confidence. not to run away in fear from the mental-health problem. it gives people confidence to engage a person who is expressing mental health challenge and to ask, are you ok? do you need help? so winning the battle against mental illness can't be done alone. it is not done alone. if we don't offer help to a veteran in distress, we are leaving a warrior behind. mental health first aid gives people an action plan like teresa mentioned. it is an action plan and it provides the training to help make that action plan become second nature. this is an extraordinaire program that will benefit veterans, their families, and

their community. i am very proud to be a part of mental health first aid. thank you. >> it's a little tight back here. >> hi there, i am liz rearden. i've been a trainer for the past five years. i'm the very proud spouse of an air force veteran. the husband dave served from 1971 to 1975 in southeast asia. you talk about the invisible wounds of war. i know what it is like firsthand have someone who you live -- really loved to have to go through that. train number of years, i did not know what to do. i figured, it is vietnam, long time ago, time will heal those well, it doesn't. i did not know to say. finally, we got ourselves down to the veterans administration hospital in white river junction

vermont where they have a primary mental health clinic. we finally got down there. the very first thing they said to us when we walked in the door was, thank you for your service. and that opened a door for us because also, they were so nonjudgmental. my husband was able to tell his story. they were not surprised. i said, of course, why wouldn't you go through this? but we are concerned about you. those words open the door for recovery for him and the other guys or the program with him. and now, a number of years later, he is healthy and strong, and healthy and strong because someone new the words to say to open the door to help him get treatment. he is also here because we talk about the buddies, the band of brothers in his program. i saw that platoon working in or helping each other out. the most important reason why he

is here healthy and strong is because of him. he is here because of his courage, his sacrifice, and his persistence in getting treatment. i am really, really proud of him. that "we are concerned about you" is what opened the door for us. those are the words we learned to say in mental health first aid. often, those of us who are family members, do not have the right words. with mental health first eight, a gives you something to say, wait open that door. the other wonderful thing about this program is, it was designed by veterans, families, and those who are involved in love them. it helps us because the people who have been there are helping us as we go forward. those words changed my life and my husband's life and you can change other people's lives as

well. i have, and my sisters and cousins and brothers generations, we have a bunch of young people coming in. young people who have served were coming out, young people going in. they are nephews and cousins and sons and daughters. i have members of my family and members of people in my committee saying, what do i do? what can i say? mental health first aid can help us know what to say. everybody pretty much has a veteran in their lives. somebody you know, somebody who might be family, it could actually be you. what is so wonderful about mental health first aid, gives us that resource and the ability to connect. i am very proud of being part of this. i expect this is going to make a huge difference and other people's lives and i'm looking forward to that. thank you very much. >> thank you, liz.

i would also like to say thank you to my fellow brothers and sisters in arms, thank you for the family and the friends that i continue to network with in this journey. my name is tasha barnes. i am here with several hats on. i'm a veteran. i served with the 82nd airborne. after leaving the service, i became a peer specialist and a volunteer court nader for the veteran peer network and the great state of texas. i have been a student of mental health first aid and i firmly believe in that this program, like mental health first aid for veterans, will change our country for the better. i am listed as a soldier nine years ago and i was part of an

extraordinary units that supported one another through everything. they were my family. when my service ended, i just wanted to get home safely. i assumed everything else would fall right into place once i adjusted and became a civilian again. but after returning home, after four months of searching for a job and not finding one, i was in despair. here i was, a college student and a veteran, but could not get a job. i was struggling emotionally. i found it hard to reconnect with the community i had previously been a part of. i was depressed and i was suffering from anxiety. i had trouble sleeping. and when i would hear loud

noises and alarms go off in the middle of the night, i instantly will look for my rifle -- digging i was back in afghanistan under mortar fire. as many of us know i'm a veterans can be reluctant to ask for help. we believe it is up to us to solve our own problems and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. now i know it is not weakness, it is a sign of strength. but i was afraid to admit i could not turn it around on my own. and i was very, very lucky to have family and friends who supported me through that time, including a colleague who literally grabbed me by the hand and led me to community support program. that one action change my life.

she did not have all the answers, but she knew i needed help. and she knew where i could find it. she connected me with resources that help me -- pull me out of that dark come a dark place. that is what mental health first aid is all about. it is recognizing the signs of depression -- anxiety, addiction , and mental illness -- and connecting people with help. in the texas panhandle, i cover 30 counties. in many of our communities are rural and secluded and too many people are uninformed about what mental illness looks like or even where to access help. but mental health first aid gives us the tool to educate everyday citizens, both veterans and civilians, and how to

recognize the signs of someone in need. veterans and their families have specific needs, and this program being launched today has been tailored for those needs. every one of us in here is familiar with regular first aid. i absolutely believe everyone should be trained in mental health first aid as well. it is especially valuable for our community leaders, our law enforcement, our educators to be able to not only recognize mental illness and substance abuse, but direct you to those resources. but those of us who work with veterans and members of the military know that this kind of education can make a huge, real difference in the lives of

veterans and their families as they manage this transition home. in my nine years of working with veterans and servicemembers, everyone who has taken the mental health first aid emerges believing a veterans program will have the power to change and even save lives. i am truly honored to be here today to see this become a reality. thank you once again for everybody here. >> thank you. >> thank you for your service. [applause] >> ok, now it is your turn. questions. >> thank you all for your service and for this terrific

program. i am a licensed independent clinical social worker who is done outpatient mental health in the clinic in virginia, which is affiliated with belfour. my question i think will direct to tom tarantino and theresa buchanan. the rest of you can chime in. when i work with these families, this a very different population. the continued family relocation and having to move around to different cities and towns was an issue. however, when i worked with families from pentagon, one of the concerns that was raised by the officer and his family, well, my son or daughter may want to join the military, what about confidentiality? my charting was severed from the

military. what are going to be the repercussions? what about confidentiality? i think the military struggling with, it's ok to get treatment, but that was a major concern that came out of this, even from the spouses, the confidentiality. >> your question is about confidentiality of records? >> the program is great, but when you get on the bases and the charting -- thank you. >> thank you for your question. you raise what has been problematic for years. i worked and family advocacy in the 1990's and recognized in terms of just that fear because it also can compromise their clearances and if you're in an installation, who is going to find out. one of the programs that has evolved from that and is made a significant difference, i think,

is the military family life consultant program. the department of defense did instituted a few years ago during the wars. one of the advantages of all licensed clinicians, mental health professionals, is they don't document think counters. they're not -- they are really making some terminus inroads with helping to mitigate the stigma associated. this is going to be a time-honored process that has occurred. there are resources out there having people, the credibility factor, talking to someone else saying, i used this person and it is going to be fine. there is that concern. we are concerned. i know you're concerned because of the impact with the troop drawdown. no one wants a mark on their

record that is going to set them apart or make them perhaps more vulnerable. i think if we continue to work -- that program is there. there is huge support for it. it seems to have great acceptability with the families because they're placing people in schools, placing people in communities, and also having them at programs so they can then to some of the linkage. for the veteran, it will not be as much of an issue. but getting over the hurdles. >> tom? >> i will be brief. ultimately, and we're still a long way from this, but we need to get to a place we don't worry that much about confidentiality. you don't telik respective employer you broke your arm three years ago -- you don't tell a prospective employer you

broke your arm three years ago. we need to educate everyone and that will help us get there. >> one of the branches of military that has more mental health provided in any other branch of special forces. why would these folks who jump out of planes from a swim underwater for two miles without breathing, come out on the beach and speak five languages, take out osama bin laden and home before dinner time ridding to their kids, why would they need until health? you know what the commanders answer to me was? we don't look at mental health as a sign of weakness, we look at it as an opportunity for strength. we call it in the military a force multiplier. i'm like, i hope we can take that same idea and bring it to the rest of the country because the military has figured out that they need people at their optimal strength -- physically and mentally.

