>> the competition. there's really nothing new. it's on track. best projection i would give you is some time in the late spring, early summer, and no real changes to the program so we're steady as she goes from things that we've explained before. do you want to talk about the operational and the meme and so forth? >> first of all, it will be -- compared to the b-52 it is pretty young and compared to most aircraft being able to operate in the environment 15 to 20 years from now, it's old. the timeline for the mid-20s, beginning delivery of the bomber allows us to start retiring the b-52 fleet over about a 15-year period so that by the time we get to 2040 we will still have b-2s in the inventory but the same limited number we have now and hopefully by the mid 2040s we'll have roughly 80 to 100 is the target number for long-range bomber and we've stuck with that number for a very specific

reason and we believe that's the number it takes after being significant operational analysis to do nuclear deterrents and to do a large-scale campaign and we need a large number of bombers. so we're trying to keep prices independent and variable so we can afford that number of airplanes and staying on a very deliberate track on this program, limiting requirements changes and growth. staying on the acquisition timeliness are really, really important to us in moving this program forward. so that's the approach and right now i'm really comfortable that we are about where we need to be. >> we are. yes. thank you all very much. live coverage of the news briefing at the pentagon. the f-35 program among the issues mentioned at today's briefing in bloomberg news reporting that the pentagon will request funding in fiscal year 2016 to buy 57 f-35 jets made by

lockheed martin corporation two more than previously planned according to two government officials. the defense department's previous five-year jets during the year that begins october 1st said the officials who asked not to be identified before president barack obama submits his budget to congress on february 2nd. if approved by lawmaker, the acquisition would mark a major increase for a program that's experienced cuts amid tight budget -- defense budgets, that is, and setbacks and testing of the costliest u.s. weapons system. again, that from bloomberg news. coming up a little later today on our companion network c-span, a discussion on the cyber attack against sony speakers. speakers will include former house intelligence chair mike rogers and the former head of the nsa and cia general michael hayden. see it live at 3:30 p.m. eastern.

>> the c-span cities tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life. this weekend we partnered with comcast for a visit to wheeling west virginia. >> i wrote these books the wheeling family, they're two volumes. the reason why i thought it was important to collect these histories is that wheeling transformed into an industrial city in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century and it's kind of uncommon in west virginia in that it drew a lot of immigrants from various parts of europe here in search of jobs and opportunity. so that generation, that immigrant generation is pretty much gone. i thought it was important to record their stories to get the memories of the immigrant generation and the ethnic neighborhoods they formed.

it's an important part of our history and most people tend to focus, and those periods are important, but of equal importance in my mind, this industrial period and the immigration that wheeling had. >> wheeling starts as an outpost on the frontier. that river was the western extent of the united states in the 1770s. the first project funded by the federal government for road production was the national road that extended from cumberland maryland to wheeling, virginia. and when it comes here to wheeling that will give this community which about that time is about 50 years old, the real spurt that it needs for growth and over the next 20 to 25 years

the population of wheeling will almost triple. >> watch all of our events from wheeling saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's book tv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. a new poll released from the brookings institution believes 70% of americans believe isis is the biggest challenge. it's led by politico editor susan glasser, washington post columnist e.j. dionne and it runs 90 minutes. >> thank you all for braving the arctic blast to join us this afternoon for this event which has been months in the preparation on what americans think about the fight against isis. for those of you whom i don't

know, my name is tamara wittis i direct the center for middle east policy here at the brookings institution and one of the things we do in the center for middle east policy is we host our project on u.s. relations with the islamic world and that project is the organizer of today's event. the united states finds itself now just four months into what we are calling the anti-isis struggle. one in which our leaders acknowledge will probably take years to play out. and along with the attention of the horrific violence that this movement has wreaked on syrians, iraqis and others questions of momentum seem to dominate a lot

of the media coverage around this new campaign. has the united states and the coalition halted the isis advance? is the military retaking territory? are the kurds holding kobani and it's these momentum questions that seem to occupy so much attention at least here in the united states, but a lot of the questions that i hear amongst our coalition partners and out in the middle east have more to do with the u.s. commitment to this struggle. after a hard decade of war with iraq having just ended the longest u.s. combat operation ever in afghanistan the question i keep hearing is

whether americans have the stomach for another war of indeterminant length and scope against an ill-defined enemy that can shift to new battlefields as we saw yesterday to horrific effect. it's important as we evaluate this question of american commitment to ask ourselves how do americans understand this threat? and then to think about how this struggle might play out not only on the battlefields of iraq and syria, but here in washington as congress reconvenes to contemplate potentially authorizing for the long term military force against isis. what exactly are americans willing to do on behalf of the struggle and for how long? and it's to try to get answers

to these question that we've convened today and it's to get answers that -- together with his colleagues at university of maryland and elsewhere put together a wonderful public opinion poll that went out into the field last fall and the results of which we are launching today. now the first part of that poll we launched here at the beginning of december and that was focused on american public opinion about the israeli-palestinian conflict and american efforts to resolve it. the second part of that poll is what we are revealing today what americans think about the fight against isis and i am truly thrilled that shibly is here to offer the findings to you and that he is here to discuss the significance of the poll findings by two wonderful colleagues.

shibly, of course, is not only a non-resident senior fellow of longstanding here at the brookings institution, but also the anwar sadat professor for peace and development at the university of maryland. he is joined today by susan glasser, the editor of politico who, of course was also the founding editor of politico ag magazine editor in chief of foreign policy and before that a highly decorated journalist at the washington post and of roll call and along with susan commenting on today's poll findings we have our friend and colleague e.j. dion of the governing studies program here at brookings, also of course, a columnist at "the washington post" and a professor on the democracy of culture, such a wonderful title, at georgetown

university, my alma mater. shibly will be out to pressentent the findings of the poll and we'll bring in susan and e.j. for a panel discussion. i want to highlight, before we start, a couple of things. first off, as an additional collaboration between shibley and politico today just now has gone live, susan's paper, an article that shibly wrote based on the poll findings and are americans ready to go to war against isil and that is on the politico website right now and i commend it to all of you. the other thing i would like to note is for all of you who are interested in joining a conversation about the poll on twitter today during the event and following please tweet using the #isispoll. with that i would like to invite

shibly up to the podium. thanks very much. [ applause ] >> thanks so much tamara and thank you all for coming on this cold day. let me just say a couple of things by way of introduction about the poll and then i'll go right to the results. this was sponsored by the sad ad chair at the university of maryland in cooperation with the program for public consultation. it was done in mid-november and it was two parts as tamara said. first, it was on the israel-palestine issue and the second was on isil in syria which we will review today. there are a number of people that helped with it. please read their names. i'm not going to mention all of the name, but they were at the university of maryland at brookings and at the program for public consultation. also we have a sample of 1,008

and an online survey provided by jfk the methodology, and you can find it online for those of you interested in the retrospective of it. it was plus or minus 3.4%, but let me go directly into sort of what drove the questions first of all. what is it that we're trying to get at when we designed this poll. first, i have been very surprised by the american public which was said to be war weary in -- and basically because of the iraq and afghanistan war and had opposed even a more minimalist intervention proposed by president obama after president obama told the american public that bashar al assad had used chemical weapons against his own people and finally after a few beheadings was pretty much open to

approving certainly a much more expansive intervention that was initially proposed against syria and now some are even open to escalation of that intervention. so i know that one of the easy questions -- answers in conventional wisdom is that it's all about the beheadings but the beheadings don't really explain it because on the one hand because if it's about the roof and this is about the beheadings and we talked about chemical weapons and the public was still reluctant to do it. if it was about americans, think about our conventional wisdom in the past when american soldiers were dragged in the streets of mogadishu in somalia, that that's exactly why americans want to stay out of it not to get into it. so clearly that doesn't explain it. we needed to probe more and we designed this to probe a little bit more into what the thinking

is of the public and i would like to share some of the findings. it's important to start with it which is when you ask people about what are the most important threats facing american interest in the middle east and we have the israeli-palestinian conflict and the rise of isis. that by far the rise of isis is number one. 70% of the public say it's number one. in some ways that brings down the sense of iranian threat or even the violence in the israel-palestine question and by the way, it doesn't seem like those issues are not perceived to be a threat by the american interest of the public and it is so focused on isis and we give them only one choice that by virtue of the elevation of isis everything else looks less threatening in comparison. so clearly isis has emerged as the principal threat as

