saudi arabia. it has started since the 1960s and as long as we don't understand that, even today i just gave you this thing that is american published that the lawyers find that the saudis helped al qaeda. and this has been -- these are the 9/11 victims. and then we look for terrorist groups in latin america that doesn't exist. this is something that we have to see. we are failing american people if we don't realize some of this thing. so it's just that. it's a pipe dream. the problem is that muslim community is never going to be -- one of the things that it is dangerous right now and i will go to that and it is getting more and more dangerous is the intrinsification of sectarian and regional

conflicts. we are making a conflict turkey. instead of zero problems, he has now problems with just about everybody. what i'm saying is that all of those things i agree hundred percent and i am no expert on that. we have to follow the sosomali disenchanted. we have been shooting our selves in the foot. we keep saying that al qaeda and taliban have no connection. whoever believes in that believes in the tooth fairy. i was invited for that. it's the only this evening i can contribute, the regional conflict. >> don't go away. >> i won't go away. >> just one point of clarification.

you're right, everybody wants to create ticalifi and aspirations -- they failed miserably, weren't able to do anything. when i look at al qaeda, i see they have not on that aspiration but they are also talking about world conquest. the issue for me is where are they at in actually achieving their objectives? to me what i see is the first objective of overthrowing these rulers seems to have happened through other means but there's places like egypt where mubarak is no longer in charge. but immediately they wanted to set up sharia in those places

and failed. the only places they've been able to set up sharia is yemen, pakistan and the places like emirates. i believe that the correct metric for measuring whether they're successful in these areas has to do -- >> there are about ten people creating a small village in -- >> to me the most important metric to saying whether they're succeeding or failing there is are they controlling people's behavior? are people in those countries forced to wear the clothing they want, forced to grow the beard, forced to pray the way they want them to do, forced to give up kite flying and all the other things. the kind of state they want to create is the kind of state they created in afghanistan and they were very good at controlling

people's behavior, despite what most of the people wanted. >> fear. >> absolutely, fear, intimidation and murder. in anbar province we saw that and we got to see it on the ground ourselves. nobody really wanted these guys, except for people who had revenge fantasies. i guess the porng thing is there's what people want and what is imposed on them. everywhere they have these jihadist ideologies and impose their vision and where al qaeda claims they control these people, only with the help of outside actors have we been able to get rid of them once they set up their so-called emrits. so the people of chechnya were incapable of getting rid of them. the people in afghanistan were incapable of getting rid of them, even though they hated

their guts. they had to have outside actors. does that mean the united states has to be physically itself involved? no. that is in fact not the obvious policy implication of what i'm saying. in fact, iraq should have told us that our presence there in some ways created more problems than it created help. our prolonged presence in afghanistan might have created more problems than it helped to resolve. i'm not making an argument for some sort of boots on the ground, u.s. must be physically involved in all of these places. >> but there is another thing that we will forget about at our peril and that is throughout the 1980s and 90s, we saw salafi islam as an antidote. we thought they were not going to be revolutionary.

we thought they were just praying and wearing beards and so on and so forth and now they have metastasized. we have to look at the conflict. you can't start -- the other thing, it's a pity mary left. you have to have a dialectic approach to these things. yes being some people may turn to taliban. but they turn to taliban as a result of the long civil war that happen. the countries do not return to normalcy after about 30 years of war immediately and become nice democrats and start doing this. and the same thing in the way that the salafism has gained interest in egypt. of lot of them are the ones that

went to work and are coming back. we have to look at the root, at the source. this unfortunately is the source. and the other thing is that anywhere that state power disintegrates, you are going to have all kinds of terrorism. yemen, for example. today it is al qaeda, tomorrow it's going to be something there. but the whole civil war that went on and now the major concern in yemen is the hutus. it's not -- so, that's -- >> milton, one thing to the point of your question, when a tactic is successful, it will be emulated and we've got a lot of crazies in our country who know how to make a bomb. we're going to need help from anybody outside. we've seen that in some attacks already. with no influence from anybody on the outside except it works, unfortunately. >> i think the cue from my question from the good general,

from his talk and then it's expanded by a good deal that was said by the other people. i'm wondering what evidence, that is what really primary source materials exists for any change in game plan, as you pointed out, may well be the case. it is in war, of any change of the game plan by collidia whether it's game change as terrorist group or whether as one of our speakers said it might be a game plan for something beyond just being a terrorist group. do we have any evidence other than conjecture for any kind of change in game plan? >> well, let me just offer that -- and i, too, am sorry that mary has left and matthew would probably be able to add a lot to this as well beyond what i can. but, yes, we do. we have evidence that al qaeda

is a thinking and promulgating organization. it thinks and promulgates through a couple primary media. one is its base web site called alfager and it has a newspaper that it promulgates messages and information in. predominantly we get the tone and tenure where al qaeda's core believes it's headed from releases and pronouncements from those that are listed in al qaeda as the heads of external or internal operations for the different function aries. you had one who are more libyans promulgating different doctrines. they get their time in the air and then they get their time with the drones and then somebody else steps in. so that's kind of where we hear and see it.

