incentives are such that the market is going to collapse. all we are deciding is how quickly that is going to happen. if it happens, and states refuse to create exchanges, then everyone is going to see the writing on the wall. the insurers in new the provisions were going to -- new with the provisions would destroy the market before they took effect, so the insurance pulled out of the market before they had to comply with those provisions. it forces congress to reopen the long before anyone gets hurt. , before the law creates these incentives for insurance companies to become the worst providing care to the sec.

if they become the best of providing care to the sec, they attract all these six people who caused hundreds of thousands of dollars but the economic charts than $10,000 premium so the insurers go out of business. if they refuse to critics changes, we can prevent that from happening after the back to congress so they can prevent this from happening. i leave that up to the president if this lot is going to cause health insurance market to collapse. what is he going to do? will he let that happen? into that vacuum, create a single payer system. i don't think you will. i think faced with a hundred million americans facing the prospect, i don't think he would let that many go without health insurance. he has some tolerance for throwing out of their health plans that is not that high up. >> one comment about the actual

decision from justice roberts. it was astonishing to me in deciding that the mandate, not purchasing health insurance is a tax, he said this is a neutral choice. he said people have a choice of purchasing health insurance or paying a tax for not having it. he said this is not really a penalty. this is not something -- bears don't value judgment here. it is a simple putting on the scale for making a decision and what will people do? they will say that if this is a completely neutral decision, i will pay the tax. especially because i know the health insurance company has to sell me a policy no matter when i apply at the same price as price schmuck who has been polite -- paying all along. it is bizarre they said this was

a natural choice. >> are you german or french? israeli. with the bureau's own crisis, nobody wants to let the greeks go. they are trying to have crippgrter fiscal union. that is what will happen if the president is reelected. there will not get rid of the law because they are worried about the private insurance market going away. they will travel of fines assessed it would not buying insurance or multiplied by five. it will increase the fines and owasco-enroll you in government- approved plans to make sure you stay in the system. will not unravel their prized regulatory architecture just because a few companies go bankrupt. the only way to get rid of this lot if you really wanted to go away is to elect a republican president and republican senate, sorry. >> blue shirt --

>> thank you, i am representing myself. i want to ask you about forcing doctors to do things but i remember when i was a kid, if i got sick, my parents just paid the doctor because i had no insurance. can you explain how it came about that paying for health care became difference than the other service or commodity in our country? >> we wrote a book. we go through the history that basically protect people from understanding the full cost of their health insurance and the consumption of health care. it started in world war two and has perpetuated to this day and it is the foundation for the employer-based health system and our country and it has become,

after several generations, just assume that someone else pays for your health care. there has been a study showing how much that dilution costs us. it concluded that the income we lose because our employers taking part of our paid to purchase our health insurance, part of the premium we pay in addition to that, the taxes we pay and our out of pocket costs, the average american family pays $25,000 per year for the illusion that we get free health care. >> essentially, there's a reason for insurance, to protect against catastrophic costs. if you have a heart attack or cancer, you cannot just pay the doctor or the surgery.

it is just like homeowners insurance or life insurance or any other insurance. when you prepare routine costs of front, you are paying the insurance company to do it. >> i'm a retired army physician. from your point of view and for your adversaries on the left, when all the dust settles, whatever and wins, what will happen to the military medical care system which includes the hospitals run by the uniformed services as well as the va system? >> i am glad you brought this up. it is little appreciated that one of the fastest-growing items in the defense budget is actually health care. it is not just veterans administration which is separate from the defense department budget but also defense department health, both of which

are going up considerably. because they are separate systems from the conventional health care system, if you want to call at that, it does not attract as much attention. it is a considerable issue and there has been a lot of complaints from people who have come back from iraq and afghanistan that the plant they are on is inadequate for their needs and/or because they served in the military that the promises that were made to them when they came into the military in terms of health coverage are not being met. i personally think there is a lot that can be done to integrate the military and va health systems into the rest of the health-care system. in the year of world war two when we did not really have the health care architecture broglie that we do today, it made sense to have a system of va hospitals that specialize. i am not sure that makes sense

today. it would make more sense to say if you're a veteran, will give you a certain amount of money to buy your own health insurance plan. that plan can choose to have you treated at because va hospital or another hospital. we would give people more freedom and more choice but we will also create more competition among health-care providers which is a big problem in the american system. people like to blame the insurance companies because health care is expensive. if the insurance companies are the messenger. the reason health care is expensive as because hospitals charge insurers. they will jack up their prices. if the va hospitals could compete and provide more efficient care, you have that element of price competition and quality competition that would benefit both sides of the equation. >> dark blue shirt on the isle -- >> i'm the author of a book on

what we don't have a welfare state. we have a special interest state. i have not heard discussed where are the big players and the corporate players? where are the hospitals, doctors, the insurance companies, farma we have read about recently and how are they going to get into this political debate over the next few months? >> they have been conspicuously silent, haven't they? there's a lot of apprehension by the insurance industry leading up to the supreme court ruling. they were concerned that if the individual mandate gets knocked out, adverse selection would cause their business model to collapse. they are preparing the ground

for a big assault on a pre- existing condition provision at least in the obama health lot of supreme court had done the right thing and struck down the individual mandate. it did not but i expect that if states block the health insurance subsidies and tax credits, it states block exchanges and therefore prevent the federal government the statutory authority to issue those credits, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that would go to private insurance companies, then they will, again, i think there will activate the way they planned to in case the supreme court struck down the individual mandate. they will put pressure on congress to reopen law. they may what -- i may not want to reopen the entire lot. the mayor on congress to spend more money on them and increase the penalties under the individual mandate which is the

one comply they had during consideration. they complained the individual mandate was not high enough. they would be taking those complaints to a congress that i think will have one chamber control by a party that is committed to repealing the slaughter there may be a deal struck their for the insurance companies get something of the republicans go farther than the insurance companies would want. >> one of the great myths of the health-care debate is a barack obama standard for the american people on one side and all these big bed industry folks and insurance companies who we all hate and big pharma and the doctors on the other side fighting it. they were all on one side over here cutting deals with one another. the american people were the ones on the other side. >> i would simply say that a lot of industries stakeholders

don't favor freemarket reforms for this simple reason -- we spend more per capita by far and health care than any other country both public spending and private sector spending. if there is a market-oriented system that encourages individuals to allocate their money more efficiently, a lot less of that money will go to health care. >> and interesting factoids -- all of the six major pharmaceutical companies that were at the negotiating table in the backroom negotiations that began the conversation that pull the industry into the obama care negotiation, in the case of every single one of those six companies, the ceo was either retired, departed, or left under other circumstances as well as pharma. it is true of many of health insurance companies so you have

a whole different team of people that are going to be negotiating the next phase that are not as invested as the folks who made the deals in the first place. it is interesting to see how many folks have left. >> the one in the back there and then i will take you two and the last one there. >> i am the house -- health counselor with the netherlands. can you speak more about governor romney's ideas on health care? >> sure, as i said in my formal remarks, the main theme is to give individuals and localities more control over their own health dollars. i will divided up into four parts -- with medicare, the goal

is to do something that is similar in character to the ryan plan which involves giving seniors a choice of health insurance plans and private insurers and traditional fee- for-service government's system would compete. they would bid for your business and they would say we will cover this set of benefits for this price and whoever -- there would be an index of maybe the average price would be tabulated. if you purchased a plan that was lower than the average price, you would save money. that way there would be a market pressure toward being more cost- efficient in your insurance plan. with medicaid, the idea is to block grant medicaid to the states. this was a very successful approach to reform that we used with welfare in 1996. it has been held by both sides

has a tremendous success. the program right now is micromanaged out of washington that sort of managed by the states. washington actually prevents states from acting simple common-sense reforms that will allow and allocate their medicaid dollars more wisely. in illinois, a state run by democrats, eleanor was -- is under a huge budget crunch right now. they were trying to reform the medicare program. as the number one item under budget. in illinois, you cannot check the medicaid applicants residency status or income status. if they submit a piece of paper saying they live and have an income with one pay stub and they did not have to prove residency, they passed a law saying you have to show four utility bills to show where you live and four paychecks.

the department of health and human services in washington block to the reform saying it was illegal under the affordable care act. this is a democratic administration and illinois. states would be able to run their programs more efficiently. with the private market, the idea is to eliminate the tax discrimination in the tax code right now. because of these which controls we talked about earlier, if you get insurance through your employer, you don't pay any taxes on that but if you buy insurance for yourself, you do so with after-tax dollars. that makes health insurance for the unemployed or people who do not buy insurance for their job very expensive. you want to change that so that the tax break is equal for people to get it through their employer and for people who don't have that opportunity. that way you can buy your own plan and keep it when you change jobs.

those are three things plus the reform of medical innovation and making sure the fda is getting innovations to market. that is what the american system does well. >> without putting too fine a point on, when i hear governor romney talk about health care, i describe my attitude as skeptical. one of the things that concerns me about governor romney is that when he talks about what he would do when he becomes president, on the first day he would work to repeal obama care which is fantastic but including giving states waivers from obama care. i don't think he can give states waivers from obama care of the way most people understand that. he does -- the president does not have that power.

what he might mean it he would give states waivers like he got from the bush administration when he put romneycare into place in 2006 which was the model for obama care. i am concerned when i hear that from the governor. it makes me wonder whether governor romney really understands the danger that obama care proposes. >> i am concerned as well. look at the list of things i talked about, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, have a trillion dollars in medicare cuts, the independent. >> advisory board, the employer mandate, the exchanges -- he cannot waive those earning more than the president can ignore immigration laws.

i am very concerned that he is saying he can wave a magic wand when you have statutory changes. >> let me put everyone's concerns to rest -- the governor's point about the waivers is what if there is a democratic senate? there is no guarantee we will have a republican senate. the one thing he can do as president without the assent of congress is to do as much as possible to liberate states from the new regulations. that is what he means when it talks about the executive order. he has stated explicitly over and over again that he will assign a repeal bill as soon as there is one on his desk. before i joined the campaign as an adviser in my capacity blogger, i wrote a piece about him appealing obama care and within 10 seconds, the romney

campaign's press focus was on the phone with her chief of policy demanding to know how i could ever in that given that the governor has said repeatedly that it wants to repeal obama care. i explained of the sort of things. about the waiver and they said he wants to repeal obama care. what about reconciliation? knowtold me that we don't if we will have 60 votes in the senate. the policy adviser had said that we don't know if we are going to be -- if we can repeal obama care via reconciliation. the next day at a candidates' debate in north carolina, the mitt romney stated that he would repeal obama care via reconciliation if he had the opportunity. i'm very condensed that the

government is committed to repeal a obama care. we have to do the hard work of giving him a republican senate. >> i am not convinced. dumpingn't -- i'm not on governor romney. the president has been very duplicitous about -- against health care reform. what would impress me from governor romney is if he said his first act as president would be to resell the irs rule that tries to rewrite the obama health law by issuing tax credits and cost sharing subsidies in a federal exchange and there by taxing employers who would otherwise be exempt -- the irs has issued a rule without congressional authority that taxes employers and spit -- and could potentially spend hundreds of billions of dollars without congressional authority

all to save the obama care. >> the campaign is well aware of your excellent work in this area. [laughter] >> that would be an impressive signal that the governor is committed to getting rid of as la. >> we're almost out of time. i last three to ask your questions and we will let the folks appear after them and then they will cut us off. >> i am i disappointed libertarian. [laughter] >> is there any other kind? >> i want to talk about illinois. i worked at the institute and we did work on medicaid. at the beginning of the decade, we had one in eight and then we had one in five. >> and ed obama care goes for one in three will be on

medicaid. how do we convince the governor short of a mandate from the president to not go ahead with the full medicaid expansion and an exchange? >> lets get all three questions in. >> could you give us some insight from the practitioner standpoint what you think the impact on the healthcare supply would be? >> last one right there? >> i am a theater critic for the d.c. fair scene. -- i want to know what the independent payment advisory board is. they have these unelected officials but they can submit these proposals and

automatically become law even if the congress does not vote to support this. i understand that part but what is it and why is it and what can it do? that is so omnifarious? >> each of you can take each question. >> the independent panel advisory board is one of the 159 new boards in the agency and the law. there is a great sense in congress that it is just too hard for them to figure out how to reduce payments and medicare. they needed to create a board that was sort of like b to beeige closure board that was apart from politics and was able to look at the data and decide what needs to be done to get

costs down. they have not yet been appointed. one of the reason senator mcconnell is keeping the senate in session over the recess in order to keep the president from keep -- for making recess appointments. even if they don't appoint the board, the secretary of health and human services is looking to defaults -- is looking to be default decider and -- in how payments can be reduced to save money to reach certain quotas in medicare. one of the things that people don't realize is that obama care puts medicare on a global budget which is really what european countries have. somebody has to enforce that. these independent on elected officials have the power to decide what needs to be cut from medicare in order to reach those financial trigger points. it is very difficult for congress to override it and there is no judicial review.

