>> i just don't see the president or the prime minister accepting assad. they got pretty much what they want with maliki gone. there is a momentum here in syria if this continues. i mean, i don't see what turkey can do in terms of having assad overthrown. but this is personal. this is personal, the way it was in maliki. i think they will wait it out. i think time is on turkey's side. i'm not saying assad is going to go. i just don't see turkish leaders saying, golly, we really made a mistake, so let's try to deal with assad. i'm pretty skeptical about that.

>> quickly. if krg is under threat, would -- go ahead. >> this is a great question. what you are hearing in the press -- my answer to you is no. this is not surprising. this is interesting. some of the kurdish leaders, they just made these statements in the press, we are very disappointed that you didn't defend us against isil. but nonetheless, you know, this is a bit surprising. there's many people who kind of knew this all along. so i think this is more part of the iraqi kurds have miscalculated, misinterpreted and overstepped how far turkey will go. quite frankly, turkey doesn't need to. at this point, the iraqi kurds have become so indebted and so dependent upon occur urkey that

if they are disappointed or upset or angry, i don't see how that's going to affect the alliance because the leverage is not in the iraqi kurds' hands at this point. does that mean occur urkey will be involved in terms of reconnaissance? certainly. launching a missile against isil is the same type of pressures that turkey would face for not becoming actively involved in the international coalition against isil. there's some very sensitive issues. i don't see how the krg is going to rank high on turkey's military intervention list if it couldn't do it in syria. turkish popular support or domestic opinion, that matters as well. >> a very quick note on that. when u.s. helped krg, turkey didn't object publically. but it did object -- it raised questions about baghdad being -- getting a lot of people from the

u.s., because that could perpetuate maliki's policies if the new government isn't able to -- it raised concerns about also pkk getting their hands on these weapons. but it didn't raise it with regard to krg. there's probably some sort of, you know, u.s./krg/turkey tacit agreement on something on this. >> we have a gentleman here in the front or near the front. anyone on this side? then we have one more person at the front here. >> i am an analyst with the united states marine corps. i was wondering for anybody who can answer what narratives and perspectives are at play from a kurdish perspective on the southeastern project in turkey and south as it will affect the

flow downstream. >> i'm an undergraduate student here at georgetown. i was wondering if anyone on the panel could comment about how iran is becoming involved in the fight against isis and if that complicates the relationship with turkey or the u.s. or the kurds. >> anybody? sg >> honestly, i don't know what -- do you mean they see it as a problem? i'm not sure about what you mean how they -- >> economic and agricultural. >> since january 2013, it's almost go years now. there is a peace process. secret talks now.

it's evolved into a political dialogue. it's about to -- it has been legalized. there is probably going to be an open negotiation process. the ultimate goal is to address the kurdish population's demands in turkey and ultimately disarm pkk. maybe across the border it won't be realistic any time soon. but within turkey, their withdrawal and disarmament of pkk. but this two years have allowed a lot of politics to take place without arms. which means both turks and kurds inside the country, especially in the southeast, are very -- they are enjoying this lack of fighting. there's been so clashes.

there have been some problems. we can get into that separately. but this process has allowed that to happen, which means that nobody wants to really give up the peace process right now. and they don't want to be the one who is giving up on the peace process. along with this, there have been a lot of sort of economic opportunities in the southeast for all sorts of kurdish and turkish businesses. they have thrived. gap project is an old project. i think it's fine in terms of -- because the region is under-developed compared to the rest of the country. so people are happy if there's more progress on that front. but if you go back to fighting, if the peace process collapses,

which it could, then that's going to be a problem. iran said it won't cooperate with the u.s. on isis, and they see them as an enemy. right now, it's the kurds faced with isis. maliki government -- iran is supporting maliki government. i mean, baghdad government. i guess we are obsessed with it. >> he's gone. >> iran has good ties with krg. i don't know how -- i think they're not fighting. they are not fighting isis directly at this point. iranians themselves. but they're trying -- they're supporting the baghdad government. >> i can put a little meat on that? one, the iranian relationship with the iraqi kurds goes long

back. it's with the larger kurdish government as well. particularly with the patriotic union the kurdistan. the first country that supported the kurds that was invaluable was iran. the first country that provided weapons to the kurds was iran. during this period right now, the forces are working and fighting with the puk in different areas, particularly in the diala area. some of the u.s. air strikes that initially went in were largely in that area. this is the barzani area. they were not going to parts of the diala where the puk was fighting. i don't mean to simplify this and say there's the puk area and the kdp. but these old historical riefshriefsh

-- the historical rivalries have been reinforced. so iran is very much active. it's nothing new. except now it's on a security level. in this last very important batt battle, the iranians were essential with the puk in the iraqi security forces in pushing back isis in the area. indirectly, there's no official -- there's not an alliance between the united states and iran. iran is not part of the coalition. iran has not been invited. however, by coincidence or by virtue of the fact that both on the working toward the same goal, iran is doing some of the work that the united states is not doing in some of the areas. the iraqi kurds are a key ally to push back and degrade isis. part of that is not reaching all

of the asias. the i don't see this as a threat to turkey. iran is not going to replace turkey. it's competing areas. that will likely continue. i think the kurds are playing on this by trying to say, look, it was the iranians that came to our defense, not the turks. i don't see how that's going to change the kurds' calculus, because they need turkey. don't under value this role of iran in working with the kurds, because they continue to do that today. >> i was going to mention the village that the iranians played a vital roll. in my view, enjoying what isis -- iran is one of the biggest benefactors. assad was successful to offer

himself as the best alternative in syria through supporting radical groups. now people question really it's better assad stays. this has been done thanks to help of iran. iran enjoys extremist groups are stronger, the more assad is more viable alternative. so i think iran is enjoying right now because it serves iran's purpose. it takes attention, pressure from iranian international community, nuclear program and others. now the international community is busy with isis. >> any other questions that you are dieing to -- if i may end with one final question. just brief comments from each of the panelists. i would like to ask on the notion of how you would evaluate public opinions. in terms of the turkish public's

sort of -- what is the situation of public opinion and how far does that have an affect on what -- how turkey will act towards this in terms of whether -- how they will participate in the coalition and whatever sense, but what is the role of turkish public opinion with respect to the government's continued role with respect to isis? d den ea denise, in terms of u.s. public opinion, to what extent is the government constrained or at liberty to act more aggressively with respect to public opinion with regards to president obama's increased role that's been defined for the u.s. military in the region? i want to get your take on public opinion. what is the expectation on the part of the kurds that you have been outlining with respect to the international community at

large? we can end on that. thank you. let's begin down the end. >> like i tried to mention previously, the kurds in turkey, their expectation is that turkey actively takes part in the efforts against isis, any efforts that destroy, weaken isis, they want turkey to take part. like i said, turkey is not taking part so far is a matter of question. the hostage issue, possibly understandable concern. now that that is gone, the expectation is more that turkey does something against isis in regards to -- especially stop turning a blind eye or supporting isis. there are still allegations that people are easily going back and

forth, isis militants. perhaps that can be further straightened. in regards to kurds, there might be a better mechanism to work with kurds other than seeing him as a danger, threat. it's an opportunity for kurds. the turks have the other side of the border. isis will have a border town, it's not going to benefit turkey. nobody predicts what isis is going to do. who can predict? damage turkey. why not secure the border with people that -- who gave positive message to you from the beginning, tried to have good relations with you. i think turkey should see this. turkey should hold the hand of the syrian kurds have been trying to reach them. this might be a better -- further relation between turkey

and syrian kurds. also turkey kurds right now. there's enormous discontent in regards to syria. this will ease turkey's kurdish population seeing the government is getting better relations with brethren in syria. it will build trust among the kurds. at the moment, there's many buses in the border town to prote protest. it's getting tense because people are really threatened that they are under attack. it's direct or indirect help of turkey. >> denise? >> i want to be clear when we say the u.s. government as we all know, are we talking about the administration, congress, the state department and the department of defense. i work for the latter. as we know, in the past, even

planning the iraq war -- i was iraq for that. i could speak my own opinion. there was not necessarily, let's say, a bridging together of views. i don't imagine that that's the case today. so it is quite complicated. i think that the president -- pardon? sounds like the government. people said, is the government going to do it? which one? who? congress -- i think the president has acted very carefully. he's doing the right thing in terms of he has to get congressional support. he's trying to get coalition building internationally. he's reaching out to the united nations and making sure this is not a unilateral venture. with that said, public opinion -- public opinion polls show 65% or more of americans that support the strikes and the same amount don't think they will work. you know, go figure.

