obvious intelligence would create the same kind of response. would be -- produce the same response. he controls a cohort of well- trained and well capable egyptians and to a lesser extent, algerians who are capable of attacks and the should not be taken lightly. this notion of ducouer organization able to plan, recruit, and -- this recruit. that has been put asunder in the past five-six years. we can all point to things that have been plotted or planned in western pakistan and our intelligence has identified that since 2006. we have shown an ability to intercept and work with partners to include the much- maligned and deservedly so but the very janus-faced isi who were plotting mass of attacks in western europe and against us board find -- or to find bits

of information. al qaeda as a core organization has no longer the kind of capability nor do i think they can regain it based on who is left alive. a monograph by published lists those who are left out there who have limited capability to reorganize. this notion of base for certain conquests. the relationship between bin laden and mullah omar and the haqqani group is showing that organization. not that al-zawahiri was in play but they never swore an oath. my read of the situation, having lived in that part of the world and having done work with the assistance of others suggests to me strongly that it is not the ideological linkage to al qaeda that matters most to

zero more. but rather than strategic linkage to pakistan and -- notions that the jihad from western pakistan is fermented into an international problem for americans or chinese source -- or others. that is the break right now. it leaves us with half the other two of the five things that are out there. which we do have to worry about a week have to take a different tack and approach and one what i -- i would argue that we're seeing and taking already. reduce the footprint of american military and western military, or enter around special forces, and direct strike technology and better coordination. that is where i think we're headed in yemen and somalia. it may be slow but where we need to get to. we should expect that al qaeda is trying to coopt. let's be careful about making sure the wheel is connected to

the bus. cannot claiming ownership. vague notion of the lone wolf terrace attacker. the u.s. came to grips and i refer you to the most recent counter-terrorism strategy. the phrase resilience comes up a lot. that has to do with the fact that no matter how good we are at counter-terrorism activities, we're never going to do away with the loan will for the inspired individual that shows up at the recruiting station or with a claim of self professed internet activity, reading a website and going off and doing something negative. they are less catastrophic. it is time that we followed the mantra of resilience and looked at our capabilities and say, we have more than enough ability to hook -- handle these as long

as we keep connected with these parts of the world where these folks are likely to be. the prescription is not to over emphasize or hyper-inflated the degree to which al qaeda brings together a dangerous but not globally catastrophically dangerous journey movement and recognize that al qaeda's uniqueness is the attempt to make -- put that together. that made it dangerous. bin laden's death has reduced the danger and our policy needs to reflect that going forward. [applause] >> thank you very much. in honor of our speakers, i would like to develop some sort of discussion. matt has to leave. are there any questions at this point?

would you kindly come to the microphone over there? >> we have scared them spaceless. >> -- speechless. >> if you want to make a statement or ask a question or comment? >> nelson hoenig. =-- milton hoenig. what you have said has to do with the concern over a rise in domestic terrorism and terrorism is perhaps inspired by the of that -- a by the ideas -- inspired by the ideas of al

qaeda. what is your feeling about the importance of domestic terrorism? what is the panel's concern? >> on the one hand what i have said might seem to minimize the danger of terrorist attacks but terrorist attacks are one of the major means that al qaeda has used in this war as a whole. it is one of their major tactics they have used. i personally do not believe that anything i said should minimize the threat that we face for potential terrorist attacks. i would like to say, if zawahiri were smart, he would never carry out another attack on the u.s. again. unless americans are dying, apparently, we do not care. if he were smart, he would never ever attack us again and keep doing what has been going on in the rest of the world as one -- the rest of the world.