that is one the reasons why the goldwater institute is suing. you've got people who have authority over hundreds of billions of dollars in medicare spending who are not elected by the people. that is not constitutional. >> they can't deny any particular type of care. >> the president has doubled down on that in reducing -- he wants to reduce further the ability for this board to reduce payments to doctors, hospitals, drug companies and others in the health sector. >> to answer the gentleman's question -- this is the world that providers will live under if the obama lost is on the

books. this is a super legislature -- a group of up to 15 on elected government officials who will be able to cut or change medicare, medicaid, and even private health insurance payments. they will be able to ration care. they will be able to raise taxes if the one. to there are prohibitions on many of these things. the statute requires the secretary of health and human services to enact these proposals. they're not really proposals. they are really lost. laws. if the president does not appoint a board or they don't come up with the proposals, it all goes to the secretary of the department of health and human services and she can execute her own laws that she has written. this is the road to serfdom

playing out in front of our eyes. this is a threat to democracy because the legislature does not to a good job of planning that sector of the economy, health care, and medicare and they seem incompetent. people say we need a pair aboveunelected experts to take care of this. >> lastly, on medicaid -- >> let me tell you the story of a 12-year-old boy who grew up not far from here in prince george's county. he was a seventh grader who lived on the wrong side of the tracks and had the usual problems that seventh graders have. he was homeless from time to. time he grew up without a father. he was on medicaid. his mother found out one day

that he was complaining of to fix. -- to date. she tried to get him a dentist appointment but she could not find a dentist to take him because of medicaid, in order to cover as many people in the cheapest possible way, pays physicians 58% on average and in some cases much less than what they would get from a private insurer. a lot of dentists and doctors don't take medicaid. after a while, she managed to get a dentist to see them. he had sex abscess teeth. --six abscess teeth. he needed to get to research and to get his teeth pulled out. it was another two months for him to see a surgeon. it turned out the abscess by that point had spread to his

brain. he had to go to a neurosurgeon at to get the abscess, the infection taken out of his brain. that took another month. by the time he was ready to have the alignment for the surgery, he died. this is a 12-year-old boy, poor, homeless, who died not because he was uninsured but because he was insured by the government. i bring this up to say that you will convince conservatives not to expand medicaid because it busts the budget or because they have an ideological opposition to government programs but the way you persuade americans to be worried about this medicaid expansion is to explain to them that help that comes for people on medicaid are in many cases worse than for those with no insurance at all and for worse than those with private insurance and real way to address the problem of the poor is to reduce the cost of private

insurance and redirect medicaid dollars a they have access to high-quality private insurance. health insurance is not the same thing as health care and if we really are concerned about the poor, we need to get them out of the medicaid satrap and give them access to better health care. >> thank you all very much and thanks to our panel. [applause] thank you all for coming into this nuys school auditorium at out of the heat. we have a reception outside, thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> here's a look at our primetime live tonight. beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern, vice president joe biden and doctors jill baden will have

the national education association meeting tonight. the presidency, beginning with michael duffy and nancy dipsticks an inside look at the world's most exclusive club from overthrow obama. on c-span 3, american history tv in prime time with oral history interviews with key congressional staff charged with investigating president nixon, all but tonight on this cspan networks. tomorrow on cspan's for the july schedule, will begin at 10:00 a.m. with the congressional gold medal ceremony, a group of about 19,000 african-americans marines in world war two. there were stationed as a segregated can't just adjacent to campuses and in north carolina. house and senate leaders will take part of the ceremony. tomorrow evening, the history of the statue of liberty. an author talks about the beginnings, controversies, and changing needs of the american symbol and events hosted by the museum of jewish heritage

tomorrow night at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. >> this weekend, go to the state capital named in honor of thomas jefferson parin jefferson city, missouri. literate -- literary life, on family life inside the governor's. also, a butcher's bill, a business contract a provisions less from ancient mesopotamia to the gun -- to the university of missouri special collection. sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern, >> at one time, in 1967, this was called the bloodiest 47 acres in america. >> a former warden take you to the historic missouri state penitentiary. walk back through history. once a month, the cspan local content vehicle exports the

history of literary life of cities across america. this weekend from jefferson city, saturday at noon and sunday at 5:00 eastern on c-span 2 and 3. >> the ninth circuit court of appeals in anchorage, alaska will decide if the supreme court's landmark decision establishing the second amendment as an individual right to bear arms extends to having a homemade machine gun in the home. matthew hannity is appealing his conviction for possession of a fully automatic homemade machine gun. he fired a machine gun from the front door of his home in a residential never would north of the. anchorage he was sentenced to two years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release and a fine of $7,500. his attorneys argue that under the second amendment based on the supreme court's 2008 decision in the district of columbia, the conviction should be overturned. the court ruled the second

amendment protected an individual's right to possess a firearm not connected to serve as a militia. the oral argument is 30 minutes. the next case is the united states vs. henry. >> good morning your honour's and welcome to alaska. i represent matthew henry in this case. mr. hendrick is a 53-year-old alaskan who enjoys and possess firearms for recreational use and multiple purposes.

he was a member of the united states army and was in the national guard in oregon before he moved to alaska. he has been employed his entire adult life. the last 15 years, he has worked at the mine in western alaska. in october, 2009, he was on medical leave. he had time on his hands. he had a garage that was more like a machine shop. he was tinkering with firearms and he made a homemade machine gun. that is the issue before us today. what is important to know about mr. henry is that he was not prohibited from having firearms. he did not have a felony record and did not have any drug or mental illness issues that would prohibit him from having weapons. he had this particular machine gun in his own home and not

outside the home. he did not have any criminal purpose for having this particular weapon. he had it for recreational use and was tinkering with a to make a machine gun for self-defense. he was not involved in any kind of commercial activity with this firearm. his prosecution brings three issues before this court -- the first one is the impact is the district of columbia verses heller which is the new landscape we are navigating of the second amendment being an individual right. the second amendment protect law-abiding citizens who are not prohibited from possessing a mission gone, it, a machine gun, for a lawful purpose and their own home and that is the position that i think this court

meets to decide and maybe ultimately, the u.s. supreme court meets to decide. >> let me ask you this question. i respect your argument and position and it is certainly one that will have to be answered in due course but you are also familiar with some of the language in the heller and mcdonald and some of the cases that have followed that suggest the earlier miller case talking about having a machine gun being startling. the supreme court in heller suggested that nothing they said in that case should be interpreted as doing away with the prohibition on certain dangerous and unusual weapons. why doesn't that give us the direction we need here? we are in uncharted seas to some degree -- >> are, and i think that as justice scalia's position in

hel;ler and a speech to both sides of the issue. in one particular sense, hel;ler is a particular case. that court discuss that and i would like to refer the court to the heller decision where justice scalia said it is particularly wrongheaded to rely on l; miller. the case to not purport to be a thorough examination of the second amendment. justice scalia goes on to point out that in miller, the defendants did not appear in the case and they found no briefs and the only position heard in mikller was from the government. justice scalia goes on later to say the second amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed law-abiding

citizens for lawful purposes. >> is it your position that having a machine gun in one's home fits into that description? >> yes, >> you should not be excited about that. >> is a learning experience for me about machine guns because i am not an enthusiast. i find out that many people enjoy weapons and join a shame guns for recreational purposes. i was surprised >> in their homes? they fired submachine guns in their home? >> the keep the manner of the fire that had a range. >> the last time i checked the atf website, there are over 340,000 machine guns registered in this country. it has enlighten me to the fact that there are many citizens who own machine guns for local purposes and that's our position. that is what the sec and the mammoth projects in this

particular case. >> if i understand you correctly, you're not addressing the fact that some people are entitled to have machine guns and their home if they have promised to do so. you're not talking about that. you are saying there's a constitutional right under heller to have a homemade machine gun in your home for constitutional purposes in the same sense that the district of columbia was not entitled to bar officer heller from having a loaded firearm in his home. your client cannot be barred from having an operating on a machine gun in his home as a constitutional right? >> yes, beyond that, it is important to note that mr. pande could not have registered this gun -- mr. henry could not a restaurant is gone -- could not have registered this done because the machine gun had to

be lawfully possessed before 1986 to be registered. he was able to make this homemade machine gun, he could not register it. that is why this is the type of restriction and prohibition that would touch the second amendment. >> does that mean that all the machine guns you found or registered? -- or registered because they had been owned prior to that date? >> yes, that is the requirement. mr. henry was in a position where he could not register in order to be legal. in heller, it points out the second amendment does not protect felons from possessing firearms or the mentally ill. it does not say that you can have firearms in government buildings or schools. it does not say there cannot be some kind of regulations on the

commercial sale of firearms. >> in heller, that statement, a fair summary of what justice scalia was saying was that unusual and unusually dangerous weapons can be lawfully forbidden. >> yes. >> it's ok to forbid someone and you would agree, consistent with the second amendment to forbid someone from having a bazooka? >> yes, but not a machine gun. >> is a machine gun unusual or unusually dangerous? the legislature has drawn that line. it is not just some local governments. it is federal legislation. >> that's true but that legislation was drawn before

heller and the second amendment jurisprudence can into effect. >> there have been some cases since heller dealing with machine guns. have they gone your way? >> not that i have noted. they usually involve somebody who also has some prohibition from having the machine gun or was in some kind of commercial setting. i know there were a couple of unpublished decisions that may have addressed that i would like to get to the second issue in this case and this is the commerce clause. this court decided in 2003 under stewart, the first historic decision, that commerce did not have the power to regulate homemade machine guns. that was reversed in next door to ii because of the gonzalez case but in the footnote in that, the stewart ii decision

was based on the fact that the second amendment is not an individual right. >> you are absolutely correct. that is clearly wrong after heller but under the case law, how we deal with that? you have written this in the citation when the progress has reversed on other grounds or affirmed on other grounds. the vast portion of stewart has nothing to do with the concept of whether the second amendment is an individual right which heller did clarified. why shouldn't we read stuart ii to say that footnotes is wrong? we should ignore that put no but everything else remains the same. >> you can read it that way but one thing i think you have to recognize in stewart ii is the standard of review. >> the standard review was very important if the second amendment applies.

that was the first question we were talking about. you are a brilliant lawyer but it for this discussion purposes we decided that the second amendment as we understand the supreme court to have considered it does not cover your client, we would not really need to get to the issue of the standard of review, would we? >> no, it is kind of a chicken and an egg analysis or a giraffe. i think it is important in this particular case because i think it does apply to all may machine-gun nests. this is a third issue that we presented. in this district, magistrate judge first does analysis on a motion to dismiss and the

magistrate judge roberts wrote an opinion granting a motion to dismiss and using a standard of high scrutiny because of heller and mcdonald. another judge disagreed with that and said we should not use that standard. which use a rational basis standard to look at mr. henry's motion to dismiss. it is our position that judge holland should have used the standard of high scores and a and i rely on this is in the camp on this court i think a few months after the judge holland decision in nordyke vs. king - >> that decision was vacated. we don't have any cases so far the deal with a situation where we have found there to be a second amendment right.

in that case, we have a county fair situation and the party had no controversy and was gone very we don't have a standard here. i can understand why you would like to articulate its tender but i'm not sure how we can do that until we have a factual situation where we say clearly the supreme court meant the second amendment to cover this area. then we would decide what level of scrutiny we apply to the factual situation. is that what we are suppose to be doing? >> that's correct and i think the answer is under the specific facts of this case where there was the lawful possession in one's own home of a homemade machine gun that that fits under the second amendment and the standard should be heightened scrutiny. that means for this conviction,

it would come under the commerce clause. >> tell me what the last part of that is. i get your point on the first part. how does the standard of scrutiny bear on whether the commerce clauses violated? >> going back to stored i, heller switches as back and gonzales took this to store ii and heller and mcdonald tech is back. -- take us back. >> you're making two arguments -- one as the second amendment and the other is the commerce clause. aren't they independent? >> yes. >> how did a heller and mcdonald bear on the constitutional elements? >> because i think there is a distinction between a homemade machine-gun which did not affect

interstate commerce or the marijuana case.0 >> will make sure you get a chance to respond. dubie anxious about your time. it seems to me your commerce clause argument might lead us to a conclusion if we agree with you that possession laws are unconstitutional. are you making that argument? >> no. >> the felony possession of prohibitions are constitutional under the commerce clause >. guest: >> it is our position that this was somebody who was not prohibited. mr. hammer was not prohibited and was in his own home and not for unlawful purposes. i think he is protected. >> i'm asking you about the commerce clause. >> we have had those statutes

forever. your rationale house is saying the second man of a special on the government's spot -- second amendment case is not as grave. we've got felony possession but there is nothing in the statues that requires proof that the gun has traveled interstate. how you distinguish felony possession statutes? >> first of all, a federal felony possession would have to be interstate. if this were a felon possession case which has been denied a number of times, that is strictly second amendment issue. the homemade machine gun for a

person not prohibited it is a second amendment issue but also the commerce clause. >> we will make sure you have a chance to respond. >> good morning, your honor. i work for the government in this case. mr. hammer was convicted persona to section 922.0, possession of a machine gun. machine guns are categorically prohibited under federal law unless they were legally possessed prior to the passage of 922. he argues that his possession of the machine gun is protected by the second amendment on the hel;ler and argues that congress

could not legitimately regulate his possession of the machine gun using the commerce clause power as because of the protection provided by heller and it goes on to argue that the district court should use heightened scrutiny because as protection of the machine guns was covered heller. all these decisions are intertwined and depend on the conclusion that this is the -- the decision of the supreme court is heller gave permission for personal ownership of a machine gun. that is wrong. heller makes it crystal clear that that argument is startling. it is an argument that does not fit within the scope of protection that heller provided. case says those

weapons typically possess by law-abiding citizens for typical purposes. this ridiculous situation that's heller has dealt with is the situation of handguns for protection and the home. in addition, i think one can extrapolate that shotguns and rifles man for hunting are probably protected by the second amendment. hellerr did not feel that situation heller says the second amendment does not protect possession of dangerous and unusual weapons. it goes back to this as in in miller which dealt with a sawed- off shotgun, that was the standard. there is no second amendment for such a dangerous and unusual weapon. >> your opposing counsel suggested with respect to stewart and i would say that he

would say the same with respect to miller, the language of a startling weapons and the like had to be considered in the context of the times when the second amendment was construed as applying only to the federal government, not the states, and secondly, that was not an individual right but rather a militia-type right. when we construe stewartii and maybe still i and maybe the 1939 miller case, to view them differently by of the language because heller has changed our understanding of the second amendment? >> i don't think so. i think that stewart is the commerce clause position. it is not a second amendment position. the powers of congress are about rancid and limited in different parts of the constitution.

congress may be limited in its ability to regulate certain types of firearms and it may be limited because certain conduct does not have enough of an effect on interstate commerce or does not utilize -- does not travel with interstate commerce, that sort of thing. those two are independent sources of power and analysis. >> for purposes of still were toii, i assume the government would take the position that at least an hour circuit, the issue of whether this particular statute violates the commerce clause is decided. heller takes that out? >> absolutely, that is the position of the government. i would not say the footnote is wrong. it notes that at that point in time, the second amendment as

far as this court understood, it does not extend to personal use. >> i understood your opposing counsel to say there was a penumbra of post ah-eller analysis that affects the thinking of these other cases and it is not just a footnote involved. is that your position? >> i think that's true. store was a commerce clause decision that correctly concluded that congress rashly decided it could exercise its powers to ban the machine guns for interstate commerce. whether or not it could do it under the second amendment is an entirely different issue. in this case, the commerce clause argument, improperly gloms the two together.