i can't -- i'm not tracing opinion polls. i think that how the president or how the united states moves forward, we're seeing two different theaters. the media and press like to say, the -- iraq is a different theater than syria. if you notice, it was easier to get this coalition together for iraq. right? i mean, we had the maliki government changed. we have a new more reconcilable government. syria, this has been the same mess as of two years ago. our regional allies -- does that mean overthrow assad? part of the problem i see as well -- there's public opinion that says this has been very emotional. this has been about the beheadings of american citizens. this has been about the fear of

hitting homeland. a lot of this emotion is to move strike with air strikes. in terms of strategy, there has been a lot more nuance and disagreement on what we do in iraq is not necessarily what we can do in syria. that's a really difficult situation for policy makers but also for getting a coalition together. >> thank you. just maybe two things. turkish public opinion has always been quite skeptical of u.s. policies. that continues to be the case. increases but -- we could comfortably say it's deeply skeptical. when the u.s. launches this new strategy, i think there is a lot of weariness about whether -- at

some point, turkish public opinion was more like, we are being pushed into a war in syria by others. that strain remains, i think, to a certain extent. a lot of people don't want to be doing anything in terms of going into syria and trying to fix things. you know, iraq's story has a baring on that as well. there are now almost a million and a half refugees. this is something else that impacts turkish public opinion. i think not overall but in certain cities, there is the overwhelming of the public services. and there is the typical anti refugee attitudes locally. some research has been done.

it's not common turkish person in the street could say, these guys came and everything became worse. but there are studies done in terms of crime and how much they actually overwhelm the system. it's not too bad. i mean, turkey has done a good job in terms of taking care of that refugee issue. but the refugees now, turkey's challenge is they are probably not going back any time soon. turkey needs medium and long-term policies about how to integrate the refugees. only about three, 400,000 now are in the camps. the rest are all around the country. but there's also the other side. they're also proud to be sort

of, you know, being able to take care of this, because turkey is a great country. we will help the ones that are being -- there is also that among -- at least from the newspapers you can see that. but anti-refugee or anti-immigrant, that kind of attitude is there. and this is -- this may be contributing to the opinion that wants to sort of move back to the eu agenda and i think gmf poll on this indicated that turks wanted to kind of now give more importance to eu because the middle east is now going through. thank you. >> if we could conclude by a couple of announcements. one is to say, these timely

panels will continue. if you are interested in further discussions relating to issues such as this, on october 22, there will be another panel here that we have booked on the kurdish opening process on turkey. if you are not signed up for e-mail, do so. just leave your e-mail with either of us, that's fine. these are joint collaborative efforts. we are proud to bring you these events. independent of that, give a very warm hand to our panel which have -- who have given up their time to share with us some very interesting points of view. thank you for your time also. white house official says eric holder is resigning. he has been attorney general since the start of president obama's first term. holder is the first black attorney general and has been the fourth longest person to hold the job.

he plans to remain at the justice department until his successor is in place. the president will make an official announcement this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. it will be live on c-span. what's your reaction? join the conversation at facebook.com/cspan and on twitter. the phoenix v.a. medical center held a town hall meeting last friday for veterans and their families to ask questions and share comments about their medical care and experiences. this particular site was at the center of an inspector general report about long wait times and other problems in delivering patient treatment. here is a portion of their remarks. it took me two years to get an appointment. the general reason the va is in

trouble was because had you secret waiting lists. am i correct? >> right. >> we were putting people on the secret waiting lists because there was -- too many people and not enough providers? relatively correct? >> yeah. >> i finally came in here june of this year. i got seen for three minutes by a doctor who didn't ask me any question about any service-related disability that i got put out for. i got a letter saying my disability is cut in half. they spent three minutes asking me what's up, telling me dipping was disrespectful and sent me on my way. since i got out of the army, my wife left me. i moved back in with my parents and i can't get a job. but telling them that made them think my issues are all better. they scheduled me -- they scheduled me for a primary care provider appointment late

august. they schedule me in september. i get a postcard saying it's canceled. i get a postcard saying it's been canceled. i start calling. surprisingly, i can't get a human on the phone. i can get an operator who i'm sure has been cussed out more than anybody on the planet because she's the only point of contact that's a human. i'm go together clinic. i walk in, tell them i've had four canceled appointments because i want to talk to someone. after walking in, they tell me, go ahead and talk to this guy over here who spent an hour answering phones. don't you think it's ironic that the reason i had to go to a clinic to talk to someone was because i couldn't get anyone on the phone? then i had to wait an hour for a guy to stop answering the phone. i couldn't get his number. they wouldn't give me his number. i get an appointment. i talk to one of these advocate people. they tell me i canceled all my appointments.

i canceled five appointments and here i am? what i'm curious is, you got in trouble because you are cancelling or not making appointments or putting people on bogus lists. now you are being open and you are still doing the same thing of cancelling -- making the patients cancel appointments. i went down there and raise hell. >> the town hall meeting for veterans and their families, watch it tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. cq roll call and just security online publication hosted a discussion on national security monday evening. the isis threat, iran's nuclear program, the immigration debate, iraq, afghanistan, the russia/ukraine conflict and nsa surveillance programs are touched on by the panel of experts. this is 90 minutes.

>> thank you. it's my pleasure to be here. let's introduce the panel straightaway. from the audience's far left, a gentleman who has never been described as far left before, cully stimson. next to him is rachel kleinfeld. she specializes in issues related to fragile states and post conflict nations. she not only comments on foreign palsy but helped shape it by serving as former secretary of state clinton's adviser on the policy board. next to her is steve vladeck who is professor of law at american university washington college of law. that online forum as you can see

from the recognition has become the go-to place for vigorous debate on foreign policy. to my left is jerry seib, the washington bureau chief for the dow jones. and then on the end is my colleague, tim starks, who is a defense specialist and writes the five by five blog. goggle that phrase. and he has a long history of previously covered intelligence for cg roll call. thank you for coming and joining us on the last summer evening of the year. let me start with jerry seib. last week you wrote fear is back and how it may influence the upcoming election. when we put this panel together,

i think we would have said there was no role in national security. that has changed a bit. i think there's a panel consensus it won't play a big role. can you describe what you are seeing in the polling and whether or not there's a percolation -- enough percolation period, six weeks before the election, for it to have an impact? >> sure. thank you for being here. i look at what happened over the years as an ar bei arc that goe way. the country is bumping along with the president in sync with american public opinion, i think, on the question of the summer which was do we want to get involved in syria and iraq. his answer was no. the american people's answer was no. though they weren't rewarding him. they were punishing him for doing what they wanted him to do. that's a different conversation. that's where things were until

one thing happened. the one thing that happened was there was a release of the be d beheading video of james foley. what we found is that that event grabbed the attention of the american public. there was more attention paid to that event in terms of the way people responded to questions asking what people are paying attention to than any event we have tested for the last five years, more than trayvon martin, more people paid attention to the beheading videos. it was a galvanizing moment. it changed attitudes. should the u.s. be involved against the islamic state, the answer was 61% of the people said yes. slightly higher among republicans than democrats and independents. there was a sense, we got to do something. the caveat is i don't think -- i think there's limited appetite. when we ask people, do you want to be more involved or less involved in world affairs, that

number that the u.s. should be move involved in world affairs ticked up since the spring but not a lot. i think the reason i think we have all said amongst ourselves that i don't believe this question of what's the u.s. role in the middle east, what's the proper strategy, army is going to be a huge mid-term election news because both parties are divided on that. look at the vote in the house last week on authorizing training of syrian rebels, for example, conservatives split amongst themselves, liberals split amongst themselves. the black caucus was split. there's not a party position for the democrats or the republicans. it makes it very hard for parties to gain traction on an issue like that. >> there's the political powder keg of involvement. rachel, you mentioned that national security, it's possibly a good thing it isn't a big part

of debate in mid-term elections. explain why. >> i would love for national security to play a bigger role in general because i think we're a democracy, the american people should have a say. our congress is not organized for the american people to have a say. districts are going to people who are of the party, and that's pushing districts to the fringes. the way the votes are being rigged is similar. a veterans affairs vote with something else attached to it. pull troops out with a funding vote with it. because of that kind of -- as long as we have a congress in which you know that if you vote on a serious national security issue there's going to be attack ads and you will be hurt in the

polls, you are not going to get serious thinking and debate. that's where we are. politics of this issue suggests to me that we need to pull back on how politicized it is until we can change the politics. we have eight more years until the census happens again. >> that debate can't wait eight years. as your colleague this day pointed out, the move against the islamic state for the purpose of this conversation we will call it that, is using an authorization for an old war that the president declared over for a new war. steve, congress needs to act and the president seems to agree on that. when are we going to get that debate? >> before congress can act, congress has to be here. we were talking about how this congress has had -- the house has had 12 legislative days this

year, which -- i think -- congress doesn't plan to come back until after the mid-terms. the conversation about what should come before that is now moot. that's putting the president in an awkward spot. president obama is committed to a inter-branch conference. as things develop in iraq and syria, i think the president will feel pressure to go it alone because as a matter of logistics, he has to go it alone. what happens after the mid-te mid-terms? there's a lot of support in circles among moderate parties for tim cane's proposal. we haven't heard the white house endorse it or step away from it. congress has to confront that.

it's one of the first things on their agenda when they get back. >> does the president have enough authority to act right now? >> i think he does. to jerry's earlier point, in the beheadings, before the dehead g i -- before the beheading, the major study that came out may 5, 48% of people said the economy and unemployment was their top concern. healthcare at 42%. budget deficit, 38%. education, 31%. immigration was at 14%. beheadings were a forcing mechanism. what happened was, because congress planned to be in session only 12 legislative days after the summer recess, it compressed what the president and congress could do. what congress wanted to do was pass a short-time extension to the budget and get out of town.

i would take a difference with rachel's point. i don't think congress doesn't want to take tough votes is a new concept. i agree i think it's unhealthy. if you read back during lincoln's time, 1862, they av d avoided votes because it was too difficult. it hasn't changed since. >> before we go further, we will have a debate about who we are fighting. even an informed citizen like the very confused, without a score card on who actually are the threats. i would like to bring tim starks in here. no sooner had the president finished speaking about islamic state action than you had clapper and the intelligence community briefing lawmakers about what they considered more dangerous threats, more pressing threats to the united states. could you walk us through those?

