it's incredible the amount of media. al jazeera and all of this. you go on listening to the stuff and say my goodness. that's not us but kind of the narrative that you get. now in fighting this war which has been going on in one form or another, since 9/11, and we talked about the brave. young people, and these kids are terrific. but let me tell you something. when we set up the volunteer military, people forget there were three components. number one, a comparatively small active force, because now you're going to have to pay people. hey, general, you and i remember what we used to get in bake. $200 a month and things like that. so they're going to have to pay a living wage so manpower is going to be expensive so you have to have a smaller active force.

then, as the general mentioned, you're going to have to have a guard and reserve that's ready to go. i mean, up until we had a volunteer military, the guard or reserves was a place to go to get away from home on the one of the things i had to do was persuade president reagan to keep it. he had campaigned against it. libertarian and all of that. one of the argument, i made was, look, you may have a prolonged conflict and you want to be able to mobilize. all right. now, we did not do that at the height of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. to me, that was a disgrace. okay? because -- yes, we had great people. did you know the army and marines gave 80,000 moral waivers to take people in, the height of that conflict, okay? yes, you had great people, but look at some of them, anybody

know who private steven green is? he's serving a life imprincement now in a jail in kentucky, he had three misdemeanor convictions was a high school dropout and had a personality disorder. while he was over there, he raped and killed a 14-year-old. killed her and her family. then they discovered, they didn't know this happened, and they sent him back. and then, of course, it came out. and the other two people with him, kn him, you know, confessed and he's serving life in prison. why did we take him in? because we were desperate. why didn't we have subscription? that would have gotten the american people involved. do you know how many people read the classified intelligence about the war in iraq? okay? before they voted. remember, only members can read it.

only members, okay. okay? 20 senators. the rest of them voted for it -- let me tell you if you had consubscription, they would have gone in and read that thing. i have not read it. obviously, i'm not a member. but talking to the senator the chairman of the intelligence committee, he said if you read that, you'll know the case for going to war in iraq is somewhat shaky. so i think, you know, is this contingency, if this gets worth it? let's go activate this elective service system to get a stand -- let me tell you, the defense department has plenty of money. in real terms, in real terms, even with sequester, defense is at the level of 2007. i'm talking about the base

budget. 2007, this is not like after korea or vietnam or the end of the cold -- you know, in the middle of the '70s in today's dollars where we were for a base budget. 350. we're at 500 billion. there was plenty of money. now and bob gates and stan mcchrystal who i worked with at the regulations after he got the boot, it's funny how washington works. after he got fired i called him up, you can't have lunch because he didn't have lunch. so we did have coffee at starbucks. i said, you called me. everybody wants to talk to you on the way up. nobody talks to you on the way down you know? we talked about how he was on the joint staff. the money was flowing. we weren't worried. well, you've got to worry about

the money. and, you know, the money is plentiful if you management it right. now, we can sit down and tell you about the things that we need to do. are they going to be done? are they hard, you know, to do? and i've got to tell you, one of the lobbies, and i happen to be a member, mowa. do you know what admiral ryan makes that runs that thing? any idea? close to $700,00. whenever something comes up, oh, we're going to change it. chuck hagel wanted to take it down to 95. oh, you're taking veterans and this type of thing. when ryan and murray coo tried to say cola minus 1 for working retirees age of 62, they were dragging out enlisted and talking about them. not talking about the fact that these people, the retirement when they came in was 40%, they

made it 50%. and all of these other things so it's tough to -- and they say, you hurt veterans. how many veterans retire? marines retire? like 4% or 5%. you guys are like running backs in football. thec÷o5r infantry don't retire high levels either. so we need to do that, and if we don't, because the budget may go up a little bit, it's not going to go up a lot. the people, the military who are going to be fighting this war, you know, this battle against isis, they're not going to have the resources. here, too, we have to acknowledge an inconvenient fact. sequestration has occurred in part because of a growing public frustration with the culture of waste and inefficiency at the

defense department one addressed for too long. i have witnessed emergence of a military industrial complex that has corrupted and crippled the defense acquisition process. this system can now be said to be successful in only one respect. turning billions of taxpayer dollars into weapons systems that are consistently delivered late, flawed and vastly overbudget if that is the systems delivered at all. john mccain. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> i'm take questions. anybody want to throw anything at me. >> about five questions for the distinguished speaker. >> here you go -- something that general reece mentioned nap is, the role of the military and civil affairs like in iraq. under it quite often that young captains were thrown into the role of being acting mayors of villages, the national guard.

that's one of the non-kinetic roles that the pentagon has been forced to play. do you think it did it adequately? spending resources for training for this type of thing? it's not of the usual pattern. >> yeah, two things, one, a lot of people say, you know, why do you use the military? because there's no one else. if i need a person or agriculture specialist to go to al anbar or whatever it might be, and i call up aid and someone going to have to volunteer? i can go to the reserves and say report to active duty. in other words, it's got to be something where people, you know, can get ahead if they don't proceed that, it's not going to -- it's not going to happen. anybody else else? yes, sir. professor.

