that, if you lose your job, you can purchase market place coverage, even if you have a pre-existing condition and you won't lose your insurance just because you get sick or get caught off or if you need chemotherapy or some life-saving operation. a healthier and more financially secure middle-class is good for business who benefit from a healthy workforce and consumers with more disposable income. the bipartisan policy center reported last week that businesses lose $576 billion each year because of an unhealthy population. as the new law makes our population healthier, we should be able to ring this number down. some of the biggest and most positive impacts that businesses and taxpayers feel from the law are in the area costs. since president obama signed the affordable care act, there is evidence that we have been to the cost are when it comes to health care. we have held down health care

price inflation to the lowest level in 50 years. premiums for employer-based coverage have been driven down as well. earlier this month, kaiser reported that this year's cost growth is the lowest on record. that, hadprojected premiums ground at the rate we saw over the previous decade, instead of the slower rate of the past four years, employer coverage would be $1800 more today. thisu are an employer, means it is easier for you to hire workers. if you are an employee, it means you can be keeping more that in your paycheck tomorrow. if you are a taxpayer, it means a healthier economy. improvements to our health delivery system are also having an impact on costs to taxpayers as we spend dollars more wisely. $160 billionyers in spending medical dollars more

wisely. in a further example, the accountable care organization models we are testing through medicare are saving $370 million and counting. at the same time, they are delivering care that is more coordinated to beneficiaries and rewarding providers that do that. taken together, i believe the evidence points to a clear conclusion. the affordable care act is working. my job as secretary is to lead our efforts, to keep it working and to help it work better. like anyone in business, we want to learn from the things we got right and the things we got wrong. we are taking that approach and we have a four-part strategy moving forward. first, improving access and affordability through the marketplace. in order to make sure that americans continue to get access and affordable choices, we have to get healthcare.gov right.

to me, the formula for this is technology, management and prioritization. off thehecking outstanding items from last year's to do list, cleaning up the backend personality and adding functionality for inewing and enrolling coverage. we are prioritizing the most important issues and the areas to improve consistent with our deadlines. givingfocusing on ourselves the appropriate amount of time for testing and we are very focused on security. anyone who can ever manage a wrought -- a large scale arctic knows that these are challenging and require tough choices. we are prepared to make those choices so that we can deliver the best consumer experience. second, improving quality for patients and spending every dollar wisely. we are testing new models in medicare and medicaid and

reaching out to the business community to find solutions that we can all benefit from. changing incentives from volume-based to more impact-based systems come investing in tools that can expand our capacity for change in the health care delivery system, improving the flow of information so doctors can spend more time with patients and less time doing paperwork, so they can coordinate more effectively with the -- with one another. third, expanding access by expanding medicaid. one of the first meetings i did with -- was a bipartisan meeting with governors and i said to all the governors we want to work with you. we want to work with you to be flexible, to expand access to medicaid. in the time that i have been there, we have added pennsylvania, a state with a republican governor, and we are hopeful that we can work together to do more in that space. consumerslping understand how to use their new coverage, including the role of

prevention and wellness. many of the folks who are newly covered have not held health insurance in years and some never before. we want to make sure that folks know how to use their coverage and we are partnering with organizations across the country to help them do so. i would like to close with one final thought. as we work through these issues, i think we need a bit of a course correction when it comes to how we talk about these issues. it starts with collectively turning the volume down. surely, we can all agree that the back and forth hasn't really helped those that we are trying to serve in terms of delivering for the hard-working families that we all try to serve. i prefer a brookings-type approach, quality, independence, and impact. a small business owner from texas wrote a blog for the hhs blog. what you talked about is what it was like to be uninsured.

she talked about what it was like to be insured but not have a member of your family be covered because your son had a pre-existing condition. she wrote about, for her family, the affordable care act is working. i want to read to you a few of her words. "recently, i was able to enroll my family, my entire family. not only is my son finally covered, our premium is only half of what we were paying before. i was shocked to learn my prescriptions, which used to cost $280 a month, now cost five dollars. my dog -- my family now has the financial security and jim and his peace of mind that comes with coverage. i don't have to work for someone else just for the health benefits anymore. i launched my small business and can focus on expanding it." families across the country are counting on us. they are our boss and they are looking for this to work.

let's work forward together. iq. -- thank you. [applause] i am happy to take some questions. yes. >> thank you. i am from the american cancer society. people touched by cancer know have available insurance is. the challenge for all of us has been making sure that people who have not been touched by the disease or may be at risk for it , how the law can help them. as well as those who have coverage through work, how the level stirs that. what will hhs and cms be doing to educate those people about the importance of the law. >> in .4, when i talked about the coverage and the covers, i think the point you raise is one not just for the newly insured but across all. i think many people don't

realize the extension of benefits for prevention and wellness. i think that is probably what you are referring to specifically. one of the things we will do as we do our education for the uninsured is do that more broadly. the other thing is, in our conversations with the employers , that is a place where we are having a lot of conversations. i think many employers are what we want to do is our own messaging, but we know in this case things will move more through our partners, the stakeholders on the ground,, people who are delivering to move that message out, and it is an important one. earlier, i dode not think we have done a good understand what the

affordable care act did. yes? >> thank you for your remarks. hospitals were deeply involved in giving people -- getting people enrolled. for hospitals that were not yet engaged in that war have hesitated because they are in states where the aca is not as popular, do you have guidance for those in how they can work in their community and getting people signed up? >> thank you for the support and help. with regard to the state where the aca is not as popular, one of the things is making sure states reach out to us. there are regional offices across the country for hhs, and with the hospitals, weather coming to our business organizations in washington or the regions, that might be more familiar with the challenges you are articulating, we want to work with those so we can enable

them to do what they can do. now that people can see last time we did not have something we could point to. we did not have those stories, and we are hopeful that will be an element that can create a better environment, that where the environment is still out, we will work in ways that will work for the context that these hospitals are in. we are working with hospitals, insurers, stakeholders. this is an all hands on effort. yes. one of the things as we think the number of latinos who are signing up for the law could be improved, and i am wondering your thoughts on how we can make a more concerted effort to get to that community and make sure their community is covered. place, and important we believe we can make progress,

even more progress this year. one of the things we need to do is listen, listen to the feedback we received last year about a number of challenges. some of those challenges were technological, and some came and other forms, and we are trying to work through and make sure, whether through our navigators, to how we share information through language issues, that there are a whole suite of things we're working on to make it easier to engage in the system and, second, to make sure we are sharing the information so people can understand what it means in terms of the benefit that it will mean. and then work with stakeholders that are closest to these organizations to help make sure, whether it is how we phrase something, explain something. often those kinds of things are making a difference. we have heard from probably some of you all here on the issues of our challenging. leaves keep letting us know. the ones we can fix, we will work to do that and do that as quickly as we can.