americans see it in the middle east and that seems to hold across party lines and you will see in the poll there are huge divisions across party line particularly between republicans and democrats, but on this issue there's very little difference there's 67 for independents and 72 for republicans and it's very consistent across party lines. the next question is what do americans want to do about it? obviously, normally it's when you ask a hypothetical question you have to understand that it's hypothetical because it's not something they have to deal with immediately and so we posed the question, what if the current effort failed? you could see if air strikes aren't enough to stop isis and would you favor or oppose sending u.s. ground troops in iraq to fight against isis. so what we find and this is hypothetical, so you find 57%

say they're not open to it. 41% who favor. you have 2% who refuse. i'll tell you that my own sense when i say hypothetical and i'm posing it that way, if the president were to go to the american people and say tomorrow, the earth strikes have failed. i'm asking you to send american forces to finish the job. i suspect the opposition would be greater. that is my interpretation of the hypothetical because it's a real issue and when it's a real, immediate issue they are much more conservative in the way they react to it. and here is the interesting divide across party line and i think this is huge if you look at it. only 36% of democrats and 31% of independents would favor sending ground forces even if current

efforts fail whereas you have a majority of republicans, 53% who say they would favor it. that is really an important finding and very important for the political process particularly in the primaries where how a candidate is going to define the positions on those issues and you can see it's going to be quite a difference. we've seen a difference on the palestine question and a huge divide particularly the republicans on the one hand and democrats and independents on the other. we see this a little bit here. which of the following is closest to review in the use of american ground forces. so we went to the 41% of the people who said i'm prepared to use ground force fess air strikes fail and we tried to figure out. so what is it that in their view

justifies the use of ground forces. yes, the ruthlessness and intolerance of isis is in fact a factor and 33% give that as a principal reason but the number one answer is that they really see isis as an extension of al qaeda. they see it as another manifestation of al qaeda which we're still at war and unfinished business and that's one reason why they highlight it and that, obviously 43% say that well above the worry about the ruthlessness of isis. two other things i want to say about this particular graph. if you look at the number of people who say that what's justifying in their mind the openness to deploying ground

forces is, you know that it's an extension they don't give the possible threat to our most vital interest as the number one answer. only 16% basically, say that they see it immediately or even can because the question was potentially a threat to america's manager and that's not what's driving them in this particular regard and certainly not a look at how many -- how small the number is of people who say it's a perceived threat to our allies and only 7% think that's the reason why we should be sending ground forces. remember, this is among the people who are prepared to use ground forces and not the whole population. there is a bit of a divide across parties and not all that much. i want to go to a second kind of

question because we have understood and everybody who does polling understands that on issues like this particularly when there is no immediate choice that the public has to decide on and you are formulating some scenarios or hypothesis, the public is often conflicted and there are all sorts of issues that come into play. so we wanted to push it a little bit more to see the extent to which the public is open to involvement. so we have the following scenario. the u.s. should stay out of the conflict with isis. the u.s. cannot determine the course of war in syria and iraq. our involvement would be a slippery slope going from air strikes to military advisers and ultimately to combat troops. on the other hand we must intervene on the level necessary to defeat isis. isis not only threatens our ally allies if it succeeds in

expanding and increasing its control and oil resources and it will become a greater threat to our interest. we asked them which one of your views is closest to your view? so basically, just to see where they lean obviously in this regard. remember, they've alreadiy said the majority said they don't want to send ground forces, but look at this. so when you put this additional hypothetical with no reference to ground forces you still get a majority, roughly the same percentage, 57% who say we must intervene at the level necessary to defeat isis. by the way this is not unusual and we see it also in syria where on the one hand the public wants to do something and they don't want to put a serious option on the table for them and we see that here, as well. i just want to go quickly to a few other questions. which is the closest to your

view? even if we commit a significant number of ground forces it is unlikely that we can defeat isis in iraq and syria. if we commit a large number of ground forces we can defeat isis and as soon as we withdraw, they or something like them will likely return and the third is if we commit a large number of ground troops we can defeat isis well enough so that it is unlikely they or something like them will return soon after we withdraw and what you see here is essentially only 20% believe that we can permanently defeat isis and that even those who think isis could be defeated and a majority, 56% say they will return soon after they or something like them and i think that is the reluctance. that is really the principal

reason for public reluctance to commit more because they think we'll be dragged into an indefinite war and that's been the experience and i think that explains it quite a bit and we see that to varying degrees across the party line, as well. i want to just transition to another set of issues which is about how the public perceives broad support for isis, particularly among muslims around the world. obviously it's an issue that has become tragically relevant given the massacre in paris yesterday where obviously a lot of people are asking the question if there is any connection whether communities in western societies will be dragged into it and whether there will be operations on western soil. so we had, while we obviously didn't anticipate this kind of attack we know this has always been on the public's mind so we asked questions specifically related to it and i would like to review some of those questions here.

the first one is what is your impression of how muslims around the world feel about isis? most muslims oppose it. and most muslims are evenly balanced? and so what you find here is that only 14% of americans believe that most lues limbs support isis but they're evenly divided, roughly between those who think most muslims oppose it and most muslims are evenly divided on isis. so it's a mixed picture. however, when you look at it again by party it's interesting that just look at the lost category which is most muslims support it and 22% of support, they are 13% for democrats and 13% for independents and you can see that there is some kind of a difference interpretation that carries itself through much of

the poll even though here it's not as pronounced as some of the others. >> how worried are you that a significant number of americans will join isis in the middle east? >> you can see that 40% say they're at least somewhat worried and there's 8% who say very worried and clearly a majority is not worried, but when you ask how worried are you that a significant number of americans will be carried out in the u.s. surprisingly you get a bigger concern and so you have -- americans are -- are evenly divided on this one. by the way, you get 101% here only because obviously when we have .5 you actually go to the next digit. so it's not a mistake and it's a

reporting issue. you can see that they're exactly equally divided among those who are worried and those who are not worried about it and that's interesting in and of itself and you have also that there is a variation across party line that by and large you find more worry among republicans than the rest. do you think that support among americans for isis is likely to be greater than support for al qaeda and less than support for al qaeda or about the same? the reason i inserted this is because, of course we had this question about how does this compare historically and we don't have a historical data on this so i don't know how they felt about it before, and i'll put in al qaeda to see at least

we had some rough comparison whether they see it's more or less threatening than cada in terms of americans joining isis and their fear about americans joining al qaeda and what we find is actually slightly less worried and it's roughly the same. you see 56% say it's roughly the same and 25% say it's less than al qaeda. 17% say more than al qaeda, and i think this reenforces this other issue of what is it that's driving the propensity to want to intervene is they're clearly combining isis and al qaeda, a large number of the public are combining isis and al qaeda in their mind. i want to switch to a few questions about syria and isis and and, and one of the questions is which is the closest to your view if we spent enough

resources to drain the moderate syrian opposition and it could stand up to both isis and the assad regime and the syrian opposition is too weak and divided each if we give it significantly more resources, it cannot effectively stand up to isis in the current regime of bashar al assad. which one is closest to your view and here is what we see. clearly, two-thirds say the syrian opposition cannot stand up to both assad and isis no matter how much support we give it and that is kind of a starting point for their attitudes on that. we then go and give them two scenarios that to evaluate two scenarios and see how much support those two scenarios have. one scenario is assad has killed its own people with chemical weapons and is as bad as isis. there is no way to resolve the war in syria without removing

the assad regime. do you find this convincing or unconvincing? so look at this. you find a lot of people find this very convincing. you have overall 70% say very convincing or somewhat convincing, but then we give them an alternative hypothesis which is assad -- a second. >> i don't have the full scenario, but we should not fight the assad army and let it fight isis. we had built a scenario around that, as well and what we find is that still a majority agreed with that even though it's obviously somehow juxtaposed with the previous hypothesis but fewer people agree with it. you have 60% find this argument somewhat convincing as opposed to the other one which is 70%. so then we go to the bottom line

argument and now that you have these scenarios, do you think the u.s. military should or should not fight assad's army in syria? so what you have is a large majority, 72% said the u.s. should not fight assad's army in syria. so a clear reluctance part of it is isis, but part of it is based on other factors, as well. >> i just want to end with a couple of issues that i call linkage issues in part because when we did this poll we had two parts, one on israel-palestine and one on isis and syria and we went to see some connection in there and it was at a time where if you recall secretary of state john kerry was criticized for suggesting that violence on the

israeli-palestinian front played into the hands of isis and enabled them to recruit more people and focused more attention on the u.s. and israel. that was an argument that he made. he backtracked in large part because he got a lot of criticism for it so we wanted to see how the public sees this issue so we asked directly which one is closest to your view? we gave them two options. one option is the escalation of the palestinian-israeli conflict is drawing more support among muslims worldwide and to focus more attention on confronting israel and the u.s. and the alternative hypothesis, it would not affect either the support for isis or its strategies. its aims are independent of the palestinian-israeli conflict and it is unlikely to draw supporters because of it. okay. so very clear two options that i think summarize the debate. here's what we get. a large majority, two-thirds

