>> if i told you i was a little bit irish i would lie. i sympathize. >> reporter: if you think that -- [ inaudible question ] we i'm not going to get into that stuff. go ahead. >> you have denounced donald trump for zone phobia for inv e inciting violence and saying things that could be interpreted as inciting even more violence. at what point do you denounce his candidacy. is it something you have to do? >> i don't know. i don't believe i would do that. this is democratic process. the republican primary voter is going to make this decision on who or nominee is going to be. if the person doesn't get a

sufficient delegates then it goes to the convention and the delegates make that decision. and those delegates are elected in each of the caucuses and each of the districts. every state has a different way of doing it, by republicans. i'm going to respect that process. so it isn't my place to say who our nominee is or what. if anybody, not just donald trump, if anybody is out there representing the republican party in ways that we believe disfigure conservativism or do not portray what our views and principles are, i, as a party leader, and others, i would assume, have an obligation to defend our principles from being distorted. i am who i am. i'm a conservative who believes in specific principles and specific policies and i'm going to speak out on those all the time. here is what i can control and here is what i'm going to do. i, as speaker of the house, am going to lead an effort for all of our members of the house republican caucus to offer an agenda to the country.

so we can take an agenda to the men and women of america to show them how we get america back on track. more than two-thirds of the people in this country think america is headed in the wrong direction. that's not just republicans. we, as the other party, have a moral obligation and a duty to offer a bold and specific alternative course. so that if we win this election, then we have an obligation and mandate given to us from the citizens of this country to go on that course. to put those reforms in place to get this country back on the right track. that's something i can control. that's something i can be involved in. that's something i can help deliver. that's what i'm focussing on. thank you very much. booktv has 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. here are some programs to watch for. saturday night at 8:15 eastern a book discussion with city university of new york professor

douglas author of "throwing rocks at the google bus." how americans can change how they grow businesses to benefit employees and employers. then at 10:00 p.m. "liberty's nemesis" examining the growth of federal government and presidential power during the obama administration. mr. yew is interviewed by victoria tunsing. former assistant deputy attorney general. >> it seems obvious that the government can't regulate the money you used to participant in a constitutional right. so it says you have a right to free speech, particularly as you said in politics. how can the government say you can't spend money on using your constitutional right. >> on sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern former first lady laura bush chronicles the lives of afghan women since the u.s.

invasion in the book "we are afghan women." mrs. bush intwrote the introducn to the book which was put out by the george bush institute. go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. former congressman pete hofstra has written a book at the obama administration's foreign policy and the events leading up to the 2012 attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi. he discussed his time as chairman of the foreign relations democratic national committee and his experiences dealing with foreign leaders. he gave this talk last month at the leadership program of the rockies in colorado springs. it's an hour. >> one of my favorite speakers -- my favorite speaker is here right now. congressman pete hofstra was my closest friend when we both served in the u.s. house of representatives together. he's from west michigan, and was on the education committee with

me. we had great fun causing trouble for the department of education. it was great times. [ applause ] literally, here is what happened. most of these people get elected to congress. you know, they vote and make nice speeches and so on. when the floor work is finished, they head for the golf course or bars in town and things that have sort. i wasn't into that. i made friends with people who took the job seriously and knew we had an important responsibility for our constituency. that's how pete and i became friends. >> there's a great story. one time we let everybody leave town and there were five or six who stayed behind under pete's leadership. we decided to go to the department of education office buildings and walk through the front door and just start meeting people and asking them what they do for a living. started on the first floor and worked our way up the massive empire of a building. get to the top floor where the

secretary was. they were in a panic by then because word had gotten out there were a few congressman in the building. that's an interesting little antedote. it's a fine statement of the character of this particular former member of congress. it was also the chairman of the house intelligence committee, and put that same kind of effort into traveling the country, visiting with all the agencies responsible for our national security. in that process becomes a national security expert himself. sufficient when he published his recent book "architects of disaster." i got my hands on a copy a few months ago, by the way, read it cover to cover. i urge you to do the same. it's in the back back here. it's very well written. it's concise. it's easy to follow. it puts things, you know, of all the perspectives and opinions that you hear swirling on the internet and on your morning news shows. it puts things in clear perspective. solid evidence. irrefutable conclusions. i urge you -- look how big it