in the back. thank you. i wish the national center for transgender equality. and with all the great things that have been done for years rules for thehave active civil rights provisions, and most people have not heard of those provisions, including providers i have talked to. we have delivered hundreds of those stories of discrimination to the department, and i would like to know, are we going to 1557 implement he rolls this year's? >> that is something we are most focused on, making sure as we are getting the system up and running that if there are issues of discrimination that we are working through those. thank you for doing that. with regard to that question for the specific timing of the role, not something that i am at this to a ready to commit

specific timetable on where we all and that. consider the issue extremely important. you know the administration's commitment on a number of fronts to the issues around making sure that there is access and that the access is not discriminatory, that cuts across a wide range of issue. we want to work to make sure we are enforcing the law and understand the importance of the issue of that specific provision . thank you. thank you very much. [applause] >> on behalf of brookings, i want to thank secretary burwell and thank all of you for coming and listening out there. and good luck. we need this thing to work at hh s, and we are counting on you to make it work. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

screeria -- nigeria. -work kile

1990's. that was one of the main reasons why we decided to establish cfid at the end of the 1990's to try democracy the idea of and resolving political conflicts through peaceful means through elections and dialogue and consensus building rather than through violence. crisiswe have a similar in iraq, in syria, certainly in egypt where we had a military coup that removed him elected president, the first ever elected president in egypt was removed a year ago by the military. a similar crisis is looming in libya where we have a lot of violence and conflicts in libya.

the only solution and the only alternative to violence is democracy. that is our main message. which is what we have been working on for the last 15 years since 1999. it is the only alternative to and that and extremism is dialogue and peaceful coexistence, consensus building and the art of the possible or the art of negotiating until a solution can be found. invited some of the main experts on this topic in the region to inform us and enlighten us about what is going on and what is the main reason for the rise of isis and extremism in general. promotebest ways to peace and dialogue and coexistence. with that, i would like to turn

it over to dr. bill lawrence who will moderate this panel. thank you very much and welcome and hope you have a good of hours or a couple with us today, thank you. [applause] >> my name is william lawrence. i am the director for csid. couple of administrative matters first -- i would like to remind everyone that this is being live stream than broadcast on c-span and we would like everyone to speak into a microphone. if you are talking, talking to a microphone so everyone can hear you. we will be accepting questions for the q7a on twitter. npc is the hastag. clear.ic for today is we have assembled one of the

best panels that i can imagine on this topic, not specifically or necessarily experts on isis, iraq, and syria but on the regional phenomenon that are creating the regional crisis we are living in today. i'm going to mention that isis has many names. we have chosen isis because it is the one used in the media these days. shem, theg syria or greater syria. sometimes it is called isl. it calls itself the islamic state that many don't want to give it. we settled on isis today. it is one phenomenon we are talking about and has over 40 nationalities and has taken over a big swath of territory in iraq

and syria. the full bios of our speakers are available online. i will only summarize certain aspects. john esposito is one of the leading voices on islam and understanding islam and the world. is a university professor at georgetown, the founding director of the center for muslim-christian understanding and the former head of the middle east studies association and many other organizations. he has a list 45 hooks, translated into 37 languages including weager. ahamid is a fellow at the brookings institution is a former research person and has been in the research field and will help us with that perspective. he has a new book out entitled " temptations of power." this book is one of the reasons we invited him. if you follow him on twitter, you quickly realize that his

twitter account is one of the few dozen most important in the region for understanding what is going on. from last night, there are several solutions for fixing syria. error --quite a stream they are and it's good to follow him. michelle dunn is a senior associate at the carnegie endowment. she is the founding director of the hariri center and a former specialist on middle east affairs at the u.s. state department and the white house. a recent article on the politics of alienation in egypt was the inspiration for the title of this conference. she regularly writes insightful shees on the region -- should -- and she has written two in particular that are quite influential. o'hanlon is a serious -- is a senior fellow with 21st

security and intelligence and director of research for the foreign-policy program at the brookings institution. at princetoning university has been an adjunct professor at johns hopkins. his most recent book cowritten with james steinberg is " strategic reassurance." he just flew in from beijing yesterday. he has a previous recent book on obama's foreign policy and has made over 3000 appearances on radio and tv since 9/11. you have seen them before even if you don't remember. with that, i will turn the floor over to professor john esposito and thank you for coming today. [applause] thank you very much. i am delighted to be here. i would note that the chinese government approved the chinese translation of the book in question but the weegers did the

chance laois and death did the translation and the chinese never approved it. i will be going back there next month to look into it. are three georgetown people on the panel and if i can arrange for an honorary doctorate from michael o'hanlon, we can make a sweep. [laughter] challenges in addressing word toi use the feeding some time but i don't think we will see that for a while -- containing and ultimately defeating isis will require short and long-term sponsors. i will probably talking about the short-term but i will eventually talk about the long-term. people of in talking about that for the last 25 years. for a bright of reasons, they don't get addressed. al-assad on aar military response to

democratization, the arab spring. with the slaughter of syrian opposition groups, heightened sectarian divisions. as well as christian. reluctancety of the tothe u.s. and the eu respond early on with significant assistance to the moderate syrian opposition forces and the opposition's failure to unite to work effectively together enhance the ability of foreign jihadist. in iraq, l maliki installing the shia government increased an already polarized situation and sectarian violence that would nnislt in an alienated su welcoming isis. groups that fight proxy wars in

syria against us -- one would also talk -- refer to the overthrow of the democratically elected government in egypt. this made the situation much worse. at the same time, the failure early on in syria of the u.s. and the eu to become significantly engaged and work closely with regional allies like turkey and saudi arabia assaddr to support anti- forces had a ripple effect. in 2011, it did the same in iraq. what about isis islamic pedigree? ake elk china, isis offers warped and distorted ideology or religious rationale to justify, recruit, legitimate and motivate many of the fighters. much of what they do violates islamic law but that's typical

or what terrorists do. terrorists will say the usual laws are fine but these are unusual times. during the argument bush administration with regard to the war on global terrorism and discussions about whether or not just war or whether or not regulations that have to do with torture or how we approach waterboarding -- one needs to think about the fact that the old laws were made for different time in those times change. that's the way i in which terrorist groups spin and get to do on the best acts of terrorism and slaughter civilians, killing of innocent muslims and christians. there are similarities between isis and other groups, there are also distinct differences.

isis seeks to create a state to occupy and control an area not just to dream of her speak up to create and impose their version of a pahte with itscali first version of law and order. they are more ruthless and driving out and suppressing and executing shia and kurds. religious leaders and others who disagree with them as well as minorities, christians and and imposing their extraordinarily violent brand of islam. they also force populations to pledge their allegiance. drivergion the primary of the so-called islamic calipharte and the primary drivr

with the domestic populations that come from europe or the u.s. or even other countries to fight with isis? since this is going to be on c-span, i will thank you for the bombay sapphire. [laughter] religion is an important factor, and plays a role to legitimate, recruit and motivate, studies of most jihadist and movements like isis show that the primary drivers are to be found elsewhere. past, this hast remained true to the europeans and americans who joined isis. studies by the european network of experts on violent as well as those

by terrorism experts show that, in most cases, religion is not the primary source but rather a long list of grievances. these are grievances that are seeing -- being seen across society even by those who may not be radicalized but will be and site american. anti-american. the gopher grievances that are not specific and peculiar to just a segment of the population were to terrorists themselves. the drivers include moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, search for new identity, meaning, purpose, and belonging. these drivers come out of studies from five european countries as well as some studies done on the u.s. for many, it's the experience and deception of living in a hostile society and seeing a hostile world.