the garden spots of the world, as one person put it, dismissively. if he made a public declaration, we have given up. that would be one of the smartest thing he -- things he could do strategically. given his aims. i do not believe he will do it. i have a slightly different read on him. 15 years ago, i think that was right on. i think he had ticked off everybody in his entire organization that he'd started. he had such an abrasive personality, caused by certain events in his life, the fact that he was tortured so horribly and betrayed his best friend to death. i think there is a lot of pent- up anger that kept him from working well, playing well with

the other children. on the other hand, he has 15 or 20, nearly 20 to watch bin laden and to learn things and see how the organization works and i am sure he has a deputy who will take over for him. the organization is this tightly knit, hierarchical organization with lots of room for guys getting killed off and replacing them. now that that does not cause problems. a lot of people expected the court to collapse and the world wide thing to collapse after the death of bin laden and that did not happen. there were 40 days of silence and he was announced as the next head and things went on. on the other hand, i said that i do not think he will be able to give up attacking the u.s. his strategic focus seems to be egypt and exploiting the arab spring.

he is also extremely angry at the united states. i think his attack on the u.s. will not be about chasing the u.s. out of our lands or will not be about fund-raising as such. i do not think it has a rational basis at all. it will be pure revenge. it was the u.s. that killed his wife and his kids and i do not think he has ever forgotten that any more than i think he has forgotten he was tortured by the egyptian government and betrayed his best friend. i do worry about attacks on the u.s. but i do not see them as having the kind of tight strategic games that bin loudoun -- bin laden's attack had. i believe it will be, i want revenge and he will do it regardless of is to the benefit of the group or not.

>> part of that is irrelevant in that the attacks on the u.s. could come from al qaeda core, it could be driven by al qaeda corp. the courts today has less of a capability to do the spectacular than it once did. they are very capable. people who know the united states who are trying to carry out attacks but the larger thing about the home grown extremist threat, they will not come from the al qaeda core. operationally what that means is if it's not that we will not have attempts and spent -- on spectacular attacks, what is much more likely and likely to

be more frequent is smaller scale attacks by homegrown and extremists or wannabes. some might have ties back as the times or bomber did back to pakistan and others may not. hopefully, most of those will fail. hopefully they will be thwarted. if they are not deported, we did not toward the times square bombing. there were not capable. they could not remember how to make the bomb. it could not go off. even this subway bomb that they had to communicate back one more time. they could not figure out how to wire it just right. it may not be another tactic to kill thousands but it could kill hundreds or several dozen. if you had a bunch of the succeeding it could be devastating and some -- it could have some devastating economic effects. the shifts of how we understand al qaeda beyond the court. -- the core.

your paper was good, thomas. it is the affiliate's and it is very much the fact that this idea has metastasized. -- the affiliates and it is very much the fact that this idea has metastasized. i believe -- with makes it amenable and open are things that have to do with social cohesion. whether it is being underemployed or unemployed or not knowing if they fit, you have seen examples in the somali-american community. >> there is an implication that

mary and matthew have touched on. the feature of the corps in terms of providing this cadre of capable bomb makers and trainers and reversers. matthew's point about the failure to have the bomb go off is indicative of the fact he was a boy scout camp are in -- camper in fatah. these guys were refered to as nitwits. the difference between 77 north and south. there is something to a core, taking something that could be, cool, mild lead tragic into huge lead tragic that we have to

be -- mildly tragic into hugely tragic. and how you find someone who is disgruntled. this seems to me where most groups want to go, a mumbai- style attack. that does not mean complacency but those kinds of attacks, those are the ones we should fear because they require less of a high-tech, high-ability mindset.

>> not xm free only to that, more in terms of the long term. if i may say about bin laden, every single person has wanted since the death of has wanted [unintelligible] you can't say that this is a global insurgency. because that is a list of desideratum. you have to realize history is important. we ignore history and our own peril including recent history.

the other thing that is important, we do not want to see some contradictions. these have relationships with a country that has played us like a fiddle for 35 years. that is pakistan. we do not want to see the facts for our variety of reasons. we basically made ourselves [unintelligible] because of our afghan policy. you -- pakistan will do anything you want it to do. the other thing of achilles heel we do not want to understand in saudi arabia. this is another word for wahabism. it has started since the 1960's. i just give you this thing that is published that the lawyers

find -- and this has been [unintelligible] and they look for terrorist groups in latin america that does not exist. this is something we have to say, we're failing the american people if we do not realize some of this. it is a pipe dream. the muslim community -- it is dangerous right now and i would go to that and it is getting more and more dangerous is the intensification of sectarian and regional countries.