>> you are right. it's very difficult for the average person to keep track of the groups. it's difficult for the intelligence community. they morph quickly. people forget al qaeda in iraq is a forebearer of the islamic state group that has become a threat. a report will come out tomorrow that says -- it does have a chart of where the groups are. they say that looking at 2008 to now, al qaeda and its affiliates are in 16 countries, which is double what it was in 2008. that doesn't include wild cards of groups that could pop up or if there's a big deepening of a conflict, that some other group might capitalize and become a danger to the united states. khorasan was getting a lot of attention this weekend.

that's one that clapper said is as dangerous as the islamic state. yet you still hear about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. a good number of experts, chairs of the intelligence committee will say that's one we need to worry about. they have a track record of actually trying to carry out attacks on the united states. inspiring them here among home-grown terrorists in a way other groups don't have. that's another big one. then there are a variety of other groups in varying states of power. al shabab. some are weakened. but they can be revived. it goes back to the point about the islamic state and where they came from. >> jerry, you mentioned -- you pointed out last week that the action against islamic state may other groups to step forward. talk about that a little bit.

>> well, yeah. i think that if you talk to u.s. officials, they worry about islamic state to some extent. in terms of the near-term danger, one of the things they worry about are the groups that you are talking about, but also the fact that they may have an incentive they didn't have a couple of months ago to launch a strike. the islamic state is sucking the air out of the extremist air. they are sucking oxygen away from other groups. if you are running al qaeda, you suddenly have a need to prove your relevance, that you are still here, you matter. how do do you that? one of the things you do is you pull the trigger, if you can, on a big strike against the west. maybe in europe. you make the point, hey, we're still around, too. i think that is -- that's a legitimate concern. it's also sort of a testament to how much islamic state has changed the game in a short period of time.

you raise the question of who are we fighting against. there's the question of who are we fighting with against islamic state. do people see the threat the same way? i think there's disagreement here about whether islamic state poses the biggest threat or not. i think that's part of the confusion that has everybody feeling nervous. the bottom line is, as you said, the one thing that's clear in our polling and you get a sense of from listening to the conversation on the hill in the last couple of weeks is that to the extent americans had decided steadily over the last seven years that the threat -- the 9/11 threat against them and the homeland had receded, that's reversed in the last month. >> are the beheadingin ining th? >> i think so. you look at -- base it on public polling, you can't see a similar spike. you see drifts up and down in the fear factor. nothing like what happened in august.

>> you have a spike in fear. you have threats. you have a congress not debating it. start with steve on this, because congress has given way to the sitting president on war action for generation now. start with steve and open to the panel. aren't we experiencing a slow motion constitutional crisis in. >> yes and no. the yes is we are experiencing the same crisis we have been experiencing since the rise of unilateral presidential war making in the cold war and then today. no at the moment that this isn't sort of different in degree. because at least for the moment, the president has plausible, if not self-evident statutes to make. he has the authority derived from the statute congress passed after 9/11. because isis is the successor to

al qaeda's legacy. it's a dubious argument. we can hash it out. that will bore everybody to tears. i think the moment when this becomes a real crisis is when you have a threat for which there is no plausible statutory authority, where congress clearly endorses the notion that the president should act but refuses to provide the authority. i don't think that's beyond. that could happen. i'm not sure whether yet with isis. >> you are releasing a paper later this week on the varying the president should seek new authority. >> right. we are releasing a paper on isis and whether or not an aumf would be appropriate. we traced the history, point out we declared war twice in recent memory. the reason that most war actions have actually been in the form of a specifically designed aumf. we break out the five parts of

that. and say that if the congress is not convinced of the president's legal arguments that isis grew out of the 2004 marriage, that even though he is dead there's this break from core al qaeda that you can't make the case, then congress needs to -- first the president should be proposing an aumf. if they don't, the congress could look at the proposals out there. i would be remiss if i didn't wish security happy birthday. you get a good sense of what's happening in the legal academy. ben wittis gave a speech this week on constitution day. it was last week. and he talked about how the constitution is under stress over the last decade because of

the various mac nations from the bush and obama administration. he gave various examples, which i won't go into. i think there's merit into the argument. i agree with steve's point. >> i do think it's worth stressing the very different constitutional question that we are grappling with today versus five or ten years. the question today is what happens when you have a president who is convinced that some force needs to be used to quell a threat to the united states where congress apparently agrees where there seems to be more than a majority in both houses to support some form of legislation but they can't get their heads together whether for political reasons or logistical reasons or other reasons unknown to us. that's the crisis is that

worries me. which is not when you have congress say one thing and the president saying something else. that's happened going back to the founding. when you have agreement but a refusal to do what the constitution requires which is at some point to pass new legislation. >> i'm wondering if -- i might take slight disagreement with you on that. i think while there might be a consensus for action, there's still such a great division between all the factions within the democratic party and republican party that in many ways it's easier for congress to not do anything. it's easier to say, let the president go right now until something gets out of hand and they don't like what he's doing. the issue of congress willingly giving authority to the president, i don't think it's a constitutional crisis. it's an interesting dynamic. we had a story today that said this would be the most do nothing congress of all time unless they pass something like 100 bills in the lame duck

session. it does give you a sense -- it's interesting how much you see a president go to congress and say i want something until he thinks about the ramifications of congress saying, maybe we don't like it the way you do and there's a cia director who wants -- there was a period of time where the cia was trying to be more open and public about wanting to work with congress. all of them say they want to work with congress. they were making an effort. he had been saying this in public. i asked him about what do you think about the authorization bill that's coming up? very privately he used curse words to describe how much he didn't care that congress passed an authorization bill. >> something interesting happened here in the last few weeks in regard to the relationship between the executive and legislative branch, which is the president -- to his credit came out and said, i think i have the ability to act here on my own. but i invite you in congress to

please authorize something. get with me here, do something. executive branch and some of us have been doing this for a long time and the tendency is to say, stay -- to say at that time legislative branch, stay as far away from me, anything you do will be an encouple brans on me. he didn't say that. he said, please authorize something so there's a sense that we're moving together here. i ask you to do this. they didn't really. they authorized training and arming syrian rebels with no dollar sign attached and went home. that's a different dynamic between the two branchs. >> contrast that with -- if i remember right, there was a tie. that's not what we're talking about here. we're not talking about a house that had legislation before it and rejected it. we're talking about bills that aren't getting to the floor. that's a different situation. >> i think this gets to jerry's point about the interesting

polling where the american people were saying we want to you do this. when the president did this, they didn't reward him for it. the american people are very much looking for a government that can do something, successfully abroad. they are worried they're not going to see it. so you get this funny back and forth where they say we want to you do something but we don't believe you are going to succeed and we don't want to fail again. that's an even bigger problematic die naynamic is the of faith. >> if i could pick up on what jerry said. part of the reason that that happened -- which i give credit to the president for doing that. that's a healthy way of signaling, let's work together. is because of what happened last year on the syria situation. it was as described by a colleague of ours sort of like two teenagers trying to figure out who will ask the first one out on a date. he didn't want to really put forward an aumf proposal.