you can look at a countries and say what other governments like ?? also what role does the u.s. and the eu both actively play in support or not choosing to put pressure on some of its issues ofian allies? disenfranchisement, heightened political consciousness, anti-imperialism and social justice in the notion of emancipation, many see countries is occupied either by foreigners were occupied by authoritarian regimes. they hold back the majority of people in the country. in a recent having them post blog's they cited a briefing report going back to 2000 a which noted that far from being

religious zealots, large number of those involved in terrorism did not track this their faith regularly and many lack religious literacy and could be regarded as religious novices. analysts concluded that a well-established identity actually protecting violent radicalization. if you look at data in the u.s. come you'll see this for a significant number of americans as aegard islam -- muslims prone to violence and have an even worse opinion of the religion of islam which they see as being the primary motivator or source for that easy acceptance of violence. when no some of the islam of public group like act make that kind of statement. to the extent that somebody is a pious muslim, they may not be a terrorist now, but they will be more susceptible are more prone to that attraction. i can member being at a for ang, closed briefing

senior military and there was somebody who was born and raised in the region, in turkey and commented that even secular who have no use for religion, when you mention caliphate, it vibrates in their historical genes or chest which is interesting. you can tie that into the appeal to calpijhqate but it is a ludicrous statement. from 2000 8-2014, there is the to jihadist and wannabes. before they set out from birmingham to fight syria, they ordered two books on amazon. what books do you think they would have gotten? was islam for dummies and the carron for charo - thehe

koran for dummies. [laughter] many of these terrorist do not have education for islam and the primary drive drivers of his of her grievances. how about the question of beheadings? we know a beheading has been used to store could buy many. grant fuller estimated that if you look at states, postrevolutionary france beheaded some 40,000 people. we know beheading is used in certain countries even today. we also know beheading has been used to terrorize. we know that mexican cartels --e used it as well as because of the nature of it and putting the head on us like or something, that is been seen as an act that is particularly -- will terrorize people. that has been there but when you

put outvideos that were by isis between 2000 6-2013, while you have citations of the what you see more predominately are basically grievances being articulated as the main reason for killing civilians, grievances against individuals and groups like iraqi soldiers and police and government workers who are seen as part of .he problem

flies in the face of islamic law. given the current momentum of isis and intentions to expand, it may well attempt to increase its activity and it is in places like northwest syria, southern air whack -- southern iraq and lebanon. i was talking to some people from indonesia. they are very concerned about isis and their ideology but its presence and recruitment in indonesia. isis will be tested on its ability to hold areas now under its control while attempting to also expand its territory. at the end of the day, the peoples of the region, obviously like syria, iraq lebanon and the gulf states have the primary challenge and responsibility to deal with what are primarily their problems.

however, a substantial international commitment and involvement by the u.s. in concert with allies is also needed. as president obama considers new strikes, the white house has begun a diplomatic campaign to enlist allies and neighbors in the region to increase the oppositionserious rather late but in any case -- in some cases to provide support to military operations. tothe long run, if we wish break the cycle of global terrorism whether it is isis or other movements in the future, notes and aler piece on avenging james foley --" the conditions and basic and enduring grievances in islam countries that jihadist

movements have exploited must be addressed. foreign boats on the ground a dictator supported by the was out of convenience, failure to end a half-century of israeli occupation of palestinian lands, the treatment of palestinians as a paradigm for treatment of other muslims, the u.s. employment of the region as an eternal cockpit for proxy wars. that's a great phrase. you have the gulf states are some of them involved in supporting proxy wars and the characterization of the u.s.. recent events continue the trajectory of u.s. and eu failure to take stronger principle stand. in egypt on that military coup, massive violation of human rights with slaughter of civilians and the restoration of authoritarian rule. and the recognition and calling it a democracy in a country well on the road to democracy.

at the same time, the issue of the asymmetric war in gaza and not speaking out and condemning it in the way it needed to be can dance. nasa saying that we are said to his action but -- of gazanve slaughter civilians compared to the israeli side and the attempt to not only wipe out all of those people but destroying the infrastructure of the country violates international law and human rights. rather you have a situation where in public media, we are told that benjamin netanyahu approaches are administration in avoidingting him having to go to international courts. of those things create conditions that will remain very strong in the future.

massive killing of civilians and deliver destruction of the gazan infrastructure alienates significant sectors of muslim democrats. that does not mean they will turn to violence but at the same time, it contributes to the radicalization and recruitment of disaffected youth. thank you. [applause] >> hello, everyone. thank you, hill and thank you to csid for having me. this is a great organization. a were talking about democracy in the world before it was cool. they have done some incredible work in tunisia since the arabs spring began. in a differentf way than i intended area of this

has been alderney for a little rise of vices and its severed she, this kind of response that isis has nothing to do with islam and islam is a peaceful religion. islamichat the peaceful term is beginning to grate on me a little bit. yes, the majority of muslims do not share, the vast majority, don't share isis's ideology. at the end of the day, islam does not exist as god intended because we don't have access to that. we can only interpret. ultimately, islam is a construct. constructs are not peaceful or violent. they are what muslims will them to be. the fact of the matter is that even though they are a minority, there are muslims who do believe this is the correct

interpretation of islam. the reason i bring this up as i feel like when we bring up the islamist piece narrative, we are trying to say that this is inexplicable and evil and these are friends terrorists and i feel that leads us to underestimate the nature of the threat we are facing. i think we have to take isis very seriously. this was something we saw in john kerry's statements recently. of course isis is evil but he said isis inexplicable he is evil. we have to try to understand the origins of isis. it is not appear. it came out a particular context and was not inevitable. the obamai think administration official suggested nothing we could have done to stop this. only ridiculous but

predicted. we have these conversations in early 2012. i remember the people who were meeting with jane -- senior administration officials telling them explicitly the longer we wait to guide we don't do more in syria now, it will conduit does. the extremists are going to gain ground is deservedly ices will will gain the-- ground. what is unique about isis? they are a fascinating group because, unlike al qaeda central and other or runners, they take .t around pretty seriously they dispense justice to sharia courts and take care of water and electricity and distribute funds to help the poor but also the kind of religious

morality piece which goes around and make sure that women are covered and other things like that. it is brutal. they are vicious. but they actually hold territory and they run territory. in many ways, they are more effective than other rebel groups in running the territories they control. this is especially the case when you have a total vacuum. you have various leslie were better fighting with each other over the control of local government, there is a fascinating piece in the where thereadology were talking about the experience of ices rule in a city in syria. they go into detail about how the residents of this city view

isis rules and many of them may they see it as preferable to the alternative cicely because isis has been able to restore law and order and crime has gone down and hangs actually run. follow the very harsh rules and do not oppose them, there might actually be a better situation than the alternative. in many parts of syria that is chaos. to understand the governance aspects and is your traditional terrorist group. have been abley to retain some local support in the territory they control. now they control does in the territories wiegand -- we estimate about 400 million that's remarkable.

