stretches most of the year. in our heartland, farms have been parched by the worst drought in generations and drenched by the wettest spring in history. hurricane left parts of this great city dark and underwater. some nations already lived with for worse. worldwide this summer was the hottest ever recorded. global carbon emissions still on the rise. the climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it. the alarm bells key greening -- ringing. our citizens keep marching. we cannot pretend that we do not hear them. we have to answer the call.

we know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm. we have to cut carbon pollution in our own country to prevent the worst effects of climate change. we have to adapt to the impacts that unfortunately we can no longer avoid. we have to work together as a global community to tackle this threat before it is too late. we cannot condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair. not when we have the means, the technological innovation and scientific imagination to begin the work of repairing it right now. as one of america's governor said, we are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

today i'm here personally as leader of the world's largest economy and its second-largest emitter to say that we have begun to do something about it. the united states have made ambitious investments in clean energy, and reductions in our carbon emissions. we now harnessed three times as much from when and 10 times from the sun as when i came in office. within a decade, our guards -- cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. every major carmaker offers electric vehicles. we have made investments to cut energy waste in our homes, businesses, all will save consumers billions of dollars, and we are committed to helping communities build climate resilient infrastructure. all told, these events have

helped create jobs, grow our economy, and drive our carbon pollution to its lowest level in two decades. brewing that they're does not have to be a conflict between a sound environment and strong economic road. -- growth. united states has reduced our total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on earth. we have to do more. last year i issued america's first climate action plan to double down. under that plan, my new administration is working with state utilities to setup first ever standards to cut the amount of carbon pollution to our power plants can dump into the air. when completed, this will mark the single most important and significant step the united

states has ever taken to reduce our carbon emissions. last week alone we announced an array of new actions in renewable energy and energy efficiency that will save consumers more than $10 billion on their energy bills and cut carbon pollution by nearly 300 million metric tons through 2030. that is the equivalent of taking more than 60 million cars off the road for one year. i also convened a group of private sector leaders who have agreed to do their part to/consumption of dangerous greenhouse gases. to cut them by 20%. more than 100 nations have agreed to phase down those emissions. the same agreement that the world used successfully to phaseout ozone depleting chemicals.

that is something the president of china and i have worked on together. just a few minutes ago i met with the chinese vice premier and reiterated my believe that as the two largest economies and imagers in the world, we have a special responsibility to lead. that is what big nations have to do. [applause] today, i call on all countries to join us, not next year earlier after that, but right now. note nation can meet the global threat alone. united states has engaged more allies and partners to cut carbon pollution and prepare for the impacts we cannot a void. all told, american climate assessment -- assistance reaches 120 nations. we assist with current technologies, not duplicating the same mistakes and environmental degradation that

took place previously. we are partnering with african entrepreneurs to launch clean energy projects. we are helping farmers establish smart agricultural. we are building international coalitions to reduce methane emissions, pipelines, and a free trade agreement for environmental goods. we have been working shoulder to shoulder with many of you to make the green climate fund a reality. let me be honest, none of this is without controversy. in each of our countries there are interests that will be resistant to action. in each country there is a suspicion that if we act and other countries don't, we will be at an economic does it manage.

-- economic disadvantage. we have to lead. that is what united nations and this general assembly is about. the truth is that no matter what we do, some populations will still be at rest. risk. the nations that contribute the least of climate change often stand to lose the most. that is why since i took office, the united states has expanded our direct and dedication -- adaptation assistance tenfold. i'm directing a federal agency's to incorporate that into our programs but i am nancy -- am announcing that we will take our sign -- scientific capabilities to establish warning systems. this establishes a new partnership that will draw on the expertise of our private sector companies and philanthropy to help portable nations to repair for weather related disasters. and to better plan for long-term

threats like rising seas. yes, this is hard. there should be no question that the united states of america is stepping up to the plate. we recognize our role in completing this problem -- in creating this problem and to combat it. we will do our part. we will help developing nations do theirs. we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation. developed and developing alike. nobody gets a pass. the emerging economies that experience of of the most dynamic growth in recent years have also emitted rising levels of carbon pollution. it is those emerging economies that are likely to produce more and more carbon emissions in the years to come.