>> could congress' constitutional a consistent with their powers than the possession of machine guns within 500 yards of a school? >> consistent with the commerce clause, yes. i do believe that. >> what are we supposed to do lopez? >> because i believe that congress could ban machine guns entirely, the joys of one particularly dangerous and unusual weapon is focused on that. i believe that would be within its power at the commerce department. >> with the possession for lawful purpose be possible for an inventor who was trying to develop a new method of making a

rapid-fire weapon out of an existing semi-automatic rifle? would that be a lawful purpose? would be better to have one of these things in his possession while he is working on it? >> i think that because of the unusual character of machine guns. there are ways within which such research and development can be done. the statute does include an exemption for legitimate possession by governmental bodies, for instance. it also includes clauses for older machine guns. for the same reasons that a tanker in his backyard cannot create an grenades or bill

bazookas, i think the machine guns fall within that same category. those two are weapons but i don't think there is any dispute -- >> does the law require a criminal intent? if the inventor is trying to invent something he could sell to the government -- be for an have to evil purpose. the government doesn't have to prove that there is any particular intent. although, in this case, the defendant was in his front yard shooting his machine gun at random in a residential neighborhood. which was not for lawful purposes in anchorage. >> this case is almost so much

on all fours for a test case. i gather this is not a contract case between the government and opposing counsel to have this issue go on to the supreme court. >> no, your honor, it is not. >> you know i have to ask. [laughter] i would urge, given the fact that this precise issue has been cited twice and is still coming before the court, perhaps it is time to publish an opinion to this issue. i would like to touch on the final argument that henry made, which is that the wrong standard reduced in assessing the validity of the ban. he said the court use a hard scrutiny exam.

as your honor noted, it skiffs an entire still appear before tighten scrutiny applies. there has to be an impact on second amendment rights on firearms. there is not been so heightened scrutiny doesn't apply. if we were to find that the second amendment doesn't apply to this factual situation, is that correct? >> that is absolutely correct. but i would suggest that, even if, hypothetically, heightened scrutiny did apply, the regulation of a machine gun passes mustard. first of all, the ban has to substantially. there are alternative means to

obtain a weapon that can be meaningfully used for self- defense. taking away one particular kind of dangerous weapon does not significantly impact that second amendment right. as this court has recognized, even under heightened scrutiny, reasonable regulation are permissible. i suggest that is with this regulation is. unless the court has a near the questions -- what slinky. >> thank you. >> mr. henry is still in custody. more importantly to him, he is now a prohibited person in

buying firearms. we have to have a case in controversy. there have been instances in our history where that does not necessarily follow. it certainly could be subject to continue litigation. the stewart decision was placed on lopez and morrison. i think you make a good point in bringing that up. the last point of light meat is that, to me, the bottom line in north at vs. king is "we hold only that regulations would substantially burden the right to keep and bear arms trigger heightened scrutiny and the second amendment." to mr. henry's case, regulations would earn the right to keep and bear arms come under heightened

scrutiny. in this case, it was not just a burden on mr. henry. it was a complete bar for this gun that he made. there was no he could register it. thank you. >> thank you to both sides for a very helpful arguments. the case of united states vs. henry is now under consideration. >> coming of tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span, vice president joe biden and dr. joe biden of the national education association annual meeting that took place in washington. >> look, folks, let me get straight to the point. you guys come educators, teachers, you are under full- blown assault. [applause] romney -- romney -- gov. ronnie

and his allies in the congress -- gov. romney and his allies in the congress, their plan for education in america is to boost enrollment into private schools. i think we should have a straight honest begun to talk about the difference -- honest to god talk about the difference between how president obama and i view education and how our republican colleagues today view it. again, i want to make it clear. a lot of you know me pretty well. by the way, where is delaware? [cheers and applause] hello, delaware! i am not prejudiced, but they're probably the best educators in the room. ladies and gentlemen, very seriously, devon romney is a

good and decent man. he is a good family man. i think his intention 0 positive. -- i think his intentions are all positive. i don't make any motives. i assume he cares as much about the american education system as i do. but the truth of the matter is that we have it fundamentally different view. and when i said that he would like to take title 1 money, give it to the states --

it is litter what she says -- it is liberal which she says. teaching is not what she does. it is who she is. these guys don't get that. i think they don't understand why you chose to teach in the first place. [applause] thinknest to god don't they understand. by the way, like in politics, in business coming in religious hierarchy, there are really good teachers and really lousy teachers. there are really great teachers and some plain good teachers. we are no different than any other profession in the world. but we are a profession. [applause] we are a profession! this is a calling.

you chose to be teachers because you care! you chose to be teachers because you want to make this country better! you chose to be teachers because you know every child -- every child is entitled -- entitled to go as far as they can! [cheers and applause] that is why you do this! but i'm afraid -- i'm afraid the governor and his allies, they don't get it. they don't get why you chose this profession. i'm not even sure -- i won't say that -- they don't get it. >> you can seal of the vice president's remarks tonight along with dr. jill biden's

tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. with the senate on break, we're featuring some of booked tv pause programming on primetime. research with a look at the presidency with michael duffy and nancy gives looking at the most exclusive club, from hoover through obama. then the nuts and bolts of their presidential electoral system. and then scott fares profiles 12 men who love lost their run for the presidency, but has had -- but have had a greater impact on american history. that is a week on c-span 2. on c-span 3, american history tv prime time, the congressional staff charged with investigating president nixon. francis o'brien at 8:00 p.m. and at 10:00 p.m., bernard nussbaum.

that is on c-span 3. >> this weekend, head to the state capital named in honor of thomas jefferson with book tv and american history tv in jefferson city, missouri, saturday at noon eastern. former senator and mr. first lady mott family life inside the governor's mansion. also, a butcher's bill, business contract, a provisions list from ancient mesopotamia to the university of missouri special collection, the stories behind eight miniature babylonian clay tablets. and sunday -- >> at one time, in 1967, this was called the bloodiest 47 acres and a mark -- in america. >> a walkthrough the missouri state penitentiary. what back through history in the halls of the governor's mansion.

this weekend from jefferson city, saturday at noon and 5:00 p.m. eastern [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> up next, a discussion on national security in the presidential 2012 election. we look at the effect at what security has had on the presidential election. from chapel hill, n.c., this is an hour and a half. > we are very happy to welcome david schanzer, associate professor of the practice for public policy at duke university. he is director at the triangle center of terrorism and homeland security and associate professor of public policy at unc.

he is the director for strategy and outreach at the institute for homeland security solutions. he did his undergraduate work at harvard. he also served as editor for the "harvard law review." prior to his academic career, he worked as a law clerk for the department of justice. he was a trial attorney for the u.s. department of justice civil division. special counsel for the u.s. department of defense. counsel for the u.s. department of defense. he is also served offor senator carnahan and the democratic staff director for the committee and homeland security. he has parlayed his extensive experience in public service and

policy analysis into it journalistic and academic career. he has weighed in on many of the issues involving homeland security, foreign and domestic policy, and the intersection of legality and individual rights in the age of terrorism. a gifted teacher, his courses offered at both unc and duke on 9/11 and its aftermath. preparing a new generation of scholars and public servants to face the challenges presented by the post-9/11 world. we're delighted that he has taken some of his time to brief us on how war, terrorism, and national security will play out in the 2012 elections. please extend a warm welcome to professor david schanzer. [applause] >> thank you. thank you to the bookstore, of

great addition to our top of the community. thank you to the audience for coming out on a warm north carolina afternoon. hope i will have a chance to share some of my ideas with you and your ideas with me as well. our topic today is the war on terrorism, national security, and the 2012 elections. while i am going to be talking about the candidates and their ideas, i am not here to represent one candidate or the other. you heard my background as a kind of no little bit about which way eileen politically. that is ok. -- which way i leaned politically. that is ok. i want to -- look a little bit at the kind of back and forth of

the campaign and tried to analyze how the candidates are going to make their case on these national security issues. i guess you're tempted to start of the beginning and ask the question, is national security and terrorism bonn to have much of a role in this campaign? i guess one could answer that question and say, not much. it is all going to be about the economy. we could all go to our local eateries and college and afternoon. i think that would not be fair or accurate. it is clear the economy is going to be the dominant issue. there are a couple of reasons it will not be the sole issue. national security, commander in chief is a threshold issue for any candidate. that is especially so for the

challenger, who was an officer of -- for the challenger. for governor romney, it is the type of issue that if you do not get over the bar, so does speak, and convince the american populace that you are equipped to properly execute the office of the presidency, the most powerful office in the entire world, then you are going to hit the bar. you were going to crash. you are not going to become president. since president obama has been president for three years and nothing calamitous has happened, this is more of an issue for governor romney. clearly, that will be part of the vetting that the american public is going to be doing. second reason is an election at

a time of war or a time of national economies and concerned about foreign affairs -- these issuesnease, rise to the top. while we do have 60,000 troops in afghanistan and the concern of terrorism is still prevalent, i do not think the american public is feeling this is a time of war and national security. their insecurity is coming more from the economic troubles that we have experienced in the last three or four years than they do about national security. nonetheless, because national security issues are still very much on the forefront of the newspapers because we do have troops, that is another reason

it is going to be important. there is some irony to that as a matter of fact that the economy is going to dominate. when you look at the powers of the presidency, the president really has virtually nothing that he or she can do about the economy. the power to set interest rates, and to print money rests with the federal reserve, which is independent from the president. fiscal policy, there is nothing that the president can do in terms of taxation or spending without skidding the agreement of the congress. -- without getting the agreement of the congress. with respect to national affairs and national security, they are at its apex. the president is in control of the nuclear weapons. the president can make foreign-

policy by walking at of his office and walking into the rose garden and stage u.s. policy without asking anybody else. and in state u.s. policy, and that is it. obviously, the president is commander in chief of the armed forces and can use that power to project authority anywhere in the glow. the president -- in the globe. the president has amazing powers in terms of national security, limited bonds in terms of the economy. -- a limited ones in terms of the economy. speaking a little bit about the history of national security in presidential elections, i will talk about the different candidates are framing. what is the big picture that they seat of national security issues? how did they view the united states's role in the world and

ability to shape foreign affairs and national security issues? and then i will talk about the lines of attack. what are their positions, the line of scrimmage, but how will the candidate line up their arguments? what are they going to say about their strengths and weaknesses of their opponent? we will look at it from both perspectives. that should leave us a little time for questions and discussion. let's turn to history. 64 sawriod from 1932-195 the democrats win nine national elections. the subsequent 20 years saw republicans win 5 of 6 elections. we've had a number of closely

contested elections when even the winning candidate did not even win the majority. what accounts -- i will not try to explain all of this change. but let's talk about how national security has played into that historical trend. lyndon johnson, as you well know, by 1968, when the election occurred, the vietnam war had become so unpopular, both on the left and on the right, if johnson had lost the country. he decided not to run. the blame for vietnam's was depend mainly on the democratic party. democrats went on to move left

and nominate a very strong anti-work candidate in 1972 after richard nixon won the election in 1968. that was not for the country was at that stage, even though nixon had escalated a fairly unpopular war, national security began to take routes and this notion that maybe democrats are not as strong as they need to be on national security. it began to influence national elections. jimmy carter, who is not experienced in foreign affairs, although he did serve in the navy, when a very tight election in 1980 -- in 1976. it should have been -- given watergate's-nixon resignation and the unpopular pardon, but

the house -- is perceived to not have been a strong candidate on national security. the response of the soviet invasion of afghanistan was deemed as a tepid. carter increased spending in the military during his four years in office. he was mired with the iran hostage crisis, which continued until the very day that he stepped down from office after losing the 1980 election to ronald reagan. reagan hammer home this notion which has been, and added -- become indebted in national security that republicans were strong, pro-military, patriotism, the idea that he used force for the first time