it's a piece of territory as large as the u.k. with 4 million people. there -- the other thing is, there are not a lot of models of islamic governance, and the bar is quite low, too. we have had the taliban, sudan, so on and so forth, but i think what isis has been able to do in a short amount of time is present in a different model of islamic governance, when the other models have failed. i will get into that when we talk about mainstream political islam and their relative failure or eclipse of the muslim brotherhood. let me say one more thing about the kind of governance here, and again this was in that jihadology piece. isis is more brutal than pretty

much anyone else in the region, but less arbitrary. so it is more predictable. when we are trying to understand why authoritarianism is so alienating and can push people toward the isis model -- for thesee, you did, syria, countries are less brutal and less repressive but you never know where the red lines are. the secret police can come to your door unannounced at don. that is, in some ways, the most terrifying thing about an autocracy, not the oppression but the fear and the uncertain tea. in this article, the point was made, there is something consistent about isis rule, that they are not arbitrary, so citizens know what to expect, which is a very important point. all of this leads me to say that this is actually what makes isis so frightening and so scary and

not easily defeated. that is why, i think, we have to complicate this simplistic narrative of terrorism and evil. if we want to confront the enemy, we have to understand what they are offering. i am happy that my colleague, professor esposito, mentioned egypt. his is one of the reasons why i was very concerned about the coup in egypt last year. we cannot pretend that we did not know this was coming, that we would not know the effects, but the coup in egypt, for all their faults -- no one has to like the muslim brotherhood, but they were democratically elected. they were able to say -- and this is what they do say -- that the islamic state is not possible through democracy.

not possible through elections. it is only possible through the force of arms. that is their narrative. that is a more compelling narrative now because of what happened in places like egypt and because of what is happening now in places like libya. there is essentially a war being waged against mainstream political islam. again, it is not good or moderate necessarily, but is an alternative to what extremist .roups like isis offer i think in that sense one of the great failures of the arab spring, when we look back and do a postmortem, yes, islamist groups failed. the muslim brotherhood was unprepared for governance, did not govern inclusively, the list goes on. but the greater failure of the arab spring was the failure of the existing regional order, of existing state systems to

accommodate islamist participation in the democratic process. islamists were willing to test it out, but really, nowhere in the region have they been allowed to fully govern in the normal democratic sense. exception.a partial to be anoing interesting test. if we look at it regionally, that is the basic trend we are talking about. believe in a democratic process were not given a real opportunity -- not to govern even, but to be a part of the political process. that is something that i discussed at length in my book, so i will not go into too much detail there. but that contrast between the mainstream islamists and extremist islamists is very important.

as i close here, i want to make a couple of final points and then a word about u.s. policy. i think this is a very important point that professor esposito just raised. there is something about the notion of a caliphate, something about the notion of an islamic state that has a kind of residents. i do not know to what extent people grasp this. even for someone like me who grew up in an american muslim community, even i would absorb this growing up, this sense that we have been the greatest civilization the world had ever seen, and then we encountered this percent of his fall from grace. i use fall from grace for a reason. it is almost as if god had forsaken us. this is something you hear. imbued inuch

political discourse in the middle east and among muslims more generally. even with people who are not religious or practicing or whatever else. so this sense of humiliation, this cap of what muslims believe they should be, and what they actually are, that is so much at the root of the conflict that we are seeing. the fact that they are blocked from expressing their aspirations or grievances through the normal political process. so the islamic state, isis, were smart enough marketing because they used the term. state, is islamic compelling. caliphate, compelling. al qaeda was not serious about that david they would talk about it in theory but was not serious in practice. the muslim brotherhood talks about islamic state all the time, but again, it was not seriously going to happen anytime soon. in a moree first time

coherent and compelling way, there is something called the islamic state. --s kind of president is dent is dangerous. we have seen copycats in nigeria. wherever there is a political vacuum and were civil conflict becomes important, where you do not have governance, state authority, and you have that vacuum, the instant a lot of extremists or people who are even less extreme will think, maybe we can start our own islamic state in this territory. that mental block has been removed. on u.s. policy, what can we do? ,f we take it seriously understand the origins of isis' rise, understand the origin of

the syrian war and what we fail to do, what can we do now? worried we are moving into this narrow counterterrorism approach and we do not want to look more broadly that the context. the fact that john kerry has said eggs like isis will be crushed. obama has called them to cancer. desire to defeat isis, but there is a mismatch between means and end. if it is our goal to defeat isis, what does -- this administration offers does not come close. me that wearkable to are talking about airstrikes and there is some talk about boosting the moderate rebels, but it does not sound serious so far. announced time and again over the past two years, we will do more to support the mainstream rebels. it does not happen in a serious way.

perhaps this could be obamas moment where he realizes if he does not change in a fundamental way, his legacy is not looking good. i hope this could be one of those moments where something clicks and you realize something serious has to be taken on here. i am skeptical as i think this instinctually, intellectually sees the middle east in a different way than i do. so i'm not optimistic in that regard. kind of close here, what about our allies? we want to work with them to build this coalition against isis. that twoy instructive of our closest allies, egypt and the uae tom a have been launching airstrikes not in syria or iraq or isis, but in libya. that tells you about priorities. maybe it is obvious, maybe it is

not, but many of these countries see mainstream political islam, whether you want to call the moderate or not -- groups like the muslim brotherhood -- as being more of a fundamental threat than groups like isis, and they have acted accordingly. this all means, assuming the obama administration does not do do, i think they dshould think we have to accept the islamic state will be with us for the foreseeable future. i do not know how long. and will be more entrenched in the territory it holds. i don't know what the after affects are going to be. al qaeda, it is often said, was originally born in the prisons andhe 1950's and 1960's nobody would have dreamed then that those events would reverberate for the coming decades. now,ry that isis looks bad

but there are things that we cannot even imagine that might happen in the future because of and because we are not able or willing to do enough to stop them. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon and thank you to csid for inviting me to be part of the panel. there was a "new york times" editorial today discussing whether the united states should strike isis in syria. the editorial decrying the lack of a comprehensive u.s. strategy iraq, military action alone is not enough to defeat the extremists who gain followers by exploiting repression against the sunnis." so i think this is part of what

we are here to discuss and i'm happy that shadi opened up this question. what is the political and diplomatic strategy that would have to accompany any military action against extremists in iraq and syria, if it should happen? to go even deeper into this question about working with our allies. it is the first thing that comes up, is there in the article. we have to work with our allies and so forth. of course it's essential, but we have a really big problem. ,ur allies are divided especially when it comes to the political strategy. many of them are leading us in a direction that i think is likely to be disastrous. as you know, we have these two can't. this is apart from the long-running saudi-iranian leadership thing.