nobody can stand on the sidelines on this issue. we have to set aside the old divides. we have to raise our collective ambition, each of us doing what we can to confront this global challenge. this time we need an agreement that reflects economic realities the next decade and beyond. it must be ambitious. that is what the scale of the challenge demands. it must be inclusive, because each country must play its part. yes, it must be flexible, because different nations have different circumstances. five years ago, i pledged america would reduce our common emissions in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by the year 2020. america will meet that target. by early next year, we will put forward our next in mission

target reflecting our confidence in the ability of our technological entrepreneurs and scientific innovators to lead the way. today i call on all major economies to do the same. i believe in the words of dr. martin luther king. there is a thing of being too late for the sake of future generations, our generation must move towards a global compact to confront a changing climate while we still can. this challenge demands our ambition, our children deserve such ambition. if we act now, we can look beyond the storm of current events and some of the economic challenges and political challenges involved, if we place

the air that our children will breathe and the food that they will eat and the hopes and dreams of all posterity above all -- our short-term interest, we may not be too late for that. uni may not live to see all the fruits of our labor. we can see that the century ahead is marked not by conflict, but my cooperation. not by human suffering, but my progress for the world that lead to our children will be cleaner and healthier and more prosperous and secure. thank you very much. [applause] obama's weekdent continues with two meetings at the united nations. there is one at 10:00 a.m. eastern, before that u.n.

general assembly. by 3 p.m., president obama leads the un security council meeting on terrorism. you can join the conversation during but those events on facebook and twitter. >> the campaign 2014 debate coverage continues thursday night 9:00. the debate between the input, and radhe incumbent ashford. .hursday bruce bailey 2014, 2014, -- campaign more than 100 debates for the control of congress. >> now an assessment of threats against the u.s.. the event is an hour and 15 minutes.

>> thank you for being here and for being invested in our nations security. you're all familiar with a panelist but i will give you a brief some knell sketch of each of their backgrounds and then we will launch into today's discussion. not only the targeting of isis, but the group that has been focused on launching plots against the united states and specifically the aviation sector. immediately to my left is peter bergen. he is the director of the international security program at new america. he is a cnn national security analyst and as many of us know, peter has written more best-selling books about al qaeda than anyone else, so thank you very much for being here today, peter. mary is immediately to peter's left. is a lecturer of strategic

studies at the johns hopkins pool of advanced study. thank you very much for being here as well. to her left, he is with the islamic world project with the brisket -- brookings institute. peter, i would like to begin with you. when you look at the overnight strike, what specifically caught my attention was the degree to which we had information about a within syria. for a layperson, what is this group and how does it reflect the current threat against the u.s. domestically and also western targets overseas? >> thank you for the imitation to write this report. i just want to acknowledge my co-authors in the audience before i answer your question. i think u.s. officials have been tracking a group of guys with

long rolodexes for over a year. people who had the coming from the tribal regions in pakistan to syria, who were an older generation. the name of the group was used in this report. we had to finish this up sometime ago because the publication's schedule. it is an ancient word for the area that is now afghanistan, or iran. this is essentially al qaeda central moving into the conflict. it is simply a historical fact, if you think of isis as being al qaeda in iraq, and has never attacked an american target since 2005 when they attacked three american hotels.

