend, the high holy one, mohammed, and how he was, he died and a day, the people have been discontent ever since they elected him so to speak to take his place. the brother-in-law of mohammad, and then from the brother-in-law came the brother-in-law's son, and she says the shiites and sunnis have been fighting over this issue since the year 600,

they have been like that. you know, my take on it is i think instead of more airstrikes we should have mercy on us many people as possible and start air dropping food. they must be starved to death out there. it's president obama ama, not obamacare. and i think it would be right for china, i think, they are such a generous people, to help us, you know, airdrops instead of airstrikes. put some barbie dolls or something in their hands other than guns. thanks. >> host: jay solomon at "the wall street journal," your thoughts on the human condition? >> guest: there has and will

be a large humanitarian component of these operations. it's been going on now for over a month first with all these aid drops to the ucd ethnic group that was being threatened by isis, for the refugees have fled into kurdistan, support for refugees have fled into neighboring countries such as turkey or jordan. so there is a humanitarian effort there, which many more countries have been supportive, regardless of what was going on with the military side. not sure what role china has been playing on the humanitarian side. i think i might've done something, i'm not sure. i don't think they have the military capacity yet to be that big a player in a military operation. but i do believe they're doing some humanitarian work. but this caller raises a good point which is this is essentially a centuries old

interreligious feud going on between the sunnis and the shia. as i was saying earlier, in iraq to saddam hussein who is a sunni strongman ruling a country that was majority shiite. once he was removed it really changed the balance of the region. if empowered the shiites in iraq. iran felt empowered. their close allies in syria felt empowered. and there is a legitimate question of a situation that with so much being dictated by things that are completely out of the uses control, which is basically this feud inside a religion, can airstrikes and a military operation really play a big role in healing something that could take decades or longer to sort itself out? i don't think anyone has the

answer for that, but if you see how many places in the middle east are afflicted by the sectarian divide, whether it's in lebanon where the shiite militia, hezbollah, basically the most powerful actor in the country and there's been tensions between hezbollah and the sunnis in syria where you had assad you is an alawite shiite element ruling over sunni majority population, what i just described in iraq. and bahrain have the sectarian problem. so this is a regional issue and it's playing out most viciously right now in iraq and syria. it is difficult for them military strikes to address something that's religious, that's cultural. i think a special focus of the u.s. has been and will continue to be the political situation,

the political leadership in baghdad. the former prime minister, and mary maliki who's a shiite, was very much criticized by iraq's sunni publishing, by the neighboring sunni states are basically marginalizing and creating second class citizens out of the sunnis. and it was these policies that really, really energize isis. i think it's true in the areas where isis has gained territory it wasn't just islamic militants who are fighting the iraqi government. it was former members of the iraqi baath party, elements of the tribal leadership of the sunni tribe. so it's more than just isis. and the u.s. has really pushed over the summer to basically remove maliki which succeeded, and his replacement is alibi, who the u.s. hopes to do a lot more to basically reach out to iraqi sunni and kurds

populations -- à la body. and address the isis threat lyrically, diplomatically. and economically. it's really early. is only been in the country, sir, in part for a few weeks so it's hard to tell, but basically in the political side of this is very important. and whether his government can make peace with the sunnis is going to be a really crucial factor determining whether a military operation can bring a more lasting situation. >> host: tomorrow at the united nations the president supposed to share a city because they were members are going to consider a resolution that is aimed at defeating isis essentially. i'm curious, jay solomon, what is the significance of depression personally chairing the meeting of was the a fact of this was ocean that is likely to be approved?

>> guest: i think the significant is yes, it's that president himself really putting his stamp on a global policy, and that in turn puts pressure on u.s. allies and on allies to fall in line. there has been a lot of quiet or criticism of the president that he hasn't kicked or cracked down hard on some of the countries in the region who have been accused of, if not supporting isis, then at least turning a blind eye to the funding of isis or other extremist groups inside syria. one of them is the al-nusra front which is an al-qaeda affiliate and tha get some workg relationship with isis in the past. turkey as i mentioned before, qatar, kuwait. the u.s. treasure and some of the finan