so by getting help, you improve your optimal strength. and don't we as americans onto be at our best? why would we reject something that would make a stronger? i think as tom said so >> it has now been a week since the united states, russia and crimea met in the european union. we did so after a call between president obama and president hooton expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in ukraine. we met in geneva with a clear mission -- to secure a mission

and find solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of ukraine. geneva, the eu representative and i made clear that both russia and ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. they needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments. the simple reality is you cannot resolve crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. every day since we left geneva, every day, even at two today when russia sent armored battalions right up to the border, the world has witnessed a tale of two countries. with vastlys different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.

clear thatter, it is only one side, one country is keeping its word. for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of lack or define in the fine, fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let's get real. notgeneva agreement does open to interpretation. it is not vague, it is not subjective, it is not optional. geneva isreed to in as simple as it is specific. we agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. we agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public openings and spaces they occupied. we agreed that to implement these objectives -- and this is

important -- to implement this, monitors from the organization for security and modernization in europe would have unfettered access to parts of ukraine where they were needed most, and we agreed all parties would work to create data access. and provide help in order to do it. osce would report from the ground whether the rights and dignity of ukrainian systems as being protective -- citizens was being did we'll stop on day one, ukraine started making good on its commitments from day one. from day one, the prime minister has kept his word. he immediately agreed to help vacated buildings. he suspended ukraine's counterterrorism initiative over de-escalationng despite ukraine's legitimate

fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. from day one, the ukrainian government sent senior officials to work with the osce in keeping in regionsreement where russia had voiced concerns about the security of russian speakers and ethnic russians. and on day one, the prime minister went on live television and committed his government publicly to all the people of ukraine -- and these are his words -- committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. he directly addressed the concerns expressed by the russians and he did so on day one. he also made a personal appeal to russian speaking ukrainians, pledging to support -- and again these are his words -- a special

status to the russian language and the protection of the language. and in keeping with his geneva commitments, the prime minister has publicly announced amnesty legislation once more, in his words, for all those who surrender arms, come out of the begin with thee ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent ukraine. that is a promise made by the government to the people of ukraine. by complying with actions requested by russia like removing the barricades and cleaning up the square in ensuring all ongoing demonstrations in kiev are actually government approved and peaceful, ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the divisions of the last months.

that is how a government defined keeping your word. that is leadership. that uphold the spirit and the letter of the geneva agreement. the world -- the world has that thedged government of ukraine is working in good faith and the world, sadly, has russia -- has judged russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. for seven days, russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. not a single russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in ukraine and called on the separatists to support the geneva agreement, to support the standout, to give up their weapons and get out of the ukrainian buildings. they have not called on them to

engage in that activity. in fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state sponsor of russia today program has been deployed to promote -- actually the russia today network has deployed to promote president putin's fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. almost spend full time devoted to this effort, to propagandize and distort what is happening or not happening in ukraine. sight, russiaain continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement. meanwhile, russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their actions. cia invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings armed to the

teeth wearing brand-new matching uniforms and moving indiscipline the military formations are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. that is absurd. and there is no other word to describe it. where everycentury, citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hands, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. no amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all the world to see. no amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today. the world knows that peaceful protesters do not come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the russian arsenal. hiding the insignias on their

ran new matching military uniforms and speaking in dialect that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. the world knows the russian intelligence operatives arrested in ukraine did not just take a wrong turn on the highway. in fact we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms i'd done the goal to the ones -- identical to the ones russian will -- russians or in crimea last month. as international observers on the ground of board witness, prior to russia's escalation, there was no violence, there was theod scale assault on rights of people in the east. ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and in the east. even as we were preparing to meet in geneva, we know the russian intelligence services were involved in organizing

local pro-russian militias. during the week leading up to the geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. example of howe russia is stoking the very instability they say they want to quell. since thiss agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon ukrainians. right after we left geneva, separatists seized tv and radio stations that broadcast in the ukrainian language. the mayor was kidnapped. the very day after the party committee -- committed to and the violence and intimidation. two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total of kidnapped her list into the double digits. that same day. two dead bodies were found, one of them was a city councilmember who had been

knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted pack strap to him. the government of ukraine has reported the arrest of russian intelligence agents. one responsible for establishing secure communications, allowing russia to coordinate the stabilizing activities in ukraine. then just this morning, separatist forces tried to override another arms depot. having failed to postpone ukraine posse elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, russia has instead chosen and illegitimate coercive armed violence to try to achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of the mob what could not be achieved any other way. enoughied to create chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize elections or force ukraine to accept federalism

that gives russia control over its domestic and foreign policies or force ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. this is a full throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external instrumentation -- intimidation that has brought inside ukraine and is worse even. we have seen this movie before. we sought most recently in crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by russia was followed by a full invasion, and invasion, by the way, for which resident putin recently decorated russian special forces at the kremlin. now russia claims all of this is exaggerated or even orchestrated, that ukrainians can't possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion.

russia is actually mystified to see ukraine's neighbors and like-minded free people all over the world united with ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves. nobody should doubt russia's handedness. as the nato supreme allied commander in europe wrote this week, what is happening in eastern ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized. we assess is being carried out at the direction of russia. our intelligence community tells intelligencea's and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern ukraine with personnel. weapons. money, operational landing and coordination. the ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command and

control conversations from known russian agents with their separatist clients in ukraine. some of the individual special operations personnel who are of on russians behalf in chechnya, georgia and crimea have been photographed in other places. some are even bragging about it by themselves on their russian social media sites. we've seen separatists endeared with those worn by russian special forces. let me be clear. if russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. already the international response to the choices made by russia's leaders is taking its toll on russia's economy. the prime minister has alluded

to the cost russia is already paying. even president putin has acknowledged it. as investors' confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014. more than all of last year. growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by 2% to 3%. and this follows a year in which g.d.p. growth was already the lowest since 2009. meanwhile, the russian central bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding russia's before yous against external shocks. that what i've just described is really just a snapshot and it's also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if

russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate. seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored. the world will remain united for ukraine. so i will say it again. the window to change course is closing. president putin and russia face a choice. if russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community, all of us, will welcome it. if russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for russia will only grow. and as president obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. > quick questions. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> secretary kerry with criticism for of russia by not