, hee vietnam's in grenada called the soviet union the evil empire and on his watch, the communist system was beginning to erode. although reagan's foreign policy record was not entirely unblemished, he projected this notion of a strong president and not rallied people behind him. he was very popular in that regard. he won a landslide election after winning a close election in 1980. he was able to pass the mantle on to his vice-president in 1988. in that case, we had a very experienced republican running with the advantages of the idea

that democrats are we gonna national security. by the way, public opinion polls were showing republicans with a 30 point advantage in public polls about to do you trust on national-security issues. george bush was not only the vice president, he was ahead of the cia, ambassador to china, and he ran against michael dukakis. he had no national security experience. to prove that he was tough, and he got in a tank with an oversized comment. many of you remember that. that was a defining moment, which would not give confidence to the american public. george bush the first goes on to win the presidency. the economy, much like the

election today, the economy was the big issue in 1992. the soviet union was no longer. the national security began to take a backseat. in some ways, it opened the door for bill clinton to get elected in 1992. again, republicans continue to have an advantage. because it was a time of relative peace and security, issues like the economy, education, health care were the defining issues of that election. democrats came man. clinton's record on national security was so much mixed. there was the unfortunate -- the tragic black cod down incident -- black pop down incident in somalia early in his presidency. there was a controversy about gays in the military. 20 things later, things have

changed. his failure to serve during the vietnam war, all of which led this perception that clinton was not strong on national security. he did executes humanitarian military action in bosnia and in kosovo. he had a mix of record of national security. in the end, even though he was present for eight years, that did not translate into more popularity for democrats on national security. going into this century, democrats for being told -- polls with over 20 points disadvantaged. al gore, 2000, no major threats on the horizon, the cold war was over.

even though he had more national security experience and military service than george bush, george bush wins and then 9/11 occurred. bush goes on to start the iraq war it in 2003. in 2004 goes against john kerry, a war hero a vietnam veteran, but nonetheless, some on national-security issues, taking advantage of the idea that democrats are weak and republicans are strong on national security. his success in preventing any subsequent act of terrorism. john kerry did not good -- do a good job of saying what he would do differently about the iraq war. it was a very close election, but many believe he lost the election on the national security issue. interestingly, during the --

bush's term, you can see for the viewers on television, this charge of the polling about which party is better for national security after two decades of very strong republican support. the unpopularity of the iraq war begins to erode republican advantage on this question. literally, a 30-point gap, december 2003, saddam hussein has fallen. over time, the inability for us to secure iraq, the rise of sectarianism, the advent of al qaeda, what was seen as many stumbles and a lack of clear execution of leadership on behalf of the first bush administration.

it goes on despite bad. -- that. by 2006, the damage is done and the gap is only five points in favor of republicans. when the midterms comment on the democrats' win that election, take control of congress. you can see that pretty much closer contest between democrats and republicans prevails. right into the run-up of the 2008 election. perhaps the nomination of john mccain and the war hero against the relatively inexperienced barack obama leads to a reopening of the divide. as the election golan, people become more confident -- election goes on, people become more confident. obama passes the national security test. you can see by december of 2008,

when obama is about to take office, he has gained the support of the country on national-security issues. his promise to end the iraq war condenses the country that he is the person to take the mantle. at that point, only a two-point gap. we see some erosion in the early part of the obama administration. that has not held. here we are, a recent fox news poll from june 7, 2012, shows that while romney has better standing on the economy, if you look at the last paragraph, obama's is trusted more on education, a foreign-policy. this is the first time in recent memory where a presidential candidate on the democratic side is walking into a reelection

with the democrats having a better perception of national security. that is our historic background. given that background, how are the different candidates framing their ideas of national security? they lookhe lens through? it is a fair reading of mitt romney's position to say that he is looking at american exceptionalism. you can tell foreign-policy is a -- isn't a predominant issue. the last speech he gave on the national security was at the citadel early in the primary season, october 2011.

he says -- later in the speech, he goes on to say -- this idea of american how we adaptedsism, to give us a special god-given role in the world to promote peace and security, but also our own values, values of democracy,

free and open speech, economic exchange, freedom of religion, equality between people. i think the idea of american connotes thatsism america has special responsibilities. america must lead, not that we should lead, but that we must. special responsibilities to patrol the world, make it safe for commerce, naked say for free expression and free enterprise. -- make it safe for expression and free enterprise. we also have some special rights attached to that. the idea that we can act unilaterally more than other nations and we welcome the role

of an international institution, alliances, if those institutions are alliances are not serving american interest, we can go at it alone. what president obama has also said that we will act unilaterally, we must. american exceptionalism is a highlighted feature of this way of thinking about the world. what about president obama? governor romney criticizes obama because obama was asked, do you think america is an exceptional nation? i think we are an exceptional nation. the british probably think that they are exceptional. other countries think they are exceptional as well. romney has mocked that as saying, we are not equally balanced. we are first among nations. what is obama's frame?

a lot of scholars have struggled to define an obama doctrine. he is very much a pragmatist and one who has all little bit -- difficult to pigeonhole him. what i believe it is the best description for obama is a frame we can look at to his policies. he believes u.s. leadership and the promotion of u.s. american values and principles but in recognizing that we do live in an multipolar world. a world that has problems that are global in nature, that america, while we are the predominant military, other nations have those powers that they can apply to international affairs. we need to operate in the that is, which is america

is the most powerful nation in the world, but we cannot impose our will as much as we would like. we are much better off and much more capable advancing our interests if we are acting in conjunction and partnership with other powerful nations around the world. it takes president obama is rhetoric, this is from his speech accepting the nobel prize in 2009. i do not think you would hear the governor romney it look at foreign affairs in that way. adds another important speech before the united nations general assembly --

yes, president obama identifies what we say as american values as being universal lines. he says we are committed to advancing the principles, but we understand that we live in a diverse world and that we cannot impose our will on those partnerships. frames, i would

like to look at how -- what are the lines of attack? how is mitt romney going to go after the obama record? and vice versa. first, mitt romney is going to argue that obama it is a declinist. because he is not willing to assert american exceptionalism, that he believes in the american decline. that china is taking over. we're willing to cede power and leadership. in libya, but we did something called leading from behind. that is not good for america or the world. second, he will try to argue that obama is naive.

and talk about how obama wanted to engage with our enemies, believing that trying to work things out in dialogue, even with countries like iran and venezuela and north korea, that that is a naive approach, that our enemies are going to always try to take advantage of us, negotiation is the only way they can be influenced is by assertion of american power and action rather than dialogue. he will try to characterize obama has not even that regard. and then the world -- as naive in that regard. he will say the successes, especially the killing of osama bin laden, were not because of anything obama did, but because they follow the prescription

established by the bush administration since 9/11. the successes are not due to him, but because of the framework had been established prior to him taking office. i think those are going to be the main lines of the romney argument against obama. where is my slide? what are some of the arguments that -- the issues he will use to try to support these lines of argument? obama tried to close guantanamo bay. this was not leave, wrong, he was forced not to do it by congress and public opinion. as i said, he tried to reach out to ahmadinejad and iran to try to deal with the nuclear program. he was rebuffed. romney will say this showed america's weakness and lack of resolve.

obama has cut the military budget. another sign that he does not believe in american exceptionalism and that we should be spending more on the military, not less. he will argue that we have not been a firm ally to israel and this is evidence of obama's failure to support our allies can be a global leader. he will argue that we have fallen behind economically because we allow china to dominate and we have not been tough enough on china. early on, he said, we are withdrawing too quickly from afghanistan. we're not listening to our military commanders on the ground. we are doing precipitous withdrawal and that he would listen to the commanders, to try to maintain the gains we have

made since our troops were inserted after 9/11. he has backed off of that position quite a bit since then. but that was one of the arguments he had been making. this is part of the money -- the evidence that mitt romney will use to try to support that frame that i mentioned earlier. one of the problems with this -- what are the problems with his argument? in many regards, he and a lot of the republicans, politicians and strategists, were really eager to run against not the obama new has been present for the past 3.5 years, but the obama who was running for president back in 2008. they want to run against this inexperienced young person who had never been any role of national security leadership before, who made these

statements without engaging. unfortunately for them, obama's 2012 version, has a strong record that he can use to deflect all those charges relating to weakness. here are a couple of them. removing u.s. troops from iraq as promised, winding down the war in afghanistan, neither of those places, while they are not stable and secure, they also have not resolved into crises. successful international intervention in libya. marshaling of a very tough sanctions against iran relating to its nuclear program. being on the right side of history in the arab spring and not -- and allowing the protests

to take place. the decimation of the al qaeda central organization. a strong record on counter- terrorism. a new nuclear weapons reduction treaty with russia. a balanced relations with russia, china, emerging powers. we do not necessarily did everything we want comment they do not get everything that they want. but we have good relations where there is dialogue and agenda that is constantly being worked on. this is a fairly strong record that does not show weakness, it does not show a decline or an erosion of our place in the world. those are some of the reasons i don't think this is going to be an effective line of attack. killing bin laden and the successful campaign against al qaeda really blancs those

questions of weakness. nobody is going to want to listen to minor issues whenever a president took these actions. finally, the american u.s. leading to, police the world against all the evils and asserting our values and ideas across the world, it does not jibe with the america that is fairly war weary. the lives of our troops, time of and a general sense that we need to focus rebuilding home, that it undercuts the residents of a lot of these arguments. -- resonance of a lot of these arguments. both mitt romney and obama are

both internationalists, i believe. does the president have some vulnerabilities? the answer to that is yes. i think a lot of them relate to the economic argument. i think that mitt romney will try to pitch obama on foreign policy in ways that resonate the story he is trying to tell about problems with the economy. for example, europe, while obama has very little that he can do about that, virtually nothing, he will argue that obama pursues a european-style welfare state with excessive government debt and spending. look at what is happening in europe and that is a model of what will happen here.

likewise, i think the idea of a rise in china is something that unsettles a lot of people. it feeds into economic anxiety. mitt romney is not the president, so for him, talk is cheap. bashing china, unfair trade practices, saying they are not devaluing their currency to make american products cheaper, the inability for us to infiltrate as much of the market in china, the idea that china is a growing power on the international stage, all which feeds into a little bit of u.s. economic anxiety. fear about being overtaken and that our jobs are going elsewhere. obama says some tough things about the chinese as well, but this is the disadvantage of

being president. he has to balance our concerns about china's activities with other things, like getting support in the united nations for actions with respect to iran, the north korean nuclear program, and a whole host of issues. he has less liberty to essentially-china. mitt romney can say what he wants. once again to office, totally changed course and it won't matter. -- once he gets into office, he can totally changed course and it won't matter. the issue for defense spending is a bread and butter republican fang. defense spending is the only type of government stimulus that republicans like.

a jobs program. we spent more than we need on defense, in my view. president obama, in his efforts to come up with a budget package to reduce our long-term debt bank has committed to reducing military spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years. mitt romney says he will reverse all of those cuts and add to the military, make the army 100,000 bigger, increase our shipbuilding, increase our procurement. that is a pretty costless thing for him to be able to say. i do not think he will be penalized for being a reckless spender for doing that, but it is good for jobs. people live in communities with defense contractors or shipyards, that is a potent economic argument that mitt

romney will be able to use effectively. i think finally the issue of u.s.-israel relations is gone to be an important one. -- going to be an important one. obama got off to a bad start when he made the demand that its the israelis freeze their settlement activity outside the '67 borders. that was bluntly rejected by netanyahu government and led to the termination of the arab -- the palestinian-israeli peace talks. they have not been able to be restarted. now i think mitt romney, in some regards, does not understand the diversity of the jewish vote on this issue. there are many jewish voters who have reflectively defended in

the criticism of israel is bad and will support candidates who do that. there are others who have been somewhat disappointed with some of the actions of israel. not unconditional supporters. there is some diversity of opinion among jews on this question. i do think the bad start that obama got off to resonated with some population. it shows up in the polls. obama got 74% of the jewish vote in 2008. recent polls show some erosion. that could hurt obama, i think, especially the jewish vote is concentrated in a number of important states. florida is a swing state. you have an older jewish population there, who would be more sensitive to these

difficult questions of u.s.- israeli relations. obama is approval ratings in israel or very low after this incident. beverly rebound in the last couple of years, partly because of obama -- they have really rebound in the last couple of years. resolutions of the united nations, had a strong position on that. some of this recent statement about having to use force against iran, if necessary. in some ways, he has rebounded very nicely. i think he will have problems with pockets of the jewish population. ok, what is obama going to say about mitt romney? obama, unlike his economic platform,, i think he is going

to run on his record of achievements in foreign policy. he is going to make the argument that mitt romney's foreign policy as a return to george w. bush. he left office very unpopular with respect to his foreign policy. obama will argue that he inherited a mess, at a less secure world, and he has made it more secure. mitt romney is advocating the same policies as george w. bush and will try to paint them as being reckless, too quick to use force, and the like. one more direct line of attack that was tried already was mitt romney did make some statement saying that he did not think we should galavant the world and spent billions of dollars trying to find one person. he criticized obama's statement that he would go inside pakistan after bin laden.

obama will try to track that out to show that mitt romney is not tough on terrorism. i think he will try to make the argument that mitt romney is trapped in the past and maybe making -- his statements that russia is our number one geopolitical cell was mocked by a lot of people in the foreign- policy establishment, including a lot of republicans. the arms control agreement was -- had very strong bipartisan support. they were kind of surprised i did mitt romney making a statement like that. are we rivals? sure. are we upset about their autocratic tendencies of late? absolutely.

but does that make us a number one geopolitical foe? of return to the cold war? most people might see that as being somewhat out of touch. we might hear something about that. what are some weaknesses in the obama's argument? it will be hard to disqualify mark -- mitt romney as not been qualified. he still benefits from the notion of just because you are a republican, you are going to be strong on national security. he is intelligent comment he has been -- he is intelligent, he has led large organizations, people think of them as a good manager. the obama campaign talked about this argument that mitt romney would not have tried to go after bin laden the same way that obama did.