64% say they think violence on the israeli-palestinian front would be used to increase support for isis and 30% say it wouldn't. we further just very quickly by the way here's an interesting thing about the divide between democrats and the republicans and the secretary of state came under criticism from the republican side on this issue and here is the anything thing, and slight difference between democrats and republicans and there is more linkage than democrats and 75% think there is linkage between those issues and one final note. i'm not going to go through the issue, but it turns out also that in our polling which asked whether the american public wanted the u.s. to lean toward israel and to lean toward the palestinians or to lean toward

either side we ran correlations to see whether we want the u.s. to lean toward israel had different views from the rest of the population and whether it was actual linkage, in fact, in the minds of some people and in fact, we find that there is, for example, among those who say they want the u.s. to lean toward israel. 73%, you know say the israeli-palestinian conflict is used by isis to draw support and surpriseing surprisingly, even more people think among that segment of the public, and it also matters for how people want to -- those who want the u.s. to lean toward what israel tend to want to also be more open to military intervention and sending ground forces to look at this slide in

particular and among those who lean toward israel, 61% say that if air strikes aren't enough, the u.s. should use ground forces versis only 31% for the rest of the population. now, i just want to make one point, and i'm sure we'll have that in the conversation this is not an indication of a causal relationship. most likely it is part of a connected world view an ideological world view of the same people seeing you know, who want to intervene. we see that also with the evangelical community and we're seeing it across party lines and don't be too quick to create a causal linkage and it's nonetheless interesting. thank you very much for listening and i invite the panelists to the stage. [ applause ]

let's see. wonderful! shibly, thank you for giving us the highlights and there are

quite a bit more in the packets that are available on the table and of course, more discussion in shibly's article for politico they mentioned earlier and we'll be able to get into a lot of what this means up here in a conversation with all of you. susan, let me start by probing the idea that shibly mentioned just at the outset. okay. americans went quickly, it seems from war weariness and reluctance to engage to readiness to support this new struggle. at the same time what we see in the results that were just presented is that americans are saying well, we have to do what's necessary to fight isis, to defeat isis but we can't win in a lasting way. these guys are either we're not going to be able to defeat them or they're going to come back as soon as they leave, but we have to do it anyway.

how do you understand that contradictory sentiment? >> thank you so much, shibly and to you, tamara. i'm glad you started with that because there is a lot to wrap around politically as to what this means. the superficiality and the thinness of the support for what we're doing is reflected in the fact that this is and it's emorphous and what we were talking about and you have to consider we're basically talking about a war without a name and all of the political consequences that come with that which is to say i'm struck by the broad but clearly not deep at all support for whatever it is we think we're sort of doing and same thing with the bipartisanship. you have this, you know on the surface very striking appearance of bipartisan consensus and we have over 70% who appear to be

absolutely fine with the policy we're conducting and yet at the same time basically there say complete cynicism around the idea that it's actually going to accomplish much and b, when you talk about b, if it doesn't accomplish anything you will open up that fissure which i think will be the fissure in foreign politics with policy that we're talking for the entire arc of this presidential campaign that's about to begin. okay, great and i definitely want to get back to that. it's washington and we can't avoid talking about the 2016 race even though it's only january of 2015, but in many ways i think that this poll has interesting implications for where that debate will go but first, e.j. let me ask you can we -- maybe one way to understand what looks contradictory or what looks like a reluctant or ambivalent from

susan's description commitment is that it's the hard lesson in the last 13 years that, well we're not always going to win and we're not always going to achieve our goals and sometimes we have to get in there and get dirty anyway. is that one way to understand this? >> i think that is and i think shibly's poll includes material that suggests that even americans who would be sympathetic to intervention think the lessons might not be good. i just want to sort of underscore what i see is a very interesting contradiction and ambivalence in the survey. there were two different questions that produced two different answers. if you asked the question if air strikes aren't enough to stop isis would you oppose sending u.s. ground troops and 57% oppose and that's a dovish majority, but when you asked which of the following come closest to your view we must

intervene at the level necessary to defeat isis. 57% say yes. that's a hawkish majority which means something like 16 or 18% of the people in the survey gave answers on one question that did not seem to match the answer on the other question. one is i do think some of that is an iraq hangover and the other is i think there has been a profound ambivalence about intervention from the very beginning and i went back for something else i'm doing, i ran across this recently and i went back and looked at at balgallop poll before we intervened in afghanistan and this was before 9/11. >> this was a poll after 9/11? >> poll after 9/11 in november 2001 and this is when president bush had a broad con sense us in

support of the invasion and 18% said no. gallup went underneath the numbers and of that 81% 22% were reluctant warriors and they found those, they classified them that way because they said they would not have supported intervention had 9/11 not happened. combine the 22% with the 18% and you're up even at the moment where americans were most interventionist and you have 40% who were either duffs or reluctant warriors and when you took apart the rest, there were only 22%, they found who were consistent hawks who would have been willing to intervene before. so i think when we look at american opinion there is this deep underlying reluctance to intervene even in circumstances when most americans have a gut sympathy for the intervention and one other point to go to

your original question if you remember shibly's slide and which comes closest to your review and this is where iraq really comes in. 57% said the u.s. can defeat isis and only 20% thought we could perfectly defeat isis so that the war, i think the iraq war has created a pessimism about the possible -- or let's put it another way. there is no longer an excessive optimism about what american power can achieve. shib shibly i want to ask you about e.j.'s comments about a long standing tradition about reluctant warrior segment. >> first of all on e.j.'s last point which i think is key is how people assess the prospects

because we have a lot of literature separate from polling and we have international theories about why public and why particular leet american public says i've had enough. at what point do they say we don't want any more of this and a lot of theories have suggested it's a link to their assessment whether you can win or not. you can pay a price up to a point and obviously, the assessment is there is no clear win here and iraq is one case, but even afghanistan people don't really see a particular win and that's undoubtedly influencing the move. i think that by and large i think the american mood i mean, remember, particularly after the end of the cold war, i mentioned the mogadishu case of 1990 when we had the soldiers dragged in a very ugly way. remember this is a time when we

are the sole super power and we're in the middle of celebrating that and the cold war ends the year before and we are the mighty power and everybody is -- we can lead ride? and yet the public says instead of saying let's go after them says let's pull out because the public's instinct that the privacy was to intervene more and this is why bill clinton came here and i think that instant is in the public not to intervene is there but then what happens is they assume that america is safe and the minute they think there is a threat or feel there is a threat they're conflicted and that's what we see, a lot of conflicted attitudes in the poll. >> okay. it's very interesting because both of you were really talking about how americans define america's role in the world that we're not there to sort of trochl around and reap our will

as long as we're safe we should let things go and 9/11 changed that not because of how we think of our role in the world, but because of threat and here i want to come to what i found striking and maybe it wasn't striking to all of you, but 40% of americans are worried that a significant member of american citizens will join isis and attack the united states. now, we're going to release a paper here in brookings on monday on the question of foreign fighters going and fighting in iraq and syria and the threat that poses to the united states and europe, but we haven't seen a large number of americans running off to fight isis. >> susan where do you think this is coming from? is this because the president talked it up over the summer because the intelligence community was out there saying this was a real problem? >> i think this is really important. first of all this is about the first mention of barack obama's name in the conversation which i find very striking and i want to

get back to that in a second, but directly to your question, it makes it a convincing case that across party lines people are associating isis with al qaeda and they do see it as an extension of al qaeda we don't have the historical data from shibly's work and we also see similarly high fears around the possibility of an attack inside the u.s. homeland from al qaeda in the post-9/11 or those numbers have been quite high even given the fact that there have not been subsequent attacks and i see it as consistent with we're willing to have what might be much harsher response to a perceived threat even if there is a low risk of the actual perceived threat here at home and that seems to me to be consistent with what we've seen from the american public and clearly, people do believe that this is either an offshoot of al qaeda or the logical extension