abiding by the geneva terms. a look at some of our live coverage. our coverage coming up this evening on c-span. >> it was inconceivable when we were young and even when we started practicing law that we would ever be a judge. inconceivable. there were no women judges. maybe two or three in the whole country. so, one of the reasons that was an advantage, and especially if you're kind of an outsider and i know it's hard to talk about outsider, insider, when you're on the supreme court. but we all understand what it feels like to be an outside insider. you do what you feel is the right thing to do because -- >> what do you mean outsider? >> you're different. if you know you're different. if you're not like the rest of

the culture that you are professionally in. for me in ontario, i was jewish, immigrant, female in a male profession that was largely, i mean, grandfather was a supreme court judge and father was a supreme court judge. anyway, i say that only because it can be a great advantage to understand that you're different, that you're never going to be like everybody else, and that's good. enjoy the fact that you are different. don't try to homoganize. the reason it's good, if you're comfortable in your skin, is because it means you do things not towards the possibility of an ultimate objective, i.e. one day i want to be on the supreme court of canada, against which you measure aum of your opportunities and -- all of your opportunities and choices. you take risks. you say, ok, sure, i'll be a judge at 29, i'll run a law reform commission when nobody else wants to do it.

nothing was against my ultimate objective because i was having a wonderful ride in the legal profession. that's the first. so i now give advice whenever i'm asked to young people and say, you don't end your legal education and say, this is where i want to end up. you have no idea where you're going to end up. give yourself a chance. the great songwriter was once asked, what comes first, the music or the words? and he said, the phone call. [laughter] i get that. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> you can see that entire program tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. on c-span 2 it's book tv with authors on the civil rights movement. and on c-span 3 it's american history tv with programs on the watergate scandal that eventually brought down president nixon. the american enterprise institute has released a report looking at national security policy and what needs to happen to combat al qaeda. earlier today panelists attempted to define who al

qaeda is. and what new threats are being posed by the group. this is an hour and a half. >> good morning, everyone. or just the beginning of good afternoon. i think we can get going if we can break up some conversation over there. a little bit. thanks. ok. i want to thank everyone for coming. out on a beautiful day. coming inside to this windowless -- well, we have windows, we've just covered them for some reason. i'm not entirely sure. i want to thank you for coming out. to talk about our usual happy topic. i am frederick kagan, the director of the critical

threats project at the american enterprise institute. we have been working on al qaeda and especially on the various al qaeda-affiliated movements around the world for a number of years now. this unfortunately is a topic that does not show any sign of diminishing in importance, and it is getting ever more complicated to understand, because what we are finding is a lot of these affiliates and associates are ramifying in heir local areas, and both expanding and interacting with one another in new ways. it is a major undertaking simply to try to follow what is going on, let alone coming up with come up with a coherent assessments of our current counterterrorism strategy, let alone come up with coherent recommendations for what one might do instead.

just to take that off the table, that is one thing you are not going to get today, is the, here is the sfradge for defeating al qaeda -- strategy for defeating al qaeda. that is something that we are working on and a lot of people are working on it, but it will take quite a lot of effort. we are here today to focus on trying to understand what we are talking about when we say defeating al qaeda, fighting al qaeda, what al qaeda is, what it is not, and what the implications of that definition are. and i am very thrilled to be able to introduce a very good friend, an old friend. we have known each other for decades and decades. back when we were both soviet military specialists and mary habeck was then known as the

tank lady because of her phenomenal expertise on soviet armored doctrine on which she has done some terrific work, which is also unfortunately becoming relevant once again. just for those of you who are pursuing topics, especially young people in the audience, and you're asking yourselves, will anyone ever care about this? those of us who graduated in the 1990's and 1980's with degrees in soviet studies are discovering, yes, pretty much everything becomes important if you wait long enough. i wish we could have waited longer for that one, but that will be a topic for another iscussion. mary habeck has devoted her life for quite a number of years now to understanding al qaeda, to understanding the ideology, and understanding the group as it actually is. we are thrilled to have been able to publish a report,

"getting it right: u.s. national security policy against al qaeda since 2011," and she has written a number of books, including an excellent primer, called "knowing the enemy," and she is working on other books simultaneously that should be coming out shortly. mary has done a fantastic service for us that she will talk about, trying to identify what people seem to mean when they say al qaeda, particularly people in the administration, and then talking about what she thinks it means. then we went katherine zimmerman speak. katie is our al qaeda team lead at the critical threats project, and she has been staring at this problem for a number of years now, and last fall published another report on the al qaeda

network, describing how we should think about the relationship between core and periphery, because that has become really a pivotal question for u.s. policy. before i turn it over to mary and before we start talking about that, and bruce hoffman unfortunately made the mistake of trying to drive in on the g.w. parkway, so he will be joining us when traffic permits. before i turn it over to mary, i want to take a minute and ask everybody to step back and say there is a sound and fury over al qaeda and how it is going. there are things that are generally agreed upon and then there are things being argued about. you won't find a lot

of people who will say that al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, in yemen, is completely defeated, not a threat, not fighting, incapable. you will not find a lot of people who will say that. you will not find anybody who will say that the islamic state of iraq, the descendent of al qaeda in iraq, we know they have regained a foothold in fallujah, but the truth is they have regain footholds all around iraq. no one will tell you there are large al qaeda affiliates in syria. that is one of the reasons why we do not want to support the syrian opposition, one of the arguments that has been made. i don't find a a persuasive reason. that is a large and powerful franchise, and it has become clear that we have a vibrant franchise in the islamic agreb. the question of whether we have affiliates out there and whether they continue to be

strong, capable, is not really in question. the real question that our policy debates have been focused on is, does the united states need to care? how much of a problem is it for us if these local groups are doing well or doing poorly? is this something we need to be concerned about? that debate has turned heavily on the question of how do those local groups relate to what the administration called al qaeda core, the group formerly around bin laden, after his demise, around ayman al-zawahiri. what is the role of al qaeda core, is it defeated, and is it appropriate to talk about al qaeda core. that is what we are going to talk about today. i want to point out that is an argument that is in many respects very much on the margins of the question, how is the al qaeda global threat oing these days?

we are going to get into the "inside baseball" that is very important when you develop strategy. we have to start by recognizing that pretty much everybody recognizes that groups that are formerly affiliated with al qaeda, including groups that call themselves al qaeda franchises, are doing well around the world. that is where we will start, where the debate begins, and now we can talk about does it really matter? for that i will turn it over to ary. >> thank you, fred. as fred has said, there is one thing that i think most everybody does agree about is we are facing a great deal more violence run the world that is in some way associated with al qaeda. the question is, first, how much is this associated with al qaeda, and how much of it is associated with other groups that do not have organizational links with al qaeda? secondly, what should be our response to this problem? that is where i will focus the

majority of my remarks. will begin by outlining for you about where fred said you need to begin with, we are facing a much more difficult problem today than we were in 2011. 011 began with so much hope, with the arab spring and also with the death of the man who had planned and carried out 9/11. if you look at just two sets of illustrations in my paper, on pages five and six, i outlined and show the growth in violence in the muslim-majority world that is associated somehow with l qaeda, a growth not just in terrorism, which i talk about, but also in insurgencies. it is here that actually the majority of the work that the

paper was done back in the summer and then i revised it again in january, and i show that there are now at least in january nine insurgencies, when back in 2011 we were dealing with three al qaeda-associated insurgencies. the growth from three to nine from 2009 to 2011. -- to 2014. actually, i was called to task by a friend of mine who is an expert on these issues who said you should redo that because we are facing now at least two more countries that are deeply into al qaeda u.s. ises -- al aeda insurgents -- insurgencies since january, since i revised this, and i would be libya and the rest of egypt. here i just showed sinai as being in an insurgency.