i do not think that worked all that well. that line of attack probably will not be a very effective. does mitt romney have all of the -- an incumbent has the air force one a fact. mitt romney cannot do that. obama it is consistently gone to make himself -- or take instances when he is gone to try to be a strong leader, demonstrating himself as being a global figure with the authority of air force wind, making national-security decisions, things like he did going to afghanistan and announcing the agreement to withdraw troops. having the nato summit in chicago recently. these things are going to keep taking place over the course of the election. there could be crises or things that makes foreign affairs

issues that don't go the way we might like, like economic crises in europe. the incumbent is then held responsible for those things whether or not he had anything to do that. that is a mixed bag, but that advantage accrues to the president. i think mitt romney's caucused this is not going to play well in a world -- war-weary nation. we will see him town that down to a large regard. he will keep advocating military spending. he will not make a lot of noise about afghanistan or iraq, but he has said enough on that record to hurt him a little bit during this election campaign. to the extent that mitt romney has advocated things that make him sound a lot like george bush, american exceptionalism

argument, morphing into bush is not a good way for him to go. the public's recollection of the bush years on international affairs is not a good one. the idea that we should've kept troops in iraq longer, even though the rockies no longer wanted us, troops and state -- iraqis republicans really feel like iran is an issue goes to their view to their benefit. obama is a week, he is not willing to use force, he is willing to reach out to ahmadinejad. the president has a pretty good record here. it is one that the american public is pretty comfortable with. he has used covert action to try to box up the nuclear program would cyber warfare. he has organized international

communities to the extent that president bush could not. tougher and tougher sanctions come up some of which will take place in the next couple of months. this has brought iran back to the negotiating table on this issue. i do not think the american public are eager to get engaged in a third war in the middle east in this decade. ironically, where republicans thought they would be able to use iran to fit their paradigm, i think it fits the obama paradigm pretty well. returning leadership, working in conjunction with our

partners, keeping the idea of force on the table, but using diplomacy, using diplomatic sanctions to try to achieve our objectives. i think it is beginning to show roots in iran. the public is going to support that approach. that leaves us with the two individuals, at the american public is going to find that they would both be credible national leaders. they certainly have a different outlook, which will be explored during this election campaign. u.s.-israel relations, china on trade could be vulnerabilities for the president. mitt romney's framing of the world maybe of advantage to the president. that is my analysis. i would be happy to engage in dialogue with you. [applause]

>> we are open for questions. we ask that you wait until the microphone to get to you. don't be shy. >> let me start back there. >> in regard to america's military role throughout the world, do you think the american public's patience is going to give out? >> i think that has a lot to do with energy. our alliance with israel, but the need to have lots of troops there to have stability, a lot

of that has to do with our desire to have secure flow of oil. we are becoming less energy dependent on the middle east. we have new sources of production in north america. mexico. other sources of even oil in north america, russia, elsewhere. we're beginning to find ourselves to be able to wean ourselves -- we are less dependent on middle eastern oil. as long as we, you know, our economy -- i think the american public will understand that investments that we make -- we believe provide stability and security, that is something we will continue to have to do.

>> i think this gentleman was next. >> i am curious, there are scheduled cuts in the military better coming up. republican party seems a bit split on that. some are not too worried about it, others do not want to see it. where do you think mitt romney is going to come down on that? >> let's get everything on the table. president obama, a part of issue at about the deficit should be handled has put down half a billion in cuts on the

table. if you recall, when we were having the debt limits debate around this time last summer, nobody found that pleasant, what was agreed upon was that if congress did not cut, find another $1.20 trillion to cut from the budget over the next 10 years, automatic spending cuts, in addition to what was in the budget already, would go into effect. half would be on national security, and half would be on

domestic spending. those cuts have not been made by the congress. the super committee that was created flopped. therefore, this automatic sequester is scheduled to go into effect in january. that would mean an additional $500 million of cuts over the next 10 years. combined with the once they're already in the budget, that would be a trillion dollars. there are not a very many democrats or republicans who are eager to see those cuts. the problem is, this is law. they are going to happen until a budget deal is made. very few folks think we will be able to do that before the election. to what extent that becomes a campaign issue, i do not know. mitt romney will certainly say that he is against the sequester from going into effect. we should make all the cuts on this domestic side. at some point, it means medicare, health care spending, medicaid. it does not talk about that very much, that that is going to come up. if you are for a large increase in defense spending and you are for canceling what obama has put on the table, you are proposing

medicare cuts. mitt romney will swear that is not true. it is not a credible argument. if it comes up, and if you are not for any defense cuts, you are not for any increased taxes, the only way to do the spending will be large-scale cuts in medicare. that is how it is going to play out during the election. go ahead. >> [inaudible] >> i wonder whether the issue of whether the war in iraq was a mistake will come up in the campaign or will people to try to forget about that? >> well, i think it could possibly could come up. i tried to allude to some of those concepts in my top. obama will try to paint mitt

romney as having supported all the policies of george w. bush and the iraq war -- i will note that there was a recent bombing, there are still problems in iraq. i do not know if we will rehash. i do not know if we even rehashed in the 2008 election. i think it will, in terms of obama trying to link mitt romney to failed policies of the past. >> i have two questions.

one is a question of weakness from the left. a lot of people believe that obama might be an anti-war president. in 2008, they voted for him because they expected peace. some people would argue that he has been very active with drones, taking out bin laden. i wonder if that could weaken his position on the left. it is not that they would vote for mitt romney, but they would not vote at all. this weakness might resonate with those who believe that his economic policies have not been as friendly as people hoped. from the right, the other side of being pragmatic is not having a clear vision. the two big threats in the world are pakistan and iran, and

possibly russia. i am not sure how much progress is made on any of those. one thing that some republicans might say, he could push more aggressively with oil in america. oil prices are down to $60 a barrel. >> a lot of questions. let me see if i can get some of them. gas prices, when they go up, it is always bad for the incumbent president. bill clinton would talk about the relationship between the number of cents added to the gas price and how would affect his approval rating. fortunately, for obama, some believe the gas prices would hit $5. they kind of peaked at $4. maybe that will continue throughout the summer and we will not have extraordinarily

high gas prices come november. that is an issue that depends on where the prices at the pump in the 30 days before the election. environmental versus domestic production is a classic democrat-republican issue. we had this argument frequently. obama's record on domestic production is pretty good. he will say that he has increased domestic production of the course of his tenure, whether you are responsible for it or not, you get credit for it if that happens. the republicans will argue that that is everything that bush did. obama got to take advantage of that. obama will argue that he has

worked on domestic production. i think the fact that canadian oil, the new sources in mexico, all becoming less dependent on oil from our enemies. obama will be able to make an argument. mitt romney will make the typical argument on energy. canadian oil, the new sources in mexico that we are becoming less dependent on oil from our enemies. obama will be able to make that argument. romney will make the typical argument we need less reliance on oil from the middle east and russia. in terms of counter-terrorism issues and the left, the idea that obama in 2008 ran as an anti-war president and has not fulfilled those promises. i think the problem obama is based on a lot of issues with respect to what people thought is that people attached to obama what they wanted to hear and did not listen or were

willing to look the other way with respect to parts of his record they did not find appealing. independents liked his talk about bringing the parties together and having a less confrontational idea of politics but did not listen with respect to a new health-care plan and other things that were not on the top of their agenda. with respect to the left and counter-terrorism, when i listen to the obama campaign, he said he would use force to go into pakistan to eliminate the terrorist threat. maybe people on the left were not listening to that part but to me he projected that he was a president who would be willing to use of force to deal with direct threats to our security.

what he has done has not surprised me personally and i am not, i do not agree with the criticism from the left about him and not, let's put it this way, trying to make this a more peaceful world. obama did get our troops out of iraq. he escalated the war in afghanistan but against the will of the military and he set a time line for the surge to end and is drawing that conflict down. he has resorted to sanctions rather than the use of force to do with the iranian nuclear program.

i would counsel folks on the left to are disappointed in the obama record to look at the totality of the issues and not just the things that maybe annoy you about the last four years. please. >> i wonder if you could comment on the route recent national security leaks from the political aspect and the national security perspective. >> from a political perspective, i think republicans are disappointed. they wanted to make obama as a naive, a weak leader and here we have a cyber war, drone strikes, al qaeda leaders getting knocked off every week, and obama essentially conducting

a covert action campaign that republicans would have been proud of under the bush administration. i think that frustrates them to a great degree and the claim about leaks is a way to try to take some of the luster off of that. that is the politics of that. i find it a little difficult to get excited about this issue. dick cheney would go on meet the press" and say things and argue that since he had declassification authority whenever he said it, that means it was no longer classified. there is a little bit of ye doth protest too much with that

issue. and said, i had a security clearance and i worked on legal cases where individuals did not fulfil their obligations. that is a serious issue. having been a government servant, i cannot countenance individuals taking it under their own authority to believe what they think should or should not be in the public domain. i believe we keep too many secrets. we classify too much and we have too many people who are entitled to have security clearances. i am not one who believes in closed government but i feel strongly against this leaking

and it is a prevalent part of our national security establishment. this is true before and after obama. can we get some ladies to ask some questions? we should hear from you. we will go here. >> two questions, to what degree given the media focus on the swing states, to what degree do these issues resonate more or less in a swing states? given you have talked about their campaigns, and the possibility exists that the pacs may follow different directions, will they go in a different manner? >> a lot of what i got in terms of trying to construct the romney narrative, looking at his website and an article that karl rove wrote about how to beat obama in the fall issue of foreign policy, and he is

running one of those big pacs. in general, the pacs are going to, there is a some biotic relationship between them, whether the legal lines are crossed i do not know but i think that if you're going to see certain things coming out of the romney campaign, you see a lot of them coming out of the super pacs. they might try to do something and if the campaign says that worked well, you might see the campaign following them. in terms of the specific foreign-policy issues, having more resonance in certain states, i think, yes, for sure. for example, you see trade policy being a much bigger deal

in the rust belt then in the south or the west. there is a big jewish vote in florida, so there are israel issues and things like at that have more resonance in florida and new jersey becomes a swing state. there are other pockets of ethnic populations, for example the muslim vote is becoming stronger and the hispanic vote is a huge vote and they are interested in immigration policy. i think that leans more to the domestic rather than national security. immigration will be a big issue in the campaign. that is going to be discussed in a lot of the western swing states. the woman in the pink.

>> would you comment on syria and the relationship of russia? our view, i know we are watching it, but could you encapsulate that? >> is a difficult situation. in terms of the campaign, the difference between the candidates is that romney has agreed with senator mccain we should try to arm the opposition in syria to counteract and make it more of a fair fight with assad. the administration has not gone that far overtly. we do not know what they are doing covertly. in number of years ago israel invaded syria and knocked out a nuclear project which they believed was a nuclear weapon. after that, syria invested a great deal of money in anti- aircraft defensive.

after a day we were able to knock out gaddafi in debut, our ability would require much more longer and deeper investment and it would be more difficult to do whout injuring civilians. it's wanted to try to use military force, and i think there are few experts to believe that is a good idea, it would b more difficult and more costly. libya is pretty clear geographically and ideologically where the lines were being drawn. in syria, the opposition is more diffuse, less organized, and

not as geographically identifiable. that makes it harder to provide a safe haven of corridors or even transfer weapons. there is concern about some of the opposition to be more in the direction of the fundamentalist extremists. you would be taking on a risk in providing advanced weaponry to them because they might be used for terrorism, possibly against israel or make its way to hezbollah. i do not have any easy solutions. i think what is happening is that more and more pressure is going to be placed on russia to take a more responsible action. maybe a possibility is we have a non-assad regime that is still pro-soviet. maybe the opposition would not

be happy but we will get assad out and be more representative. maybe the russians could live with that if they were able to sell arms and have this relationship. in terms of what i have been talking about, it is easy to call russia your geo-political foe but in the real world they have power whether we like it or not. here is an instance where having a more positive relationship with russia is potentially giving us some leverage or some ability to engage in diplomacy, to address this particular issue. yes.

we will get to you next. there is a gentleman here. >> what is the position on north korea? >> i think the position on north korea has been stable throughout the second bush administration through obama. again, talk is cheap for the challenger. being able to say we have a growing threat and the president has not solved the problem, president bush could not solve the problem, either. our ability to influence the north koreans is very low. they have a huge amount of weaponry they could use against south korea. some sort of unilateral attack or even a strong western attack

against nuclear facilities would end up in a lot of lives lost in south korea. that is an option that none of the parties or presidents have felt was on the table. in many ways the only game in town is trying to get to the koreans to the bargaining table and a lot of that, china has the strong leverage against north koreans. north korea is a leadership transition. in an autocratic, closed states like this, what that new, younger, inexperienced leader is very beholden to the military and is in need of seeming strong to his domestic population. you might see a lot of rhetoric and provocative actions that come out of north korea. but i do not see president romney or president obama from

doing differently about it. >> the federal debt is going to catch up with us. it caught up in germany and spain. what is going to happen? >> our debt problems are not as extreme as europe. in terms of the way we look at things, comparing apples to apples is our debt to gdp ratio. how much is our debt compared to our economy? if we have a smaller economy, that is what makes the difference. our debt, our total debt, which is approaching $16 trillion, i could stand to be corrected but i believe it is close to around 60% of our gdp.

right now, what we are looking at in places like greece and ireland and spain is debt to gdp ratios that exceed over 100%. the feeling is if we get to that point, we would be in a serious crisis. now, left untouched, leaving the defense budget growing, leaving the expansion of medicare, especially, is going to explode in the next couple years as medical care keeps getting more expensive and baby boomers who are in their 60's and still healthy, in 20 years they are going to be 80 and not as healthy.