we're making even a country -- who will pay a heavy price for its ambition. instead of zero problems, and has more problems than just about anybody. all those things i agree 100% and i am no expert. we have to follow the somali disenchanted, the pakistani. we have to be a little bit honest with ourselves. how we have been shooting ourselves in the foot. we keep saying [unintelligible] do not has -- do not have a relationship. whoever believes that believes in the tooth fairy, i am sorry. i was invited for that. that is the only thing i can contribute. >> just one point of clarification. you're right. everyone wants to create the [unintelligible] >> except me. >> they want to create the [unintelligible]

here is a great example. the attempted to carry out military coups. they failed miserably and were not able to do anything. when i look at al qaeda, they have not just an aspiration. they're talking about world conquest. the issue for me, where are they at in a -- achieving their objectives? what i see is the first objective of overthrowing these rulers seems to have happened through other means but there is places like egypt where mubarak is no longer in charge. they wanted to set up sharia they failed. they succeeded in northern pakistan or other places in imposing sharia.

they declared multiple emirates. i believe the correct manna patrick forrester measuring whether they are correct metric in measuring whether they are successful -- are they controlling people's leader? -- behavior? are people in this country is forced to wear the clothing, forced to wear the beard, forced to give up kiteflying and all the other things? the kind of state is similar to what date -- the al qaeda created in afghanistan. fear, intimidation, and murder. in anbar province we saw that

on the ground and we got to see that for ourselves. nobody wanted these guys except for some people who had some revenge fantasies. the important thing is that there is what people want and what is imposed on them. everywhere these guys have this where they have managed to impose their vision and where al qaeda claims to control these people, only with the help of outside actors have we been able to get rid of them once they set up their so-called and rep. the people of chechnya were incapable of kicking of these guys. you have to have -- had to have an outside after. the people of afghanistan were incapable of getting rid of the al qaeda even though they hated their beds. you had to have outside actors. al qaeda actors were the only ones who could do something. does that mean that the u.s. has to be involved?

that is not the obvious policy implication of what i am saying. iraq should have told us that our presence there created more problems than it helped. our presence may have created more problems than a help to solve. i am not making an argument for some sort of loose on the ground, u.s. must be physically involved in these places. >> there is another thing that we will forget at our peril. that is throughout the 1980's and 1990's, we saw salafi islam as an antidote. they're not going to be revolutionary. we thought there were praying and wearing beards and so on. they have metastasized into this thing. this was linked to regional rivalries.

we have to look at the country. it cannot start -- [unintelligible] you have to have a dialectic approach. in afghanistan, people turn to al qaeda as a result of a long civil war. the countries do not return to normal after 30 years of war immediately and become nice democrats answered during this period the same thing in the way that the [unintelligible] has gained influence in the agent. these other ones that people went to [unintelligible] we have to look at the root of it, at the source. this is the source, unfortunately. anywhere that state power disintegrates, you're going to have all kinds of military ism

militarism. -- militarism. now there is a major concern, the [unintelligible] >> one thing to the point of your question. when a tactic is successful, it will be emulated. we have a lot of crazies in our country to know how to make a bomb. it will happen more and more. with no influence from anybody but the outside but it works, unfortunately. ok, next question. identify yourself. >> i take a cue from my question for the good general. and it has expanded by a good deal that was set by the other people.

i am wondering what evidence, what primary source material exists for any change in a game plan, as you pointed out, may well be the case. it is in war. any change in game plan by al qaeda, whether it is a game plan -- its game plan as a terrorist group or whether it is -- it might be a game plan for something beyond just being a terrorist group. do we have any evidence, other than conjecture, for any kind of change in game plan? >> let me offer -- i am sorry that mary left and matthew will be able to add to this as well. we do. we have evidence that al qaeda is a thinking and promulgating organization. it thinks and promulgates

through a couple of primary media. one is its base website. it also has a newspaper that promulgates messages and information. we get the tone and the tenor from al-zawahiri or those were listed as the -- these are the heads of internal or external operations for the different functionaries. for many years you had one or more of the libyans promulgating basic doctrine. two are both deceased. someone else steps in. we have seen the change. we have seen the want to reach out and aspire to what i call coopt, others call franchise.