is. you can become an expert on national security and the middle east courtesy of our next speaker. text lpr 313131 in order to ensure you get our mobile updates. i've got a script here for congressman hoef stfstra, but m off-t off-the-cuff introductions was even better. let he turn the floor over to congressman pete hofstra. >> thank you, bob. it's great to be with you this morning. i want to talk to you this morning a little bit about threat of radical jihadism. a war we face. i want to focus on that and talk about, as we go through it, i'll give you what i think are some of the lessons learned. you know, mark twain said -- he's attributed to have said history doesn't repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes. so i think there's a lot for us

learn especially over the last 15 years about the violent war with radical jihad. what we call the stealth jihad where they're trying to influence us to use our very values, our society, our rules, our laws against us to change who we are. i will share a few bob schaffer stories as we go through the process. as bob said, he and i were best friends in the years we had the opportunity to serve together. i'll share some of those. i learned a lot from bob and very grateful that the people of colorado sent them to washington for us do those kinds of things. and then i also very much look forward to having good portion of time to talk about the things that you want to talk about. to answer some of your questions about, you know, whether it's

nsa, cia, and those types of things. i did have a phenomenal opportunity to serve in washington, to serve on the intelligence committee, to be chairman of the intelligence committee or the lead republican for more than six years for the gang of eight. and you get to have the opportunity to have insights into some of the greatest secrets that we have as a country that we employ to keep america safe. so the real question is, let me put in context to get your interest initially. you know, since regardless of when you think the war on terror started or when they started attacking us, whether it's 1979 with the take over of our embassy in tehran, whether you think it's 2001 9/11. from a military standpoint, i think all the evidence is out there today we are losing that war. this is the first time in american history where we've been involved in this kind of a conflict, and for that long of a

period of time that we are losing. this is not a war where over the last decade, over the last 15 years we've actually made any progress in fighting it. as a matter of fact, we're going downhill and going downhill relatively quickly. if you take a look at what is going on in europe today, they are in danger of losing not only the military, not that it's being fought on their -- they're in danger of losing their cultural identity because of what they've done over the last 20 to 25 years. and the challenges for those of us in this room who love america is to learn from the experience of what is going on in europe to make sure we don't make the same kinds of mistakes they've made in other parts of the world. the real question is, how does a guy who is a dutch immigrant -- my parents emigrated here when i was 3 years old, move through

this process. i'm in a -- i move into a marketing career. getting into this kind of position to be talking about national security. let me give you a little bit of context. i think there's some lessons learned there as well. the first of which, as my parents left europe in 1956. so 11 years after world war ii. people say, you know, why would your parents leave? eleven years after world war ii europe was still a very depressing place. they still had not recovered from world war ii. and the devastation. so they're looking at it and they've got three kid. three, six, and ten and saying there's not a lot of opportunity here for our kids. we can make a living. if we want opportunity for our kids, we need to go somewhere else. and america was welcoming and said come to america.

so if you think about it, in europe, the cohesion, the marshall plans and all of these types of things. if 11 years after world war ii it was still a depressing place. take that lesson and apply it to the middle east today. iraq, syria, yemen, libya, other places in northern africa. how quickly do we think the middle east is going to be able to rebuild itself and be back at any point of stability, coheren coherence, or stable governments and we are now looking at a decades long issue in front us. take a look at the cities that have been destroyed in parts of iraq, aleppo, and other parts of syria. the bombing that is now going on in libya, and think if they can't rebuild europe in 11

years, how quickly do you think they're going to be able to rebuild the physical structure in the middle east? and how long do you think it's going to be -- going to be before you can bring the people of those regions back together. they live together for, you know, hundreds of years. with a agagenocide going on agat christians and other religious minorities how long will it be before you put the fabric of that society back together. it's going to be a long time. this problem is going to be with us for a long time. my parents came to america. they take their kids with them. and the christian school -- the local christian school principal at the middle school had a great job. his job was to help assimilate us.