congress didn't want to reword him by giving him one. compressed time schedule didn't allow congress to do their constitutional duty by staying many town. they wanted to go home on recess to get themselves re-elected. query what would happen if congress -- if it was an election year so that a calendar lasted through october and november. who knows. it's very clear to me that by saying what he said, he is very open to an aumf. i think they realize that there is this vigorous debate in the legal academy about the efficacy of the aumf and they are open to a narrowly specific isis aumf. >> it was a speech last month -- last may where he said, i invite congress to work with me. >> to refine and repeal the old one. >> and he never put forward a proposal that i'm aware of. and defense officials testified, we're good. it's hard to tell how sincere he

is. it's a very different situation than last year. it might be more sincere this time. >> no surprise that a law professor is interested in what other law professors have to say. can we go back to august year. did obama make a mistake not forcing that vote? he asked for the vote. he said this time, i think it was can't doll business as usual, very forceful rose garden speech. 11 days later, late at night on a saturday? >> well, look, it was a pivot point. i mean, i think almost everything has happened. administration foreign policy since then is to some degree or another judged against the backdrop of what happened that week in august and the white house doesn't like to hear that, but i think it's true in terms of relations in congress and it's probably even more true in the way that people abroad see the u.s. and see the obama administration. i think that what the president has done on the islamic state and the coalition building

associated with the decision to guess on the offensive is starting to pull back some of that, but i still think it was a big moment, and i think it did affect lots of things that happened in the years subsequent. >> having been involved from afar, but closely in that vet, there weren't the votes, they just didn't have the numbers. so they didn't want to bring it to a vote. and they didn't have the numbers because the constituent male was running against that vote, i don't remember the numbers for every single senator i was talking to. but it was 90-10, it was overwhelming. so there wasn't a beheading video, there wasn't a forcing function at that point. and you have to eventually go back to the american people if you are a member of congress. >> let's follow up on that because you did say the american people are uncertain that there would be a successful, that we will have a measure of success. and i want to go back to something that you have written about, which was that the u.s. has done a poor job of getting partner militaries to become

more functional, that these ad hoc coalitions can fail because of the use of patronage and regime mentality. what's the prospect of success with this coalition? >> i'm not privy to the classified documents on this one and i really hope that it looks better than it does from the outside. from the outside, most militaries are not set up the way our military is to actually protect the people of your country and the territory of your country. most militaries are set up to protect the regime or to make money. based on that, we give them money, we try to train them, but their fundamental purpose is different than what we want them to be. and that's a real problem if you want them to be in a militia with you to go after a bad guy like this. >> absolutely. colleen, you know, some of these states that we're dealing with, you would have seen a lot of confidential information about. are you any more confident? >> this isn't a partisan issue. at least it shouldn't be. we need the coalition 0 win.

and the one thing we haven't talked about here is leadership. the president, any president in his sixth year and maybe in the future, her sixth year, needs to regroup, needs to reassess the people around lim or her. and then needs a clear vision for the next two years, and this is one of those classic cases in point where the president needs to lead and he needs to lead and make the case. and jerry's point, tim's point about this sort of deploying all the varying constituent parts for the funding bill. there's a lot of different types of folks voting who didn't split along party lines. that actually is an opportunity. to put together the right type of winning legal argument and political argument for us to win. i think the administration needs to be more forthright and honest and direct about who this coalition is and what they're going to do. i know that's going to be very hard, because they're going to be doing things they can't talk about. but the american people when we

hear we're going to war are used to turning on cnn or their favorite cable show and next day seeing the crosshairs and bombs going off. but we're not seeing that so we're like what the heck's going on. so there's an emotional aspect that the people aren't getting, they're hearing we're at war, they're not seeing we're at war. >> steve, do you think we need a legal framework of partners? >> if you look at, and we alluded to this, about the kinds of countries we're talking about enlisting in this coalition against isis, when you're talking about the assad regime in syria, when you're talking about iran, the question is actually how do we go to bed at night comfortable that our enemies are all of a sudden not so bad enemy. i think we do need a new framework. it would be nice if we were able to exert some kind of leverage and put strings on the aid we are providing and the support we are seeking.

the problem is, we need them at the moment perhaps at least as much as they need us. as long as that's going to be true, it's going to be very hard for us to impose conditions and that's going to create a very bad incentive structure where the kind of support we need, especially from the middle east is going to come from countries who are not going to say oh, we'll do it and we'll improve our human rights efforts or we'll do it on the conditions of the other things you want us to do. they're going to get as much leverage as they can. so we're in a relatively weak position, i think we need it. >> when obama backed down i don't think we're going to get it. >> gak back to partners when obama backed down september 10th or 11th last year, he said he was dispatching john kerry to talk to russia on our partner in peace there, to talk about the difference in one year since then. john kerry this morning, i want to go back to steve and we'll be a bit wonky here on frameworks and legalities. kerry seemed to be describing

the islamic state as a state. you know, that they control territory that, they have a funding flow, be, et cetera. was that the beginnings of an argument? >> gosh, i don't know. whether the u.s. government is on the precipice of r ris rec cooknizing -- is a very dangerous prop pigs. because recognizing any entity as a state first of all is recognizing they have territory, which presumably is going to piss off the authority that creates that state. but it also violates all kinds of international law that i can't imagine that we have -- trt in recognizing on the part of the islamic say the, sovereignty, the ability to the act in self-defense. so i don't know if that rhetoric is designed in order to sort of hail in some kind of move to recognizing some kind of statehood or a clearer focus that this is a group that we're going after, not just

terrorist group, because they are members of other groups. they control wide swathes of territory. it's a territory that gives them a larger base of operation, it makes them more secure from action by other countries law authorities, so i don't know if this is the beginning of anything other than just a nomenclature change. i can't imagine this is a step towards formal recognition. >> colleen's point about the people not being able to see the sort of normal spherics and imagery of war. maybe that was just kerry trying to create that. >> i think the consequences are so dire, that, you know, the last thing we want, just to draw the analogy, this is the one bridge been con wouldn't cross during the civil war. lincoln would never recognize the confederacy as a country because his view was the second you do that, you confer upon them legitimacy that the whole operation was to deny them. >> the fact that our partners in jordan and turkey, today we're seeing a lot about problems with refugees, a lot of reaction,

this is in your wheel house. do we have not a lot of time to make an effective push back to ease this refugee crisis? particularly in turkey? obviously it's been going on for years. >> the refugee crisis, we're seeing it now on our tvs, suddenly its real to us. this started years ago, two years ago with the beginning of the syrian war really, three years ago at the beginning of the trickle. and it's been a serious issue in lebanon and turkey and jordan, the destabilization of those states is quite real. but remember there are little boys and girls growing up in those refugee camps, what are they seeing, what are their parents doing? what are they seeing on their tvs? seeing your parents helpless in the face of something does something to a child. the more years they're in those camps, the more you're going to see a generation growing up with this norm malt. that does things we know now not just to the emotions but to the

brain. brain science is telling us the kinds of violence that causes in people, the impulse control that that changes. you don't want generations growing up in refugee camps and you don't want grown-ups not being able to work and kids to see that. and i think we're seeing that in this generation in the middle east. we want to be dealing with this soon, and we have been trying, secretary clinton started putting money into humanitarian action there and we're probably going to need a lot more. >> colleen, what kind of a drain is that on a country like jordan? >> i have no idea, i'm not jordanian. but i can only imagine from what i have read and what i have seen and when i talk to my friends in the military and i served for 23 years so i have a lot of friends in the military, that it's debilitating, if you just look at the number of people in these refugee camps ready to cross the river in the last week in the pictures coming out, it makes katrina and the numbers of

people fleeing new orleans look like not much. and they weren't being shot at and weren't afraid that, you know, american isis group was going to come after them. so i share rachel's concern, i also agree 100% with what steve just said. i don't think secretary kerry meant literally that they're a state. i think it was more of a colloquial expression. >> tim, talk about, has any of this had a purchase on lawmakers, the idea of the refugee problem in the briefings last week? was that coming to the fore? >> oh, sure, yeah, it's a big part of what some of our future expenses might be. so in addition to the humanitarian impact, there's a sense that this is something we're going to be wrestling with as a cost of this new military action against isis as an islamic state for a long time to come. we're already talking about $75 million i believe that the pentagon said last month, right when we first started ramping

this up and the refugee crisis can really, really add to these kind of costs. it already was doing it in syria, for instance when syria was getting out of control and now that it's getting worse and spreading, it's becoming even more of a problem. and the lawmakers have to do something. tim's right, but i think there's something even bigger happening here, the combination of the refugee crisis and the fact that isis has claimed as you said, huge waths of territory, whole countries are being changed here. the border between iraq and syria does not exist anymore. the demographic composition of lebanon has changed, the demographic i can composition of jordan of jordan and as changed and the demographic composition of syria is a mess. so none of those states, as we're speaking now and certainly over time are going to exist the way we thought of them two years argue, five years ago, ten years ago certainly. what are the consequences of that? well, i think one of the consequences of that is that the

adult states in the region need to step up. the real countries, the real civilizations an, egypt, turkey, iran, israel, saudi arabia, i mean adult countries that are real countries that have functioning governments are going to have to step in at some point, not just the u.s., at least in my opinion. and what form that takes, i don't know. but these other states are not going to be able to take care of themselves. they practically don't exist now. at least not in the form we have always thought of them. >> i was thinking about the several bitter ironies about this situation for this president, one the president wanted to get out of iraq, getting back into iraq. also the president ran for president saying that the predecessor or the incumbent had the put two wars on a credit card. we're doing that again. tim, you want to talk a little bit got how unsustainable that is? >> yes, i mean once they come back after the elections, i don't mean the lame duck, but once they get back in the house