of the radicalization of a small segment of this part. so to me that seems very much connected to our anxieties around this faraway conflict that has managed and to manifest itself here. barack obama the thing i would say that's interesting to me about the survey is that it kind of reflects right, the inherent, unresolved conflicts, contradictions and the administration's policy. in many ways, you can almost say he is either representing or reflecting or has designed a policy that more or less intentionally or not reflects the ambivalences and ambiguities and uncertainties of how americans view the situation. he's basically very much in line with yes, we're worried about it, but we're only willing to do so much and a wink and a nod, that's been what he has conveyed to the extent that he's spoken which is not very much about

this conflict more or less, the president has made it clear, it seems to me that he doesn't think that we'll necessarily be defeating isis any time soon. he's made it very clear he's not going to be going to war against the assad government any time soon and so i think that's just something interesting to reflect upon, too. >> yes, and then i want to come back to syria. >> briefly on obama. i think obama's position reflects pretty well where the country is which is the country wants to act on isis and it's reluctant to get too involved in the effort and it also shows why the president didn't push ahead to get authorization to strike syria when he wanted to or why the congress didn't seem, we'll never know and didn't seem prepared given that and when you look at the numbers and survey on syria opposition intervention is enormous and it

crosses party lines. almost no partisan difference on that, but i was really struck, as you were by that enormous number who believed that americans would fight with isis and i was the old rock 'n' roll song "paranoia strikes deep into your life it will creep." i would love to see some work within the survey about who are -- which americans believe that. but if one thinks that number is high, think of what that number might be like if you took the survey tomorrow morning after what happened in paris. i've been a journalist all my life, but i think anybody who cares about free expression has to be horrified and stand in solidarity with the people of that magazine. we can perhaps talk about that a little bit, but it's -- murder doesn't settle arguments. it ends them. it ends lives. but imagine americans looking at that and it does appear that the attackers were french, if i'm correct about this.

somebody correct me -- had citizenship. will that number go up will that increase our paranoia that is already very substantial. on the one hand i look at that number and say i don't share that view, i'm not worried particularly when one looks at the history of the american-muslim community which is a historically moderate community, historically very successful community in american life. so the odds of that happening in large numbers strike me as very small. but we look at horror like this and i think people say, all right, do i have to check that view, is there something wrong with that. it's -- but it was a very big number. >> yes. a striking number. >> just on this because i think you are probably right if there is a poll today or tomorrow after the massacre in paris, it will probably go up. i'm not sure it will go up a lot actually, because i think in american public mind they have generally differentiated between what happens happening in europe

an what's happening in america. that's one. but the second thing is that number is high, for sure, 40%, but if you look at it closely, the number of people who say they're very worried is very small. and you can attribute that almost to ideological because some of it. not all of it. 8% i think is the only -- and also when you then have a rough comparison with al qaeda if anything it is slightly less than what they thought al qaeda's capacity. so in a way, yes it is high for sure. that does tell you something. but it is not as intensive as we should be careful not to overinterpret it. >> okay. so in other words, we're not in the public opinion environment we were in that immediate post-9/11 era where people were willing to contemplate a lot of things on the basis of their threat perception. i want to come back to the point that susan made a few minutes

ago which is that it seems that president obama has actually done a pretty masterful job rf reflecting public opinion at least as indicateded in this poll, in his policy as he's triangulated the demands from the intelligence community, from allies in the region, and from american public and from congress in dealing with the question of isis and american military engagement in iraq and syria more broadly. so okay, the american public says assad in an awful guy, he's done terrible things. but the syrian opposition can't defeat him even if we help them. so maybe we shouldn't over invest in that. and the u.s. military shouldn't try to defeat him. that's not our priority. so if those -- each of those three findings i think came out in different parts of your poll. if obama has in fact

triangulated well, then number one, where does that leave congress as it tries to think about authorizing this fight. there are of course those in congress who would like to authorize a broader fight including against assad. and there are those in congress who want to tie this administration and the next administration's hands as much as possible including on issues like ground troops where it looks like they'll have some support. so that's one question it seems to me is what does an aumf, an authorization to use military force, look like if congress is going to reflect this public opinion. second, what does it say about the fight that is largely within the republican party over foreign policy between more interventionist views and more reticent reticent, if you will, rand paul verses are john mccain, if you want to put it in very rough terms. we have an am bivbivalent public.

does that favor rand paul? does that mean that john mccain has already lost the argument with the american public? lou do we interpret the way this will play out going forward? e.j., you want to start? >> sure. i think one of the paradoxes for president obama -- and this was even more obvious before the election when his numbers were lower. his numbers have recovered some. where you seem to have obama's policy matching public opinion pretty well, and yet the approval of his foreign policy was way down. now i think there are a couple of things that were going on there. one is, republicans would disapprove president obama probably if he could clang straw into gold. there would be something wrong with the gold. so there is just a deep partisan feeling against president obama. but the other thing is americans want two things at the same time. they do not want a disorderly world. they do not want the rise of groups like isis.

and they don't want us to do too much to get intervened in ways that are going to hurt us again. it is almost -- what it reminded me of looking at the survey is this old piece of political science, some of you probably know the observation that americans are operational liberals but ideological conservatives, they don't like government in theory but they actually like a lot of the stuff government does and some of the stuff government gives them. similarly, americans are ideologically interventionists but operationally cautious. and i think that's what -- >> and you see that right there. that's exactly right. >> that's right in our faces here. so for the president, there is this challenge where the americans want somehow for him to make the conflict -- these troubles go away but don't necessarily will all the means that might require. and the republicans clearly are the group split most in this survey. if air strikes aren't enough, would you favor or oppose

sending u.s. ground troops. 53% of republicans favor. so a hawkish view still prevails. but very narrowly. 46% opposed. which i think points potentially, if rand paul gets in the race, to a very interesting debate inside the republican party, because there has always been a strong and interventional/libertarian/ realist view within the republican party. and rand paul is going to try to speak for that view. it's probably the case that it is not a majority, but it is an awfully large minority. >> susan. >> well, the poll also points out -- i totally agree with that -- that there is an ideological component even within that fractured republican party where support for israel is much higher and it's hirer -- support for israel higher among evangelicals which we were talking before the panel which has gone up over time as a proportion of the most fervent israeli -- supporters of israel

in u.s. politics is evangelical. that come fliktsplicates the election even further because i think you are talking about potentially candidates in the presidential race whose foreign policy views may or may not line up with the very strong evangelical support that's going to be required in places like iowa, for example. so i think what we're looking at number one is that foreign policy is likely to be a bigger issue in the 2016 presidential campaign for these reasons, perhaps even than it was in the primary season in 2012 for example. so i think that already seems to be how it is playing out. number two the support for israel of course is much higher across the board in american politics with democrats and republicans than it is in europe. to get back to our previous conversation, i think that's very important when you consider what the after-effects are going to be of this horrific attack in paris. they're very likely to play out differently among the european

public, both in france and more broadly across the european union, both because this is a neighborhood issue for our partners in europe in a way that makes it very different. it's much more comparable to something like this happening in canada than it is to how our reaction to it is going to be. and also there is just a really different attitude towards the divisions and fractures in the middle east that exist in american politics because of that really rock-hard support for israel across the political spectrum. there has been some fraying that's interesting. we can talk about it separately. the democratic party obviously in recent years about what our attitudes are. but talking about 2016 certainly is in many ways a republican story. although remember that it was hillary clinton when she was secretary of state who teamed up back doors with david petraeus and worked and lobbied president

obama, unsuccessfully at that time to do more both to support the syrian opposition and to intervene in a way that obama has never been willing to do and my final point goes back to this question of did obama design the syria policy that the american public wants. it may well be that he did so but the american public would probably disapprove of itself if it was president. >> if i may just on this issue, because i mean consequences for the american elections and particularly republican/democrat divide on foreign policy which is strike something across the board. i certainly believe that foreign policy will be a major issue in the campaign. not because it is for a lot of americans. it is because i think the president is relatively popular on other issues, and if the economy continues to do it his numbers are not very good on foreign policy and that's going to be one that will be picked on by the republican side.