i would argue to you that is important both ways. for the local level groups, it is important for the same way the comintern was important for people like the revolutionaries in vietnam or other parts of the world because it was a signal for fund-raising. a signal to these places that tends to give the charities and the charities are unregulated or over focused on liberating or -- and those charities tend to find their way to these groups. signaling and affiliation. the group announces and speculates. al-masri or azar urey, how they want to manage the message about a gender palestine or now,

about syria. al-zawahiri said syria is the place for the move to gain -- mujadeen to collect. they -- now, zawahiri is asking for more to exploit the sectarian violence in syria. that is important. that does play into another broadening fame in the wider middle east which is this shia- sunni split. the belief that this decade has advantaged tehran. this is the interesting tactical shift.

tactics do not vocalise strategy. to the extent al qaeda manages if it is not an aspiration, only violence can bring change, you have not got al qaeda. it is something analogous to trade unionists or social democrats. that takes time. 100 or 150 years. if we get to the point where all the heads of the residual core want to talk about how they have influenced the parliament in agent or syria, that battle is just about one. -- won. the voices of the people, [unintelligible]

they can't do without the oxygen of violence. that is where they lost footing as people have had alternatives in the greater the middle east. >> i think you touched on it a couple of times. for a game changing watch, watch the money. it is about money. it was -- it is what will drive them and give them capability. recently, i can say this in a general sense. we have realized that and matt with his background in the treasury could speak to this better. we have started to employ those tools to go after some things, and when you take their legs out and add accord, at religious beliefs are important but if you do not have the capability to do it, you will fall flat on your face. the sooner we can go down that

line and employ inkster's of capitalism in this fight, of the better off we will be. >> if i may respond, i offer you the opportunity to look at this book just published and precisely because of your question, we provide electronic communication persuasion. as you know, the general can defeat an army but the general cannot deceive the minds of the peasants and this is what we have to deal with, continuity and change. general, would you like to ask a question or make a comment? >> this has all been very interesting and most and

lightning -- enlightening. it is always good to hear what academia and other experts from several disciplines have to say about this topic. i was wondering, though, as i listened to all this, what we do now? it seems to me that one thing that was not discussed at all is, how do we get the media on board with our intent? one way would be to come up with an intent. what do we intend to do in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. the long view with respect to how to wait and of with a better world for everybody and not just focused on the united states or on western ideas and

all that kind of thing. how do we set out to try to improve the world as we know it for everybody? that ought to be the kind of goal that our country could help take the lead in in the future. 20 or 30 years from now, as i say. it is interesting, for example, that we do not learn a lot from history. one of the things that history teaches us is that freedom is not necessarily a universal value and all that kind of thing. many people in the world are more interested in security than they are freedom. that is why in some cases, many cases, they gravitate toward the totalitarian type of government. they can provide in some ways better security. we need to look at that and look at our history and see what

can be done to make the world better. i think in terms of terrorism, terms like a global war on terrorism and all that, that is not correct. terrorism is a tactic. it is a tactic tactically and strategically. it always has been and there are examples, as you know. not just in the last century. terrorism and tactics and that kind of thing go back. you can find them in the koran, and the torah, and it can certainly find them in the bible. it is -- that is what we are dealing with our tactics. the idea that we need to prevent catastrophic types of tactics from hurting any nation, whether it is our nation or any other free world as we know it

today. that ought to be one of our prairie goals and one of our prairie objectives here. -- primary objectives here. we forget the asymmetrical value of terrorist tactics. those are the kinds of things that present real danger to us. i also hope that we do not get overconfident here based on what we have heard here today. that we should never underestimate the enemy or the other people or anything like that that bridge disaster in the long haul. we want to be very careful. the terrace attack that date tactics and the attack that occurred on the 23rd of october in 1983 against the marine headquarters in beirut and the french headquarters and the israeli headquarters.