we had sponsors back them to help us get assimilated. get a place to life, find a job. we were originally supposed to go cleveland. a couple of weeks before my parents emigrated, we ended up moving the family from cleveland -- that was going to be our sponsor backed out. they found a sponsor for us in west michigan. that's how we ended up going from the netherlands to holland, michigan. you guys are in colorado. you may not quite appreciate this as much as what i do and how thankful i am for it, but it also -- that move made sure that i was going to be a wolverine instead of a buckeye. all right. thag what we're really thankful about. the job of our principal at the middle school was very interesting.

we meet with him and i don't remember it, of course, but my parents will tell the story. you fill out a lot of paperwork and they go through the process. and they ask him, you know, "what is this kid's name." he'll become andrew. okay. you have to americanize it. they said what is her name? she'll going to become -- i'm the last one in line. right. think about that. the fun people like bob could have now if this system were still in place. they said what is his name? they tell him. they said we don't have that name here. there's no way to americanize it. okay. what's his middle name? peter all right.

he's going to be pete. at 3 years old, i lost my first name. you can laugh about it. it's traumatic for me. you know, it's kind of a 3, 4, 5 years old and they're calling me something at home and something else when i go somewhere else. focus there was had a sponsor family. you got integrated. my brother and sister went to school. there was no english as a second language. i'm not saying whether that's a good program or a bad program. but it was kind of like my sister tells the story she gets to school. all she speaks is dutch. all the teachers and everybody speaks english. she has to go to the bathroom but takes her couple of hours to communicate. i have to go. it was all about becoming an american. that is the lesson. because it's kind of like you're

coming to america and the focus here -- my parents fully bought into it. the focus is you're coming to america. you're going to become americans and we're going do everything we can to help you to assimilate and share our values and help build our country. in some cases, we're starting to lose that focus and say america is something very different. there's new longer a shared value system. jew d it's not the melting pot where we become americans. it's no long er a melting pot bt a place for everybody to come and be whoever they want to be. you know, that's something we have to have a national dialogue on saying that's not -- that's not what it means to be american. america is about embracing and sharing the set of goals and values together. but that is something i think europe has forgotten about.

germany, netherlands, other places they lost sight of the culture and value to their society. they allowed people to come in and never forced them and encouraged them and helped them to become dutch. to become german and swedes and they're facing the problems. let's transition over to what bob was talking about. what i see now in this military war against radical jihadists. 2001 i get put on the intelligence committee for all the wrong reasons in january. and nine months later we have 9/11. for the next nine and a half years, i spend almost all of my time focussed on intelligence. work on the intention committll

committee. i don't do much else in washington in the next nine years. 2003 one of my colleagues says, "hey, pete. do you want to go to libya and meet with gadhafi?" . not really. that was not on my bucket list. i've gone with bob to ukraine. i've met putin. i've gone with bob to afghanistan. i've met with karzai. no, i never really thought about meeting gadhafi. i just kind of laughed about it. i said no. he said, well, no seriously. the bush administration wants us to go meet with gadhafi because there are indications that gadhafi, after he's seen for whatever reasons, you know, we've had sanctions against him, republicans and democrats. this is an important point. republicans and democrats

consistently for 25 years had a strategy to contain, confront, and ultimately defeat gadhafi. the executive brancht in congress had a strat zegy. she's evil. he's done other terrorist atax against the united states. we're going to ostracize him from the world community until he changes his behavior. we're going to confront him and contain him and ultimately defeat him. it appeared to be working. he wants to come in from the cold. we go. i go with him. a group of us go and we meet wi with gadhafi. between 2003 and 2009 i had the opportunity to go back and meet with him on two more occasions. i'm one of the few people who had the opportunity to go to libya and meet with the, you know, the man of libya on three