but that's going to change the dynamics because what we see is that while republicans are somewhat divided on some of the issues including the intervention using ground forces in the middle east, the gap between the grass root republican party and the leadership in congress isn't very wide. the gap between grassroots democrats and leadership in congress is wider on foreign policy, in part because the democrats are playing to national politics and being put on the defensive on the republicans. we see this on the israel-palestine question especially where the most strike something result is that you have a completely different outlook among the grassroots of the democratic party than the positions being taken by the leadership. so it is going to be very interesting to see how this is going to play itself out in the primaries, particularly the democratic party but also the republican party, before you aim for national election. i think it is going to be an issue. but the final point i want to make you've suggested that -- i

think it was e.j. who initially suggested maybe the policy on syria was calibrated in some ways. it fits nicely with the public sentiment roughly, sort ever the ambivalence about all the different components. i would even say the iran policy is calibrated this way. one thing that comes out of this poll, because the public suddenly sees isis as the main threat, it lowered the -- >> salience of everything else. >> -- the sense of the iranian threat and it gives the president -- and therefore even the insinuation that iraq could be possibly helpful in dealing with isis actually helps the president because that's where the public is. so in some ways that, too, plays to the -- not only to i think the sentiment of the democratic party, but even national priorities including republicans. so it will be interesting to see how the republicans play that out in the elections. >> my hunch is that the policy

isn't -- since i seem to have said this -- it wasn't like the administration took a poll and pursued this policy. i think actually obama won the election because the very ambivalence he feels is actually similar to the ambivalence that the country feels. but susan is right that the public doesn't always like the result of the very policy they support. >> they're also skeptical that it will work. in fact, they're convinced that it won't work. that's what i find interesting. they support the thing that they don't think will do anything. >> but they don't think the other thing will work either. they're pessimistic. >> they don't like "a," they don't like "b. wts. >> i have to say as somebody who worked in the first term of the obama administration, this is something that i think is very deeply ingrained in a lot of the people who came in with the president. it is partly an iraq hangover but it is partly much deeper than that which is a keen sense of the limitations of american

capacity to accomplish things, particularly but not only using force in the world. that we try. we may have good intentions. we may sink tremendous resources into it. but it often -- in fact it mostly doesn't work. and i was struck over and over again by it while i was in the administration, and since i've left, the sense of incapacity and the way that that constrains willingness to attempt. this is not dare and dare greatly. it's also not, importantly, a care that turicature that many in the mccain camp put out there. it is not sort of post-vietnam america is a bad actor it's on the line out there in the world. it is a belief that, no, hearn america is a beflinnign actor it is not just a very capable actor. we're not bad, we just suck.

and i think that's a pretty powerful sense also among the american public as these numbers reveal and therefore something that i think that comeing incense of the obama administration, what the public is telling them as problems mount and mount. >> i don't think the public's ambivalence is stupid. i actually think the public's ambivalence -- >> i didn't say it is. >> no, i know you didn't say that. but i think it is an intelligent ambivalence. were you in and i was not, but i recast the administration's view just a little bit, which is to say there are some things even a competent power can't achieve, even if they put in vast numbers of resources. and i think that is a lesson that a lot of people drew from iraq which is that if circumstance on the ground are not in a situation where an

american intervention could then lead to x, y and z happening and a happy result, then all of the competence in the world and all the resources and all the human beings that we put in including lost lives, we still won't get the result we want. therefore, a certain amount of caution is in order. i think that would be my sense of what the kind of am biv lentbivalent view of kind ever american intervention comes down to now. >> fair enough. and also i think an appreciation of how much more complicated the world is today. >> some things are really, really lard. >> some things are really, really hard. okay, i want to get to one more pointard. >> some things are really, really hard. okay, i want to get to one more pointhard. >> some things are really, really hard. okay, i want to get to one more point before i open it up to all of you. especially on the right in those cross tabulations at the end, those last couple slides, there is an ideological continuity across issues, whether it is

israel-palestine, syria and isis. can you help us understand a little bit what this constellation looks like? it's not neoconservative. it doesn't seem to be partisan. how do we understand it? >> no, it is really really interesting because we see it in the democratic party and the republican party. when i probed on the middle east specifically, it is interesting what you get. on the republican side the most intensely held views on foreign policy that tend to be conservative come out of people who classify themselves as evangelicalçm born-again. significant percentage of the republican party right now. nearly half of the republican party. so this is not a small group. but a lot of those views, a wrorld world view, if you wish, comes out of that. now why, it requires deep analysis to how this group -- obviously they're diverse.

i won't suggest they're not diverse. but on foreign policy they're much more in agreement. on the democratic side there's something that i would call a human rights community that emerged. i bunched it up, i even tested it to see whether froror example people who are expressing views on israeli issues or syria issues are really doing it because they care about israel or because they're taking sides or they care about america's strategic interest. turns out the number one concern for much of that constituency is human rights. and so there is a community where the reference point isn't necessarily specific issues, or even -- and that -- what goes with that is the particular interpret tagsation interpretation. it doesn't always tell you whether you should intervene or not, because you can take it both ways. but i think there is a world view. and maybe multiple world views within each party. and therefore, i think it wouldn't be surprising if people are not analyzing their relationship between issues is

good for iran and good for isis. or good for assad. that they as -- on the whole have a propensity to answer in a particular way because of the world view they have. yes, we can do it. yes, we can defeat assad. yes, we can defeat assad and isis and iran at the same time. and so you have some people who actually feel those -- take these views, and you have people who say we can't do anything forget it. so what i'm suggesting is while obviously we need to focus on what e.j. suggested on the small sentiment that sways from one side to the next. we are starting off with people who have roughly entrenched views that come out of a world view, not so much out of analyzing the particular strategic consequences of reaction. i think that's clear in my mind. that's why i suggested that we shouldn't jump into conclusions about cause and effect when we

look at correlations in these results. >> okay, great. let me open it up for questions from the floor at this point. i'm just going to reiterate our house rules. number one, please wait until you're called. number two, please identify yourself before asking your question. and number three, one, singular question. thank you very much. we'll start right over here. >> ted gatou former u.s. ambassador to syria. i'm going to get the question pretty quickly. but to paraphrase dick cheney i think before the iraq war, or whatever, he said even if there's a 1% chance or less that terrorists or iraq gets their hands on weapons of mass destruction, we have to go all out, we have to make 100% effort. i wonder if you had included a question something that said to

this effect -- what i'm getting at is a lot of americans seem to have an exaggerated fear of terrorism and isis and what could happen to them and their families and communities. but we keep sending the same people over and over again to fight a war that we say we can't win. so the question is if you had included in your survey how would you feel about this if a draft was reinstituted, and somebody close to you was going to possibly be sent to fight this war that you're in favor, how would you then feel about it? i'd be interested in that. it seems to me it's become too easy for people with hawkish inclinations to say i'm a little bit concerned so i think we ought to go and send the 82nd airborne. >> yeah. do you want to take one at a time? >> why don't we take one more if you don't mind. then we'll come back. in the third row here.

>> my name is ilhun and imaem from the muslim public affairs council. the question is in spite of the fact that it's mostly muslims in the case of kurds, iraqis, syrians, fighting against isis, there is sort of rumblings within at least certain sectors of the media here and in social media that muslims are somehow not doing enough to counter isis. i'm wondering if you actually included that kind of information or probed for that within your survey and what your findings were. >> good. >> let me start with ted's question which is a good one in highlighting sort of the kind of choices that people face. as i said in my opening remarks, usually the realistic option is and immediate to them, the more conservative they become. undoubtedly. it doesn't have to be about the draft. as i said, when you're given the hypothetical, what if the air strikes are not enough would

you then support that's a theoretical yes. if tomorrow, as i suggested, obama says they didn't work i'm going to send troops, they're going to get fewer number of people who say i'm supportive. so we have to keep that in mind. there's always a connectedness with the reality. and yet, let's also be realistic. the president asked them to strike syria from afar. just by shooting missiles punitive. and they said no. the president said i'm going to send my air force and some logistical support to iraq and syria for the first time. and they supported him. so the public, you know, does sometimes support. the question is what is the limit. it's not always -- and that wasn't just hypothetical. that was a real question posed. on the second question i haven't asked that question. and i'm slurure there are others who have.