there is really no argument we are facing a much more serious problem now than we were in 2011, and certainly since we are facing since 2001 when it comes to groups that have some affiliation with al qaeda. the second part of my paper takes a look at what current policy is towards al qaeda, and i will begin with a careful set f remarks on this. i am not blaming per se any administration's policies, the growth in this violence. there are all sorts of factors involved in the growth of this and we should remember that the enemy has a vote. the enemy has been doing things that have led to a lot of this increase in violence. there's also all sorts of factors out there in the muslim-majority world that has allowed some of this violence to grow. please do not take that second section as pointing at any specific administration for this growth in violence. having said that, however, i believe that we could be

designing better policies for dealing with this new threat we are faced with since 2011. i point out in particular two key issues that i think this administration in particular, although i think you could actually look back and find root for it in the bush administration, the second bush administration as well, that are preventing us from designing successful strategies for dealing with al qaeda. first is the definition of the enemy. ow do we define the enemy? we need to obviously in order to understand where any administration is on this issue look at what they are actually saying about it. there is the national security strategy that came out in 2011 for countering terrorism that quite carefully defined al qaeda as three parts -- al qaeda, affiliates, and adherents.

my concern with that of the -- with that definition was with the first part which was actually never defined in the strategy itself. al qaeda is al qaeda. well, that is ok, but what do you mean actually by al qaeda? i went looking for that definition amongst all of the statements that have been made by this administration, including the head of the c.i.a., the d.n.i., the nctc, homeland security and a whole range of other folks to see if there was a clear public definition of what constitutes al qaeda itself, rather than the affiliates or adherents. the result is i could not find a clear definition. by looking at things -- and i should say i cannot find a clear definition until january of 2014. by sort of piecing things together from these statements and from the way that this, the urrent u.s. government

understands the role of the u.s. in the world, i was able to come up with what i believed was the official definition, and in january of this year that was actually confirmed the by a public statement by matt olson in his testimony before congress. that definition is that al qaeda core, as it is sometimes called, consists of all of those people who participated in some way in 9/11. al qaeda core consists of all those people who participated in some way in 9/11. if you look at the authorization for the use of military force, that is in fact how al qaeda was defined legally back in september of 001. this administration above all else is concerned with the rule of law, and doing things in a very legal matter. they have a sincere and firm

commitment to that, and i take hem at their word. that is what the aumf says about those people that the united states can use military force against. so having said that, should it not also include all those people who have replaced those folks, who have been killed off since 9/11, because there are probably several thousand people killed off by first the bush administration and this administration in their attempts to deal with al qaeda. i actually found a public statement that also says, no, people are not being added to that list of people who belong to this, and there was a statement actually back in march that firmly states we are about to strategically defeat al qaeda because we are down to just a handful of al qaeda members that need to be dealt

with through attrition, that is, to killing or capturing. that is the official definition of al qaeda itself. then there is the view of al qaeda's objectives. al qaeda's objectives are defined primarily in terms of u.s. national interests. that is, al qaeda has as its primary objective to kill americans and to attack america. in fact if you go looking at what al qaeda says, you come to a different conclusion. al qaeda says their goals are first and foremost to force the united states out of what they term their lands, secondly, to impose a very extremist and unique version of shari'a on unwilling muslims, to create some form of shadow government, thirdly to overthrow what they call apostate leaders of their countries, and finally, to create something they call a caliphate.

most of what al qaeda wants to achieve has nothing to do with the u.s. at all, has everything to do with them imposing their will on the rest of the muslim majority world and on varying unwilling muslims. you can see this by taking a look back at what al qaeda has been actually doing since the 1990's to today, and they have been focusing a vast majority of their effort on taking over ter tore and imposing their extremist version of shari'a rather than attacking the united states. the 9/11 commission report notes that 99% of the effort in the 1990's was dedicated to creating a mujahedin who would carry out their plan in the rest of the muslim majority world and only 1% was dedicated to attacking the united states. in my opinion the second vision of the administration has also been askew.

in my opinion, thanks for this -- and i explore this in great depth throughout the book, explains why the policy that is based on these two exceptions is flawed, because the policy that comes out of this is one based on attrition, that is, killing and capturing the small group of known people, and once they are gone, the united states will be safe, and we no longer need to worry about al qaeda. i go into detail in critiquing this. the final third of the paper is about thinking about what we should be doing in order to design a good strategy, one that gets it right, as i put it in the paper. i begin with a definition of the enemy that attempts to get at the scale and scope of the problem we are actually facing. before you take a look at that, ou should know that i affirm

and support a lot the policy preferences that underlie some of this definition and some of these assumptions. i also want to see the u.s. be able to take this fight from something that involves military to something that is just law enforcement. that is absolutely my policy preference. i want to see all of our troops come home. i want to see an end to war. i do not want to see a militarization of something that does not need to be militarized. i affirm and support that policy preference, and i think it underlies what administration is saying. i also support the need for partners who will be engaged in the fight and not be dependent wholly on us to carry on this struggle that mostly involves their country, their lands, their people being killed by al qaeda. just as an aside, the united states has lost thousands in this fight with al qaeda.

but muslim-majority countries are losing hundreds of thousands. this is a fight that obviously we need to have partners and we need to have people working with us. it is not about us taking over and running things. i affirm and support that policy preference. we cannot let our policy preferences drive reality and our definitions of what is really going on. i am afraid that that is in fact what is going on. that we are not looking first at the problem set and allowing that to determine our policy, but determining what we want to be true, what we would like to see an outcome, determine how definitions of the enemy. that is the argument i make in the final third that getting those definitions right, understanding who our enemy really is, and understanding what the objectives are should be what drives our policy, regardless of whether that leads to the kinds of policy preferences we actually want. thank you.