uae,ve saudi arabia, the egypt, and a few others in one group that have proposed a certain political strategy, which is lumping many islamist into the same category, the category of terrorists, and barring them from politics, media, civil society. there are a lot of things happening. shadi referred to things happening in egypt. on a smaller scale, in a number of the other countries that i mentioned. this is being applied particularly to the muslim brotherhood because the governments of these countries see the muslim brotherhood as the greatest political threat to their continuing control. the gulf countries have taken their own steps internally and have also cheered on as president asisi has carried on

countrykdown across the . as many as 40,000 have been imprisoned. to go back to that editorial , it says that isis got to where it is in iraq because it gain followers by exploiting repression against the sunnis. so where do we think repression of islamists, brotherhood other islamists, human rights defenders, journalists, and so forth? where do we think this is going to go? that is the political strategy that a certain group of our allies recommend to us, that we support, or at a minimum, turned

a blind eye to. but actually they want our support in the strategy of repressing that section of the population. where do we think it is going to go? except to generate more support for the extremists that exist, and it is not only in iraq or syria but they exist in egypt and many of the countries of the region. also, closing off the avenues that i discussed, of politics, media, civil society, and so , will diverge energy in the direction of radicalization. and beyond that, in many countries, it is probably only a small number of people that would be attracted to join or actively support extremist groups. but i think it is even more important that you could have a large swath of the population that is not going to help the

government fight the extremist groups because they have been alienated by the government and by a lot of the collective punishment taking place. there is another camp of u.s. andes, generally qatar turkey who say political islamists must be allowed full participation. but we need to be honest with ourselves. even though these two camps are talking about political islam, the muslim brotherhood in starkly different ways, when it individualso it, and states in each of these camps are willing to work with islamist, willing to work with dangerous and violent islamists. there is not really a pro-islamist and anti-islamist camp here although it is portrayed that way. if we look to the actions of all of the states, we can see they

have been willing to work with one islamist group against another and so forth. it is not a principled thing. it is about politics and about maintaining political control. so what does the united states do about this? i think the administration has been doing the correct thing by refusing to be drawn into this regional polarization. i don't think the obama administration has fallen into ofs trap at this point supporting one camp of allies against another. i think the u.s. administration ontoried to refuse to sign repression of political islamists in the name of fighting terrorism. they have been imperfect in that regard, but in general, they have tried to avoid falling into that particular trap. of course, it is a pity, and it's been alluded to, the u.s. and europe did not do more to

peaceful,e growth of political expression, the experiments of democratization that started to take place in the last few years. but i want to point out another failure of policy in the last few years, and that has been managing these allies. the fact that this region has been going through these tectonic shifts, massive changes over the last two year that made everyone feel secure and that the u.s. has been, for our own andons, been pulling back saying we do not want to be the leaders, we do not want to be responsible for solving a problem like syria. be the ones coming up with a strategy and coordinating everyone. it is the sort of thing that we would've done in the past. it would have meant taking international leadership,

diplomatic and perhaps even military, assistance, other strategies. we have decided that we did not want to do that. a lot of our allies feeling insecure, going out and taking their own actions. shadi referred to the recent example, these airstrikes on libya. i do believe there is fault on the part of the united states, that we need to manage these relationships with our gulf allies, turkey, and indeed, israel, in a better and closer way and we need to have strategies because we see that we are really getting into very dangerous situations by withdrawing to the extent we have. i have heard people say recently , that is all great, but right now we have a specific problem with isis.

sake, we arey's going to have to work with whoever we have to. bashar al-assad, president al-sisi. those things, like human rights, democracy, those will have to be in the longer-term. we will get back to all of that stuff. what i want to say is i don't think there is any long term. i think things are happening very quickly in this region. who would have expected isis to, as far as it has, as quickly as it has been really only a few years? the threat that u.s. partners in the region, that some of our allies with whom we need to work , may actually, by the actions they are taking in their countries, but before they are may beeach other,

fueling radicalization and terrorism at a much faster rate than they are fighting it. that is a problem that the united states needs to take on right away. it's a problem for this year and next year i'm not or the long-term. not for the long-term. thanks. [applause] stay righting to here because i know we are pressed for time and i only have a brief set of comments to make. i would do this more in the spirit of ginning up the discussion rather than making a formal presentation. my co-panelists have done a good job framing the issue and i agree with their perspective. want to do is to say which military steps i think are needed right now against isil. this is not to suggest this is a complete answer to the question or subject of the panel today. my colleagues have done a much better and fuller job of explaining how to think about a problem. but i want to agree with some of

the spirit of saying we have an acute threat right now. isil is an abomination. everyoneuggesting that would agree with me here, but i believe we need a fairly concerted military and political strategy, working with what i hope is a new iraqi government and national unity, working with a searing opposition that we have to cultivate, more than we have in the past, and come up with a serious strategy. the obama administration, in my opinion, has done a good job in ordering it steps correctly. taking sure kurdistan was not overrun by isil. if you have any doubts about their ambitions, why would they want to go into kurdistan if they had taken ambitions? not even their fellow arabs and they saw it as a target of opportunity. they will take what they can get, including close american allies, like george and. -- jordan.

i am not trying to suggest the entirety of the subject of today's panel is being addressed by my recommendations but i think we need to focus clearly on this question. to fend we have helped off the immediate threat to donestan, now that we have a nice job pressuring nouri al-maliki to step down as prime minister, in a realistic way to have a new government under another shia, and it has to be from his own party leading the government, but hopefully now getting sued me, and kurdish buy-in. as that ray -- process plays out, in addition to the announced steps of spending a half million dollars on the searing opposition which is a good idea, and congress should approve it immediately as they return next week, and that is all i was a about syria for the moment. in iraq, we need to do three things. we need to be ready to step of airstrikes. shadi is right, it is not the complete solution, but it is

one. we also need to help the iraqi army get ready to do its version of a surge into the sunni arab areas of iraq that are held by isil. it may not be possible this fall. be the iraqi army needs to rebuilt and has to become capable and confident enough to do these things. i believe that will require american mentoring teams in the field with the iraqi army units. this could mean the kind of capability that we are moving towards in afghanistan, where next year we will have 10,000 people doing the sorts of things. i think that is what we need to envision for iraq next year. and afghanistan mission look similar. air power, intelligence, mentoring teams in the field, and special forces. the special forces peace is needed, i believe, because if we can do a fairly aggressive, combined set of action with iraq he special forces, i think we

can take down a lot of isil targets that should be done, in my opinion, without a lot of public forewarning or trial ballooning by the administration. they should go at it once they find a moment. anddinate with the iraqis catch isil by surprise and try to make headway against these targets in the early going. because they are enmeshed in the area. it would be hard to get them out. we defined every advantage we can. to doaq he army will have the long-term protecting of the population, the long-term uprooting of isil elements. but in the early going, we need to help them with special operations raids on key weapons depots and so forth. we need this training with the syrians. it is overdue. let's get after it. on the iraq side, in addition to specialr, we need

forces working with iraq he special forces in an intense campaign for a few months to go after key isil targets. and then we need to do mentoring in the field with iraq units by teams of americans dispersed with iraq he battalions throughout the country. the combined american capability maybe 10,000 people. it is not a big mission in the sense of combat units, but certainly will involve combat and casualties, but i see no alternative. i will stop there. [applause] we are going to open up the floor for questions in a brief moment. i want to invite you to get in line at the microphone over here for the question and answer period. we will take as many questions as we can. i would invite the panelists to stay where they are if their microphones are working, and hopefully they are. we continue to invite questions.