this is certainly that often is key debated. it's already debated on our pages, are "muslims doing enough." and i suspect whether they are or are not doing enough you're going to get probably a large percentage of people who say probably not. i mean i wouldn't think a majority, but i would think that you would get a large number of people who would take that position just like there are a lot of people who worried that there would be americans who would join. i would expect that. that obviously doesn't mean that's true. as you know there's a whole kind of debate all kinds of condemnation of there. even in france e.j. talking about "we're not like the french." and we're not, obviously. but the french, when you look at the muslim-french, overwhelmingly moderate. most of them are secular. most of them don't even want to have anything to do with religion altogether like the rest of the french population. so the fact that you have -- the

fact that you have these criminals who are conducting these awful attacks is not representation of -- you can't lump it together. there is a problem obviously in some segments of the community that people are dealing with. but so objectively i think it is a question of where you place the emphasis in who's doing what in terms of fighting. but if you want to look for voices for condemnation, you can look just from egypt today from leaders across the arab and muslim countries to certainly community leaders including imams in various communities standing up and going. so you have condemnation. i don't think that's going to matter because the issue -- those people who are carrying out these horrific attacks are only using religion as an instrument. they're killers and their aims are political and i think that

i'm not sure that delegitimizing by the mainstream is necessarily going to be effective. >> well, it is interesting, too the gap between i think the intelligence community both here and in europe, their understanding of the muslim communities within their borders and the percentage that are radicalized versus the vast majority who are opposed to such radicalization, and the perception of the public. clearly there's a big gap there. jim hoglund had a wonderful piece i think in the "post" that came out this morning about the challenge the french government faces in responding to this because they're going to face contending pressures. it's very polarized. we'd already seen a lot of strengthening of a very right wing anti-islamic, anti-immigrant political forces inside france. and inevitably partly by design, the guys who did this

are stoking the growth of that sentiment. >> two quick points. one, on the french with last name like mine i'm not knock being the french. what i was saying is what i do think is the case -- in other words, i was talking about american-muslims are not like french-muslims. specifically what i meant is in class terms, the class position of american-muslims is very different than the class position of -- on the whole than the class position of muslims in france and france has had a very large group of poor -- you know, relatively poor unemployed muslims to a degree. that is not a case in the american-muslim community. and on this gentleman's very good question -- which do i think the whole issue about the fact that we don't have a draft, the fact that very few members of congress have sons or daughters in the mill dear -- there are a few -- is important.

but i didn't read this poll as terribly hawkish. and even on the question we must intervene at the level necessary to defeat isis where you got 57%, you alternative was worded very strongly in a way that i think puts some people into that one. the u.s. should stay out of the conflict with isis which got 39%. i think a lot of people may have drifted to the more hawkish answer because their view is we shouldn't stay out but we still don't want to send ground troops. i didn't read this as -- i saw a certain determination about isis but not a really hawkish result. >> interesting though. that number that 39%, is higher than you get on the chicago council's broad question of should the u.s. -- is it better for the u.s. to be involved in world affairs or to stay out of world affairs. i think their latest result was about one-third said stay out.

susan, did you want to add? >> that goes with the 7% of the majority. right? >> we can go ahead. >> okay. why don't we take a couple more. here in the front. >> thanks very much. i'm garrick mitchell and i write the mitchell report. whenever i listen to the results of your work, i'm struck by the distinction between -- it makes me think about the distinction between what people think as they -- in response in a survey, as opposed to how they think about the questions that you pose. i'm thinking back to the first of these two sessions, israeli-palestinian conflict, when you spoke about one of the ways to distinguish is the people predom flantly democrats who look at this through a human rights lens, and the people

predominantly republicans who looked at it through a national interest lens. that if you were a -- if the glasses you wear are human interest glasses, you saw the israeli-palestinian situation in -- you tended to see it in one light. if you wore the national interest glasses, you saw it in another light. and i guess my question is -- and we've touched on it a bit. e.j. has touched on it. is there such a factor at work in these questions about isis in syria, if not literally u.s. rights and human interests. is there literally some other way that people think about this issue that determines what their response is to your questions have been. >> okay. we'll take a second question over on this side. >> i'm harlan ulman.

i'm a recovering realist. my question in terms of an observation, we've been unsuccessful in two wars, in large measure, i would argue because we had two presidents who were inexperienced and really not competent to start and then to finish wars. and the proof is my question. during world war ii we had pretty good propaganda against a foe that really deserved it. during the cold war we weren't bad. one the question i pose to you is one i've posed to four secretary of states without effect. why wouldn't we take on and delegitimize al qaeda, isis and these horrible hard movements but rallying the muslim world and maybe get king abdullah of saudi arabia off his ass and put out a fatwa that says this is not good. >> susan, you want to start off on that?

>> i can't speak to internal saudi public opinion. but these guys whether it comes to american public opinion are certainly very effective american propagandists frankly. chopping people's heads off on video has given them pretty low approval ratings whether it comes to not only the united states but i'm sure american-muslims. they are somebody said to me back last fall when this escalation was occurring in the u.s. presence, they have not only triggered obama to do something he was extremely reluctant to do but they're almost a caricature like the perfect sort of dream villain whether it comes to american politics. so i'm not entirely sure in the american political context that they haven't been pretty effective propagandists themselves for their own cause. >> of course that's a self-fulfilling prophecy for them because if they bring down

our wrath -- if they could actually get the united states to reinvade iraq, that would be their dream. right? >> sure. sure. you know, this is i think a bigger part of the framing that we haven't talked a lot about today that i just throw in there. you started to get into it right before we went to the questions, which is the historical context. is it really about where americans are right now? terms of their views of american power and american foreign policy? or does this poll actually reflect a very correct historical assessment that most american interventions -- or any interventions in middle east politics are likely to fail. it seems to me that it sort of -- the same way that one could reasonably look at restarting negotiations for peace talks in -- among the israelis and the palestinians, that the odds are extremely high that they won't succeed. you don't need a lot of additional information. i do just wonder if the poll tells us more about a sort of sensible conclusion based on the

questions. >> i want to ask you to draw here on the earlier polling that you have done across the arab world. and of course we also have a lot of data from gallup and others toward islamist extremism. what do we know and what do we know about that counternarrative maybe not driven by the u.s. government but maybe driven by others. >> yeah. it is a really good question. let me just quickly address the earlier questions with susan, the world view issue i think is something that needs to be probed. that is something that i start with because i think there's something always there that is

just covered when you're just focused on the issues. you have to look at these packages. it goes down to -- it relates also to what gary asked about, so what is the prism through which democrats or republicans view as issues or at least the american public. obviously a multiple prism. but i just want to note one thing on the poll that you refer to you're right about democrats attempt to see it mostly through human rights. certainly the israel-palestine question mostly through human rights prism. but the republicans actually don't see it necessarily through a u.s. interest prism either. they actually see it through two prisms. one is also human rights, by the way, particularly evangelicals. but evangelicals in particular see it through a religious prism. on that one, they are the only community, the only community in the poll, that had strong feeling about it is just their position on that issue is religiously motivated. now here, we haven't done all

the analysis yet. there will be more analysis of the data when we look at further demographics as we've done in the past. but i would suggest that if you look here, just at the democrats and republicans alone, it tells that you there is something of a world view that you have to analyze. just by looking at the differences on some critical issues. going back tamara aquestion's question about attitudes toward the muslim worlds, i've been doing polling for a dozen years across arab countries on multiple issues including attitudes towards extremism and al qaeda. we've asked many questions originally about al qaeda specifically. there is something to be learned here because initially when we probed about attitudes toward al qaeda by west certainly after 9/11, most people when you ask them what aspect of al qaeda do

you admire most, if any? the number one answer during that decade was the fact that stands up to the united states. number two was that it was championing causes like the arab-israel issue. and those who said endorsed it's again today of a puritan calical state, always ranged from 4% to 10%. there was no variation. it was by and large the enemy of my enemy. that's not necessarily the case for people who join it. now remember that. we're talking about public attitudes in the broader community. not about why do people join. that's a different story. but of those attitudes in the public in general it was the enemy of my enemy. now the interesting thing about isis is that while it is -- of course it is derived from al qaeda. you look at it, al qaeda in iraq, so there is a link obviously, an ideological link. but here is the interesting thing. when isis initially emerged, it said, unlike al qaeda my first

aim is not america. my first aim is arab rulers. and it was tapping into something really really interesting. first, in iraq and syria, if you had sunni communities that were unhappy with the ruling governments in both places but more importantly, the fact that you had an arab spring of people wanting to get rid of regimes that have obviously stalled and the regimes were fighting back. so they were tapping into something that was different from al qaeda's issue which is they were angry with pleshg. they america. they were tapping into people who were angry with regimes. they said they left america by and large -- not that they liked america, it wasn't their operational priority. now it is different. so now the interesting thing -- this was my worry all along -- that the minute you go in and you intervene, do you make it about america and do you play into their hands with people who were reluctant to support them

but may still be angry with america. i still think that one of the things that's working against them is al qaeda was seen to be remote insignificant, america-centric organization that had no chance of ruling over them. with isis it's too close to home. and overwhelming majority of people in the arab world would never want something like isis to rule over them. and that threat probably is the one that is deflecting a little bit of the anger with the united states in the fight against isis. >> interesting. >> i'm going to answer this with impyrrhicseer impier ricks. what are the roots of opinion on isis. the poll really presents -- gives us three groups. the largest group are simply americans who fear it is an extension of al qaeda and they -- americans just want to

fight against the terrorist threat. that's 43%. but then 33% gave a kind of human rights answer. most troubled by isis' ruthless behavior and intolerance. so clearly there is still a human rights constituency. and then what foreign policy types tend to worry about isis can threaten our most vital interests. 16%. or threaten allies in the region 7%. some the smallest number are the people who probably think like foreign policy specialists which we need to include that we are a nation of moralists or protect our own shores jacksonians who tend to be governs by realists. >> well, that is a fascinating point. i have to add just one note on the question of public opinion in muslim majority countries when it comes to the extremists. isis and al qaeda vp ushave us at a real disadvantage here.