there are a lot of them. even social security is a flipping in terms of its in not bringing in as much in contributions. the explosion can come in the next 15 years from now when our debt to gdp ratio which start approaching over 100% and get into a danger zone. we have a short-term debt problem. we have a medium-term one and then we have a long term. it is a very clear that every person involved in this says we need to take action on our long-term debt, we need to bring the trajectory of our spending down and there is a debate about whether we need to bring our rate of taxation up to meet that. what is going to happen in november, after the election, i guess it is really january when it happens, is a tax-maggedon. the sequester would take 1.2

trillion dollars out of the economy and it is the expiration of all of the bush, obama, bush extended by obama at tax cuts, which over 10 years, if you take the totality of them, and nobody thinks all of them will go back to the way they were in 2001, we are talking about $5 trillion in taxes. another 1.2 trillion dollars in spending. people believe that could put us into another recession.

there will be a tremendous incentive, especially once the election is over, for some sort of political deal to be made between the parties. i think both parties are waiting to see who will be president so they will know what the relative bargaining strength is going to be. if romney winds, the republicans hold onto the house, then the final plan is going to be more spending, domestic spending cuts, and less taxes. if obama wins, it will be tilted with more taxes, more defense cuts, and a little bit less on the medicare spending. but i believe there will be something because under current law, but things are unsustainable in the long term. everybody knows that. >> we have time for one more question. >> i believe this might be a former student so i am worried. >> that is correct. you mentioned that obama may

benefit from the perception of being on the right side of history according to the arab spring issue. i have heard from strategists on the right that perhaps this could be interpreted as obama abandoning strong american allies, in tunisia and egypt. and that the recent elections of islamic-based political parts may in fact leads to anti- american policies in the region and abroad. do you think that romney will attempt to make that argument? if so, will it resonate with the american public? >> an excellent question from a former student. obviously learned a lot. [laughter] so, i think on the mubarak issue, which is what you are

talking about, i think those americans who feel that the united states can somehow impose its will and get the desired effect it wants on every international issue might find that argument to resonate. but those folks are probably voting for romney already. what were we supposed to do? were we going to support egyptian tanks rolling into cairo to suppress popular, unarmed protesters? i think that is preposterous. if somebody is going to try to start making that argument that we abandoned mubaraks, and then at the same time making an argument that somehow we should

be more active to get rid of assad in syria. he is not an ally, but nonetheless it is not all holds together. that said, the question of islam and what direction the arab world is going to take, and fear in some regard that when these countries gained democracy and are able to vote, they are going to bring in governments that want to the more governed by islamic principles than previous ones. the question will be, what does that mean? obama in some ways is taking a risk and a chance in believing, again, what he to do otherwise is not clear to me. but st. we are going to see what happens in this election and

what we want to do is take the islamists at their word they will be committed to democracy, with a more islamic flavor, and hope they start looking more like a turkey than iran. iran is shia, but we do not want these countries to devolve into these autocratic, theocratic, anti-western entities where there is no true democracy and a harsher version of islam is being pursued. we would like to see more of a turkish model which is a commitment to democratic principles and if people want to be governed by laws that are more in accord with islamic practices, so be it. it is their country. that is what democracy is. we do not know which way it is going to tilt. there will be more of them, obviously. i think the position the government should be taking is, let's see where it goes. let's do what we can to support these governments and in courage them to head down a democratic

path, to liberalize their economies and be supportive and if they head in the other direction to use coercive measures to try to influence them. but this is about the people who live in these countries and our ability to shape this outcome to one that would be a perfect and in our interest is actually extremely limited. how that plays out in the campaign, i am not sure but i do not think governor romney is probably going to go there because there are not any good answers. thank you for your excellent

questions and a great session. i really enjoyed it. thank you. >> thank you, professor schanzer. we have three more series coming up. june 27, discussing civility and public discourse. on july 11, talking about gender issues in the elections. and on july 25, we will have daniel talking about network politics. thank you for coming and for c- span for broadcasting. have a wonderful evening. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> here is a look at the prime- time lineup. beginning at 8:00 eastern. is president joe biden and joe biden hit the national

association education -- and washington. but tv's weekend programs and pride time. looking at the presidency, beginning with michael ugly on the world's most exclusive club. and on c-span3 tonight, american history tb in prime-time with oral history interviews with key congressional staff charged with investigating president nixon. that is all to eye on the c- span that works. tomorrow on july 4, we will begin at 10:00 with a congressional gold medals the marines. a group of 19,000 african- americans of world war ii. there were stationed at the segregated camp just addition to the camp in north carolina. house and senate leaders will take part in the therapy. marty blake, the history of the statue of liberty. talking about the beginning, controversies and j. g. weeks. that is tomorrow evening.

-- talking about the beginning, controversies, and the beginnings. >> the light of the sailor included scrapping the deck, climbing the loft -- whatever the duties assigned, but by the end of the day you are ready for rest. it is four hours on, four hours off. take of this weekend, the life of an enlisted man aboard the u.s.s. constitution. during the war of 1812. >> the sailor was in fear. it was the thing the sailor wanted -- never wanted to see was a petty officer getting ready for a flogging. you do not want to see details coming out of the bag for a flogging. >> sunday at 7:00 eastern and pacific. also, more from "the contenders."

our key political figures the changed political history. sunday, 19 democrat presidential candidates. to tell the former ambassador to get a stand today said the u.s. is hurting its own cause by not projecting an image of steady this in the country and drew criticism from the obama administration strategy. robert gibbs spoke at the brookings institution. the event comes a few days before the donor conference. ron neumann spoke at the brookings institution. thank you for coming out today.

i am like all hamlin from brookings. we will spend the next 90 minutes talking first with alex of the u.s. agency for international development about ongoing state of his agency's efforts of the broader mission in afghanistan. the way we will proceed is first after i introduced him in just a second he will speak from the probe of them were prepared remarks. he will then join ron newman and myself for a panel discussion and then we will go to you. let me say a couple evermore marof remarks. ron continues through a broken leg and broken wrist to fight through. he was ambassador for afghanistan 2005-2007, culminating a fantastic career in foreign service. he was one of only two fathers- sunday was to be ambassador to the same country. his father was ambassador to of kurdistan in the late 1960's.

there will be a trivia question in the end as to which other do well had to other people ambassador to the state country. they both wound up residence. that is your hand. then, our featured guest for today, and opening speaker is alex thier, the director on the afghanistan portfolio. he has a longstanding commitment to the afghanistan and pakistan. in the 1990's he worked for the united nations in afghanistan during the difficult times of civil conflict and entering into the time of taliban role. he has been a distinguished scholar at the u.s. institute of peace with commitments to many of the issues that in the early going often evaded the attention of so many of the policy makers like the rules law and other crucial matters. he is a huge portfolio today.

i believe our largest recipient of foreign assistance, but a lot is about to change. we convened today in the preparation for the tokyo donors' conference. a lot of people paying attention to the nato summit in may where afghanistan was arguably issue number one. no less important and perhaps some -- perhaps more important is the tokyo conference next week were donors will meet to talk about their current and long-term commitments to of get a stand and what strategies my guide ongoing efforts. we're thrilled to have you here to keynote this topic. thank you for being africans. please join me in welcoming him. [applause] hank you.yo it is a real honor. thank you for coming out. i was not quite to say this, but i cannot help for market by yesterday awarded we have a large video conference to

discuss ongoing efforts to discuss power efforts in the northern afghanistan, which we almost had to cancel because of lack of power in washington, d.c., but really it is a pleasure to be speaking alongside people who have dedicated so much to keeping our engagement in afghanistan on track, honest, and really with an eye not primarily to pointing out problems but solving them. when you go to the embassy in see the remarkable roads of ambassadors, maybe it is because of the moment, but father and son are right above and below each other of the moment, and that is a record of a multi- generational service and perspective on the country that cannot be taken lightly. every time i see michael i am reminded of the incredible work he has done. particularly where i first got to see his work were the

incredible graphics that have run through good york times for almost a decade now. i think it is rare that you seat of datasets that is so expert we set out that it can change people's opinions, if not thousands, and it certainly did for me. we are in the midst of a political economic and security transition in afghanistan that to my mind will likely the fine -- define the country and region for centuries to come. for it to succeed, it will require an enormous degree of sustained commitment, and after 10 years for many people that is asking a lot. first and foremost this commitment has to come from the afghans and their leadership, but also needs to come from us and our allies in the national -- and the international community. together we must overcome the

ghosts of 1991. at that moment, two, after 12 years of international intensive focus on afghanistan was a turning point. it was the point where the world turned its back on afghanistan. the nato summit in chicago, the donor summit coming up in tokyo this week, the u.s.-afghan strategic partnership are all about showing the afghan people and the taliban and the regional actors and our allies, and indeed ourselves that after another decade of chili action and investment, we are not leaving afghanistan to the wolves, that the lessons of al qaeda a and extremism left unchecked are not lost, and the stability of this region matters up to u.s. foreign

policy. this is what president obama said. we are building an enduring partnership. the agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the afghanistan people. as you stand up, you will not stand alone. it establishes the basis of our corporation over the next decade, including shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions. it supports afghan efforts to events development and dignity for their people. it includes afghan commitments to transparency and accountability. and to protect the human rights of all afghans, men and women, boys and girls. our relentless focus for the past several years has been to get results from our investment of taxpayer dollars in afghanistan and to make them

sustainable over the long-term. in the last decade we have helped afghanistan to develop more rapidly, reaching more deeply into it society than in any previous the decade in their history. i realize that that bucks some of the commentary and reporting that is passing for conventional wisdom these days, so let me repeat it. we have helped them to develop more rapidly than in any previous decade in their history. i know this in part because i first decided to go to afghanistan in that fateful year of 1991. for four years i witnessed a civil war that was part of the systematic dismantlement afghanistan society and the states. as a result, a decade ago,

afghanistan ranked among the world's lowest for light expended see -- life expectancy in literacy and the highest for infant mortality. one-third of the afghan population were refugees, and war were leaving. another third were dependent on food aid from the international community for their survival. half of the population, afghan women, were about to be plunged into darkness and destitution by the taliban in 1996. over the last decade we have invested approximately $40 billion worth of civilian assistance into afghanistan, and while this is a significant figure, and the most significant over the past decade, it is a poor and to remember this is equivalent to roughly four-six weeks of the cost of the military campaign. let me give you a few examples

of some of the progress we have achieved before going on to talk about what is happening next. there is a report that was available outside that we released recently. this outlined some of these things statistically and talk about the results we achieved. for example, growth domestic product, economic growth and a get a stamp has been 8 percent signed-10% on year on average for the past decade. per capita income has risen, are virtually tripled, bring the millions of afghanistan out of poverty. if you think about public health, life expectancy in afghanistan in the past decade has increased 15-20 years and in a 10-year period, which is likely the largest increase of any country in the world in that

time. maternal mortality and child mortality has plunged below the previous highest in the world mark, and 64% of the afghan population now have access to basic health care, where as only 6 percent signed did a decade ago. in education, a similar story. 2001, 900,000 afghanistan children almost exclusively boys went to school. today the figure is over 8 million children in school today. over 35% of them girls. there are some lesser-known but equally important statistics. if you look at energy, and i think there were handouts passed out, the number of energy connections and megawatts available had soared. went from being the only capital without electricity to having 24 hour reliable power.

equally important, we of work with the afghan utility, which did not even exist five years ago, and has gone from requiring subsidies of $160 million to keep the energy system functioning, to only $40 billion today. they are well on the path to self sustainability. you could tell a similar story about derivatives that have increased eight-fold over the past nine years and have doubled in the past few years. ultimately it they are going to sustain the progress, it will have to come from their own economy, from their own revenues and private sector. i want to say that by no means, all of these projects been successes. we are aware of that, and we have tried a enormously to learn from our past failures and have made significant reforms over the past few years in the way we do business. i will not go into detail, but i

encourage you to look at the report. just a few things. in afghanistan we issued the first ever sustainability policy, which requires us to examine every single project we do to ensure it will be sustainable over the long-term and think about how we achieve that. we issued something called the accountable assistance initiative for afghanistan, which has done things like limited the amount of subcontracting, increasing vetting for contractors, dramatically increase the level of staffing and oversight we have over programs to make sure we are safeguarded where taxpayer dollars are going. we have also signed on with other donors to some of the donor best practices that have emerged like those announced. something called the new deal for front of states that afghanistan has signed onto. the bottom line here is that afghanistan, although one of the

most challenging places in the world to do this kind of work, we have decided to make it rather than we will get to it eventually and focus on the easy places, we're putting it to the vanguard of our assistance reforms to make sure u.s. aid is using best practices of the most challenging places where we have the biggest portfolio. what i want to say is this progress remained fragile. due to ongoing insurgency, lack of political settlement, corruption, impunity, and institutions and society that remain weak after 30 years of turmoil, we have an enormous amount of fragility in afghanistan. when i think about that afghans i have known for so long and talk to them today, i am often called to ask, what is normal

for the people of afghanistan? how do they see their own future? what is it that we need to do in order to break the patterns and over, the ghost of 1991? judging from the last 30 years, what you see are constantly shifting things. redeemed -- regimes, ideologies, invaders -- the only certainty has largely been that they come, take their toll, and are largely swept aside. i believe today we have a chance to help them to change this dynamic. this is really the heart of what we're trying to accomplish in tokyo. tokyo is not just a conference, it is the culmination of a process that has concluded a year of dialogue and debate and included other conferences like tokyo better leading us to understand together how we can secure afghanistan's future.

