last, i was in college in 1954, and adlai stevenson, no conservative, gave a speech to my senior class. and he said -- he said the following. he said, "the power for good or pee evil of this american political organization is virtually unlimited. the decisions it makes. the uses to which p devotes its immense resources. the leadership on moral as well as interior questions appear likely to determine the fate of the modern world. you dare not withhold your attenti attention. if young americans do not participate to the fullest extent of their ability, america will stumble. and if america stumbles, the world falls. it is -- it seems to me that those words are as true today as they were then. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> we'll be right back with a discussion and some questions and answers. this is a conservative intellectual tradition in america here at the citadel in charleston, south carolina. we're here at the citadel in charleston, south carolina. we're back with secretary don rumsfeld. and we're talking about the bush doctrine and the war on terror. i'd like to start out by asking him, in what sense should the global military conflict with radical islam be seen as a recapitulation of the cold war? >> i don't usually use five-syllable words like recapitulation. >> okay. how do the lessons apply? >> i think that there is a

greater similarity to the struggle against violent extremists, the so-called war on terror. a greater similarity between that and the cold war than there is between world war 1 or world war ii or korea. >> well, what are the lessons? how do they apply? >> one lesson, it seems to me, is we have to recognize it's not going to be won with bullets. it's going to be won in a competition of ideas, an effort not simply by the department of defense or people with weapons but by all elements of national power, finding ways to get that battle to be fought within the muslim faith. the overwhelming majority of people who are muslims in the world are not going to madrasas to learn how to strap on suicide belts and kill people. and they're not determined to e re-establish a caliphate and end

the concept of nation states. they are people who are practicing their religion. but a small minority in there is, and the likelihood of non-muslims to be able to persuade that group of extremists not to be extreme and to live within the nation-state concept that our world has it seems to me is small. i don't think we're going to win that from the outside of that faith. i think we've got to find ways to support people in that faith so that they in fact -- and it's risky. don't get me wrong. they get killed if they say the wrong thing or if they do the wrong thing or if they say things to authorities that are inconsistent with what the extremists want. they put their lives at risk and their families at risk. but i think in that sense it is much more like the cold war. >> what lessons from the cold war do not apply? >> i just thought of one that does apply, another one.

we have to be patient. this isn't going to end with a signing ceremony on the "uss missouri." this isn't going to end in two, three years. it takes time. cold war took decades. and we have to expect that this is going to take time. i don't mean hot warfare's going to take decades. but dealing with that problem of terrorism is going to take decades. in what ways doesn't it apply? well, it's not conventional. each was unconventional and asymmetric and something that is quite different than what we're comfortable with and what the department of defense, for example, is basically organized, trained, and equipped to do in large measure. >> oh. cadet mellon. first question from you, please. >> sir, you seemed to make an argument for compassionate conservatism and a larger federal government and you said

we can't be libertarians because we need a large defense. what's wrong with a small federal government with a large defense, and can't a libertarian have a large defense? >> i think you misquoted me. i don't think i said i favored a large government. >> you said that we couldn't be libertarian because it wouldn't make sense, something along those lines, sir. >> no. you're misquoting me. i said i think all of us, a great many of us conservatives, like the idea of a smaller idea and less -- almost my precise words. less regulation. and less government involvement in our private lives. however, there are people in that category of libertarians who favor a more modest and smaller defense capability and a more isolationist approach for the united states. and my point was i don't believe

we can afford to be isolationist in this world. i think it would be a more dangerous world if the united states were less involved and contributing less to the people and stability and had a weaker deterrent and less ability to dissuade people from engaging in the kinds of adventures that they would avoid were the united states seen as capable, engaged, and contributing to peace and stability. >> next question. mr. faust. >> earlier when you were speaking you mentioned that it's a -- >> this is not fair. they've got computers. he's sitting there reading. >> i can see it, mr. secretary. there's cartoons on it. >> that's a relief. okay. >> but earlier you mentioned, you said it's a battle of ideas referring to the war on terror and similar to the soviet union. but if that's the case, then shouldn't we be worried less