and senate with the new congress, that's going to be a very major component of what happens when we're looking at the overall budget, the defense budget, the mandatory cuts that have been put into place. then when you have -- there has been this attempt to try and move everything back into the base pentagon budget. that's being completely reversed. it might have to be, there might be arguments for why it has to be. but it's a weird position that this president's going to be in that he's going to be doing a war on credit cards. >> we have many national security issues and we're going to move on to them in a second. but i'll just go back to jerry on this one. do people in the administration acknowledge that the president may wind up being in the spot that dempsey indicated he might be in, and that robert gates said over the weekend that you cannot turn back the islamic state or these various groups without some sort of combat

troops on the ground? >> i don't think they acknowledged that. i'm not sure it needs to be acknowledged. i don't know if he's right or wrong. i think what general odierno said last week, which got a little mangled in the translation was the important point. he said yeah, there need to be boots on the ground if you're going to roll back the military which is what the islamic state is that has taken territory. they don't have to be america's boots, just body's boots. >> you're talking about the adult states in the region, and the syrian free army, up to the job? >> we'll find out. i don't know. >> so if any of you have discerned an answer to any of that, to these questions, please let us know in the question period. so national security is broader than what we have been talking about for the last 35, 40 minutes. and let's talk about other manifestations of that and the politics.

steve, you've written on security about a possible political realignment on the issue of privacy rights on national security and how last year's attempt of a roll back of the nsa's -- was an indication of a possible emerging new alliance. and i think everybody here has something to say about that. >> one of the things isis pushed off the radar was surveillance. this was an issue that obviously was sparked last summer by the snowden revelations, and there was a clear impetus for at least some change in the house, in the senate and it wasn't the good old-fashioned left-right divide. i wrote this "washington post" about a year ago about how one of the things we saw in the surveillance conversation was a strange albeit not entirely unpredictable alignment between the libertarian wing of the

democratic party and so there was a vote last summer to defund the program that lost in the house 217-205. and we can look and say some republicans defected but it was right down the party lines. it was anything about you. i think this is a possible moment that just hasn't happened yet and i think part of what isis has done is push it even further into the distance. but at some point, by next spring congress is going to have to pass some kind of surveillance reform. because seconds 215, the statute at the heart of the program is going to expire. for better or worse, we're going to have to have some legislation come out of congress. the house has already passed the usa freedom act. the senate has a bill that the white house has apparently signed off on. the real question is, is there going to be a meeting of the minds before this congress goes home? if not, the very different senate that comes back in january are they going to be willing to push for the same deal.

at the end of the day, i think the real question is it going to be the democrats or the republicans, or is it going to be the wing nut coalition. he's one of them, against the more conventional hearts of the parties. we'll see, i wrote that a year ago and we're still there. >> colleen, do you think this is a political alignment that can get something done during the lame duck or the next congress? >> i think things are moving so quickly that we have no way of knowing. when steve wrote what he wrote, he was exactly right and a few months later he was exactly right. then you had the beheadings and you have isis, so all these things are happening, and i think what's happening is you're seeing for example the libertarian wing of the republican party pulling back on some of their statements, some of their desires for certain policies, you see rand paul's suit against the nsa, that's on hold for now for legal reasons but that serves a political purpose, too. so i think what's going to happen, and god forbid any

horrible terrorist attack happens here in this country so i'm supering for the sake of my point that it doesn't, is that you're going to have a renewed sense of neorealism starting with the new congress that okay, we need some form of surveillance. let get the adults in the room. we understand what you're saying, we understand what you're saying, but this is going to expire in may. we need some boots on the ground in iraq, not us, probably for now, but who? and how do we really actually vet these folks? are we any good at vetting these folks? we saw what we did in iraq and in afghanistan, training afghan national army people, iraqi army people, we had green on green, we had blue on green, we had all sorts of various insider attacks and that's going to happen and that's going to dampen the spirit of what we're doing, but we can't let it quench the resolve to get it done at the end of the day.

>> there's one actor we haven't talked about. it's the million dollar question if they're going to say anything and that's the courts. rand paul's lawsuit, of course, there's already been arguments in the federal appeals court in new york in the challenge to the 2515 program. there's a very important, albeit largely overlooked challenging in colorado to the much larger intelligence gathering program. it's entirely possible that the more that the political branches drag their feet on these matters the more the court might be pressed into at least some kind of action. i'm not holding any breath that the supreme court is in a hurry to restore privacy protections but there was no greater liberal than chief justice roberts who wrote the mo jart opinion this june in riley, a case about searching cell phones, chief justice roberts wrote about how much different qualitatively the data is in the stuff we store on our cell phone versus what we carry on our person.

if the court really means that, then congress may drag its feet long enough to leave the courts no other option than to actually jump in. >> before it gets to the top court, we get a multiplicity of opinions along the way. >> we get a decision from the second circuit. there's another appeal brought by larry clayman here in d.c. it's going to be argued later this fall. by sometime this spring, we're going to having two court opinions on the telephone metadata program. you know, it's going to percolate, it's going to take a while. i guess all i'm saying is that if congress really goes the narrowest route possible which is just to look at 215, i think the courts may actually feel compelled to do something. >> can you handicap the cases? >> this is why i'm a law professor and not a poker player. but i think that the district courts in the 215 case is split on the fourth amendment question which is to say do americans have an expectation of privacy

in their telephone metadata. i think both peas court will resist the answer is yes. but there's a narrower way out to say congress never actually authorized the telephone metadata program. so without the constitutional issue, we can say it's not authorized by statute. that fits quite nicely with congress having to reauthorize the statute anyway by next may. the much harder question, is the section 702 challenge. the overseas is bulk collection that's going on in colorado and there i have no idea. >> which allows the collection, if someone calls me a foreign national, my data is collected? >> it's a little more complicated than that. the question is whether is the collective happening, the way that the 702 works is that it authorizes certain intelligence mast collect information going through foreign servers so long as they are targeting nonu.s. persons reasonably believed to be outside the united states. the result is, they can't target a communication that they know that you're a party to. but the way that technology works, it's just inevitable, in sweeping everything up going

through these fiberoptic cables, they're going to collect millions and millions of u.s. persons anyway. so they're probably picking up your phone calls accidentally. >> rachelle, given the fact we've talked such a bulk of this conversation about foreign threats and the fear of terrorism, is it possible that once again privacy concerns will be overwhelmed by this wave of concern about terrorists? >> i think particularly the younger generation doesn't share many of our privacy concerns, and so i think it will be interesting to see where it goes. but i think a lot of issues are being overwhelmed by the talk in washington that as someone who lives in colorado are still very live in the states, so the immigration debate has not gone away in the states, it is still very there and in certain subsections of the population, it is very salient. the honduras, are gatt ma la, kids coming up from el salvador, that issue is still very real. i was stuck in dallas getting my

plane rebooked and the woman behind the counter was talking to me about honduras and whether she should go down there and help those kids. she was with a church. that's the kind of things people in texas are thinking about. we're not dealing with them here. congress has certainly been kicking the can for a long time. the courts are getting involved to some extent. but they're going to have to pick those issues back up. >> tomorrow i'm running an international conference on violence. one thing we know about violence from mexico is that when you have a series of cartels that are fighting each other, and a government comes in and fights one of them, you actually don't just weaken that one cartel, you start violence between the cartels because one's weak and so now everyone else wants their turf. you start succession crisis within the one you're attacking so you get more violence there. and, of course, you have state on cartel violence. you basically metastasize the violence. we're about to do that in the

middle east. when you look at what we're doing in the middle east, the one group we're going after versus all the rest, we're about to pull a mexico two years ago, and the american people are going to notice that just the way they noticed what was going on in our southern border and we're pretty scared, the border states are pretty worried. >> jerry, the problem hasn't gone away but has it faded as a concern for people as evidenced in your poll? the child migrants and immigration? >> immigration? no, not faded at all. i think rachelle is absolutely right. if you ask people what they worry about, the immigration worry is very high on their radar screen. it kind of comes and goes and there was a tendency in washington to conclude, i don't know what, two months ago that congress wasn't going to deal with it, so check it off the list for the year, put it on the back burner, but that's not, at least the polling suggests that's not the way americans look at it at all. i think it's very much on their minds and that's not to say that there is a consensus about what to do about it. you know, i think the country is almost as divided as washington on that question.