>> this is what i get paid to do. to ask easy questions. our program, military and terrorism, i'm not going to say anything about the military. i think you know everything and more. on the terrorism side. it was a tactic, it's not the global war on terrorism, blah, blah, blah. you went on to say it's not existential compared to the cold war. that is something i don't -- i agree it's not like the cold war. it's not like these guys speak russian. they speak arabic. you have to look at the american side. morale is a big issue. tolstoy once said about the russians. morale is the key. the morale of the american civilian like me tend to be scaredy cats. we're susceptible. we exaggerate the good and the bad. i think this is important because this explains how congressmen act. it's certainly not the cold war. using the weapons of cold war is

preposterous. we are going to rely on the military because it's the instrument at hand but i think what we think about what's happening is important. >> well, i don't disagree but i think what you have to be careful about is when you decide, okay, are we going to send men and women in harm's way here. okay? and is it serious enough that we have to worry about it? and the other thing i think that is interesting, and you see in in the debates now, okay, who is helping us in iraq right now? the iranians. okay? don't want to admit it. at the versailles conference there was a british academic his name is sir hendrickson, he said something that i remember. nations don't have permanent friends or enemies. they have permanent interests. okay, why are the -- yeah, there was a story in the paper

yesterday with them bonding with us. on 9/11, i was working in new york at the council on foreign relations. and i had this title, you know, vice president director of studies. i'm only telling you that because i got a call from the iranian ambassador. remember, that irin neey're in . but they're at the u.n. he said i'd like you to come over for dinner and i went over to dinner. my son is still mad at me because i had yankee playoff tickets for the game. anyway, i went over. late september, 2009. he said, look, we condemn the attacks of 9/11. they had a candlelight vigil to iraq. we hate the taliban, make sure your government knows that. so we led condi rice know. i assumed they knew that. according to ambassador bobbins

at the conference, they persuaded them to support karzai. okay. january 2002, what happens, bush puts him on the axis of evil. the ambassador calls me up, like, what the -- you know. no dinner this time, okay? so when you talk about, in other words, you've got to do the best that you can here. would i like to get rid of it? sure. he fought with us in the first war, remember that. so the idea that we've got to wipe them all out and it's a zero sum game, no. and i think that's the point that i'm trying to make. you know, if isil controls syria. five years from now. is that more of a threat to us than assad was, or less of a threat? i mean, those are the type of things that you have to ask yourself. whereas, with existential,

you've got to take it on, whether you want to or not. so, yeah, it's threatening. okay. but it is existential that you have to sacrifice a lot of other goals to do it. you know. i think that's the real issue. i'm thinking you have to put it in perspective. would we be better off if saddam hussein was still in iraq now as opposed to isil? >> yes. >> okay. yes, sir. >> lawrence freeman from executive intelligence review. since you opened up with a joke about secretary hagel, i wanted to follow up with a question. there are many people in washington and in the military who say that the reason secretary hagel was removed is because he stood with general dempsey on the fact that the house would be a cleared mission in his fight. and his argument with susan rice and others is they didn't have a

clear mission, because the mission also went over to assad. so the question is, he's got the case, because you have a new secretary of defense being nominated today. if the military, general dempsey and the secretary of defense say we want a clear mission. and the president ends up resigning that person, how is that effective in dealing with the military campaign? >> well, again, i think you raise a terrific point. one of the worst things -- he be harry truman's old saying, you want a friend in washington, get a dog. i mean, look, they'll throw anybody under the bus for political reasons. i worked in the obama campaign. i worked with deb this mcdonough down the hall from me. he called me a lot in the campaign. in fact, we wrote the thing one day about if musesarif and acted

in the campaign. basically, what you have say president who has taken more and more control of a foreign policy process. probably more than kissinger and nixon did. now, if you're a cabinet officer, you have two choices, you can say, hey, i'm secretary of state and defense, this isn't what i signed up for, and i'm out of here. and in the white house, he wasn't the neocons, you know, type of thing. look, i don't need this job, you want me, you've got to listen to me. if you don't, i'm out of here. see, and basically, so they were trying to show that okay -- he's lazy. i mean, come on, you know? they're trying to demean him.

at the staff meetings he agreed with kerry and general dempsey. they were right, why not. in other words, there are some people who say, i've got to say something whether it agrees or disagrees. i think we're trying to show that they're shaking things up because things are not going as well as we would like in the middle east, like, you know, we were surprised by isil, okay? oh, general clapper's fault. do you want to fire him? no. so hagel was easy sacrifice because he's a republican, who the republicans don't like. and, of course, he was weakened by the confirmation hearing. and again, you know i've known chuck, we worked together in the reagan administration, and what people don't know about him is he was the number two in the va. he was about 35 years old. a pretty big job.

the head of the va at the time said, agent orange is no worse than teenage acne. can you believe that? so hagel said either he goes or i go. he went. that was pretty tough. i said, boy, i've got a lot of respect for this guy. but at the confirmation hearings, you're taking money from the north koreans, and he gave a speech at rutgers with an iranian professor, i mean, horrible, horrible stuff. carter's not going to have any problem, okay?