so we've seen the tacting change here. we've seen them want to reach out and aspire to what i calico-onned, others called franchised but to co-op some of these local level initial give groups. for the local level groups it's been important, though we need to watch carefully to see if the importance still resonates after bin laden's death. it's important the same way the common term was important for people like the revolutionaries in vietnam or the revolutionaries in other parts of the world because it was a signal for fund-raising, okay, a signal to these very places shireen is talking about. that's an important part of the signaling and affiliation. it's also the other way where the groups announce and

speculate, one of the other pronouncers on these web sites about what it is they expect or want, how they want to manage the message about egypt or palestine and now about syria. they want to send the message that syria is the place for the mujahadeen to congregate. the reality is the shia is smaller. but now and this is an interesting tact, okay, he's asking for much more to exploit the sectarian violence in syria. and that's important because as shireen indicates, it plays into another theme in the middle east

which is the split over the n h nuclear weapons but this belief in riyadh that the lest decade has helped to -- tactics don't belie strategy. to the extent al qaeda matters, it matter for what its overall aspirations are. if an aspiration says only violence can bring change, then you've not go al qaeda. you have something that would be analogous to trade unionists or social democrats. but that takes 100 to 150 years to fully develop through the political process. if they all want to talk about is getting a new parliamentary

procedure in parliament, then they have won. they are now in a plit cal process. toe sew al qaeda in that analogy to me are still the bolsheviks. >> tom, if i could, i think you touched on it a couple times. i think for a game change you watch the money. it's not about money, it's all about money, it's always about money. it's what's going to drive them and give them a capability. i think recently and i can say this in a general sense, i don't have anything to back it up, i think we've realized that and matt from his background in the treasury can probably speak to this far better. we've started to employ those

tools to go after those things but if you don't have the capability to do it, you're going to fall flat on your face. the sooner i think we can go down that line and employ gangsters of capitalism in this fight a little bit more, i think the better off we're going to be. >> if i may respond, norton, to you as an academic, i hope you'll have an tonight look at this book just accomplished and, as you know, the general can defeat an army but the general cannot defeat the mind of the peasants. and this is what we have to deal with is both continuity and change. general gray, would you like to ask a question or make a

comment? >> this has all been very interesting. >> you have to use the mic over there. this mic. >> it's all been -- certainly been very, very interesting and most enlightening. it's always really good to hear what academia and other experts from several disciplines have to say about this topic. i was wondering, though, as i listened to all this, all right, what do we do now? it seems to me that one thing that was not discussed at all is how do we -- how do we get the media on board with our intent? one way of course would be to really come up with an intent.

what do we continue end to do in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. take the long view with respect to how do we end up with a better world for everybody and not just focused on the united states or western ideas and all that kind of thing but how do we -- how do we set out to try to improve the world as we know it for everybody. that ought to be the kind of goal that our country could help take the lead in in the future. as i said, 20 or 30 years from now. it's interesting, for example, that we don't seem to really learn an awful lot from history. one of the things that history teaches us is that really freedom is not necessarily a universal value and all that kind of thing that, many people in the world are more interested in security than they are freedom, and that's why in some cases, in many cases, they

gravitate towards the totalitarian type of government, because they can provide in some ways better security and the like. and soap we need to look at that a little bit and look at our history and see what really can be done to make the world better. and i think in terms of terrorism, terms like a global war on terrorism and all that, that's just not correct. terrorism is a tactic. it's a tactic tactically and it a tactic strategically. it always has been and there's been examples not just in the last century but terrorism tactics and that kind of thing go back, you can find them in the core rkoran, you can find i the torah and you can find it in the bible.

whether it's our nation or any of the free world today. that ought to be one of our primary goals and one of our primary objectives here. we forget, for example, that the astro metric value, those are the kind of things that present real dangers to us. i also hope that we do not get overconfident here based on what we heard here today. we should never underestimate the enemy or the other people or anything like that. that breeds disaster in the long haul. we want to be very, very careful. for example, the terrorist attack that the terrorist tactics and the attack that occurred on the 23rd of october

in 1983 against the marine headquarters in beirut as well as the french headquarters and israeli headquarters, not many people really realized that within a few minutes the terrorists took out three major headquarters of three very different countries who were there trying to bring peace and stability in lebanon alike. and that attack was really conceived in iran and it was funded with money and material through damascus and then into the western front in beirut and carried out by the hezbollah. and nobody's even mentioned the hezbollah today and yet they were a very, very violent group and still are. in fact, we should have probably gone into them there in 1983 and gone to the becca valley and

deposited all of them right there and ended that, but that's a different topic. the point i want to make here it is it was a very carefully coordinated attack. i think we overdramatized this. we made a hero out of bin laden. we aided and abetted everything bin laden was trying to do, making him a hero, by giving him broad play in the media, setting him ups somebody that couldn't be taken down and all of that kind of thing. wooey don't we step back and bit and think about these things a little bit. and i agree with dr. lynch that we can do a lot more by operating out of this country and out of other countries around the world and like that. we don't have to be in these particular countries and regions to be very, very effective, and not just with special operations type capability but there are a