but in terms of what do we worry about? its still very much there. >> and do lawmakers worry about it too? >> absolutely. and this will be one of those interesting what happens if the senate changes control kind of questions. let's go back to the surveillance thing for one moment to give you a sense how things can change. a few years ago, it would been easy to say they're just going to renew. there was no real forcing factor. once the nsa surveillance came about, the wing nut faction that steve mentioned got very vocal, and it got to the point i was talking very briefly, in july, before some of this isis and islamic state issues became as big of a deal as it was. there was an amendment on the floor to the sunset the amf bill and 30 house republicans voted for it. i don't know that that number would be the same if that came to the floor today. and then that goes to the question of what happens if the

senate changes control. you know, the bill would probably be very different you know than the one that they were looking at recently. and there would be a different emphasis on terrorist travel. that might even push it further toward the border security side of things and then where the issue factors in is a little harder to figure. the way people might change on surveillance reform is so interesting, too. the senate is has been a little more conservative on the notion of going after and restricting the nsa bill or the nsa's operations because the senate has more traditional sort of national security oriented republicans than some of the more libertarian oriented house members. >> it's worth stressing. i don't mean to get far into the weeds. there are material differences between the version of the usa freedom act, i hate that name that passed the house and the version introduced by senator leahy and has the backing of the administration and virtually all

of those differences redound in favor of the privacy and civil little bits in the senate bill compared to the house bill. the house bill is much more it changes the status quo much less. it responds to the concerns raised by the snowden allegations in a more superficial manner. if time is right that a change in control of the senate means a weaker bill in the senate, i think that's going to be a big loss for the privacy and civil liberties movement that seemed to be sparked last summer by snowden. the legislation is not going to accomplish that much. >> col clean, do you agree with that? >> i agree. the thing i would add those same concerns may not be around next spring or summer. i agree with the name problem, too. i think it's silly. washington is great at that. the only institution that's better is the pentagon where i worked. but yeah, i think that when

you're talking about the immigration piece, are you saw jeh johnson testify last week, he's the secretary of homeland security and folks were asking him, how many people from not south america and not mexico, were crossing the border trying to say hemoterrorists were coming across the border, and he had to agree that there were folks from yemen and other countries that came across. there is no evidence that i've seen publicly that isis is trying to come into mexico and p pay a coyote and cross the rio grande river. they don't have to cross the rio grande river. assuming no terrorist attack in between now and the spring when we have to really take a hard look at the reforms to fisa --

you might be right that the house version prevails and you might see the leahy bill have legs. but i think it's way too early to tell. i think it's too early to tell how that's going to play out. >> the fact that we are having this conversation, that we are on what happens happens in the spring i think underscores just how all inclusive isis has been. i would never have thought this bill would not be done. because this was agenda item number one and it looked like the whole reason why senator leahy all summer got the intelligence committee to sign on to a bill was to get it the before the midterms. the fact that this is up in the air problems how much isis has taken over the politics of national security. >> people on such opposite pages of the debate have the somewhat come to the same place.

on intelligence issues, you can hardly get late had i and feinstein on the same page. all of a sudden they were moving close to each other and arrived. >> let's move on to a couple other hot spots before our time runs out. sandusky of state kerry was lauding what he called an extraordinary achievement in afghanistan, be the unit aught agreement. is he overselling our position there? >> well, i mean, you'd have to ask the two copresidents if that's what they are i suppose that question. i guess i would cynically answer just about everything that has been promised in afghanistan for 12 years has been oversold. so i'm not sure why this would be different. however to the extent that the administration had a view and i think there was a plausible reason for it that anything that followed president karzai was going to be an improvement is still a plausible enough position to hold. if that's your standard, this is

certainly progress, it's certainly progress compared to what seed possible a couple of weeks ago. i think the hard question is what is the understanding of security arrangements and is there a status of forces agreement that is plausible and will it exist and if it does, will the u.s. act on it. those are all questions that now start to be discussed. they're nowhere near to be being resolved. >> rachelle, put your fragile state hat on and talk about afghanistan an where we're at. >> i happen to know him as a close friend. i hope this works out. he is worried for his dad's life. he has good reason to worry. the history of power sharing agreements is they tend to freeze conflict and that's probably -- the best case scenario here i think is a frozen conflict in afghanistan so you don't get a live war breaking out right now and you give everyone time to breathe, you get a status of forces agreement and start getting a

functioning government. ashraf ghani is a very smart man and how to put these things back together and he makes shred political judgments like % bringing a warlord on to his ticket which he needed to do. if anyone can, he can. i don't believe in putting our eggs in the basket of a champion. i think as america we need to look at how you shape the institutional an rankments there with the status of the agreement to ensure pause because the history of these things is that conflict can break out overtime. >> sounds like a little bit of optimism. i'm glad we have it on this panel. let me throw this out to everyone. has europe and the u.s. reached the limits of their restraint on vladimir putin and should we be worried about that? >> no, i don't think we have

reached the limits of our restraint. should we worry about that, yes, i guess. >> cully, what's your view where we're at in ukraine because putin has played a vet opportunistic game in the summer when we were looking this way pushing forward. we're in that same position again. we are distracted and our lawmakers are out on the road. should we be worried? >> look, if you asked 50 people walking down the street, are show me where the ukraine is on a map, most couldn't point it out. >> if you asked two people to show you where washington, d.c. is on the map. >> right, or who is the vice president they would come up with a different name than you would hope for. >> people understand beheadings in videos. people understand terrorist events. i don't think the american people have that much of a concern about putin being putin and doing what putin was designed to do.

which was reach out and grab more territory and try to protect his people or what he perceives to be protecting his people. and so part of that will -- the fact i think that that's true i think will motivate congress. now congress is interested in this. the president i think now speaking of nero realism realizes what putin is about. congress realizes what putin is about. and i think -- but if you put the same question to me that you put to jerry, i don't know where it's going to end because i don't know -- there's a point where sanctions when they're so extreme have a -- there's the old law of unintended consequences comes into being. i don't know how far we can push him before europeans and others say push off. and, of course, the iryanic quayion fits into that, as well. >> i would have thought that the shoot down of m 817 would have

been the beheading episode of this conversation. just to say that the shoot down was the spark that ignited it and finally got folks to actually pay attention. they have got the american public's attention for about three days, maybe four. certainly it got the european public's attention for a lot longer. but i think the question will be here unlike in the isis context, what's europe going to do and are we going to follow and try to bolster up what why you were decides to do. ask them what europe would do is the more fraught question these days. i think it's rare to see the dutch get exercised about anything. i would have thought that would have been the moment.at least so far it seems to have had a modest effect on the appetite of europe towards western russia. >> some of that is common sense, but how dependent europe is on russian energy compared to what we are. it's easier for us to be a little ahead of europe. up with of the interesting things about ukraine and how

people might be relating to it in the voting booth is the way republicans are talking about it. they are talking about the failure of the president's leadership and putting in a list of examples. they are not railing on ukraine, but saying there is a narrative they are trying to build about the president being a failure basically and they can use this as a check mark on than example. >> can i offer a slightly contrarian view? one of the surprising things about the ukraine and russia situation is the extent to which the europeans have not headed for the exits on sanctions. putin very cleverly created a golden opportunity for them to do that. the nato meeting was happening and he creates a ceasefire. in ukraine, the terms of which he dictates himself which is odd because he claims he's not involved in the conflict. nevertheless he said here's a ceasefire that works this way and this way. just as everyone is gathering. for the nato meeting. and the europeans don't do what i think what i expected them to

do is say a cease-fire. let's back off. they went the next step. maybe it's not enough and as much as it should have been, but we have very little economic skin in the game. but they did it. i think by standards of european behavior and similar crisis over the last 20 years, that's pretty good actually. >> i agree. >> the other interesting thing is how it affects our own energy debate. coming from colorado a big new energy state with gas and oil. the export of oil and natural gas. we have all sorts of issues with can we export this and what europe decides to do with the energy equation. how much it wants to stay dependent on russia now that it really sees how russia is using it. that's going to start playing into our politics but very much to european politics. >> it's an issue in senator udall's re-election rays and his opponent has a bill and they

introduced their own independent bills and it was interesting to watch and try to -- they were not outdueling each other, but trying to outdual on energy. >> you see the energy and you literally see the fracking and the see the mining going on as you drive down the road. it's everywhere. >> the one place where gerry mandering is in the senate. the one place where that is not an issue is the senate. it might show up. even in the energy in colorado is in the 7, 8, 9 contested senate races down to the wire. we will see them raise the spector of national security and or civil liberties going forward in the last couple of weeks before the election. >> before we throw it open to questions, we have the small matter of iran. yes. so what's one of the things we haven't talked about, right? >> that's right. >> reporter: the by november, we're supposed to either have a deal or not have a deal with them. what happens then up to and including the lame duck is anybody's guess.

and then the election is going to affect that in a big way. so let's say we have a deal. there will be a push by the administration most likely to reduce some of the sanctions we have on them over their nuclear program and some other nefarious activities. that probably will be pushed into next year if that's the case. if the -- if there is no deal, you might see an immediate lame duck push to put some sanctions on iran because the president promised no deal. we are going to sanction them. that's what he said. then of course, if the republicans take control, what the president wants next year in the event that there is a deal gets much, much harder because nobody wants to be seen as the people who aced up on iran. that's not a popular position politically. but it is a position that is much less popular with republicans. and real quick, you know, some of the things i'm saying are things my colleagues have shareded with me and reported.