we have to accomplish i believe four things in this process. first, there has to be a long- term commitment to of get a stand. we have to convince our partners and the afghans and ourselves that we're not leaving afghanistan in the lurch, even as transition moves forward. we have to cement the incredible gains of the past decade, address the potential factors or causes of instability or fragility, like the economic impact that the withdrawal will have on afghanistan's economy. second, we have to set priorities. we cannot do everything in afghanistan. the needs in afghanistan are virtually endless. but with donor funds going down, and this transition moving forward, we need a narrow,

achievable set of priorities that need to be focused on a few, critical things. private-sector led economic growth, and enabling environment that will allow the growth, including better walls, better governance, and better infrastructure, and human capital development. and of the words, cementing the gains we have made for afghans and health and education and making them were ready to become part of the work force. third, there need to be reforms. these reforms and government and economic policy will enable a successful economic and political transition. a failure to make some of these critical reforms will disabled that transition. finally, as someone who has watched this process intensively over the past decade, we need

clear, all what mechanisms that will set and tracked benchmark so we know where and how we are on track and where we are off track and how we will correct that process. so what you will see coming out of tokyo is something that attempts to bind all of these things together in of mutual accountability framework, a framework that is an agreement between the international community and the afghan government, about how to get there we will achieve those four objectives. i will close by saying i believe these changes, this commitment, these reforms and the need for real results like many of those that i outlined are no longer nice to have.

they are imperative if the afghanistan is going to avoid its prior fate. to an economy that is much more self-sufficient. there needs to be greater regional integration. afghanistan and its region are one of the least integrated in the world. finally, we need a successful political transition. i think it is absolutely fundamental to remember about the peaceful transfer of power that must happen in 2014 will be an historic first for afghanistan. not only in this period, but ever in its history. you do not get to the second one without going through the first one. at the hand, am -- at the end, i

think we look at afghanistan with these realities in mind. the troop levels are going down. overall donor investment of the next decade will decline. at the end of the day, we must be there to support the afghans throughout this process, but the afghans and their neighbors will have to make critical changes in order to succeed in this process. thank you for your time. it is a pleasure being here. [applause] >> [inaudible]

>> i think we are good to go. congratulations on what you and others working on behalf of the government have accomplished in afghanistan. there is no doubt there has been remarkable headway in so many areas. it is one of the distinctions, frankly, between this effort and many other efforts were going to a conflict zone and it can be difficult to see the quality of life gets better. that happens afghanistan, too, but the amount of headway you have made is quite remarkable. i know we will want to juxtapose that with the broader question. the broader state of afghanistan, that is the title of our discussion today.

we are focused primarily on development and governance matters. that carries over into politics and corruption matters. an end to the entire mission. we're going to broaden -- and into the entire mission. we're going to broaden the scope a little bit. you can ask anything that you wish. i will invite ron to comment on whatever. those of you have not -- who have not read it, i will plug his book. his broader observations on how afghanistan is going. ron, over to you, and thank you for being here. >> that brought an invitation which still needs to be contained in 10 or 12 minutes is

an invitation into chaos if he were not disciplined. while i am out of government, i speak only for myself. i am clearly invested in many aspects of afghanistan. i cannot claim to be a wholly disinterested observer. that is a particular project in which i was deeply vested. i shifted some of our funds to get some of that done. i get criticized for some of those decisions. drive around the city which is no longer a black city at night. what i would like to do for these units is to try to reflect on a few broader realities of afghanistan and of our working

there, which i think it is rather short shrift in our discussions. it complicates your life. i am skeptical of some things, but the first thing i want to talk about is this business of developing capacity. we use this phrase and the people in the business understand it. by and large, people outside do not understand it. there has been a huge gap between military and our civilians, for instance, in the difference between training and developing capacity. in that gap, there has been a demand often for progress very fast. somebody said to me, the problem is that we do not have synchronization between the military, our economic and political strategies. if you mean that in the two years we have left before we

turn the security over to afghan lead, we are supposed to achieve a really modestly well functioning government, you are asking for a rate of progress that has never been seen in the 60 years of post-colonial development or the world. you are asking for something that cannot be done and then you are blaming people for not accomplishing what was never possible or feasible. there is a need to get realistic. there is real capacity development in afghanistan. you mentioned bill collection. this is a very interesting example. the outfits that collects bills is making major progress in bill collection. we have beat them over the head on that issue for 10 years. it took 10 years of work to transform a bureaucracy that

was based on a large sheet patronage and corrupt model and was antiquated. into a bureaucracy that is now collecting bills, which means they can pay for things like fuel. this is a critical piece of keeping the light on. i use this example because it is an example of progress. on the other hand, it is an example of how long it takes to achieve progress. we strained at this as americans constantly. we want things now. 24-hour news cycle. it won't work that way. i remember talking to a first- aid director who told me about to go into the education ministry in the early 2002. they went to a building where

they had no glass in the windows. they groped their way down a dark hall to find the minister of working by the light of the kerosene lamp with no power in .he building, no computers on the one hand, you have enormous development from then until now in their educational system. 8 million kids in school. on the other hand, you have enormous gaps. i raise this to illustrate the reality of where this country is coming from and how long it takes to get changed. we frustrate ourselves enormously. we also waste a lot of money sometimes by trying to do things at a rate of speed which is unrealistic and criticizing the program for failure for not doing what is impossible.

does not mean there are not lots of things to criticize, but we have to get a certain amount of realism. this goes back to the difference between enthusiasm and implementation. we have been bedeviled and afghanistan by repeated enthusiasms to charge off in new directions. this is also exacerbated by our short tours. i believe we will never -- until we leave people in place for a least two or three years. you cannot build a learning organization on the basis of going once a year. we tend to -- everyone who comes in at new wants to find out what he or she ought to change. the result is a program

exhaustion on the part of afghans to look around and say, this is the fourth, fifth, sixth person who has changed the program. why should i exert myself when it will change and a year? -- in a year? we jerk things around. that was bad enough for me had a lot of money. but now, we are going through an enormous process of reducing the funding. there will be a double economic shock because it is not all of the foreign aid funding that is going down, it is a huge amount of the economy that has been bolstered by military spending, and that is going down as well. this is going to be a huge economic shock. the foreigners have been working

hard to train afghans and putting them extravagant salaries. overall, there is going to be a very large economic shock. one of the things that will be terribly important -- and this is something that i give ia aid great focus -- credit for. trying to hold steadily to a course of action. this is fun to be very hard. tendency to change. when things don't go well, this is a place like to talk about policy. everything -- we like to change the policy. an awful lot of the problem in afghanistan is the implementation. it takes years to do something

so when you switch constantly, you were always letting other things drop. your enthusiasm becomes like a small child that walks away from a complex prop -- project. you need to stick with things. you need the ability to change, to analyze what you are doing. aid gets criticized a lot for what happens to contractors. the contractor model is deeply flawed. for one thing, you hire a contractor to do whatever you hired a contractor to do. you do not hire a contractor to come in and tell you that you are wasting your money. you have a lot of trouble when we have all of the movement -- until we allow aid to grow to a level of staff for it can actually do things again, and until we give them more legal

flexibility in how they contract, they will continue to fight with work around fixes to a model a cannot alter. we need realism in this town -- to a model they cannot alter. we need realism in this town. we cannot cut this agency to the bone and expect that it performs better than it did. when i first went to afghanistan in 1967 -- you reduce the organization by 10 times, you raise its budget enormously, and then you say, why are you all screwed up? as we go forward now, steadiness is going to be enormously important. convincing the world we're going to stay.

there is no more important point about succeeding in afghanistan than that. the majority of the problems we have with pakistan are based on the strategic view that we will not stay and that afghanistan will crumble. the fact is that if we do not convey a message that we will stick, we constantly undercut everything else we are doing. we are such a major player in afghanistan that everyone takes position on what they think we are doing. whether they are friends or enemies. insurgents take position on whether they think we will bail out. they do not worry about whether the afghan army is gone to win. the question is whether they will be strong enough not to lose. we're not winding down the war. we're winding down our part of

the war. we may run out of national commitment, i hope we don't. we will take a serious price for that. our most critical challenges in afghanistan, i believe, is to make up our minds that we are going to stay at a level sufficient with the country -- so the country will not lose. that changes the entire political and economic dynamic. i fear that what we will do, we will manage to stay in another decade, but every year, it will look on certain so that we never reap the strategic benefits of the effort that we actually make. we're pretty good at that for a number of reasons. the fact remains that in the aid program, in the politics and in the military, our ability to

project steadiness is going to be enormously important. with the respect -- deep had to say what alex it -- we cannot describe to the american people what we intend to do in 2015 and afghanistan, we are not contained an image of steadiness. that is a political choice which will have to be made after november in this country. if it cannot be made now. it will be the major choice of the next administration whether it is a continuation of president obama or governor romney. if we are going to state in afghanistan, even if it is more

modest, but be honest about it. if we are not going to do that, we are causing americans to die for a fallacious policy. let's stop saying that we're winding down a war that we are not winding down. we're winding down our presence, and that is a statement of fact. we're not winding down a war. we need to say, what is this relationship of 2015, 16, 17? not in perfect detail, but in sufficient detail that we can see a year from now that we have retained a steady course. that is not what they see today. today, they see a level that was half what it was last year.

and has put to a the most excruciating business of trying to -- and has put a for the most excruciating business of trying to downsize. they see troop levels that are rapidly changing. when you looked in that context of years of uncertainty, having lived that way your entire life, and you see the troop numbers get changed, decisions that seem somewhat unconnected to the ground on numbers, budgets that are affected as much by our deficit as our policy, we are not conveying -- this is a decision the next administration will have to confront. i hope we stay. thank you for all you are doing. i can only imagines when you finally get out of government

come and go back to your previous life, the wisdom you will bring from now having actually trying to do what you're talking about. >> i will focus the question to you, alex. and then we will go to all of you for the remaining time. another point we have been talking about already, the remarkable progress in the field. i want to commend our development and diplomatic workers as well as those in the broader international community. there have been some recent critiques of the so-called civilian upsurgsurge. there is a lot of critique in the the mission. i personally would disagree with the notion that the civilian upsurge has not been impressive. i think it is quite impressive.

plenty of caveat, including our strategy has sometimes had trouble with the afghanistan challenge. the dedication of the people i of scene is very impressive. this is not all happy talk for me. i will wind up with a tough observation and a tough question about corruption. that is the 800-pound gorilla or elephant in the room. greatdoing all these things in afghanistan, but how come corruption is so bad? before i get to that, because it is also not discussed enough in washington, i want to commend those great afghan reformers who all of us know very well, especially these two gentlemen. i have had the pleasure of meeting and number and there are a lot of impressive people.

on the trip that we were on in may, i stayed for the first five days and we talked about afghan politics with a lot of important officials in and out of government. there were a number of hopeful signs. let me mention a couple. the minister of finance has been doing some useful things to make it harder to carry suitcases and money -- suitcases of money out of the country. i will not go into detail, but there is a general sense that there is some progress. i am not trying to say this is a happy place in terms of eliminating corruption, but there are significant steps. the army inspector general has been following through on a lot of the corruption cases you might have heard general petraeus talk about with army supplies being sold off and not being available to their

soldiers. they are continuing on with the criminal pursuit of the people. it was not just one time. there is a legal follow-up. that is one example i was informed about. we visited the asia foundation office, which is trying to encourage good governance at the local level and afghanistan. there are 34 provinces in afghanistan with an average population of close to a million each. for the most part, they do not have a lot of control over their budget because most of them are centrally controlled. there are now efforts to try to give these governors and a little bit more of a sense they have some control over their budget and the amount of money will be tied to their performance. there is a performance based governor's fund and the asia foundation administering this, i

was impressed with the trend line. things were getting better on average in their mind. they had an objective system of evaluation. i do not want to make too much of it. all of these things are somewhat mushy and you cannot claim that it is scientific, but their overall trend line was an improvement of 10 or 15% in the overall quality of local government. there are a lot of good people doing things with in afghanistan, even as our news accounts focus on the karzei elite. we rode about this when we came back from our trip, -- we wrote about this woman came back from our trip, at -- about this when we came back from our trip, as you probably know, there is an expectation -- all of this

effort we have made over the last few years -- which is a fairly small number for a country of this size. that is only about half the number of the rockies have in uniform, for example. that -- iraqis have in uniform, for example. that will happen almost as soon as nato has withdrawn its forces. we raised a lot of questions about that particular planning assumption. i would reiterate that i hope this is not becoming an expectation among policy-makers. just because we're tired of spending money, we preemptively decide to downsize the force.

i would want to raise some questions about whether in the pursuit of saving a billion dollars a year, at that we lose the war because of a false economy on downsizing the afghan security forces. you may or may not want to address that. it is relevant to the broader question of financial commitment by the united states. by last point has to do with an area where i am a little sheepish to mention this because iran does not agree with me -- because ron does not agree with me. we need to send a strong message to them. we need to remind the afghans,

this is conditional on you folks not electing a corrupt warlord in 2014 for president. that may seem obvious. how could we possibly give a billion dollars a year to of regime that is hypothetical worse than the current karzei regime? we do not know who is going to win. we're not going to give $5 billion to $8 billion a year to that kind of government. we're not going to walk away. it is not credible that we will continue to treat afghanistan as our top two or three aid recipients internationally if the corruption problem remains such as it has been in afghanistan. we need to find some way to

signal this. not to pick the winner of the elections. there are two or three people with him we cannot work. -- whom we cannot work. as a matter of fact, there are some people do u.s. congress is not going to support at the levels alex is hoping that we might. that is my last comment. how do we wrestle with the corruption challenge and make sure we do not give the afghans the sense they're getting a blank check from the international community? >> i think this issue coming back to where i ended and you ended of mutual accountability is fundamental. afghanistan has to have the government, and institution better capable and legitimate. without them, they will not succeed.