about going to war and pre-emptive strikes and those measures and working more on soft power and making -- and focusing inward on america itself so that that way we'll be a country that people want to look up to and be like. because we're suffering from i'd say a lot of maladies right now that make other countries say oh, it doesn't seem to be working. >> well, you use more or less. i would recast and respond this way. diplomacy and military power go hand in hand. not the military power necessarily to be used but to exi exist. and you can have a country without any military capability do all the diplomacy it wants, and not many people are going to listen. and it seems to me that we have to recognize that soft power alone is not impressive. and certainly military power alone without diplomacy is

mindless. you need to use the two together. and i don't mean use the military power but have the military capability for your diplomacy to be persuasive. you don't see what -- in the newspaper day after day what -- i'm not going to mention any countries, but i could list probably 60, 70, 80 countries what they think. why? because it's not relevant to us or the world. it doesn't affect the world. what affects the world are countries that are factors, that are politically and economic and militarily capable. the task is to have those two in close connection and effective. and i think it is a -- would be a misunderstanding to assume that diplomacy alone can accomplish a great deal.

i'll give you an example right now. it would not faketake a genius have a status of forces agreement in iraq. we don't have one. diplomacy didn't get us one. we can't have our forces in a country without a status of forces agreement of some kind in any continuing basis. now, i'm one who does not believe that this country has the ability to go around and nation build. i think each country's different, it has its own coulter, its own history, its own neighbors, its own experiences, and they have to do that. what we can do and have done in places like korea and japan is create a circumstance so they can build their countries. and they in the last analysis have to do that. the other thing that you -- about your question that worries

me is this. you say other countries don't respect us or something to that effect, that people see problems with us. that's always been so. the country that is the biggest, the most influential, the most economically powerful, whose movies or music or culture affect other countries is always going to be criticized. and i think the mistake is for americans to think that people who point their finger and say we're not perfect are correct. we're not perfect. but the fact that every country doesn't love us or agree with everything we do ought not to be surprising because there are very few countries in the world that are like us. we're bound to have values that are different. and i happen to think the values we have are good ones. and i -- let me give you this

example. i have two titanium hips. and when i got them, i had to have a therapist come to the house and make me move my legs in a way that would be good for the new titanium hip. three days later i was finished. i knew how do it and i could do it myself. i said thanks. he said can i say something personal? i said sure. he said, i don't think you americans appreciate your country. he said, i come from nigeria, and if you go at 10:00 or 12:00 at night to the grass outside the american embassy you'll see people sleeping on the grass, lined up trying to come to your country. why do they want to come to your country? because your country's the land of opportunity. your country's where people have an opportunity to improve their lives. and i think we ought to be careful in believing these people who contend that america is what's wrong with the world.

it isn't. america's not what's wrong with the world. and if it were you wouldn't see people lined up all across this gloeg globe trying to come here. and they are trying to come here. and with good reason. because it's a very special place. >> i'm going to shift gears for a second and ask you to take a look at the current military state of affairs in afghanistan. i'm going to pick a few other countries after that. but i'll start with afghanistan. can you assess what's going on there? >> no. i'm out of date. i've been out of the pentagon six years. i haven't talked to any of the commanders, the recent military commanders. i've talked to enough people who've been in important jobs and thought they were current and weren't. and i'm not inclined to make the same mistake. i will say one thing. i described afghanistan as a country that's landlocked, had a civil war, was occupied, was

poor, illiterate, tribal. and what have they done? since 2001. they've placed in power karzai. not because he was strong but because he didn't have his own militia, largely. the other warlords said, gee, at the loya jirga, the meeting to decide this, let's make him the temporary one. it's easier than making one of the more powerful warlords the temporary leader of the country. so then they fashioned a constitution. and then they vote on the constitution. and then people who'd left afghanistan a decade, two decades earlier start coming back. over a million refugees returned to that country. problem was you look around where there's a piece of construction going on and what's happening is most of the people working there aren't afghans because they're not literate. they don't know how. they don't have people who are