.e are live in the twitterverse we are collecting some questions and we will be collecting more. refer youso like to to the csid recent statement on isis, from which i will list a sentence or 2 -- the wonton brutality of isis committed against religious minorities and local populations in iraq and syria, as well as mr. foley's murder, is in direct contravention with islamic principles and the geneva convention which states all prisoners of war -- further down, isis has been the most prominent upsurge in violence across the middle east and north africa jeopardizing populations. cases, one ofe the important contributing factors has been the unwillingness of key actors inside and outside of the region to support accountable governments. csid calls for robust support

for building reconciliation, respect for human rights, and proactive protection of civilians as the best anecdote the rise ofombat extremism. democratization should not be sacrificed in the name of stability, economic development, or of defending the rights of any particular group at the expense of another. i worked in algeria for 10 years. if there is anything i learned from looking at that conflict, which inspired the creation of csid, i learned that violence begets violence. we are about to embark on new expressions of violence. that is why this panel is so important. violence does beget violence. so we have to couch violence, state violence, all kinds, in a context of political reconciliation and healthy dialogue, or the violence will

make things worse. i would now like to open the floor to questions. we will take a group of three questions. first of all, give your name and affiliation. try to make it a brief question or comment and directed at one of the panel members if it can be so directed. we will take a group of three and then we will open up the answers to the questions. natasha.me is i'm a freelance journalist. my question is to mr. shadi hamid. how serious is the threat of isis in the u.s.? we can consider the beheading of james foley, that incident as a turning point in which isis declared that before they left the u.s. alone, but now they are going to go after the u.s. and launch attacks.

can we take these statements seriously, is there a serious threat? >> second question. > >> on the notion of the genius i think you ing, see in indonesia, many are saying just the fact the califat has been established should be supported and celebrated. the fact they are not perfect is something secondary. but i thought i heard dr. esposito saying something about your turkish colleague mentioning something like that and the fact that you thought it was not something reasonable for accept so maybe i'd like your opinion on that issue. the second notion is the notion that the isis is a creation of the united states. this is something that was not mentioned in the panel but is something that's been

circulating a lot in social media, especially in indonesia and i believe also in lebanon where the u.s. embassy, through their twitter accounts have denied this as something that was said by hillary clinton in her book "hard choices. talk about what kind of frame i don't recollect mind that would make people believe of this notion, i'd really appreciate it. thank you. >> third question? >> in response to mr. o'hannel's remarks and in part to your statement violence begets violence. i'd just point out if you look where the united states has become directly involved militarily over the last decade or so, iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, yemen, somalia, south sudan, libya, it seems we have a sort of anti-midas touch, anything that we touch turned to shit which doesn't bode well

for the ukraine. >> c-span has no eight-second delay so be careful. >> i think it has an adult audience. i should have said it in french, perhaps. in light of this, shouldn't we try something new for a change and give these people a break and not interfere in the internal affairs of another country? >> i'd like to inslight shedi to answer first. >> on the question of the threat on the u.s. homeland, up until now, isis has been consumed by the near enemy, meaning in the region and particular, iraq and syria. that's what they're consumed with now what they're putting their resources and effort into. that doesn't mean they don't have ambitions to attack the u.s. or u.s. interests at some later point. they've actually been rather

explicit about this and actually issued various warnings against the u.s. to this affect, that i would be more concerned at this point about europe just because the number of european foreign fighters -- and this is a part of it that's really remarkable and will reverberate in european countries. we're talking about summer between 500 -- somewhere between 500 and 1,000 citizens who have gone to the country to fight, many french citizens. so in that sense we're talking about almost like the u.n. of like militants in places like syria and iraq. many of them have european passports which means that it's easier for them to return to their home countries and obviously european passport holders have more access to the u.s. so if it's not a direct threat against a homeland or to our european partners now, it almost certainly will be in the

future. and very quickly, and two other points, actually, i'm not even sure what to say about the u.s. creating isis because the kind of chain of conspiracy theorizing i'd have to go through right now is just too complex. and as someone who is used to conspiracy theories, having lived in egypt and focused on egypt for a long time, this is sort of at the egyptian level of conspiracy theorizing which is impressive. and then just on the last point of intravention, so does intravention work in these kinds of contexts? and obviously if you look specifically at iraq and afghanistan, the record isn't so good. but if you look at bosnia and kosovo and more recently libya and maybe i'm in the minority on this but i still do consider the intervention libya to be a success. it prevented mass slaughter as

gaddafi's forces were marching on to benghazi and displaced a terrible regime. if anything i put more on the blame of the failure to stay engaged in libya the day after. there wasn't -- very little interest from the international community. we said gaddafi is gone and we left libyans to their own devices and i think that's another thing that will haunt this administration for a long time to come and we also can say very clearly the failure to intervene in syria earlier on has led to this particular outcome. so intervention can be dangerous depending on the context but so can nonintervention. it's nonneutral. nonintervention is a policy choice. so it should be treated as a policy choice and we have to judge it three years later and say this is the course the obama administration took in syria. did it work or did it not? and i think it's fairly clear. >> i'm going to invite mike

hanlan to answer it next but before we do that, he has to leave early. he's been called away. do any people in line have a question specifically for mr. o'hanlan. would you answer the question, just you and any of the other questions that were raised? >> thank you and apolicy dwis for stepping out after this but think it's a very good question. i'm glad i got help in answering it because it's a daunting question and any of us who advocate doing more in iraq should have to face squarely the fact the american track record in recent times in the middle east is obviously mixed at best. however, i would say it's better in afinogenov that you -- afghanistan than what you'd give credit for. what broke them was the soviet invasion and then the successful pakistani intervention to that decision followed by our decision to leave and then is when the mayhem really occurred in afghanistan, far worse than what's going on now. what is going on now may or may

not have a happy outcome but the fact american intervention made it worse is demonstrablyly wrong. in iraq, you have a harder case and i have a harder time coming back at you and since i'm on iraq, let me finish that point, no one will propose sending major combat units to iraq and i didn't and i wouldn't, largely for the reasons you're getting at can with the question our track record hasn't been good enough and not clear iraqi wants us in those numbers but what got iraq to this point in the last couple years are the iraqis themselves, not working well across sectarian lines and specifically prime minister maliki deserves the lion's shafer the blame. so iraq and the intervention may or may not have been worth it and the evidence probably tilts against, i would concede that but the reason iraq is in a mess today is not because of the united states but because the iraqis themselves couldn't get along and sure, maybe they'd be better off today if we'd never intervened in the first play and maybe udai

hussein would be taking over his dad's man true in a succession strategy and can do that counterfactual some other time but the fact is limited amounts of military forces as the iraqis themselves would request with iraq in the lead and the iraqi army in the lead is an option we have to look at very hard. now that we have an iraqi government of national unity in the making i think would be capable of engendering sunni arab support. there is that big if. this has to continue. a body has to complete the government and we probably can't do a full-bore support of that until he has completed that task in the coming weeks, i hope. but provided that ibadi does that and he wants our help and the iraqis support it and we play a supporting role. i think we have no choice because we've seen what happened in the absence of our role in syria and in sunni arab iraq. thanks. >> let me just quickly add that hillary clinton's comments, whatever you think of hillary clinton, i'm not passing judgment on her, on this