different occasions. what we do -- what we find when we meet with him is that, yes, he is interested in changing his behavior. within 24 months through the work of the state department and other negotiations, the intelligence community, all these types of things. gadhafi doesn't mean he becomes a boy scout and all these types of things, but he becomes -- it is a phenomenal win in american foreign policy that republicans and democrats could take shared credit and responsibility for. what does he do? he pays reparations to the individuals of pan a.m. 103. does it bring the family members back and heal the wounds? absolutely not. that the point in time, it's about what it's left to do. he decides to give up the new program. it's not some goldberg scheme if you push here and push here there and that you'll figure out

they're not doing nuke weapons anymore. maybe. which is what we have with iran. we go over there. how do we know the nuke program is gone? it's now sitting somewhere in a warehouse in the united states of america next to the arc of the covenant and we'll never find it again. only those who love "indiana jones" will get that. they crated it up, took it from libya, shipped it to the united states. sense abraham accepted the shipment. he gave up his nuke program. most importantly because when you take a look at the fighters that were fighting the u.s. and afghanistan and iraq and those types of things, they will -- you will realize they came from places that you are now on the front page of american news. where did they come from?

per capita no country provided more fighters than libya. they came from a place called benghazi. why did they come from there? if they stayed there gadhafi would kill them. he never liked them, but after 2004 and 2005 he became an ally with us in fighting radical jihadists. so the great foreign policy w win -- because we were building allies for what has now evolved into the greatest threat against the united states of america, which is radical jihad. radical islamists. we were building a coalition and people we didn't necessarily agree with on lots of issues, but at least on that core issue they agreed with us and said radical jihadists.

meeting with gadhafi. this guy had fought with them. fought radical jihadists for years. the interesting thing is, you know, being the chair of intel or being on the intel committee and traveling around the world, some of you may remember that the sunday insert you'll see in your sunday papers. every once awhile they used to publish the top 20 worse deck they or t -- dictators in the world. one sunday morning i'm looking at the front cover and there's putin, there's mubarak, gadhafi, there's assad, and you go through the list. you look at it. this is interesting. i'm looking through it and checking it to say i've met with him. i've met with him. and pretty soon i've got half the boxes checked. i'm thinking what kind of job do i have? these are the kinds of people that i'm meeting with. but in many of these cases

where, from a human rights record and a lot of other things, they weren't necessarily american allies. or excuse me, they didn't represent american values. but what they did do is they helped us in fighting the enemies and helping keep america secure. mubarak egypt. before we went into iraq, i remember going and meeting with a lot of the leaders in the middle east, and interesting perspective as they all warned us in advance. be careful about what you are thinking about doing. this will not be nearly as easy as what you think it is. it might be. and what we've learned with gadhafi and mubarak and saddam and folks in afghanistan is getting rid of a two-bit dictator is not that hard for the greatest military power in

the united states. excuse me, the greatest power in the world. that's not hard to do. putting the pieces back together is really, really hard. but the other thing that these folks told us, as we went around and met with them, is we're sharing this information with you because we want you to make your decision in a fully informed way. the second thing they told us is, regardless of the decision that you make, we will be with you. like mubarak, over a period of time, over the suez canal, intelligence, everything. abdullah in jordan. they did everything we asked them to do for us to be successful. gadhafi got to the point he was doing everything we asked him to do. including insights.

these folks all did what we asked them to do to help keep america safe and for us to be successful in the wars we were fighting. in 2009, it all changed. think about this. i laid out the strategies to get gadhafi to switch. it was a bipartisan strategy that extended long-term. foreign policy is hard when you don't move -- you don't move foreign policy very quickly or if you move in quickly you don't move it very effectively. in 2008, 2007 the current president -- this is where you have to listen so carefully to what candidates tell you. you actually have -- you don't have to believe them. everybody says politicians spend too much tilying to the america people. listen to what they say.