>> thank you, mary. i would like to follow up on your conclusion that we need to understand what the enemy is and defining al qaeda properly in order to have a strategy to fight it. i think the takeaway that i got from your report was that because we have improperly defined al qaeda we are only fighting a fraction of our enemy force and not only that we are fighting in a way that actually is not fighting the enemy itself. to me that sounds like a losing strategy. i think what is most helpful is to talk through how al qaeda today is operating, how it has adapted to some of our policies, and why it is important that we start looking at the network itself, the affiliates from and the associates in preventing ourselves from limiting

, the way the administration has, to simply the al qaeda ore that was active on 9/11. it's a different beast today and we need to bring a different fight. the key point in my report that i wrote in september is that the network extends across the muslim-majority world and it is the relationships between the different groups, between affiliates and the core group in pakistan, between affiliates and the local group of thugs, upon whom they rely for resources, for support and also at times are just as dangerous as the affiliates themselves that make the al aeda network so resilient. it is not the wheel-and-spoke model that we have heard about before, where there is a central group that you can pound away and want to get rid

of that center the spokes will simply fall apart and they will become their own localized insurgencies or threats. it is not the starfish model where it spread its tentacles and if you chot at one you kill the beast in some sort of way. net it is this network -- instead it is this network that actually if you push down in one area, it will support itself and be able to crop up in areas where it has historical presences and it will also move resources, fighters, expertise, funds, from one area into another and that's what we're are seeing in syria today where all of a sudden syria has reinvigorated the al qaeda network which we have not seen since we were fighting in iraq. what does that mean? that means that if we continue to only focus on the groups that pose the most direct threat to the homeland today and only beat out the al qaeda

core or al qaeda in yemen we are really not going to win. and we are not going to win because in syria al qaeda is seeing that as a staging ground. . and we are not going to win because in syria al qaeda is seeing that as a staging ground. it is the primal fight for al qaeda today. al qaeda core leadership sent a committee from pakistan into syria to serve as a policy-planning group to help support al qaeda's affiliate in syria, to help it develop trainers, fighters on the ground in order to see victory in serious. that is a forward-leaning

organization and one that is not covered today under our counterterrorism strategy against al qaeda. but al qaeda sees syria as something that will in the end bring about the islamic caliphate, and that is where mary draws out the ideology. it is the teaching about the setting of the stage for what they see should come about. the other place where al qaeda has adapted is it no longer uses its name as a brandmark. it is certainly extremely powerful where we see it in al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, in yemen. that is the group that has attacked us three times since 2009. "al qaeda" brings about american reaction. we craft our policy in reaction to simply naming a group al qaeda. and i will turn to the sahel region, which is one of best

cases recently where you can look at how al qaeda has adopted to this policy and direction we get from the united states. a recent study lays out how these groups are operating. what you can do is look at al qaeda in magreb, in sahel, revolutionize how it is working them and as the confident knowledge that as the conflict in mali broke out -- they denied connections to al qaeda, never had a relationship with aqap, but there were meeting notes that showed leadership and were sitting down and figuring out how to maintain their relationship and keep it covert.

that means we have not called them al qaeda. many people did not consider it to be part of the al qaeda network, but what i can see it actually was a fighting force on the ground and was tasked with governing the local villages and actually being that local face that it does not have in mali. it has gotten to the point now where when you look at who the leader of -- was, he had been active and interacting with aqim in many years. he was not someone who simply all of a sudden said "i am al qaeda now." that is something that we need to recognize and her policy of al qaeda, that there is a group of leadership that is active today is not operating under official al qaeda titles. we may not have the al qaeda

number three who we have killed many times over be the most threatening person anymore. it may be the leader of the group that seems local, but who has served as a facilitator. we need to think about how they interact formally within that work, but what they are doing, what actions they are taking to serve the purpose of al qaeda, and think of the group as something that has changed today. we cannot limit our strategies simply by name. that is one of the key ways that i have seen al qaeda at that, it has obscured its relationships, it has prevented us from reacting to its newfound relationships by hiding how its tentacles have reached out throughout the muslim-majority world. i will and there and leave it up to questions. i can't talk at great length about how these groups are

interacting and sharing resources and fighters into syria, yemen, somalia, west africa, but at risk of boring the audience i will end there. >> thanks, katie, and, bruce, you made it through the washington traffic. i am thrilled to have you, really one of the best and most established experts on this topic at georgetown now. yes, georgetown. really excited to hear what you have to think about it. >> [indiscernible] discussing these issues with mary for a long time and know her thinking. two things are quite unique about mary's work. anybody who talks and speaking

on this subject at all. there was a long time when where there was little discourse on al qaeda, when the arab spring created a sea change where democracy would flower and civil protests and civil disobedience had trumped terrorism, and the threat of al qaeda was seen to be nonexistent. we have seen how different that has become. second, this is an especially valuable piece of work because even when people discuss al qaeda or terrorism in general so little of the conversation or the dialogue deals with strategic issues. this i think is mary's strength, her background in military strategy and history, and in her dissection and analysis of al qaeda's own strategy, and i think is absolutely critical, and also something that is being neglected.

let me make a few observations in general that i hope will supplement what mary has written and also what katie has said, and then draw things together for a bit of a conclusion. the dimensions of the challenge we face today are best evidenced by the fact that al qaeda's presence in twice as many countries than it was six years ago, and that is an astonishing development. for the past several years we have been told that al qaeda was on the verge of strategic collapse. this happened when economies were shrinking, agencies and bureaucracies across the world are shedding personal and having to make do with less. al qaeda has reversed process and has expanded. it is not only the physical presence and not only the number of fighters, but we see that al

qaeda's brand and ideology has prospered at a time when we were more inclined to count them as having been completely irrelevant, or at least that was the cliche around the time of the arab spring. especially worrisome, something that mary brought up, is not only is there being this extraordinary expansion,, but the core al qaeda in pakistan has remained remarkably resilient to the extent that few people have imagined. i have written on this. mary has also focused on this. much of the conventional wisdom over the past decade or more has been consistently incorrect. the strength of the core is yet another example. core al qaeda has always had a much deeper bench then we have imagined, and this is why mary's

argument that the strategy that relies on attrition is not going to succeed over the long run. there are any number of individuals who most of us in this room have not heard of, but are veterans of the afghan-soviet war, who have three decades of experience and credentials to assume positions of leadership in the organization. we saw rauf and others as amongst this number. also what has enabled al qaeda suit to survive when it has been the greatest onslaught in history has been to overcome and obviate even the most consequential countermeasures directed against it. we see the changing demographic of al qaeda, the al qaeda core,

and of al qaeda in pakistan, where the canonical al qaeda fighter of the past was a pashtun coming down the hills, satchels full of grenades, including ak-47's, and we see in pakistan a ways to ensure its longevity, recruiting among middle-class pakistanis to join the organization. and amongst that number faruq and others are some of the people who have assumed increasing roles in al qaeda, much like a person who was killed recently. al zawahari has also proven to be more resilient. it has to be the challenge from isis, and he has reasserted

control over the movement that he still retains with the expulsion, but what worries me enormously in the al qaeda ferment is this immense emerging rivalry between the core and other groups, which will lead to data competition, and we have seen historically when groups of people against one another that they become much more lethal and active. i think another very discordant developed over the past couple years is how al qaeda's global jihadi orientation has had resonance across the geographical expanse while al qaeda is active. we have seen groups in north and west africa has well as in east

africa not only prosecuting local struggles, but also buying very much into the global ideology and their worldview come and this was clear with -- for example. i will not repeat what mary writes, but al qaeda thinks strategically, and that is why mary's work is so important because we need to think just as strategically about al qaeda. especially because i think we are at a critical juncture or crossroads in our struggle. al qaeda is not only resurrected itself, become much more relevant than we imagined it could have in a short time, because of the syrian civil war, but i think that is going to be a game changer unless we are active against al qaeda in a number of different levels. not to repeat what katie and others have said, but the influx of foreign fighters is in and of