comment, were taken out of context. she was talking about blowback in afghanistan and that's been misconstrued to u.s. support for al qaeda and there have been references to the u.s. support for the free syrian army that's been twisted around in the u.s. support of isis and has been manipulation of information rather than any sort of admission by hillary clinton or anyone else. i would invite -- unless you'd like to say something right now? john would like to say something and then take the next three questions. >> with regard to my question about kalafate and the islamic state. that's something you look back upon with pride but the fast majority of muslims do not look to the creation of calafate. the islamic state is a different story. in many muslim countries there is a desire for, among some, certainly the islamists, for some kind of islamic state. but even there, it's more complicated because ishadi said in the past we have no clear

paradigm for what would call an islamic state. there's no single paradigm. in terms of today if you look up and other ll organizations, they want democracy and not a secular state and some form of shiria and doesn't qualify as islamic state but there's a certain influence. muslims ink for many the notion to the appeal of calafate by isis resonates. and if you study would be the case and if it did resonate, to free them would be a hell of a lot more successful than it has been. and the final comment is with regard to the u.s. policy and whether the u.s. is behind this or that and it's out there but part of the problem we have is on the one hand we tell a story

historically that we're the power and can go in and we celebrate when we can go in and do things so then you raise expectations about our being involved in what we could do. we also know that truth often is stranger than fiction and that is that often we discover the u.s. has been doing things that at least in my generation we never would have believed the u.s. would ever do and certainly wouldn't think of hat today. and i once spoke at a university and a student said the c.i.a. is doing this, this and this and they wanted my answer. i said you do realize you put out four options and there is contradiction to which the fifth student said that's their policy, part of their strategy, too. you're not going to be able to, for those that are into that kind of mentality, you're always going to see that the .s. is responsible for

anything you want to say the u.s. is responsible for. >> my name is mr. mohammed and with the center for u.s. relations. and i would like to thank the fourth speaker who left us now but the question to the three speakers here, we heard from him very clearly and seems that in the mind and whatever is written in the newspaper and so on that we need an action. he talked about intelligence help and armies and actually specific geographic areas and official forces and so on. but don't you think that really the root of the matter is that we are facing an ideological confrontation? this is a war of ideas. deviated ideas maybe, fanatic ideas, and this is where the work has to be and this is what the superpowers should be thinking about, not only a short range bombing here or

bombing there. why was it absent at least from what i heard and what would you like to say about that? thanks. >> question number five, stacey? >> hi, my name is stacey pollard and i'm a political scientist, often specialize in middle eastern politics but i've been doing research and consulting the department of defense for the last four years as well. and my -- first of all, i'd just like to say this is an excellent panel and feel very privileged to be here, thank you. my questions are for shedi and michelle. i had a semiquestion, i guess, for michael. i guess my frustration is with this specific discussion is that we hear over and over again this criticism that the

united states, that the obama administration does not have a coherent strategy. and folks come to the table, they offer us a lot of information, you know, and it's really helpful and provocative and then close the conversation with, but we don't have a coherent strategy and we need one and then we never get to hear that expert's insights on what their cohesive strategy would look like. from my point of view, the united states is doing precisely what michael suggested. i don't see any defyation from the strategy that the united states has taken on or between the strategy that the u.s. has taken on and what is occurring on the ground in iraq. from shed isks, you closed kind

of saying, you know, talking about how you help -- hope that the obama administration does what you want it to do. what is that specifically in terms of your recommendations? and for michelle, i very much agree on the points that you drove down on in terms of pressuring allies or managing allies. but how -- from your point of view, how does the united states -- because i think this administration has worked on it but very difficult, gain the leverage that it needs in order to do that? and that's all. >> question number six. >> good afternoon. i'm here representing mr.

sharif who couldn't reach it from the nation's mosque. this problem we know is massive but the question i wanted to pose to this pan sell that oftentimes we don't address and professor esposito, you did a great job in regards to the miseducation of the muslims and what i would equate that. as a person who accepted islam willingly and freely as a youth and now as an adult, i know this is not the islam that's being taught, we all know that. every last person here is educated enough to know this is not islam but we never seem to address these individuals who step outside of the bounds of islam and equate them as criminals. because that's exactly what their actions are. it isn't right to look at a person's actions, indeed but never hear it addressed as much. and i say that, too and i'm getting to the question. i'm saying it also as a person who was once under the leadership of the honorable mohammed.

we would considered a radical group ourselves but after 1975, we changed under the leadership and came into a broader undergo of islam and became more reform that now today many of our members are now judges, lawyers and everything else. what do you all see long term and short term as a way to reform much the mentality as the gentleman mentioned earlier that this is an ideological issue, what do you all see that would help change on a short term and long-term basis to re-educate many of these uneducated people who claim to be muslim? >> michelle, can i start with you? >> on the question of whether there is an ideological confrontation involved in this battle against isis, yes, there is. but the question is, what is that ideological confrontation? that is exactly what i was getting to in my remarks

because as the u.s. tries to work with the allies in the region, some of them want to pose in and even quite a few people in the united states picking this up that it's a ideological confrontation between islamists and moderate are or something like that and i think it's a lot more complicated than that. there is, as i said, there's an attempt to lump in islamists who were essentially peaceful, political and so forth with those who have been very violent. so there is an ideological confrontation and the united states stands for certain things and it should be clear bout what it stands for. but it shouldn't get roped into this kind of confrontation that some of our allies would like us to. on the other question on stacey's question about what should the united states actually be doing, and you asked regarding u.s. allies, how can the u.s. gain the

leverage that it needs? in my view, the united states in has a lot of leverage these relationships but chosen not to use it. we need to look at u.s. leverage properly. because the u.s. has leverage over an ally it doesn't mean the united states can force that government to do what the united states wants it to do. it doesn't mean we can make things happen in other countries and so forth. that's not what it's about. but we can scrutinize our own actions. we have control over our own actions, our own policies, and we can certainly -- first of all, we cannot support actions that we think are unconstructive, in this case, for example, actions by some of our allies that we believe will actually build radicalization and extremism in this region, so that's one thing of not supporting them. in terms of actions that those governments take and so forth, look, there are -- many of the

governments in this region still depend on the united states at the end of the day for their defense. so there is a lot of leverage there and i think at my own experience as a u.s. official that very often u.s. officials don't see this, or they don't conceive of it. and so it's a matter, i think sometimes of thinking more strategically of finding refuse line of scrimmage in these relationships and being willing to use it. but the general approach the administration has had of we don't want to be responsible for solving the problems in this region, we don't want to be the ones who have to come up with the solutions, the strategies put together the coalitions all of that, is one of the things that has led us not to use this leverage because, you know, it just would be taking on more responsibility than we really want to. >> stacey stressed your question about my ideal foreign

policy in two minutes, i've written about this but kind of some highlights. first of all, in 2012, many of us called for military intervention in syria, targeted air strikes, the creation of safe zones, humanitarian corridors, along with a serious effort to train and equip mainstream syrian rebel forces. that was a very clear policy prescription and it was something that was discussed for quite some time in 2012 and almost happened in 2013 and was conof the key inflection points and was late but last august we were preparing to launch military strikes and instead we accepted a chemical weapons deal that helped legitimatize and normalize the regime. this administration should not pretend this was a success. this was i think the start of a chain of events that has led to where we are today where we