obama warned us in 2007 he was on public radio in new hampshire, i believe. he said the day after i'm elected, the world will see us differently. the muslim world will see us differently. that was a promise. he's carried through on that promise. the world does see us differently. in 2016 than they did in 2008. because he fundamentally changed our approach against radical jihadists and the threats we face out there. think about it. 2009 i'm in colorado. this is when there's the green revolution in iran. this is when there's people on the streets in iran that are protesting for freedom. and what is america's response? nothing.

it is silence. and you're thinking, wow, if there's anybody we ought to be embracing, it's the people in the streets and iran who are clamoring for more democracy and freedom. but we are silent. we then go to egypt and the president gives his famous speech. i'm picking on this president right now, but i'll tell you over the last 15 years there's plenty of blame to go around to find why we're in the position we're in today. by both parties. in 2009 the president goes to cairo and gives a speech. who does he invite in to sit in the front rows? the muslim brotherhood. who is the muslim brotherhood? the muslim brotherhood is formed in the 1920s to reestablish the

caliphate that was defeated in the 15 to 20 years before that. they want to reestablish caliphate, reimpose sharia law. they've had a long-term strategy to do that. they're very patient. that's who the president invites to sit in the front row. he believes that -- this is a mistake from 2007. the world will see us differently because i'm president. that's a very eerie statement. the world will see america differently because one person is now in the white house. and everybody else, whether it's the state department or everybody that served before, they're now irrelevant and the world will look at us and they will change their self-interest, they will change their behavior all because we have one new person in the white house.

so he decided he would engage with the muslim brotherhood. send a very clear signal to the muslim brotherhood, but also send a very clear signal to our allies. people who stood by america that this is a new world. i'm nervous. what happens? the muslim brotherhood, quote, unquote the arab spring which has not turned into an arab spring turned into, you know, an arab disaster throughout the middle east. mubarak gets overthrown, almost dies in jail. thankfully the military comes back and throws the muslim brotherhood out. egypt is still trying to recover from that disaster. during those 12 to 14 months when the muslim brotherhood was in control what happened? radical jihadist elements established themselves in the sinai peninsula. they are still there on the southern border of israel.

we're trying to -- and the egyptian government is still trying to root them out and bring stability back to their country. what happens in libya? you know, the freedom the freedom fighters in libya. sure, there are some freedom fighters in egypt. there were some freedom fighters in libya. but by and large, what happened in libya was we engaged radical jihadists to overthrow gadhafi. and the end result is what happened on 9/11 and 2012 in benghazi is individuals and groups that maybe not the exact individuals or the groups and that that were trained and equipped by nato to overthrow gadhafi used the resources and the training to kill our ambassador and kill three other americans.

because their objective was not to establish democracy in libya. their objective was to take over the government, establish the caliphate, establish sharia law, and as soon as they got rid of gadhafi, they were going to get rid of the u.s. and guess what? they succeeded. the u.s. left an we're now in a position where we are bombing in libya because they have established a caliphate, there's 5,000 jihadists estimated to be in libya who are now exporting fighter, equipment and ideology into northern africa. where do they send their ideology and fighters and weapons first? come on, you know. syria. people have reported weapons, fighters. libya has a history of exporting fighters to syria through turkey.

it was flush with weapons. nato flooded libya with weapons. uae, qatar, they flooded libya with weapons. the arms caches were liberated. they went turkey into syria. we were more encouraging of it than stopping it. why? s a said needed to gop he's an evil man. but we called the book one of the things that mubarak, kwa dar fi -- i need to give him credit

for that. i was talking to him about libya and talking about libya and keeping the radical jihadists down. kind of like keeping the lid on the garbage can. mubarak, gadhafi, assad, they were imperfect, but they kept the lid on the garbage can. they were concerned and fighting radical jihadists. we created an environment for radical jihadists to grow, embracing the muslim brotherhood. it's not just over there. we're completing a report and we're going to be putting a book out often this as well in the near future. we not only have embraced the muslim brotherhood, the people that want to destroy an undercut western democracy all around the world. but we've embraced them and we have allowed representatives of the muslim brotherhood to come