itself alarming. the open-source conservative estimates put this number at 8000. reports from the european allies indicate over the past 18 months the steady increase in all fun exponential growth, of the number of individuals going to syria. another thing that is misleading and more disturbing about that figure, because that is just foreign fighters. many countries are not counting their citizens or their residents who are going to syria on humanitarian missions but are providing other assistance to al qaeda. even the 8000 figure is on the low side. even in the united states, except for the 30 or so somali-americans that went to somalia after 2008, we have never seen this concentrated outflow of the united states citizens and residents going to a jihadi conflict. i would be hard-pressed to name

even a dozen, and maybe on one hand that americans that are with core al qaeda in afghanistan, yet we have seen at least according to publicized reports, at least 60 individuals have gone over. the greatest challenge in responding to or embracing mary's policy recommendations are twofold, and i am reminded of the british officer's observations about the intervention of domestic and foreign-policy in united kingdom in the 1930's, where he said everybody was for the quiet life. that is not so different here. i was on the hill a few weeks ago speaking to a congressman

whose constituency includes the new york metropolitan area who lost many constituents in the attacks 13 years ago, and he said raising this issue of the al qaeda threat or even invoking 9/11 he sometimes feels -- and this is from the new york area speaking to his own constituency -- "i feel i am talking about gettysburg." that is the first big challenge. the second big challenge is mary sensibly, and those who have followed the al qaeda challenge for the past decade or more, have often argued is it cannot be conceived as a counterterrorism mission. counterterrorism is tactical. it is about attrition. to really make an effect as we have always argued and long known when we have invoked the struggle for arab minds or muslim minds, to make a difference and have a lasting impact, one has to change the dynamics of these environments.

that involves a strategic approach and one that is based on counterinsurgency. there is any single word more reviled or to state in washington right now than "counterinsurgency," which is another challenge. as soon as you start speaking about things of foreign internal defense, development, the kind of adjuncts of combat operations that are needed to prevent this type of resurrection or recrudescence of terrorism, people run in the other direction. in more concrete terms, the first step is much more proactively contain al qaeda's growth. that is remarkable, that we have to talk about a containment policy. this entails at a time when we want to focus in words, when an excellent article in the current issue of "the new yorker"

reminds us how the situation in iraq has deteriorated since our withdrawal four years ago. it does demand greater engagement, specifically, continued engagement in afghanistan, pakistan, yemen, and syria. it also requires more effective pressure on and negotiations with some of our closest allies in the war on terrorism, especially turkey, and again it means that we cannot completely turn our backs on south asia, because those problems exist along the afghan-pakistani order. again, to be more pessimistic than mary, or more discordant, we have to be seriously concerned about the threat of a terrorist attack somewhere,

ridiculously i would argue more likely in europe than in this country, and involving a chemical weapon. there have been a spate of arrests of al qaeda operatives in turkey and in iraq in particular, in israel, and elsewhere in the middle east who have been either seized with actual quantities of sarin nerve gas. that is too much of a cluster of incidents in a specific region in a short time that one can ignore. another affiliate's goals in syria is to seize assad's chemical stockpiles. this has become a much more serious threat of terrorists using unconventional weapons in the future than it has been at any time in recent years.

a better capability to scan the horizon of potential al qaeda expansion, we have proven inept at that. we have allowed its expansion. finally, i would say, and this is one of the strengths of mary's reports, is that she underscores the uncomfortable fact that the struggle against terrorism cannot be wished away despite all the temptations and the drive to declare victory and just to come home, that this is an ongoing challenge. al qaeda has a strategic vision and plan. we will only be effective when we adopt one as well. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, bruce. and thanks to all the panelists. i will open it up for questions

in one minute. i want to throw a couple of thoughts that are spurred by this, and if you want to pick them up in questions, but the panelists can pick them up. one is the question of the role of the authorization of use of military force in our strategy against al qaeda. i wonder if we have not reached the point where we have a hammer and we are looking for nails and we have defined our strategy against al qaeda to be coextensive with the limits of the aumf, because the mechanism for dealing with al qaeda has been attack targeted strikes. as we talk about the limits of the aumf, we lose ideas of the fact that it allows us one set of tools, but we have not been talking about the other sets of tools, for reasons that bruce pointed out. another thing that is remarkable that is not remarked upon very much and i want to mention because it was not raised is the

united states has created by policy the largest sanctuary for al qaeda that the group has ever known in iraq and syria. because we will not conduct targeted strikes in iraq and syria, we have created an absolute safe haven from the standpoint of our attack in those two countries, which is really remarkable when you look at the virulence of those franchises, and it is something we should think about. at aei, we tend to have conversations that are focused on realpolitik and narrowly scripted u.s. national security interests, and it is important to be able to tie anything relating to the discussions of these of military force in any way to narrowly scripted national security interests.

another thing that has been undergirding our approach to these problems for the last several years has been a view that it is not our problem fundamentally, it is not for us to do anything about it, when hundreds of thousands of people are killed, when war is raging across a large portion of an area of strategic importance, when atrocities are being committed on massive scales, we need a compelling national security reason separate from that to be involved. we have had people, including people in the administration, suggest it was in our interest to have a civil war in syria persist because hezbollah was fighting al qaeda and how wonderful is that. the problem is we are seeing that in addition to the fact that those policies are in my opinion morally reprehensible and an indefensible, they are bad strategy because the conflicts themselves and the atrocities and radicalized populations and become magnets

for radicalization and become laboratories for experimentation by the enemy that are in fact dangerous. we have made a mistake by going so far in the direction of a realist approach to all of these problems that we have missed the fact that even a realist would have to recognize the problems that some of these humanitarian crises are creating. with that i will open it to the audience. our ground rules are please wait until -- raise your hand and wait until the microphone comes to you, identify yourself, and phrase your brief statement in the form of a question. >> [indiscernible]

thanks very much for the discussion. the arab spring -- >> microphone. >> [indiscernible] as a number of people have said, the arab spring is the background here. and it may be that [indiscernible] al qaeda. as was mentioned, it has produced a situation in which there is factionalization, the dispute between individuals and the islamic state of iraq and

syria. i was wondering what the panelists thought about how that goes forward, and on the one hand, how the organization or the network, the core and the network, deal with that. yeah, just how they see the dynamic of that. >> who wants to start? mary? >> so, my reaction to the arab spring has not changed from 2011 to today. i gave a series of talks in 2011 in which i said i have a lot of hopes about which direction this will go, but i also have a lot of fears. i outranked both of those at the time. unfortunately, in many, not all, but many of the countries that experienced such a huge

outpouring of hope in 2011, we are seeing some of those fears realized. in some cases it is because capable governments were replaced by governments that were less capable in counterterrorism terms and in policing their own borders and in controlling violence within their territory. for instance, libya, right now, as far as i know, does not even have a government. there is nobody to police the borders are make certain that the violence is not spiraling out of control, not just within libya, but within all of its neighbors as well. people at first who replaced mubarak in egypt, there was a lot of hope based on that new government, the democratically elected government, but violence was already spiraling in the sinai, even under morsi, which shows some lack of capacity and