i think the iran issue could be next to isis next to the general issue of the defense budget be the very top things we're dealing with at the beginning of the 114th congress one way or the other. >> i'm struck by the decided lack of optimism in the administration announced a deal was going to happen. i don't know anybody who puts the chances at 50/50. most people put it below 50/50. the real question is what then and you know, tim's right. you inevitably have to move further down the sanctions path because of has said that's the alternative. then you have to do it. congress will be more than happy to oblige. the administration's in a tougher spot because there is this isis problem and iran next door. you would like them to help on that but it's complicated. >> sunni shia conflict makes this even harder. >> at that point you the have a

really interesting 2016 presidential campaign issue on your hands, as well. >> the elephant in the room is national security is not going to be a huge issue in the midterms except maybe on a couple small topics in smat races. it's going to be something that the 114th congress has to deal with reluctantly. they have to pass something for isis and deal with reform, appropriations bills at the least where they have to figure out how to fund all these enterprises. it seems the real elephant in the room is how this starts to shape the primary fight in 2016. especially on the republican side. where i think there's going to be a real split between perhaps a you know, old school goldwater republican kind of candidate and perhaps someone with more libertarian roots. that's very well where you could see national security become a wedge issue even within the republican party. >> it's more of an issue in the presidential elections because it's a more decisive issue. the history of it affecting national security affecting midterm elections is pretty small.

2002 right after 9/11, everybody was thinking about this issue. more or less since then, you haven't seen it become a dominant issue in the midterms. we'll see it in 2016, as well. >> rachelle, you said that's where the debate should unfold on the national level. >> the american people deserves a debate. i think we're going to get one. it will be an interesting one between the libertarians and the goldwater republicans. you'll probably see a similar slit on the left, as well. we'll get real interesting discussion. it would be a pity if it boil down to character alone. i do worry that might happen. are you tough enough, you are not tough enough. >> will you repeal obamacare. >> we're in a very different world where that kind of strength is not really what we need. we need i used to say we need spiderman more than the incredible hulk. you need a more flexible strength than just rah-rah and beat your chest.

i don't know if that's what we're going to see in the debate. the character tends to boil down to the lowest common denominator. >> kelly, as rachelle is implying, when you say we're leading from behind, it becomes a political attack point. it's not a very successful one in these midterms. when you're articulating a new policy, it gets dangerous sometimes when you use a phrase like that. >> it's not new and character will be part of this presidential election just like it has been in the last 43. the -- i do agree with steve though that this spring and up till the summer recess i think will be a very robust period of debate regarding national security. everything from when the torture rendition report comes out to -- >> i'm glad you said when, not if. >> when it comes out. i think it's going to come out, you'll have a military commissions case in the "uss

cole" bombing case which will kick off this spring against al nasry. you'll have surveillance reform. i think you'll really know we're in the thick of it if there is an appetite for revisiting the budget control act and the sequester with respect to the defense budget. remember twice now, they've raised the caps of the bca, budget control act but haven't lifted it. so if they want to pull that band aid off and really look at that and the administration did make a case for a larger than some people thought would happen defense budgeting this cycle. we'll see whether -- if that happens, then you know as a barometer that it's everyone's all-in on this debate. >> well, so and this is the beginning of a very long season of debate in washington. i wanted to remind everyone of two things. one is following the event we're going to have cocktails and ca nap pays just up there.

i hope you'll join us. the second thing is cq roll call's team on homeland security has produced an executive briefing being gifted to everyone who's come here tonight. i hope you take that away with you. and we have some time for questions. i'm not sure whether we have a mic. >> there are mics on the aisles. >> don't be shy. can i see a hand? there's a gentleman right there and a lady right behind you with a mic. >> as you went around the world and you focused on the middle east, i was wondering if you would take a few minutes and talk about the president's pivot towards asia and the issue i guess my concern is it will be based in some way on coalition building a coalition of partners and two of those partners make our -- i'm talking south korea and japan, make our congress look like a budget guys can just going to play golf and have a couple beers afterwards. because at least my observation, things are getting more dicey all the time between the two of

them. >> you know, i was just in japan i guess about a year ago. and almost begging some of the folks i was talking to to make nice with south korea just saying looks, you're both our allies. we would like to do something with you. and can you come together. and boy, are you right. there is not a lot of love between those two countries and the rationale neorealist way of thinking about things is not cutting a lot of water there. we didn't even oo touch on asia. it's the biggest part of the world, most people and quite volatile right now. i would be surprised if i get through my lifetime without a war in asia. we need to get the allies working to the. i don't see it happening without a lot of massaging. >> thank you for introducing that. cully, talk about the pivot to asia, a sort of late first term initiative. it's kind of gone aground and seems to be he'll leave office with it uncomplete.

>> yeah. i used to be an english teacher at the high school level before i went to high school and my favorite line from shakespeare is talkers are no good dohrs. look at what people do, not what they say. you said there's a pivot to the asia in the obama administration, most people would say there is? when did that happen? you have chinese jets circling our jets. you have the chinese navy expanding exponentially. you have chinese making extraordinarily extra territorial claims in terms of the -- their eez. they're building. their economy is now slowing down but you know, i think the obama administration, it may not have been a pivot but it's been a repositioning some of the pieces on the chess board because we need to do that. what's on the front page of the paper is isis, russia, is and i think this, that gentleman's

question is further support for the argument that we'll probably see a big debate about the defense budget this spring and whether you need to lift the bca or need to refund and recapitalize from these -- this decade of war. >> obama's national security advisor susan rice is giving a speech this week i believe on southeast issuia in particular. you know, the government, the united states government maybe all governments tend to react to what is happening right then. they don't tend to plan very long-term. this was a case of we need to be prepared but other than say china doing a lot of hacking, that doesn't seem to make any sort of asia pivot doesn't seem to be making a lot of news right now. it doesn't mean there isn't groundwork being laid. there was a small provision in one of the defense bills that was saying we need to re-establish jungle combat training. because we used to have a dedicated base in panama, and we

don't have it anymore. the thinking is, we're going to be in some kind of war at some point with some asian nation. let's start being prepared just in case. >> jerry, what happens to the pivot to asia in it seems like it was a new way of thinking and a counter point to china's influence particularly in the third world. what happened? >> first of all, i think the term pivot was probably unfortunate and everybody involved in the policy will agree on that. it implied we're not going to do this because we're now going to do that. what it was supposed to be and there is some of this actually happening, it means slowly shifting resources to a part of the world that becomes relatively more important while other parts of the world become less important. to some extent, the pivot called something different is still happen. one of the premises though was and this is clearly where the idea falls down was that you know, as we end two wars in the middle east, we can stop paying

so much attention there and start paying more attention here as a nation, people can shift their thinking and arguing and the national security debate what happened there is what we've been talking about for an hour and 15 or 20 minutes, whatever it is. >> right. >> i saw another hand or two up there. the lady right there. there's a man coming up behind you with a mic. >> thank you. thank you. last wednesday's "new york times," tom freedman's column talked about an existential struggle going on within the islamic state and that helped explain some of the recent events we've seen in the middle east. he said that that was an attempt among them to try to define their future. i'd welcome any comments on that 0 or if anyone did read it, your thoughts on the general column itself. >> well, i've spent more time than is probably healthy reading

islamic state literature over the last few weeks. so but it's fascinating and it's actually quite9jrz sophisticate. and there is a -- i'm not sure debate is the right word. there's a vigorous conversation going on within the people who are part of the movement about what they mean. and why they're different from al qaeda in particular. they don't mention al qaeda all the time but there is a notion that they have embraced as a group that says essentially al qaeda was wrong. they thought that you attacking the west over time you would wear down the opponents of islam and then you would create the conditions slowly to have a caliphate and the islamic state went past all that saying here is here, it's now. you do the right thing and you stop the people who disagree with you. i think that as the islamic state movement grows, there are bound to be people who have different thoughts about in tactical terms, are we going too fast or too far?

haven't we stuck our heads out of the foxhole? we're going to get whacked. i can't imagine there's not an interesting debate going on whether the beheading videos was that a really good strategic move on their part? so it's hard to know. but i guess my point is, there's a really interesting public window into islamic state if you go look at what they say themselves. it reveals a lot. >> i would add, are this is not a new phenomenon. if you read andy mccarthy's book "the grand jihad," he traces not only the birth of the predecessors of al qaeda but the two general schools of islamists. one is those who adhere to some form of violent jihad. isis is obviously the most recent and radical version of that. the other is a version that says no, you don't. we foreswear that. you go this route.