into the united states, their frond organization and we have allowed them access into our federal government agencies and into the white house, which is absolutely unconscionable. these people want to destroy the united states and they have access now to the highest levels of our government to inform, to, quote, unquote, inform our foreign policy. this is where we are today. the end result is in the next week or so we're going to have another report out from ipt. look at the evidence. from 2001 to 2006 radical jihadists on a global basics weres s bs b s bs by dispersed. from 2007 so 2011, that number

increased to somewhere in the high 3,000s. okay? 2012-2013, we went from 35, 3,700 per year on average to over 9,000. it's starting to concentrate. we've gone from 9,000 to 28,000 per year victims of radical jihadists attacks. those attacks are now concentrated in two areas, primarily. primarily in the middle east and in africa. as bob will remember, when we were in congress, we said -- and this was the whole strategy about going into afghanistan. nobody know where is afghanistan is, right? right?

they were trained to attack us. we're going to go into the end of the world. the joke about afghanistan, afghanistan was formed when all the countries around it decided what territory they didn't want and they drew the boundaries and what was left was afghanistan. but we were willing to go to afghanistan to make sure there was not a safe place for these people to plan and prepare and train to attack america. we would go to afghanistan. well guess what. they now have a relatively -- sure, we're bombing. the problem is our planes fly over and too many times they come back with the bomb still on, but we've given them a big scare because we' gloen over them. but, you know, they've now got a safe haven in somewhat of a safe haven where they've organized with the caliphate in syria and iraq. they've got a safe haven until more recently in libya.

what's going to happen here. what are our predictions that the investigative project on terrorism for 2016, '17 and '18. fatalities are going to go up, because we don't have effective strategies. the second thing we predict is that in the middle east with what was going on with syria, iraq, yemen, watch out what's going to happen with turkey, watch out what's going to happen with jordan, watch out what's going to happen with saudi, watch out what's going to happen in egypt and watch out what's going to happen in israel. okay? it is -- it's just a rat's next right now. we don't have the strategies to confront it and contain it.

look at africa, nine of the countries now -- back in 2001, it was ten countries dispersed widely. now it's 18 countries there's a relatively high level of terrorist activity. the middle east, concentrated in the middle east and africa, nine countries in africa. that number is going to grow. because again they've got a base where they can train, prepare and attack other places. you're going to see africa get to be a bigger hot spot. if you've got the middle east and libya and northern africa. through turkey, last year diane and i were in budapest.

we got on a train saturday morning and typical russian efficiency. you got in one line to go into another line to get into a line to buy your ticket. we took the train from budapest to prague. we got to prague the next morning and turned on tv. the station that we were in the day before was not surrounded by 5,000 to 10,000 refugees and migrants. you've got this getway. now you have these fighters going into europe. you've got the gateway from libya. why? because it's not that far. across the mediterranean. and you can get to the soft underbelly of europe. europe is at risk.

i think that the security services in europe are going to be absolutely stressed with the new folks coming in with the folks they've already had here. you're going to see an increase of terrorism and violence in europe in the next 18 to 24 months. there's no way that they can stop it. they're going to expand into asia. they are on the move. they have the momentum right now. and we as americans and the west fail to realize it and admit it and confront it. this doesn't look like winning to me, folks. when you see that we've got failed states in libya, syria, iraq. when you take a look at it and go back to what we talked about

when we started which is that when it break, it's very, very hard to put together. it's going to take a long time. the northeast is broken. africa is broken. large portions of africa are broken. europe is on the verge of breaking. and for europe to get back to the europe we knew 10 to 15 years ago, i'm not sure it's even possible. but the question is how far will it go? and how far will it deteriorate before they actually put in place? and what you'll see in many of these countries is -- and we look at this very, very closely. there is now a break between the populist and the governed. we see the same thing here.