which we have to recognize. which is even if a vast majority of these populations rejects them rejects the ideology rejects their goals, rejects the idea that they might rule over them in a horrific manner that they are ruling over their territory that they've conquered, they don't need a majority of these populations to be successful. and they certainly don't need a majority of these populations to do what these three guys did in paris yesterday. they need a tiny tiny fringe. that is the essence of what makes this counterterrorism struggle so hard. you can do a lot on counternarrative. you can do a lot on enabling environment. but you really don't need that many people to be a successful terrorist movement. >> good point. >> and that's just a tough reality with which we have to reckon. i apologize, ladies and gentlemen, you have been fantastic and i see that there are a lot more questions but we have run out of time. i really want to thank you all for coming. i want to thank you, susan,

e.j. shibley for a wonderful poll, a gants conversationfantastic conversation. we will be continuing this fantastic conversation in weeks and months to come. thank you. today and tomorrow house and senate republicans are holding their first joint retreat in ten years. earlier today speaker john boehner held a news conference with reporters and addressed recent security threats. here's part of what he had to say. >> mr. boehner, there was a possibly attempt made on your life by a bartender at a country club dm westchester ohio. how are you feeling about that number one. and in light of a foiled attack on the capitol how do you feel about your personal security, your members' security and the security of the building itself? >> well we live in a dangerous country and we get reminded every week of the dangers that are out there.

we saw what happened in a week ago. my personal situation i'm not going to get into it but it's one thing to get a threat from far away. it is another when it's three doors from where you live. and obviously this young man has got some health issues mental health issues that need to be addressed and i hope he gets the help that he needs. but i do want to thank the fbi and the capitol police and westchester police and others who resolved this issue rather clearly. but with regard to the threat to the capitol? coming, frankly, not far from where i live. the first thing that strikes me is that we would have never known about this had it not been for the fisa program and our ability to collect information on people who pose an imminent threat. i'm going to say this one more

time because you're going to hear about it for months and months to come as we attempt to reauthorize the fisa program. our government does not spy on americans. unless there are americans who are doing things that, frankly tip out our law enforcement officials to an imminent threat. and it was our law enforcement officials and those programs that helped us stop this person before he committed a heinous crime in our nation's capital. >> mr. speaker, do you know something we don't? because apparently he was on social media talking about this. is there more to this that we don't know? >> i'll just -- we'll let the whole story roll out there. but it was far more than just that. >> if you missed any of our knch of the congressional republican retreat in hershey, pennsylvania, logon line any time to c-span.org.the congressional republican retreat in hershey, pennsylvania, logon line any time to c-span.org.of the congressional

republican retreat in hershey, pennsylvania, logon line any time to c-span.org.republican retreat in hershey, pennsylvania, logon line any time to c-span.org. coming up tonight on c-span, kansas governor sam brownback delivers his state of the state address live from topeka. then at 9:00, nevada governor brian sandoval gives his address before a joint session of the nevada legislature in carson city. see all of our state of the state coverage online any time at c-span.org. here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span networks. on c-span2 saturday night at 10:00, on book tv's after words wall street journal editor bret stephens argues that our enemies and competitors are taking advantage of the situation abroad created by the u.s. as it focuses on its domestic concerns. sunday night at 10:00 democratic representative from new york steve israel on his recent novel about a salesman and a top-secret government surveillance program. and on american history tv on c-span3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, george mason university

professor george turner on the early morm rns andons and their attempt to create a new zion in the american west in the 1830s. sunday afternoon at 4:00 on reel america, nine from little rock. the 1964 academy award winning film about the forces desegregation about little rock arkansas central high school. let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments pennsylvania@c-span.org. or send us a tweet tweet @c-span#comments. join the conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. the c-span cities tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life. this weekend we partnered with comcast for a visit to wheeling west virginia. >> i wrote these books "the wheel family," there are two

volumes. the reason i thought it was important to collect thesei family," there are two volumes. the reason i thought it was important to collect these histories isng is that wheeling transformed into an industrial city in the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 120th20th century. it is kind of uncommon in west virginia in that it drew a lot of immigrants from various parts of europe here in search of jobs and opportunity. so that generation that immigrant generation, is pretty much gone. i thought it was important to record their stories, to get the memories of the immigrant generation and the ethnic neighborhoods they formed. that's an important part of our history. most people tend to focus on the frontier history the civil war history, those periods that are important. but of equal importance in my mind is this industrial period and the immigration that wheeling had. >> wheeling starts as an outpost

on the frontier. that river was the western extent of the united states in the 1770s. the first project funded by the federal government for road production was the national road that extendeded from cumberland maryland to wheeling, virginia. and when it comes here to wleelgwleelg wheeling, that will give this community which about that time is about 50 years old the real spurt that it needs for growth. over the next 20 to 25 years, the population of wheeling will almost triple. >> watch all of our events from wheeling saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's book tv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3.

next, part of a forum on opportunities and challenges for u.s. and global energy policy in 2015. we'll hear from energy secretary ernest nomoniz about energy technology and security. the wilson center in washington d.c. hosts this event. >> good afternoon. i'm jane harman president and ceo of the wilson center and the event continues with what i have termed as the rock star from the energy department. i'd like to welcome -- i think we have several ambassadors here, plus a number of our cabinet members. i think the ambassadors from italy and lithuania are here. but i also see others who are very close and dear friends of the wilson center. we're thrilled to have secretary

moniz here today. ernie also joined us last october for an event on collaborative research target rg the the amazon and he co-authored a chapter of our book energy and security. that book frames this event. we're glad he's becoming such a wilson center regular. pe's back he's back to address the global energy picture for 2015. it is not an easy future to forecast. who could have predicted that oil prices would slide as much as they did in 2014? but the geopolitical implications of that are huge for russia, for iran and for consumers pumping gas here in the united states, and for those extracting fuels here in the united states. suvs are back. used hummers are on the market again. i never thought i'd see the day. and i don't know that anyone saw it coming. but it's where we are. so, where are we going? some pundits want to boil the

energy outlook down to one number -- the market price for a barrel of oil. but one number can't begin to capture the complexity behind global energy economies or international energy security, something very, very relevant to some of the problems in the middle east and, unfortunately, those bubbling up in paris and other capitals today. you have just heard arm nuanced view of this problem from our panelists. and you'll hear a very nuanced view, i believe, from secretary moniz. because this is what the wilson center does best getting beyond the usual snapshots and caricatures. too often my former employer, congress, tries to legislate without the whole ground truth, without a sense of difficulties and challenges. i served there for 17 years as a member and five years decades before as a senior staffer. so it's the wilson center's job

to promote a sharper understanding, which is the best basis for actionable ideas. as the new congress wrangles over keystone xl over iran sanctions, over cuba, this town needs creative non-partisan wisdom. the kind ernie has efrdoffered during a long and distinguished career. a rock star, of course, but also a star nuclear physicist, a committed public servant, and a center regular, there's no one bitter equipped to address this topic. please join me in welcoming secretary ernest moniz to speak to us. you're welcome to speak from there or here. >> i'll just speak from here, jane. okay? >> okay. >> makes sense. thanks, jane, for the introduction. i interpret nuanced remarks to be reference to the fact that this is a public meeting and i will be very nuanced in that sense. no. we'll try to spell out not

forecast but spell out some of the issues of course that we are dealing with and looking forward to the 2015 agenda. jane -- as jane mentioned my colleague melaniechanicallanie kenderdine and i contributed to this very fine book in its 2nd edition on energy and security and jan glitski and david goldman as the people who pulled that together, they were always very calm and not pushy at all in terms of our meeting deadlines. but i would say -- i'll talk about four things briefly because we have i think about 50 minutes. then we'll open to up to q&a. but i want to say the chapter that we wrote in this book was called "energy technology and