you get more mosques. you set up current sit. exchange program. you send students into various universities. we do it through other lawful means. and the two are at each other's throats figuratively speaking. so i think freedman's piece was what's going on within a fraction of this side of the debate. >> as he was saying actually, you can broaden this even bigger if you look back at the writings back in the 1950s when the whole movement really got going, it was an effective modernity. what was it doing to the middle east, why were they not catching up and so clearly behind the west. how do they deal with that sense of humiliation and lack of agency that he was feeling and that he came up with all sorts of reasons. but one way that the arab world was dealing with that with what was known as the arab spring was actually a quite healthy move in my view toward taking agency and

saying okay, you have your violent folks over here, al qaeda, they tried to regain the ball and move forward. they failed. we're going to do this through peaceful democratic means. i think one of the real pities that that movement in most countries didn't succeed that we and others perhaps didn't do quite enough but really it was an internal issue in terms of how much they could succeed on their own, one of the real pities is now we're back in a world of sort of hard-core islam and less hard-core islam rather than another way forward for how do you deal with that sense of humiliation. >> i think i saw another. >> actually got a question that came in from twitter. it's a great one. >> okay. >> it was, will veterans issues play into the midterms? >> that's another one that

they've tried to play up on the republican side as a competence question. i mean, you know, veterans are very politically popular for very obvious reasons. they should be popular and but you haven't seen a whole lot of pressure from the republican side on that other than another example of how this administration is bad at leading generally. >> it's a hard issue i would say. north carolina it's come up a little bit in kay hagan's rays. but in general, first of all, if you look at the actual votes, the democrats devoted a lot of money for veterans an so on. republicans have not backed those votes. on the other hand, you have the va scandal. it kind of points in a lot of different directions. in general a lot's been done for veterans. so saying someone's not good on veterans other than the veterans scandal which is a scandal and horrible thing is a hard thing to argue. i doubt it will make a huge dent in rayss. you have a couple of races where

you've got veterans running, seth molten won a primary and him and i number of others. and those i'm sure they'll use it as a character issue i'm not sure it will be a policy issue. >> i don't think that was specifically out of the va scandal. >> exactly. >> it's the political power of being a veteran. thank you to the person on twitter who sent that in. i used to cover business. so i would say the market has priced that in the va scandal in this particular election. i think we have time for one more question. i saw one more hand. or two more hands. there's a gentleman. there's a lady with a hand up right there. okay. >> we'll take these two questions. you and the next person. >> sure. i'm curious there's another area we haven't talked about which is west africa. there's been sort of talk whether ebola basically is going to be such a destabilizing influence that there will be real national security concerns coming out of the collapse of states there. i realize this may not be as

much a mid temple issue per se but i'm curious what the long-term might look like in terms of national security issues. >> it's an issue in one rays already. mark pryor's senate rays had he an add where he criticized his opponent's vote on the issue of i think it was health care, biodefenses i think was what the vote was on. he got an ad that got criticized that seems to kind of backfire. that's one issue. >> i think it goes back to cully's point about the budget. this is going to be an area where there's not going to be any strong push for concrete substantive policy but a need for money, especially if the u.s. decides to actually invest more resources in trying to help stabilize the regimes in liberia and west africa. so i think it all goes back to the question is where is all the money going to come from to handle all these crises at once. it will be part of the

conversation but i'm not sure it will take it over. >> some ill informed people may try to use it as a wedge or an issue in the rays by saying obama is sending more people to africa to fight ebola than he is to iraq. that's silly. and it's silly for the fact that for the simple fact that you know, if this dred disease is not addressed by civil society, and it spreads, it has a factor of magnitude for destabilizing all sorts of not only that part of africa, but the world. people forget their history. i mean, it was military members who spread diseases in the past. which killed tens of millions of people. and so thankful hopefully won't happen today. so i think the administration is well within their legal right and their moral right to lend a hand and take a lead role in this. >> i agree that it's not going to be a political issue.

i was in west africa in the fall. or sorry, last winter. i think this is going to be -- it's treated as an issue of medical need. this is a governance issue. why are people not letting medical officers take their sick? because they don't trust their governments. why don't they trust their governments? for some pretty good reasons. getting serious about you know, i work on governance, but getting serious about how we help these governments is important because this is what is bad governance does for you. they don't let their sick be taken by health care workers, et cetera, and we're starting to see is the problems metastasize. the difference between isil and ebola is less than you might think. >> final quell to that gentleman there. >> john donnelly with qcq rolihlahla call. i'd like to go back to iran real quick and if the current

negotiations fail. you talked about the inevitability of sanctions which i think is accurate. what about the inevitability of war? i would think that patience with negotiations is kind of wearing out. what are theout. what are the odds that israel and or the united states launches an attack on iran? >> that's a heavy question. thanks, john. there is a constant agitations and often more on the republican side, but not sboirl. >> what he has been doing is mid-igating the fear of war and talking about how difficult the deal will be. there is a next level of punishing that is worse than

what we have done. we can go harder on sanctions. we have gone pretty hard on sanctions. they have seen that and we have been talking about the program for decades and how worried we are. more agitations, yes. whether it goes for the next level, it's hard to say. >> there is a legacy question here. what i saw is that the finalists had been chosen for president obama. you know you are welcome and this is a president who came to office with two wars, both in which -- one in which he was opposed to. he was dedicated to ending as swiftly as possible. it's now probably occurring to him that he won't be able to -- be totally out of afghanistan and iraq. he doesn't want the number to go

up. if there is anything this person can do trial trying to do whatever they can to declare victory in one continent. they are saying all right, we are done. if nothing else happens, we are gone. >> they box themselves in because they vowed and it might be hard when the moment arrives. to give themselves more room to negotiate, they have been harsh in their description at any cost. that of course applies the threat of force. >> we also promised to close guantanamo. >> sure. yes. government does it. you're right. >> i think the -- first of all, you are right.

there is no app tide that they won't have for confidence with iran. the question is how much pressure is exerted from outside forces from congress and israel from others. that depends on how they conclude successfully. they can end with a bang or a whimper or the notion that we got close and we are not going to extend. if not for the crazy ayatollah, we would wait and see if he dies off. there a lot of scenarios and the amount of pressure to do something militarily would depend a great deal on what that end game looks like. >> there is i think a lot of understanding that that doesn't end with the problem. they recognize that the boots on the ground solution for iran is

unthinkable. that only gets you so far. particularly six years in. >> i agree with everybody. i would add if there was any action, it wouldn't be us. and we would go behind the scenes to encourage them not to, but they are a state that will prepare in a way they think they have to. they made that clear. i agree with everybody. they will keep ratcheting pressure because there is no app sight for the war and that would not be a good thing. >> the politics of our representatives and senators is a different matter all together.

>> on that peaceful note, i would like to once again congratulate him on his first anniversary. i would like to invite you to join us and thank all of you for coming tonight. i would like you to join me. thank you. >> a white house official said attorney general eric holder is resigning. he has been attorney general since the start of barack obama's first term. he has been the fourth longest person to hold the job. he plans to remain at the justice department until his successor is in place. he is making an additional

announcement at 4:30 p.m. live on c-span. what's your reaction? you can join the conversation at facebook.com/c-span and on twitter. >> at 9:00 p.m. eastern, the campaign 2014 team continues with the candidates running in the second house district. republican tery and democrat brad ashford. >> i'm harry waller from nebraska. at one point in time, our homeless veterans signed a contract with the united states government and said we will go to battle and give our life if it's necessary. >> when you talk about homeless veterans and the va hospital and the veteran cemetery, you hear

their name. thank you for caring about our veterans and giving us an opportunity to serve them. >> i approved this message. he caught here early in and never forget those who serve our nation. my disagreements are not personal, but the votes against veterans sure are. the congressman shut down the government and defended his pay while soldiers were on the battlefield while cutting veteran's care. our promises to veterans are personal. >> he is keeping our neighborhood and strong. he fought for the violence against women act and cracked down on human trafficking and passed a law empowering an activist to start a new fm radio

station giving a voice to stop street violence. lee terry. working hard to keep us safe. >> i'm lee terry and i approved this message. >> i'm not running to represent any political party. i'm running to make a difference. it's not one easy step, one single day or electing one member. i'm going to create a coalition of 25 members of congress who set aside partisanship and focus on solving problems. just like i have done for 16 years, i am grad ashford and i approved this message. >> working together and changing congress. >> the candidate's debate on c-span. >> a house foreign affairs subcommittee reexamined terrorist threats in europe.

hundreds of citizens from france and germany are fighting for islamist groups in syria and looked at the potential for these citizens to return to their home countries to commit terrorist acts. this is just over an hour.

>> i call this hearing to order and this is the subcommittee on emerging threats. today we will be discussing an emerging threat to europe which is an area that we are focused on, but it is a merginging threat to the world. i'm going to handle things differently and ask my or permit my ranking member if he would move forward with his opening statement first and i will have mine as the chairman of the committee. and have statements as well. i yield to mr. keating