there's a disconnection, you know? you've got governments in europe saying come on in, welcome in. you've got people in the community saying uh-uh, this isn't working for us. we need to -- if we're going to do that, we question. we've got to do some kind of assimilation process or whatever or we're going to lose our germanness. youive' gotta break. here in the united states, we face some of those same kinds of issues. how many of you have heard about legislation that a lot of states are considering, american law for american courts. is that something we're working on in colorado? no. and people say why would you have to do that? in many parts of europe, there are little enclaves or area where is they allow for sharia

law. if we talk about -- think about it. we don't talk -- people who are talking about american law for american courts don't mention any other kind of thing, we just want to reaffirm that in america, think about it, in america, we want to affirm that if you go to court, you will be judged by american law and nothing else. if you're espousing those kinds of ideals it's hate speech. no it's not. that's a speech that say is love america. i kind of like our system. it's imperfect, but it's better than anything else out there. i want to make sure that people here recognize that if you're in america, you will live under american law. do we really want to embrace some of the philosophy and

ideology out there in some of the other places. i'm sorry, it's not the values that i em brags, that we in america embrace. their treatment of men, treatment of kids. human rights, basic human rights and human values. no, we have to eare enforce who we are and what we have to do. i encourage you, the threat to america is real and it's today. this is not something that we can leave to our kids and our grand kids. this is when i talk to a lot of my friends in europe, it's kind of like we wish that we had talked about this and addressed this 15 years ago.

the second lesson that they tell us is learn from us and don't make the same mistakes we made. america is strong, we are the greatest, we are exceptional. and the question that we now have is what are we going to do to make sure that we keep that exceptionalism and we continue to be the right hope of the world. does that mean everybody has to be like us? no. for everybody to get where we want to be, we would love that to happen. we're not going to employ our military to make that happen. we're going to set our example for who we are so people want to aspire to what we are and who we are and when they see who we are, they will want it and make that change for themselves. that is the challenge we face. i believe we're losing today is

that we need a national dialogue to move this forward. we need to get rid of republican and democrat labels on this. we need to embrace and come together once again as americans and talk about what it means to be americans and develop a long-term strategy. we can no longer have a foreign policy that shifts dramatically every time we put a new person into the white house. this is to determine who america is and from one president to the next, we may tweak our foreign policy, but never again will we so dramatically change our foreign policy that, your know, we are in the mess that we are today. our enemies no longer fear us, our friends no longer trust us. this is not brain surgery, folks. assad has looked at mubarak and said this is a guy that did everything that the americans asked him to do for 30 years and

the americans threw him under the bus. the bus kept going from cairo to tr tr tr tripoli and it rode over him next. gadhafi lived six months longer than bin laden before we killed him. what is the lesson to assad or anybody else out there? that's a good idea. i think i'll negotiate with the americans. if i really change my behavior, if i improve human rights or go after radical jihadists and work with em them, they're going to be with me. i don't think so, that's not going to work.

a shared vision for where we want to go, how we're going to promote them in the future. the good things that we've done, with that, i'm more than willing to take whatever questions you want to throw my way. >> are there any -- two-part question. are there any democrats that could give that same kind of speech to a room? and if not, if you were in this room with a group of democrats, what would they be throwing back at you? >> yeah, i think there are. there are some. there's not a lot of democrats, but there are some who clearly see the threat from radical jihadists. what will they throw back at me?

hillary clinton was talking about -- this amazes me. she talked ability in one of the debates said libya is the best example of the the use of smart power. i was like you've got to be kidding me. but that's what they believe. you mentioned in the front row here, racist, islamaphobe, you just don't see the world clearly. what i do in the book is outline a series of what i think are realistic foreign policy and outline. foreign policy is not black and white. most of the world that i dealt with in foreign policy, it's gray. to move forward, you sometimes have to do business with bad people. and there's a whole series of things like that.