the decline will be slow, but it will happen. coming from both of these comments, something important occurs to me because i go to afghanistan it so much and have almost over 20 years, you have to be able to see afghanistan as the tale of two cities. people like to look in afghanistan and say, it is failing. the reality is, those things are happening simultaneously. there is remarkable progress in some areas. when you go into these afghan ministries that maybe had a good minister, maybe not, 10 years ago, had very few other people. today, you see the young graduates and the american university, men and women both,

and the work they are doing, the deepening of the bench, it is remarkable. when you travel around the country and see the infrastructure that did not exist. today, all the security does prohibit movement in some places, -- all the security does prohibit movement in some areas, it is much better. they have experienced globalization. afghanistan sat outside of globalization for 30 years. there were a few thousand land lines in afghanistan in 2001. most afghans had never seen or used a telephone. today, 85% of the afghan people have access to the mobile

network. there will probably be more afghans as a percentage basis using mobile money then there will be americans. some of the things -- look at the explosion in media, all of these things. it is remarkable. these things are existing side by side. what we have to do to stick with the good side and held them persevere through the long challenges. even as afghanistan does become more stable, it is still gone to be a fragile post-conflict state. it is a place we will need to continue to support throughout the process. on issues of corruption, two great examples. on one hand, you have kabul

bank. it was an undermining of the afghan financial system. it demonstrated a couple of things. there is an afghan financial network that did not fail amidst all of that. a network of banks and financial institutions that survived that challenge and have been strengthened as a result. last week, afghanistan got a positive report on the imf program. the reason that is so significant is because when you have something like that happen, it threw off everything. it threw off the international confidence in their financial system. but things in place, such that many of us believed would not

happen. and then you see things on a positive sign. i am going to come back to mobile money for a minute. we are starting to use telephones to pay the afghan national police. this is a policy that has been going on for a few years. when this first happened, the afghan police who got their payments theirself funds believed they had gotten a 30% raise. -- payments through their cell phones believed they had gotten a 30% raise. cash was going straight into these accounts. it demonstrates that even as you have ongoing challenges like corruption in afghan society, by strengthening institutions, by being creative and and powering the leaders to demonstrate that they do care about these issues, you can make progress. wages have to keep on pushing on

the people -- we just have to keep on pushing the people and supporting the people able to make those reforms. it is a gradual process. amen to what ron was saying. what has been demonstrated by the past decade is that afghanistan is not a lost cause. i am always amazed by the potential that i see in afghanistan when i go. despite the setbacks, the progress that we make on a consistent basis continually gives one hope that the bigger challenges can be met. >> thank you. i really agree about the young people, the most inspiring thing that i find is talking to the 20 and 30-somethings. in an educated generation that did not exist -- an educated

generation that did not exist. an enormous number of impressive people who want a different country. that does not mean you did change right away. when a younger person goes back into a ministry, they may be a threat to leadership. it takes time for them to develop the critical mass to make change. a lot of change in ministries i have seen has occurred, some of it, you feel now. some of that will be progressively available. it does not happen all at once. it is a plea for the detail and patience rather than for broad generalizations, which we lead

to on anecdotal basis. it is complicated. you will never understand this country as clearly as on the day you arrive. that is very much true of afghanistan. the more you know, the harder it is to generalize about the country. on corruption -- i think we will make slow progress. whether we are staying or not, the results are important. if we are going, we incentivize corruption. you incentivize people to grab what they can before the collapse. our lack of clarity polls against ourselves. it is also very important as one looks at corruption and aid to be careful. we tend to want to -- washington tends to say, because we give money, we have influence.

it is very important that you recognize when you try to make that argument, you are using the lever against the right holder. those who say, by god, we have the leverage. miss understand where aid has leveraged -- misunderstand where aid as leverage and where aids is not have leverage. political survival may be connected to personal survival. age is leverage against the state. it has -- aid is leveraged against the state. it has no bearing on the political survival of the particular politician.

survival is number one. the state in its functioning are someplace down below. i have this great leverage to apply to priority #3 and somebody is dealing with priority number one, you are irrelevant. we need to understand where aid is relevant and it is not. there are plenty of places where it is useful pressure. it has to be carefully calibrated. on the elections, i do differ a little bit with mike, not much in the desire to send the message. i have no problems saying it, i just do not think afghans will believe it. they do not understand our political process. i have come to conclusions about the elections. a bad election can be absolutely disastrous for our policy.

by causing all sorts of explosions in afghanistan. two, we ought to basically keep our hands off. how could i possibly come to that conclusion? i do not think we understand what a bad election is. we are very focused on transparency. you can have a very bad election when it comes to score saddling. you could have that result -- scorer settling. the election is cleanly carried out and regarded as illegitimate. i do not even know if this sort of a brokered election between power holders is more or less disruptive than a deeply flawed contest in a politically immature society.

we do not understand what is more or less destabilizing. to think we do, is an exercise in hubris. i do not think our leverage is up to the task. our european allies do not want to rock the boat. they did not have any appetite for the level of interference. i am not sure if it is credible on our part. the one thing you want to be very careful of when you are a big power, do not bluff and lose. it means that you have less influence the next time. we intervened in a lot of ways and we can say a lot of bad things about the last election, but at the end of the day, president karzei outplayed us. if we make threats we are not

fully determined to carry out, we will again fall short. there are a lot about can politicians sitting on their behind waiting for us to fix the issues of the electoral commission. i believe we lack the power to do that and we probably lack of the will. therefore, we ought to make it very clear, this is potentially a disaster, but this is your disaster. or your success. i do not think we gain anything by leading afghan politicians to believe that we will fix their electoral process. i come to this counter intuitive the view that we ought to make it clear that while we will help, we will support, this is their election. >> thank you. let's go to you in the second row. please identify yourself.

>> international crisis group. i want to agree with the comments about the courage and commitment of u.s. civilians and our military there. i do have some questions. ron, you just said something that seems to be contradictory. you want the united states to stay in afghanistan and to maintain our presence and commitment. yet he say it may be that we do not have the ability to press afghanistan to have an election we consider to be halfway decent. if so, it seems to me that undercuts our validity tuesday. if it appears that the government and afghanistan is worse than the current government, it seems there are two other issues on the question of being realistic. you said we should not be

thinking that in two years, you can get a competent, capable ana in place. $35 billion, and everything we see from the evaluations is that it is not capable of autonomous action, the evaluation of about 220 units, all of the army units, only 7% of capable of autonomous action when they have advisers with them. we have a huge gap. command and control, the analysis from department of defense, 47 units in the ministry of defense, not capable of carrying out their mission. five, including the ground force, airforce, are not able to carry out their mission at all. the level of confidence in what

the military is able to do in terms of security is highly questionable. >> i gather those are to me. >> i want to make sure we have the developments -- pair these things together. >> if it is not a development question, you cannot ask it. >> at this moment. >> i hate to be the guy who gives a long question here. >> make it short anyway. >> all of you mentioned the youth in afghanistan. the biggest development has been in the military. last year, out of the 170,000 students, about 60% of them did not get in because there are not enough seats at the university

system. we have 8 million other kids in the system coming towards universities. we only have one or two master's degree programs in the entire afghanistan. in a country with 70% illiteracy, building a functioning modern economy, you cannot do that based on fundamentals like that. what are they doing to actually create a skills transition in the next 5-10 years? this is something that gives quick turnover results. give somebody a bachelor's degree or a master's degree, and you have them ready for a good job. >> it might be easier [unintelligible] [laughter] >> it is a terrific point. i think that one of the things,

as we have focused very intensively on basic education in afghanistan, and those figures, the 8 million children in schools represent a revolution in terms of the number of afghan children going to school. but there will have to be gains in the potential for employment in order to realize that potential and to take all those people and give them opportunity. the two ways that i believe we are trying to pursue that is that, first of all, a huge new focus on vocational training and education developing skills. the reality is that -- and this is true when you look at construction and other industry in afghanistan -- the demand for skilled labor is a higher than the availability. that is a good problem to have.

what we need to do is to make sure that there are more afghans capable of engaging, not only in their own economy, but in the regional economy. the next big thing on the horizon is the extractive industry. i say this with caution for a couple of reasons. if there was ever a case out there for the resource purse, afghanistan is dead. if afghanistan is gone to be successful with this new extractive industry, they will have to have a good governance scheme in place to make sure those revenues are dispersed transparently. it will create a lot of jobs. the most important thing that it will differ afghanistan is not the direct jobs in the mining industry, which are very important, but all the ancillary industry that will result around that are really critical.

you have to have a mixture of skilled afghans and the potential to take up on to premiership. all of those bags of cash were being taken now by afghans. there has to be an investment climate or afghans want to keep their money in side of afghanistan. you need enabling environment in order to do that. at the end of the day, it is about governance. their challenge is with governance and corruption and availability of electricity and other things that prevent them from keeping those dollars in side of afghanistan. that is going to need to change. >> can whether there is not a contradiction in my position, yes, there is a contradiction in our interest and capacities. if the election is really bad,

it may be disastrous to our ability to sustain ourselves in afghanistan, which i believe we should do. that does not lead me to the conclusion that we should massively inject ourselves. that is the conclusion that naturally follows for a lot of people. i do not believe we have the capacity or the will or the ability to follow up that conclusion. if you cannot do one thing, understand that you cannot do it, and make it clear to the others. there is a contradiction between the importance of the election to our policy and the fact that i am recommending that we hold back. it is a recommendation based on what i think is the reality of our means and what is credible in the afghan context. on the army, i didn't mean my comment to apply quite that way to the army.

i am relatively more optimistic about the army. although i am relatively pessimistic about the way we rate the army. i have. complaints about the lack of transparency and the standards by which we do military rating. i am a civilian and i worked with a platoon in vietnam as an infantry officer. i do think i know something about the subject. it is very important to understand how much of this we have not been doing for 10 years. we have been doing it for two years. when i left afghanistan, we were building a total force that was going to be less than -- just

over 200,000. we have not reach those targets. we did not began to finance the building of sufficient radio, vehicles, artillery, airplanes, any of those things that allow a force to operate in the field, until the budget of 2007. when we decided, and i think it was the correct decision, to have the enlargement of afghan forces, we had to delay building a more complex support forces because we needed every physical space there was to train and a tree. -- infantry. we have only been engaged in building the logistics base to support this force and sustain it in the field within the last two years. a lot of it, we for gets in our

criticism the last time between the decision, financing, and delivering. big decision 2009, bill before us. november of last year, -- build the force. november of last year, at every battalion was able to leave with a full set of radio equipment. that is the time lag from making a decision to unit going out of the door with a full complement of radios. what i am watching now is the process that is very critical in which we are turning over responsibility now to afghan security forces. the picture is usually mixed across the country. it is not one you can generally -- generalize about.

there were no afghan forces. there are 25,000 security forces. they are making decisions about how there are redeploying their forced to handle the drawdown of the marines. i heard enough about interaction between police and local police and army to be reasonably impressed. probably the best story in afghanistan. but it is different. the east is different. one thing i heard from all three american division commanders was the excruciating difficulty of getting hard-charging marines and paratroopers to take their hands off said the afghans take the lead. -- so that the afghans take the lead. in short, the process of building this army is a very recent one. it is not a 10-year process. it is about a 2.5-year process.

we have examples of having done this well, not a guarantee. vietnam is an example of having done it well if you look at 1972 and a massive north vietnamese attack. by 1975, the morale was already going to hell, then they fell apart. i do not say it is certain, i simply say that it is possible. we have critical issues to get through in the next couple of years. these two years our movement from quantitate to quality. we have done quantity, but we have not yet achieved equality. there are some big problems of politicizing, the upper levels of the army, which we're not talking about sufficiently in

our public discourse. we need to have a presence that is dense enough to build quality, but to let them take risks. that will be one of the critical part of the troop decision that president obama is going to make. if the yanks down the level of troops so far -- too far, the process will be endangered and could fail. i think in two years of hard training and hard fighting, if we keep the support of the level we have, we have a serious chance of producing an army that will not list its war. >> i will take three more questions and then we will finish up because we have a hard stop at 11:00. we will start here. gentlemen in the fifth row. >> i was with usaid until

january. this is about corruption. the performance based governance find rated r governor as one of the cleanest governors in the province. the afghan network rated our -- said most corrupt in the country. one of the things i saw, different people were using different data that i do not even think was data, to decide if the government official was correct or not. how do you create a more evidence-based, objective rating of corruption?

>> thank you. >> ibm a member of peace and democracy -- i am a member of peace and democracy for afghanistan since 1996. my question is to mr. ron, he said about a national commitment of the u.s. to afghanistan. afghanistan, we are under influence of england for 250 years. how do you separate the united states supreme politics over england? we want to be allied with the

united states, not england. >> we americans can identify. [laughter] >> thank you very much. i want to come back to the question that mark posed and the response and link it to the message i feel like i have heard this morning. if there was a word to describe afghanistan, from my perspective, it is conundrum. the conundrum seems to be best captured by the fact that on the one hand, what i hear from this panel is we must stay the course and we must convince friend and foe alike that we are in this for the long haul.

countering not, we are in the process of drawing down the troop level. to most people, it will sound like we're getting out of town nicely. we are advised by the ambassador, anaya understand that it is a point of view shared by a lot of people, we need to understand what age can influence and what it cannot influence -- what aid can influence and what it cannot influence. here we are in a troubled democracy with its own set of problems with the bank accounts running low on money and the intense heat of the political system ramping up. what i don't feel like we have

heard this morning, and i am wondering whether we should or factualthere a national security basis that can be articulated for why we must continue to invest in afghanistan and settle for our relative lack of influence and power in the process? >> alex, we can begin with you. you can respond to any of the questions he would like. >> first, i would give two different responses. at the technical level, when we work on governance and work on governance and