trained electricians and trained pipe fiters and trained to do these things. so they've got a difficult situation. they've got a whole generation of women who weren't allowed to go to school or to learn. so karzai's in there. here's a country that's not known for having a strong central government. it's tribal. with open borders. with tough neighbors. and what do we do? well, unfortunately, in my opinion, our government, leaders in our government started trashing karzai publicly. now, is he perfect? no. are we perfect? no. did he do everything we want? no. is there corruption in the government? yes. someplace. is there corruption in our government? yes. we have congressmen and governors go to the slammer. so when people started publicly pointing to the government and saying corruption, even though i know of no evidence that says

karzai's personally corrupt. second, they expect him to behave as a strong central government, which the country has absolutely no history of. they publicly criticize him and weaken him. now, think of yourself as a politician. if some outsider is pointing his finger at you and criticizing you, as mr. holbrooke did, ambassador eikenberry did, vice president biden did, all publicly criticize karzai, our congress started doing it. what do you do? you defend yourself. that's what cakarzai's doing. so he starts saying things back. and it's tit for tat, this for that. and what have we accomplished? what's happened to private diplomacy? if you've got a problem with somebody, go in and talk to him about it. but you don't go out in front of his country and criticize him publicly. and i think we have mishandled the karzai government.

he is the elected leader of that country. does the country behave like we do? no. is he perfect? no. but is he the person that was selected by those people? yes. does he do a pretty good job? i think so. is it a tough job? i mean, he came to me once and said, look, i've got a warlord that won't do what i want, and i want to be able to tell him that u.s. military power is going to support me if he doesn't do what i want. i said no way. i'm not going to have you throwing around u.s. military power. that's up to the american people. i went back to the national security council. they had a big debate and discussion. some people said yes, you should assure him that our military power will stand behind him. i said, well, i don't think so. the president ended up agreeing with me. i went back to karzai. i said look, here's the drill. you'd better start acting like mayor daley in chicago. you'd better find those warlords who want something, whether it's

patronage or they want the potholes in their streets fixed, and be political. work with them. and get them to do the things you want by using the power you have, which is not total. you don't have total power. nobody does. and he said okay. and he tried, and he did. he ended up bringing some of those people into the parliament and into his cabinet and playing this off against that. and being political, which is what a political leader has to do, unless you're an authoritarian. but i thip think public ly --

briefly. it's imperfect. the country was used to sunni rule. a minority sect in the country. the kurds pulled away and kind of operated semi-autonomously in the north. the shia has the largest population and had not been in the driver's seat. once you had an iraqi constitution drafted. once you had an election under that constitution, the majority rule, the shias took over. there was a fight within the shia sect, an element. and in this recent election the man who got the most votes didn't get the job, malawi.

malky got it. he was able to stay in. he has a very tough job. just as karzai has a very tough job. and it's easy to look at it from the outside and say oh, my goodness, why don't they do this, why aren't they more like we are? i have no idea how i would behave if i were in maliki's shoes. but he has a big problem assuring the sunni element in the country and the kurds that it's in their interest to stay as part of that government and not break off and divide that country into pieces. he has a big job keeping the shia population, his group, from not asserting itself in a way that drives others away. he has a big job dealing with some elements within the shia group that are largely influenced by iran, the sadr and some of those people.

he has a big job trying to maintain security in a country where the iranian influence, military influence and terrorist influence maintain security in a country where the iranian influence, military influence, and terrorist influence, and political influence i should add, is a difficult situation. you know, some people criticize him for vacillation, others for failing to be assertive, some accuse him of being too assertive. and it's business as usual in politics. everyone's got an opinion, everyone is fussing at everyone else. i think that it's not clear to me how it will evolve in iraq. we keep reporting that people

are being killed and it's true. we also keep reporting that in chicago and new york and cities around america people are being killed and they are. and it's a shame, it's heartbreaking when people are killed. but it is not -- it is not -- that journey they are on is not going it's a tough one. to be smooth. and how it will come out i don't know. all i know is that at some point they have to do it themselves and we can't do it for them. most of our people there don't speak the languages. we don't know the cultures. and -- i used to say it's kind of like helping a child learn to ride a bike. you run behind him holding the seat, and then you go to three fingers, two fingers, then one finger. you let go they might fall, and they might. you don't let go you're going to have a 40-year-old who can't ride a bike.