not many people really realize that within a few minutes, the terrorists took out three major headquarters of three different countries who were there trying to bring peace and stability in lebanon and the like. that attack was conceived in iran and it was funded with money and material through damascus and through the western front in beirut. and carried out by the hezbollah. nobody has mentioned has bullet today. they were a very violent group and still are. we should have probably gone in to them in 1983 and gone to the valley and deposit it there. that is a different topic. it was a carefully coordinated

attack. one of the things i think we over-dramatize is we made a hero out of bin laden. we aided and abetted everything he was trying to do by making him a hero. and by giving him broad play in ho the media and elsewhere and the like and also setting him up as someone who could not be taken down and all that kind of thing. why do we step back and think about these things a little bit. i agree that we could do a lot more are operating out of this country and other countries around the world. we do not have to be in these particular countries and regions to be very effective and not just with special operations type of capability but there are whole host of types of capability, not political, economic, and technology that we could bring to bear when we

want to do it on our time schedule. we should drive the whole thing. the free world. not bin laden or some other terrorist core activity. i have already said to my chair. but i think i agree. we ought to come out with a different kind of strategy for the long haul, look ahead, and then work backward like you would in the campaign command. you work backwards by phases in terms of what money you can afford to put to this strategy and all the kind of thing. we have got to and somehow we have got to harmonize not just the academic and research and thought -- research thought and military thought. i do not know how you pull in that crowd across the river. i will leave it up to you academic types. we need to pull together and this is above politics and all that kind of thing and do what is best for the free world as we

know it today. thank you. [applause] >> i would have let you go first. >> i think he did. >> for those who do not know me, i am don kerr, i have been associated with a number of organizations over the years. one of the things that came up here is the most important, the need to pay greater attention to pakistan and be realistic about what it is.

some of you will recall that when we got to exploit some of the sides in afghanistan, what we found is the evidence at tarnac farms and long term interests al qaeda have. other kinds of weapons and other kinds of technology. not only that, people that supported that effort were mostly retirees from the pakistani nuclear program. if the retirees felt it was important to support al qaeda, one might ask whether people currently in the program share those views in some manner. it is something that we need to prove out. we also need to understand that when we leave afghanistan, it once again becomes part of pakistan's defense in depth against what they consider their real enemy, india. it has killed a bit as a consequence of the mumbai attack. they talk once in awhile now. in fact, we are a pawn in the game they have been playing in terms of two nuclear-armed

neighbors and what each might be able to get from the united states, depending on what our interests are in the region. i think pakistan is the lurking double in the background here. it is the place where more technology would be available to al qaeda and those who would emulate them. it is very poorly controlled. it is as close to being a failed state while still remaining estate -- a state we must deal with. i will leave you with that. [applause] >> here is the mic. >> can you hear me? i am sort of overwhelmed by how much i have heard. i am a civilian, and i respect generals.

the title of this is " al qaeda, quo vadis," and this is a challenge to us. he used the term grand strategy as did shareen hunter. this is not the cold war. the desire for the caliphate -- they had one in the 20's. we have to get away from cold war thinking. there is so much knowledge, i was overwhelmed by my neighbors, how much they know and shareen hunter said we do not know enough. the brits talk about a great

game. is it a great game or is it a lot of little games? we did a great program on nigeria. it was interesting to listen. you have the local terrorists and there is some of al qaeda. there will be blown actors there as well. how can we aggregate all these phenomena, and relate it to a national brand strategy? as much as we heard today, god knows we heard a lot. most of us learned about the subject we have learned before. we do not know how to get our calpers around this subject and it is a real challenge. -- our calipers around the subject and it is a real challenge. >> [unintelligible] regionalist but i have been doing this a lot and i have the advantage of being from the region myself. i can kind of understand some of the things.

one of the things we have not come to terms with is the collapse of the soviet union has changed the world. in the old days, when you had an absolutely dominant paradigm, you could have even during the cold war, i remember one of the books i read as a graduate student in england. it was called "nations in alliance." the great powers generally what alliances to achieve their broad game -- gain. the local stes