it has really gotten out of control since the military decided to take over. a very capable partner is no longer able to police its territory the way it once was. one could go around actually to a lot of places. the one place where there is more hope today that i think fear is tunisia, where you have a group that has some relationship with al qaeda's ideology, there the violence has not spiraled out of control. and one can still have some hopes about it. i do believe that, unfortunately, that was one of the driving factors. the release of prisons of thousands upon thousands of people who were arrested by those governments drove a lot of this violence as well and egypt

and elsewhere. >> well, you know, al qaeda was knocked off balance by the arab spring. we know the symbol full of governments that will was received in abbottabad. al qaeda has been more adept at taking advantage of the arab spring than anyone else. the meaning back then was al qaeda was no longer relevant. it has demonstrated its relevance in north africa and in the levant. it has been able to take advantage of some of the phenomenon and we have seen in the arab spring. the greater recruitment, jihadis that have been left out of prison, but we do not have a firm grasp on what their recruitment activities were like during this time when there were opportunities to recruit within the region and also foreigners.

al qaeda has clearly seized on what was the driving forces behind the arab spring with the use of social media, and this has transformed and is something of a game changer. it is a challenge as well, which is why they're creating their own english-language magazine, because they can control the message. upwards of 24,000 followers in syria. this is one of the best recruitment platforms one could imagine. it is going to create a situation different from afghanistan even 30 years ago. the one bright spot is the factionalization, the inviting, but at least historically most types of splintering and factionalization have created higher levels, not lower. to respond to the point about taking a realistic view of this,

the israelis have one of the clearest views of what factionalization creates. certainly in syria they view the fighting there between hezbollah and al qaeda -- they will not cancel each other out. it is an extremely volatile region that is very difficult to control and may not play out in the way we hope it will. >> [indiscernible] >> the core partly -- two things, it is ramping up its involvement, attempting to develop its relevance. one thing is a lot more of its propaganda has been in urdu than in arabic.

my future is that the al qaeda core right now is biding its time and waiting to see what happens in afghanistan and what u.s. forces are left behind. i do not think it is dead. it will become more assertive. >> that is the end of that. on the factionalization point, there used to be a commercial that was saying "when banks compete you win." in this case i say when terrorist groups compete you lose because they tend to bid against each other for international support and recognition by doing the most outrageous things they can possibly do in order to attract attention, and that is worrisome. i might disagree with verse about one thing. i think zawahiri may have made a mistake in expelling isis. i think it will turn out to be bad because the last thing i

want to see are the groups like isis and j.n. start compete on a stage, and the only thing that we say is not terrible about them is they have been focused on their region. i'm not sure they do not win that dogfight over the long term. i'm not sure zawahiri it a good call there. i think he misjudged the situation. questions? >> from the carnegie endowment. fred has probably asked this question in my place. i want to pick up on the notions that the egyptian, current egyptian forces -- sorry -- government, is less capable than

the mubarak government, and then go more broadly, the question is, if the same military, why is it that they are less capable than they were in mubarak, and is or something else about the government that is driving the expansion of al qaeda? where i want to take this, what i have not heard in the discussion today is whether legitimate grievances against local governments or their perceived backers are not in fact in part not only driving recruitment, but even driving some of the ideology. in other words, i get the description of the very extremist version of sharia which is hated by the population upon which it is imposed. that is not a recipe for success. is there something else that we are overlooking in the behavior of some of these governments

that we might be tempted to ally with for their short-term counterterrorism capabilities that may not in fact be driving, helping drive the expansion of al qaeda? >> i agree completely. so my comment about capability was not solely about c.t. capability or military capabilities, but the ability to find a political solution to the problems that they are facing as well, and to include populations that might otherwise have grievances. the first solution that was chosen by the military to some of the popular uprising was to meet that with a great deal of violence. and i have -- i actually teach a class on irregular warfare where you can go back and look at the onset of insurgency in multiple

cases, and you find in nearly every case in the 20th century in the 21st century, a radicalizing violent incident that in fact is carried out by the government in an attempt to suppress in many cases what are perceived by people as rightful grievances, and it is the use of that violence that in fact sets off recruitment and a lot of people joining up with the insurgency in order to fight it. i do not want to make it sound -- like this when it use the term capability, i am talking about purely ct or military capability, but on the third hand am of the release of so many thousands of egyptian terrorists and people who had been deeply engaged with al qaeda and other violent groups early in the arab spring, as well as the loss of visibility about what was going on in the violence that ramped up their, i

think there was also a lots going on there that led by people who claim some sort of affiliation with al qaeda in order to take advantage as bruce says, of this permissive environment that led to a lot of the growth in violence as well. >> it warms my heart to hear sarah answer that question. there are few people in the world that have more of a right to answer that question and continued focus on it and sarah who was a crusader on the issue in afghanistan. risking her life among other things for a long time. i have the privilege of being in afghanistan with her for some portion of that time, which was

a highlight of an otherwise fairly dismal experience. i want to put a sharp port -- went on the answer to that. i think that because we do not like to talk about counterinsurgency anymore, we have lost sight about the fact that it is an insurgency and you do not have it just because you have a small tiny cell of people who are trying to do bad stuff and terrify people. you have an insurgency because you have a significant population that has a significant grievances with what is going on that a small group can take advantage of and hijacked. we saw that in afghanistan. sarah saw it much longer than i did but we had a predatory government that was drawing a lot of people that were not otherwise sympathetic to the taliban but were supporting the taliban.

syrian is another case. another example is iraq. i do not think is possible to question the degree to which the prime minister's approach to dealing with what started off as a peaceful protest movement among the sunni population radicalized it and drove a very unwilling sony -- suni majority back into the arms of al qaeda. this is not just about the use of military worse on protesters or government escalating but governments that are predatory in terms of irruption that are isolating minorities that are excluding people from the franchise that are in other words behaving in ways that make them seem illegitimate in the eyes of the people. we as a country have been very went to recognize that as a problem for us, and we are especially and when the state in question is supporting us and we

are trying to use our hammer in looking for nails. so to bring this all the way around, and the panel can free -- feel free to react, are we totally head on backwards in the sense that we're so focused on the situation strategy, so focused on looking for people who can help with that that we are actually fueling the problem by supporting or trying to support governments that are so illegitimate that they in fact are making the problem much worse even as they cooperate in limited ways with the strategies? >> here's a look at our primetime schedule on the c-span networks. supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg and other justices discuss what is like being a female judge in today's world. is book tv with authors on the civil rights movement. , american history tv

with programs on the watergate scandal that eventually brought down president nixon. >> are remember on saturday the first conversation i had with a group of people at that table. it wasn't about where you're from, what is your school like, but it was about ukraine, politics, our beliefs and education and religion and after that moment i was like, wow, this week is going to be intense. but it has been really cool to see the evolution of all our friendships and bonds from just talking about politics, our experiences, what we have learned, who we have met. this is an experience i will never forget. >> i have always been cynical about it. i always thought i can never really go that far in politics. but slowly throughout the week, different speakers in different people have chipped away at that

opinion. it has been so ingrained in my head. the president told us, don't get cynical. that's not going to help us relieve the problems that we have. >> are social media, we are able to express her opinions very easily. we just send a tweet about what we think. i think that starts a conversation and would like to talk a lot, so there is conversation, social media, and we just like to get our opinions out there. >> i think this whole week has been about learning. i come from a small town where ly is very political homogeneous. there's not much chance for people to get their opinions out without being ridiculed. being here with the other delegates has given me an opportunity to learn other viewpoints and to also get my ideas out without the fear of

being shunned for thinking differently. >> high school students from across the country discuss their participation in the u.s. senate youth program, a program held annually in washington. sunday night at 8:00 on c-span's q and a. see -- the 35 years c-span brings public affairs events from washington directly to you, putting in the room at congressional hearings, briefings, and conferences and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite dealer. earlier today, secretary of state john kerry gave a statement on the situation in ukraine. in current relations between the u.s. and russia. this is 20 minutes.