they're racist, they're scared and those kinds of things. i would have left gadhafi in place. i would have left as sad in place. i would have left mubarak in place. and if we had left those three governments in place, the middle east would be a whole lot different today. why would i say that. when you go in and break it, it's really, really hard to put back together. >> it seems like we're playing this game of whack-a-mole. we take them out and more show up in the vacuum. it seems like maybe our best strategy is just to support a few strongmen, even though that seems, you know, unpleasant in itself.

people in the west were unwilling to put resources and those types of things to keep the lid on. you see failed states. the other thing i report will show, where do you see the graetdest number of terrorist attacks? the failed states. where are the failed states. the ones we're more active in. >> paul cohen 2016, denver, colorado. sir, you describe a change you would like to see in the political dynamic such that foreign policy doesn't go through theetz abrupt changes between administrations, especially different parties.

>> just a whole new level of maturity back into the political process. >> we're not going to have -- so we're all going to mature all of a sudden? >> no. i'm not -- you're asking how it could happen. i'm not saying it will happen. >> how you see it happening. what can we do to make it happen? >> i'm very pessimistic, okay? i listen to the campaigns today on both sides of the aisle and i see a lot of phrases thrown around that provide the american people with the hope and the expectation that there are easy answers to these, what i see as deep enduring problems. and it's kind of like no, this is not. this is hard, this is not political. you're using this for political advantage. and so i'm very pessimistic, and i see the real opportunity that as you go from one -- what we've seen over the last 12 to 14 years, we're going to see for

the next 12 to 14 years are foreign policy is a political hot button. it is a leverage point to win elections. and it's going to flow back and forth. foreign policy is really, really hard. people are going to make mistakes, and the other political party is going to leverage that for their political advantage. and we as americans are going to suffer. i'm pessimistic about us actually developing the maturity to have the kind of discussions we need on foreign policy. i'm sorry i wish i had an optimistic answer but i don't. i lived through it when i was on the intel committee. there was all this discussion about black sites. republicans and democrats all knew that these things were going on. we were brief, we were briefed in detail about what enhanced interrogations were where they were being used, who they are

being used on. it was a gang of eight type of thing. and then i started seeing it in the press. and i know where it came from. it didn't come out of the intel community. it came out of congress. and it was using it for political advantage. they thought that they could destroy the other political party and use it to gain advantage in the next election. and you know what, they were right. and they hurt america because of it. and that doesn't mean i agree with every one of those policies. but every single republican and democrat in that room had the opportunity to stand up and say no. and i never saw one of them do it. until they had an opportunity to talk to the press anonymously. >> congressman, maybe my question plays on what you just said. in the back there, there's a sign that says big government sucks. and we've heard a number of previous speakers say some

variant of big government sucks. but the fact remains, i think if you look at this country's history, the war is the health of the state, and if we're going to go to war, you can not run a war on the basis of big government spungs wars mean higher taxes, they mean larger debts. they mean more government power, and they mean less freedom for individuals. it's just part of the way we deal with emergencies when wars happen. and i think that's something that maybe this program needs to think about. >> yeah. okay. >> congressman, i'm jack graham from fort collins. i've heard many people talk about the fact that we're not fighting a military war, we're also finally a ideology in ism, radical terrorism. similar with naziism, stalinism and imperialism. do you agree with that? and if you do, how do we fight it?

>> absolutely. i just got a -- someone sent it to me this morning where someone asked about regit gabriel from act for america. yeah, it is an ideological war, as well as a military war. and you have to fight both of them. she does it much better than i do, the question was, aren't most muslims peace loving? it's kind of like yeah, most germans were peace loving and we still ended up fighting a war that cost millions of lives. many people in -- most people in russia are peace loving. and they still went through a process where they killed 20 million people. most japanese are peace loving, but they went through a killing swath across much of asia. so yeah, we have to fight the ideology. a protestant in mumy can't fight the ideological war. i'm