because the republicans like him. you took money from north korea, senator hagel, carter recommended bombing them in 2005. is that who you want? maybe some people, you know, do, okay? but if you didn't want to get him in, those are things that you could -- that you could use. so i think it was, well, we're going to shake things up to show you that we're not going to just keep things going, so we threw him under the bus. and i've got to tell you, it was the worst handled resignation i have ever seen. you're going to fire someone, you better have the other person picked. not only did they not have it, then they listed people, all of whom turned it down, you know? that's why i used the colt mccoy

analogy here before. everybody turned it down. so i think, you know, that that's why, you know, hagel went under the bus. chuck brought to that job skills. he was a wounded enlisted person from vietnam. you want to take on military compensation? that helps. because you've been there, and you've been a trooper. he obviously had the congressional experience. very successful in the private sector. he worked in the va. so he brought a lot to the job. but he wasn't part of the inner circle. so we've got to throw somebody -- you can't get rid of kerry because he's involved in 400 things at the same time, running all around, doing these things. so it was easy to, you know, to go. he's a real gentleman. but one thing he did figure out which i thought was really interesting, his accomplishments when he was secretary of defense, i've never seen anybody who's been fired put that out, a list of his accomplishments. so it's not a good -- it doesn't do him or i think the country or obama any good. you know, the other people turned it down, because how much are you going to get done? okay? the '16 budget's already up there. you're going to work on the '17 budget, who's going to be president? okay? yeah? >> it's not often i agree with the executive intelligence

review. but i've got to at this time. i like many of the things you said. but i think one of your initial statements that isil cannot be destroyed is a misnomer. the ideology behind it can't be destroyed because that's much wider than isil. that is a segment of islamism which is very broad. isil, the territorial entity can be destroyed. and i hope will. right now it's being destroyed on a several-year plan at best. i believe the gentleman is right, it could be destroyed by having a policy. that requires making choices. either we choose assad or we choose turkey. we don't sit on the fence. if we choose turkey, we get a major ground military force on our side. if we choose assad, we get a real military force on the side,

not as big as turkey. either way, isil can be destroyed in a matter of years. sitting on the fence, and refusing to engage our own forces on the ground, which probably is going to continue, that is true, we cannot destroy isil even as a territorial entity at least for several years, and possibly never. what if they use the several years to gain weapons of mass destruction, which is quite possible. >> you raise a lot of good points here. again, i think as long as people are -- accept this ideology and are willing to use terrorist tactics, it's not going to go away, because they can get, you know, car bombs or whatever it might be. and that's the point i was trying to make. you raise the question of turkey, assad. don't forget, you've got the russians who you're working with through the iranian negotiations. i mean, which is a bigger threat, isil or nuclear armed iran? you'll have to make that judgment. and to a certain extent in the cold war, it was easy. if you help the soviets, it's against us, and vice versa. and remember, that we prevailed against the soviet union, not militarily. they collapsed economically. okay? they collapsed because they were trying to maintain a very large

military establishment, and the economy was going down. and the key event -- and it's coming back now -- the saudis dropped the price of oil to $10 a barrel by 1985. and that -- you know john mccain, how he describes russia? as a country -- a gas station masquerading as a country. that was the key thing. you didn't beat them.

you contain them. we had the forces, and all of that type of thing. i'll give you an analogy, and no analogy is perfect, where in vietnam we diverted our attention. we said communism was the enemy. no, communism was not the enemy, soviet communistic was. i don't believe that you're ever going to get people who do not accept that extremist etiology, unfortunately. to the extent we'll have to live with that, we can get to the sunni, shia divide, and all of that type of thing. but no, i think that's an important point, you know, to consider. that's the point i'm trying to make, that somehow or another you're going to go home and say, isil surrendered. no, that's not going to happen, okay? >> okay. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> we're ready to move on. and our next speaker, final

speaker, dr. abdalaziz. doctor, they make you earn this, the university of helsinki. as a diplomat, of course, you can bring to this discussion your own personal experience of egypt. when dr. korb was talking about terrorism, it's the perception of the nature of the threat. and with the egyptian experience, obviously we can learn what worked and what did not work. but also, your experience in damascus for two years, until very recently, that you can also share some of your observations about the threat of terrorism. >> thank you. let me start by extending my appreciation to the institute for inviting me to this seminar. and a special thanks to the

professor who initiated the idea of this important event. looking at the distinguished panelists here, i feel like a stranger in the room. because i'm not a military candidate. i'm not a university professor. i'm not american. so please bear with me if i'm going to share with you some naive ideas. unfortunately these naive ideas represent only my own ideas, not necessarily my country's. as you know, the revolution in syria started almost four years ago in march 2011. and there are really a lot of stories that deserve to be told about this revolution from a military perspective, from a

political perspective, from a humanitarian perspective, from a socioeconomic perspective, and maybe from a religious sectarian perspective as well. unfortunately this is not the right forum to tell this interesting stories, because we are expected to focus on the role of military in combating terrorism. so i'll try just to give a syrian flavor of this topic. i lived in syria for more than two years. and i had a good habit during this time, every morning i would look at the map of syria and ask myself, what has changed. why.