security," or something approximating that. and it was laid out in a way that i would make some brief comments on. its central construct way to lay out what we called energy security challenges. then to talk about policy responses to those challenges. and then finally, what our representativeare technology pathways to represent those policy approaches to challenges. for example if one looks at the first challenge in terms of concentration of natural resources and all the implications thereby then for example, some of those policy responses to that, fairly obvious. increased domestic oil. check. reduce demand for oil. check. provide alternatives to oil. i don't have to keep saying "check" every time. alternative vehicles drive

trains. we are seeing evs, for example, coming in faster than hybrids did in the comparable time period, et cetera. on gas of course again, domestic gas exports, working towards at least a global market. and a third area put in terms of concentration of natural resources were critical elements, rare earths, et cetera. you've seen just recently -- very kreerecently how quotas have been lifted on that because quite frankly, the attempt for control that market has in some sense backfired both in terms of development of alternatives and in d.o.e.'s case the establishment of an innovation hub specifically around the issue of addressing critical elements. so the technologies attached to those are pretty obvious. what i want to say is i think best way, a, we're trying to think about these issues i think, b -- i'll address the

other challenges briefly as well -- b, i think we are making tremendous progress actually across the board. and, c, as a broader issue -- this is again a part of getting to the issues of 2015 -- as we continue, a very, very strong focus on technology development and specifically on the cost reduction of the technologies that we need to meet our environmental, our climate, and our energy security challenges. my first point is that i think you all know, we have obviously very robust technology programs at the department. what i want to emphasize is, i believe they republican central to having the policy developments that we are looking for because when the costs come down of those technologies, jane's former colleagues can have a much easier job in terms

of addressing the policy issues be they on the climate or on the energy security side. i'll just mention without going into detail now that the other three overarching security challenges that we used in this chapter were climate change as a security issue, in addition to being environmental issue. third, the potential challenges around nuclear power development, nuclear fuel cycle development, and none pro li nonproliferation, and finally, issues around energy infrastructure and supply clans chains. i will not go into the nuclear power and non-proliferation issues but i will address climate, i will say more about our energy security agenda for 2015. and then on the energy infrastructure side, i'll tell

you where we stand on what's called the quadrennial energy review and where we are heading in terms of recommendations for energy infrastructure resilience, and other challenges that we face. so let me first turn in my limited remarks to climate and give you an update and look forward to 2015 in terms of addressing and implementing the president's climate action plan, the plan that was issued in june of 2013. that plan has three pillars. the one is mitigation. second is adaptation. and third is the international dimension that we need particularly on the road to paris. mitigation, well, again, that goes back to a theme i've

already touched upon. a big part of that, at least, is in fact the technology agenda. the -- one of our programs was created in 2009 and we think it's been very successful. we will be strongly moving forward again with rpe. and today, i'm pleased to say that today we will be announcing the third open 2009, 2012 now 2015 -- there is a pattern -- this will be our third so-called open solicitation. we're going to put out $125 million for new, novel technology ideas across the entire spectrum as long as the technology is "clean," that is advances a low-emissions agenda. these open solicitations you

might ask, why aren't they done all the time? well, for one thing they generate a lot of applications. the first round in in 2009 had well over 3,000 initial submissions for what ended up to be 35 awards. so you can understand these are a challenge. however we believe they are crucial in really opening up the aperture to all the good ideas that may come in. if you look at the 2009 open solicitation flexor example there was very innovative work on wind turbines using jet engine inspired designs but just a few days ago one of the initial awards, perhaps the largest of the initial awards -- happens to be at m.i.t. where i was at the time -- to a novel technology

called liquid metal batteries. and the announcement a few days ago was the commercialization of these batteries as utility scale storage devices. and so that is an example of a brand new technology that came out in this kind of open solicitation. in 2012, similarly, an example was sensing and computer hardware that could be in a backpack sized device that you could walk in and rapidly generate indoor, physical, and thermal etc. importants of a built -- maps of a built structure. so we think this is exciting in terms of really generating new technology ideas going forward. but let me also say that this will be a big year for your loan

program. i hope some of you have noticed the change in tone of what's been written on the loan program. for a while it was slinslind ra sinned ra, slind ra. the overall default rate was 2%. selindra represents two-thirds of the default rate in that one project. but it's paid off in major ways. utility scale photovoltaics. csp. we could go on and on. but what i want to emphasize now is we have just recently completed our full suite of call for proposals for an additional 40 billion dollars of loan

guarantee. that is 4 billion roughly in renewables and efficiency. these are set by statute. 8 billion for fossil technologies that lower emissions. roughly 12 for advanced nuclear technologies, and roughly 16 for new vehicle technologies. which probably will see more auto suppliers as opposed to integrated manufacturers coming forward. so we already have proposals in for many of those -- renewables and fossil. we see strong portfolios -- just want to make it very clear that we continue to be very forward leaning, very aggressive in terms of now the deployment side through our loan guarantee program. a different kind of mitigation push comes from setting standards, efficiency standards for example.

and i want to say that once again with two hours to spare before new year's, we met our goal of actually 10 efficiency standards in 2014 double the amount in half the time relative to the previous two years. we are going to keep running through the tape in this administration with this. because the cumulative impacts of these through 2030 are projected to be three giga tons of co2 reduction and nearly a trillion dollars of energy savings by the accumulation of these standards. so that is another area you could expect to see strong focus in the coming year. an adaptation -- i'll come back to that when i discuss the

energy review. and international consideration. obviously the joint announcement by presidents obama and xi in beijing we think really changed a lot of the discussion in terms of international collaboration. this year we will be working hard with the chinese in terms of moving forward on the joint commitments for the department of energy. it again goes back to technology. and we agreed to expand in scope. for example, adding a strong energy water nexus focus and to expand in scale our direct technology cooperation with the chinese. including a commitment to move forward jointly -- and we will invite other international partners -- to really push the edge in terms of understanding carbon dioxide sequestration in

a -- with a new -- a new and much expanded approach to instrumentation to understanding all the issues one fwheedsneeds to know about deep co2 sequestration to allow, for example the appropriate regulatory basis to be laid. so that is just an example of that is a very important area in international collaboration. the other one i'll mention and it's quite fresh. yesterday we had so called high level economic dialogue with mexico. and that in turn followed a trilateral in december with mexico and canada in terms of energy. it's been a very very, very positive discussion. one of the things going forward i see my colleague adam sminski out there from mia. he's leading one of the agreed to trusts in a trilateral

actually, which is data and energy infrastructure mapping integration. right now we don't have very good data that goes across the three countries. and sometimes we do have the data. it doesn't agree. so getting data integration we think is a very important foundational step. that is an example of a focus. but we will also have a very strong focus on infrastructure development, integrated infrastructure development. and with mexico for example, that will probably have -- not probably. it will have a particularly strong focus on electricity integration. there is more than i think most of us might have realized already in terms of electricity going back and forth across the border with a seasonal footprint. but it is still rather much -- rather lower than is the case

with canada for example where we import so much hydro. but that is an example going forward. and mexico will be hosting in march the energy and climate partnership with the americas. a multilateral context in -- for the western hemisphere. >> and we think this is very important both for our relationships with mexico, united states. but also looking at what is very clearly in latin america a lot of progressive movement on the climate front. on the way to paris. and of course i should have said in the beginning the mexican reform is extremely ambitious. and it is, a lot of the focus in the discussion publicly tends to be in the hydrocarbon second but that reform is equally ambitious in the electricity sector in

mexico. and to the extent to which these market structures and regulatory structures become much many in sync with those in the united states for example, collaboration and energy integration will just be so much easier. so that is a few of the areas on the road to paris that we will be looking at in terms of climate. in terms of energy security -- and i think i probably don't have too much time left. in terms of energy security let me say that a major focus for this year will be continue inging discussion, set of activities developed under the g-7 context umbrella. it is a g 7 activity in partnership with the european commission. and i'll just focus on one piece of it -- a very important piece.

the issues that were clearly put on the table with the ukraine situation, looking at in particular european energy security. but the first point to make is when we say it is european energy security we really mean it is the collective energy security of allies and friends. so even if we have -- if some of us may be tempted to have a complacent view of energy security in the united states because of our production, the fact is we have a serious interest in the broader energy security issue with our allies and friends. it has huge geopolitical implications for us and so that is a discussion that we are very, very deep into. part of it was first of all presenting an updated view of energy security. it is not just about diversity of oil supply