you can't ride it for them. at some point they have to ride it. it is not a science, it's an art figuring out when you go from four fingers to three and three to two and two to one. i don't know the answers and i know i don't know the answers. >> egypt. >> big, important. poorly handled by my standard. it's the -- i don't know what, 60 million people or something. kind of a big anchor in the arab world, the fountain of education for arabs all over that part of the world. with nasser gone and sadat in they fashioned an arrangement with israel and sadat had the courage to go to israel and sign that and ended up getting killed by the muslim brotherhood eventually. mubarak came in, air force pilot. nothing against the air force

pilots. he wasn't a navy pilot. but no one's perfect, right. air force pilot and he's been in there a long time. he could sit back and say gee, shouldn't he have moved faster to move toward freer systems so that turmoil under him wouldn't have bubbled over so fast. and so furiously. where are we today? well, where we are is that he was thrown out, and the impression in the arab world is that if you're a friend of the united states don't count on the united states because the feeling is we threw him under the truck, that our government, our white house, said he's been there too long and so forth. that's the impression in the arab world which makes other friends of the united states step back and wonder gee, are they allies and friends or aren't they? along with the muslim

brotherhood control i think 73% of the parliament. i could be wrong by 3 or 4% but that's good enough for government work. what does that mean? you've got -- you have i'm going to guess, 60%, 70% of the men under 40 are probably unemployed in that country. all of us we see a revolution like that and you can't help but think isn't that fabulous. wonderful. ese people who have been denied. they don't have the free political and economic systems where this have jobs and opportunities and the ability to do things. you look at what happened and who is in charge. it wasn't a bunch of young people looking for jobs. you have 73% are on the extreme side. in the parliament. what's the single most valuable thing right now i will submit is the u.s. military to military

relationship with the egyptian military. that's not what you're going to read in the newspaper. but i would submit that decades long interaction between our professional military, civilian control, talented, capable. when i went -- i was at nasser's funeral. isn't that amazing. i was there with robert murphy the diplomat among warriors and john mccoy. we landed and there were soviet airplanes, tanks and soldiers all over that country. this is 1970 plus or minus something. we met with sadat who was the acting president, the vice president, and the briefing

papers said he was a light weight. that nasser didn't like to have strong vice presidents around him. this fellow won't last 15 minutes. sometimes i over state for emphasis. probably not exactly what the paper said but something like that. we went independent and met and came away enormously impressed, a man of substance and guts and he looked at us in the eye and said look, i have no problems with the united states of america at all except israel. and within a year or two all of the soviet tanks and airplanes and artillery and soldiers were gone. gutsy move. you know, we look at the revolution and we think isn't that terrific. then it starts sorting out and you see it's not so terrific. why is that? the reason is you've got a whole bunch of people who are

illiterate, you unemployed, who -- and the way i look at it, if you have three or four people coming down the elevator, three don't know what they want to do and one wants to go to the movie. they go to the movie. and by golly in egypt right now the ones that know what they want is the muslim brotherhood and the salibas. they have 73% in the parliament. why, because they are tough, brutal, they know what they want. and the others are disorganized. haven't planned, aren't funded. so, when you see what's sweeping across that part of the world, you go in to morocco you'll see head scarves, probably compared to five, ten years ago enormous change.

towards that approach in their country. you look at libya, unclear where that's going to be. you look at tunisia, it's unclear where that's going to be and the problem is, as the turmoil takes place the people who are best organized and know what they want are the people that probably are the least likely to move those countries toward free systems and egypt is important and they are vastly more important than any other pieces of it. >> you mentioned that libya and tunisia but you didn't mention syria. can you comment on syria? >> well, it's of a kind. here we've got the country that works closest with iran that contributes the most to terrorism acts against the united states and against the free countries that is causing the most difficulty in lebanon.

is that a country that would be vastly better off if assad and this -- he is a member of the alowite sect, a minority sect. one can say the world will be a better place if assad weren't there. you can't say that. you don't know what you're getting. what are you replacing him with. if you're replacing him with the muslim brotherhood and hamas and his follow type people, extremists, then i mean, we're not their neighbors. israel's their neighbor. if you want to know the answer to that i'd ask the israelis. assad as bad as he is, as poor a neighbors or as what might replace him. i don't know the answer to that. it's hard r