host of types of capabilities, political, et cetera, et cetera. when we want to do it on our time schedule. in other words, we should drive, we, the free world, should drive the whole thing, not bin laden or some other terrorist corps activity. i've already said too much here and the like. but i do that i agree, we ought to come up with a different kind of strategy for the long haul, look ahead, and then work backwards, like you would in a campaign plan. you work backwards by phases, work backwards in terms of what money you can afford to put to this strategy and all of that kind of thing. we've got to -- somehow we've got to harmonize not just academic and research thought and all of that and the military thought i don't know how you pull together that crowd across

the river, i'll leave that up to you academic types. we'd need to pull together. this is above politics and all of that kind of thing and do what's best for the free world as we know it today. thanks. >> i would have let you go first. >> no, no. >> i think he did. those that don't know me, i'm don kerr, i've been associated with a null of organizations over the years. but i think one of the things that came you up here that i feel is most important is the need to pay great ar tension to pakistan and be realistic about what it is. some of you recall when we got to exploit some of sites in afghanistan what we found was, of course, the evidence that

tarnac farms about long-term interest ta al qae that al qaeda had in other weapons and other kind of technology. not only that people that supported that effort were in fact mostly retirees from the pakistani nuclear program. if the retirees felt it was important to support al qaeda, one must ask those currently in the program share those views in some manner. it's something, i think we into the to root out. we also need to understand that, when we leave afghanistan, it once again becomes part of pakistan's defense and depth against what they consider their real enbemy, india. it's healed a bit by the mumbai attack, they talk once in a while now. but in fact, we're a pawn in the game they've been playing in

terms of two nuclear armed neighbors and what each might be able to get from the united states depending on what our interests are in that region. so i think pakistan is the lurking devil in the background here. it's the place where more technology would be available to al qaeda and those who would emulate them and it's very poorly controlled. it's as close to being a failed state while still remaining a state, as any we must deal with. so i just leave you with that thought. >> thank you very much. >> professor, do you want to make -- >> can i sit here? >> yes, you can sit there. use the mike. >> can you hear me? i'm overwhelmed by how much i heard. i'm a civilian, i respect

generals, i think general gray put it well. the title of the program is al qaeda kovatis, in other words, the challenge it is to us. i have a friend in the back of the room, nate rothstyle, and he uses the term grand strategy as did shireen hunter. we have to have a grand strategy. the program is this is not the cold war. i've heard reference to lennon, marx. i know that they had one in the '20s, i think we have to disenthrall ourselves from cold war thinking. what's interesting is, so much knowledge, i really was overwhelmed today by all of my neighbors, how much they know, yet shireen hunter said we don't know enough about countries and their histories. so how do you take this objective requirement the united

states think big? i mean, brits talked about the great game. is it a great game or a lot of little games? and that's the nature of the program. we had a very good program on nigeria, referred to before. you have the local, the terrori terrorists, i can't think of the name there is some al qaeda there, and of course there are lone actors there as well. how can we, in our own mind, aggregate all of the phenomena just to get a grip on them intellectually and relate to a long-term national strategy? that is the challenge. as much as we heard today -- god knows we heard a lot, most of us have learned about the subject than ever before -- we don't know how to get our calipers around the subject and i think it's a real challenge. >> bold enough to suggest methodology of somehow looking at this, i don't have the answers. i'm not military strategist. i'm more of a regionalist. but i have been doing this a

lot. and i have maybe the advantage of being from the region myself and i can kind of understand sometimes some of the thing. one of the things that i don't think we have come to terms with i don't any in the world, generally, the collapse of the soviet union has just changed the world. you know, in the old days, when you had an absolutely dominant paradigm, you could have, even during the cold war, i remember one of the books that i read as a graduate student in england was called, you know "nations in alliance" and one of the things is that great powers generally want alliances in order to achieve their broad games. whereas the local states want alliances with the great powers to help them in the local little games. now, this asymmetry that exists

between a great power and a local powers has become so much more pronounced and strengthened since the collapse of the soviet union, and i am sorry to say that i don't think that -- even academic community, but definitely policy community, least of what i'm sure they know it maybe in the private deliberate rath deliberations, we don't understand quite well our interests and pakistan's interests and afghanistan are not the same. i wrote an article in 1989 saying that. the title if you look at lexus nexus in afghan act ii, america beware, interest is not pakistan. the same thing, our interests in afghanistan are not the same with saudi arabia. our interests in the peshen gulf not the same with saudi arabia, or even iraq. yet we pursued both in afghanistan, after our victory, and in iraq, a strategy that

ultimately afghanistan we favored the pashtun, pashtun equals taliban, to a great extent. again, in iraq, i'm sorry to say, certainly after 2005, 2006 we basically helped sunni insurgent and that's long history-this is one of the major things we have to keep in mind, that the whole system of international relations has grown asymmetric. frankly, i'm going to say, this is last time i am going to say but i have important, important people, our policy towards iran has distorted our entire policy in the middle east and central asia. you cannot go round iran. we have whether it was dual containment, whether it was to help create the taliban, a major rational behind it was to contain iran. and we have made of iran, a soviet union that is not a soviet union, it's a