>> multitasking. it has now been a week since the united states, the european union, russia, and ukraine met in geneva. we did so after a phone call between president clinton and president obama in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in ukraine.

we met in geneva with a clear mission, to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflicts threatening the sovereignty and unity of ukraine. , eu, highe in geneva representative ashton and i made clear that both russia and ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith, they needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments. the simple reality is you cannot resolve a crisis when only one ise is willing to do what necessary to avoid a confrontation. every day since we left geneva, every day, even up to today i'm a when russia sent armored battalions right up to the border, the world has witnessed withe of two countries vastly different understandings

of what it means to uphold an international agreement. one week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black or fines tothe fine print crude ways justify crude actions, let's get real. the geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. it is not vague or subjective. it is not optional. what we agreed to in geneva is wesimple as it is specific agree that all sides would agree -- refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied.

that to implement these objectives, and this is important, to implement this, monitors from the organization for security and cooperation in europe would have unfettered access to parts of ukraine where they were needed most. and we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to do this. we agreed that the osce would report from the ground whether the rights thomas security and dignity of ukrainian citizens was being protected. from day one, the government of good onstarted making its commitments, from day

from day one, the government sent senior officials to work with the osce in keeping with the agreement to send them to work in regions where russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of russian speakers and ethnic russians. one, the prime minister went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of ukraine, and these are his words, committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reforms that will strengthen the powers of the region. theirectly addressed concerns expressed by the dayians, and he did so on one. he also made a personal appeal to russian speaking ukrainians, pledging to support, and again,

these are his words -- a special status for the russian language and the protection of the language. and in keeping with his geneva commitments, the prime minister has publicly announced amnesty legislation once more, in his words, for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises, and will begin with the ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent ukraine. made by theomise interim government to the people of ukraine. and by complying with actions requested by russia, like removing the barricades and cleaning up the square, and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in kiev are actually government approved and peaceful, ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move the on the division of

the last months. how the government defines keeping their word. that is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of the geneva agreement. the world has rightly judged that the prime minister and government of ukraine are working in good faith. world, sadly, has rightly judged that russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. for seven days, russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. official,le russian not one, has publicly gone on television in ukraine and called on the separatists to support the geneva agreement, to support the stand down, to give up their weapons and get out of the

ukrainian buildings. they have not called on them to engage in that activity. in fact, the propaganda that is the state-sponsored russia today program has been deployed to president clinton's fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. to propagandize and distort what is happening or not happening in ukraine. meanwhile, russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous ,laims to justify their action that the cia invented the internet in order to control the , armed to the tees,

wearing brand-new matching uniforms and moving and disciplined manner -- military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. that is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it. in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. no amount of propaganda will hide the truth, it truth is there in social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all the world to see. no amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today. the world knows that peaceful protesters don't come armed with grenade launchers and automatic

weapons, the latest issue from the russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand-new matching military uniforms and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. the world knows that the russian intelligence operatives arrested in ukraine didn't just take a wrong turn on the highway. in fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones russian soldiers war in crimea last month. as international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to russia's escalation, there was no violence. broad scale assault on the rights of people in the east. ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. even as we were preparing to meet in geneva, we know that the

russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local, pro-russian malicious. and during the week leading up to the geneva meetings, 29aratists seized at least buildings. this is one more example of how russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell. in the week since his agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon ukrainians. right after we left geneva, separatists seized tv and radio stations that broadcast in the ukrainian language. a mayor was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidation. , one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. that same day, two dead bodies were found, one of them was a

city council member who had been not unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him. the government of ukraine has reported the arrest of russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing russia to coordinate the stabilizing activities in ukraine. just this morning, separatists forces tried to overrun another arms depot. having failed to postpone ukraine's elections, having failed to halt a legitimate hastical process, russia instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a whatnd the force of a mob could not be achieved any other way. they try to create enough chaos in the east to delay our date

legitimize the elections, or to force ukraine to accept a federalism that gives russia control over its domestic and foreign-policy. or even force ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. effort a full throated to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside ukraine and is worse even. we have seen this movie before. we thought most recently in subterfuges similar and sabotage by russia was followed by a full invasion, and where president putin recently decorated special forces at the kremlin. now russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that ukrainians cannot possibly be calling for a

government free of corruption and coercion. russia is actually mystified to see ukraine's neighbors and like-minded free people all over the world united with ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves. nobody should doubt russia's hand in this. as nato supreme allied commander in europe wrote this week, what is happening in eastern ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized, and it is being carried out at the direction of russia. our intelligence community tells intelligencea's and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern ukraine to personnel. money, operational planning and coordination. ukrainians have intercepted and

publicized command and control conversations from known russian agents with their separatist clients in ukraine. some of the individual special operations personnel who were active on russia's behalf in chechnya, jordan, and crimea, , some arephotographed even bragging about it by themselves on their russian social media sites. we have seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by russian special forces. threatening today's movement of russian troops right up to do ukraine border, let me be clear. if russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. already the international response to the choices made by russia's leaders is taking its

toll on russia's economy. prime minister medvedev has alluded to the cost russia is already paying. even president clinton has acknowledged it. -- president putin has acknowledged it. some $70 billion in capital has fled the russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two-three percentage points. this follows a gear in which gdp growth was already the lowest since 2009. meanwhile, the russian central bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble am a erode in russia's buffers against external shocks. that what i've just described is really just a snapshot.

it is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will was bond if russia continues to escalate what they have promised to de-escalate. seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored. the world will remain united with ukraine. so i will say it again. the window to change course is closing. facedent putin and russia a choice. if russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community, all of us, will welcome it. if russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost to russia will only grow. as president obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act.

headlinese of following sect kerry's remashes earlier this evening from abc news, john kerry threatens but no new sanctions and from the bbc, ukraine crisis, accuses russia of destabilization. caseupreme court heard a on tuesday that will decide the fate of a technology company local broadcast television to customer customers tablets., phones and the court is looking at whether or not they are violating copyright law. abc versus areo releasedled to be tomorrowpy the court so we will have the oral argument for you at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. a couple of more court related items. in a