came to see asad as a partner and lost any seriousness when it came to confronting the regime but that's water under the bridge. now $500 million is not enough to support mainstream syrian rebel forces and is a start but i would actually recommend people check out my colleague's ken pollack's long detailed, very ambitious and provocative proposal in foreign affairs and he lays it out in detail of building a syrian rebel army. he puts the price tack at $3 billion to $10 billion a year for two to five years depending on how extensive we want it to be. that might sound unrealistic to the ordinary american viewer. which is fine but we shouldn't -- we can't do a lot of this on the cheap. if we are serious about defeating isis, then we have to rise to the occasion. if people don't want to do that, that's fine. but there are proposals out there that are possible if we had leadership in the u.s. and

europe that were truly committed to addressing this. and just a couple other examples and a little bit on the lower nonmilitary scale, we indulged, we have been complicit in one of the most brutal -- with one of the most brutal regimes in the middle east, egypt. and we continue to give them billions of dollars and will presumably for the foreseeable future. and we had a legal obligation the day after the coup happened last year to cut our assistance. we did not do that and we sent a message to the egyptian military that they could literally get away with murder and they did. and what we saw shortly thereafter was one of the worst mass killings in modern history on august 14, 2013. and more generally and this touches on michelle's point, we have to use our assistance as leverage and there was no bold initiative in 2011o to say we'll incentivize reform, that we're building to give

additional financial assistance to those countries that commit themselves to a democratic process, along specific benchmarks. and my colleague peter mandoville and i proposed, for example, a multilateral endowment for reform which we put initially funded at $5 billion and building enough support to get to $20 billion where the basic idea was to say more for more. and to have tailored specific benchmarks for countries in transition and if they met those benchmarks over a period of time, they would be eligible for massive infusions of financial assistance and that uld just be multilateral support for our allies and you add the world bank funding to that, but there were no bold initiatives forthcoming from this administration. >> john? >> on the coherent policy, it eems to me that an

administration which has all the resources, with all the many ts in government with great economics and i remember ann slaughter speaking out, etc., the administration is responsible for coming up with that coherent policy with its coherent policy. but the possibilities are out there and the fact it didn't happen is due to other things. sometimes it means making very decisive conditions in which you can screw up and if you're concerned about your legacy, you always don't want to come off afghanistan and iraq, you don't want to really get more involved and indeed i think the administration before two or three years ago, i think president obama wanted to look more to asia, to southeast asia and not get into this entractable area of the middle east. i think that there are other

things that come into play, if you're really going to be decisive with a coherent policy and my two colleagues here have made some reference to it, some hard stands are going to have to be taken with those that are our allies in terms of what they're doing and continue to do. whether it's egypt, whether it's, you know, israel, whether it's saudi arabia, etc. and i don't think that there is the will to do that. or maybe it's also that there is also a realization with some of these steps, the congress won't go along with it. i think for a variety of reasons. and the final thing is that this administration has demonstrated, which surprises me because i was a very strong supporter of president obama the first time he ran. i thought this is our last chance to really get some real stuff done based on his cairo speech and other things. its inability to be consistent has been, you know, from my point of view, really

surprising and not realizing that there are incredible costs there. that little blurb i read at the end of the paper from graham fuller and then i added to. these long-term, you know, when you talk to people long-term, a number of years ago we were at carnegie and somebody from the clinton administration was asking about -- eight of us about the middle east in africa and somebody from africa did short term and long term and the guy smiled and said you don't understand, presidents don't think long term but think short term. and you know, the fact is long term comes around rather quickly, you know. it just does. you think back and it's -- i put on a t-shirt today given to me for my 50th birthday saying, you know, 50 and still perfect. that was given to me 24 years ago. look, i wouldn't have thought long term went by rather quickly. and i think if we look at not addressing palestine and israel, if we look at not addressing atheory terrace him and the signal -- you a

theorytism -- atheoryityism, that they can come and do what they want and just ride it out and at a certain point they'll have to deal with you, they'll have to say well, it's a state. we have to deal with it. but then to go and, as it were, legitimate that state with comments like they're moving on to the path to democracy, we're giving them aid with saying we recognize the election. you know, we support, quote, the will of the people, you know. a lot of the people didn't like the president. as one member of congress said to a member of the obama administration, i can think of a couple presidents that could not get at times, you know, a majority in terms of percentages supporting them. does that mean that we would think that the person should be moved, pushed out undemocratically? i think there are a lot of hard choices and regrettably, i think obama's legacy, unless he acts now, would not be one to at least put some precedence out there, even if they're not totally successful about the

fact that the u.s. is going to take a new look at its relationship with the region which does mean our allies have to be primarily responsible in the region for what they do but which also means that we are going to be really strong on the things that they do that are devastating. we're not going to look the other way when slaughter takes place of the magnitude that its taken in egypt and also more recently in gaza. >> we have one minute left. we're in the lightning round. i'm going to take two questions -- the discussion on the twitter sphere is really interesting. i'll take two questions and ask for quick answers. for john, what about the question of isis recruiting, for example, somalis in minnesota, how should the u.s. be dealing with isis recruiting in the states and for shadi, quick answers, how should the u.s. be dealing with isis competitors like al qaeda in the region while addressing isis. with quick answers we won't have time for the other three

questions. >> the u.s. knows and has done some of some. there needs to be much closer working relationship with local communities, with local muslim communities to begin with. but that said, and one could say the same thing in europe, that said, unless you address conditions and unless the country's policy looks better for some youth, you're not giving them a reason not to be radicalized. and i think that that's also part of it. if there's a sense that u.s. policy isn't -- is actually part of the problem, etc., then you've got a situation for, you know, for some to just feel that they must act. i wouldn't exaggerate. we definitely have to be concerned about terrorism in america. but i would be more concerned with terrorists coming in, you know, than actually our domestic population. it's not that some of our population won't go out and there will be some in our

population that will do something but if you actually take a look at, you know, most polls and if you're out there in communities, the vast majority of american muslims, the one thing we have is that they are so fully integrated economically, etc. so you don't have youth who feel that they are alienated, marginalized, don't have a job, etc., in the way you can have it in areas of europe which can concede disaffection. >> the last question on the issue of isis competitors. >> i'll just say that one of the -- sometimes there are really bad ideas in policy debates. i think one of them, and it really takes your breath away, is this notion suggested by some even in the administration that if we kind of take a step back and let isis and other extremists fight it out with the assad regime and hezbollah and the you'reian backers that both sides would end up weakened and i remember when i first heard this and said ok,

but can't imagine anything that's turned out more long. the opposite is true and both were strengthened tremendously. this was their training ground fighting each other and became much better fighters over the course of that. and this is sort of the sarah palin position, let it all sort it outside. steven walt wrote a piece which is essentially let them bleed and he's still writing it now which i can't understand. but the obama administration policy explicitly agreed with some of those assumptions and it doesn't work that way. >> thank you so much for coming. i'd like to say that twitter is calling this a real powerhouse hamad and sposito, dunne. thank you for coming. this was a really special event.

. .

. .

received access to the material he seeks in each before us today. attorney general eric holder and deputy attorney general james cole are not the problem. they are both intervened personally on multiple occasions to overcome the fbi's objections and to compel production of the materials in question. i commend them for that leadership. but i do not know who will hold these posts in future administrations. we should not be willing to entrust this key oversight matter to men and women who may