that group is that group, much more than isis. that can change. we had a new audiotape from one of its leaders, citing people in the west to do lone wolf attacks. >> this is the concrete threat to the u.s. in the aviation sector, in the way that isis has not cracked that threshold? >> i think that is true. it has been nine years since al qaeda launched the attack. that was on the three american hotels. it was a spectacular failure, because almost all the victims were jordanian. there was a very unusual statement -- it was almost like an apology. it was not a real apology. yeah, i think that is exactly right, catherine. this is a group that has the

track record. of course, there are indications they have linked up with either the people in al qaeda in the arabian peninsula and they are sharing bomb making and that explains the strike. >> i want to bring marion, because one of the things i have learned through my reporting, there is a bomb maker in yemen -- this is the person who is the expert with nonmetallic explosives. he was behind the underwear bomb that failed in 2009 over detroit. also the printer cartridge bombs the following year. i think my panelists would agree the u.s. intelligence community believes that he has been very persistent in trying to develop or evolve technology to circumvent the new security put in place. mary, my question to you is, given we understand that he has trained apprentices to go into

syria, what is the intent? is it to find mules to carry the bombs? in layman's terms, how would you explain that? >> to understand the nature of the threat we're facing from this group and also syria, which is involved with the group, you need to see that his is one of the few times we have watched a different affiliate in the greater al qaeda network in order to carry out a specific threat against the united states. we have other sources we can look at and say, they have been coordinating with each other on local issues. there are all sorts of reports of al-shabaab members in africa

or even in yemen helping out with fights there, and you have also reports of aqim pretty much all over north, coordinating with different groups. this is the first time we have seen a specific plot against the united states where two different groups are coordinating with each other. >> it is very purposeful in a way that we have not seen before. >> yes, but this is not the only place we are seeing this. we have also had a threat from both aqim and --together to the united states for their attacks on isis. this is again an unprecedented that we have these huge groupings of affiliates, huge groupings that are called by us affiliates. they call themselves branches. threatening attacks against the u.s.

>> i want to bring you in. how do you make the distinction between a group like khorosan, which i would describe as traditional al qaeda, or ties to the old guard of al qaeda, to the front in syria, which at least shares the same goal as the united states and its allies, which is to topple the regime of bashar al-assad? >> i have a very minor minority report, and i am sure they will correct me if i say what i'm going to say. >> we will jump in first and we will bring you in. yeah, yeah. i'm doing this all wrong. go-ahead. >> yeah, no problem. so, the khorasan group, the name we have been told of this group -- i do not know if that is what they call themselves or not --is

part of the organization syria that is a direct affiliate of al qaeda for the last year or so. previously they were part of the islamic state in iraq and broke away. now it answers directly to al qaeda. what i have read in the media, a lot of us are just getting up to speed on this group -- it is part of the old guard. many of its members were part of the al qaeda branch camped out iran. we do not know a lot about them. we know a lot from private al qaeda memos that have come out over the years that they did maintain a major logistics hub in iran. it has been said in the past a lot of these guys were under house arrest in iran. i do not know if that was the case. they seem to have had a lot more

free hand than previously. they were often in direct communication with al qaeda leaders. it seems like a number of these members are the ones who went from the khorasan group into syria and are coordinating with al qaeda. these guys are used to taking orders from al qaeda and doing its bidding. it is interesting -- to your question, the united states government, and the few statements they have made about the khorasan group, has downplayed the fact that it is embedded inside the nusra front. i do not know what to make about that, but they seem to make a distinction between these external operatives and nusra itself, which seems to be exclusively focused on toppling

the assad regime. i do not know why that distinction is being made. i only know that it is there. >> mary, go-ahead. >> i'm so sorry. actually, i find myself in agreement with will on this issue. there is a very tight connection between nusra and khorasan group. the fact that there are press reports that the airstrikes are not just against isis, but specifically to get the khorasan group, i think is telling. and i agree with will. this is a group used to taking direct orders from al qaeda central. you could make an argument that they are al qaeda central members who have relocated themselves to syria. it is very troubling, but it is also not the first time we have seen al qaeda central leadership in places other than afghanistan

and pakistan. for instance, in yemen or the arabian peninsula. so, i think this is a problem of our definitions. if the two are located and working together, what is the distinction between them? >> peter, i want to bring you in. what does this tell us about the influence of what remains of the al qaeda core? >> it probably tells us that the american drone program in the tribal regions was pretty effective. if you take the same documents will referred to about -- i think there is an ambiguous relationship al qaeda in iran had with the iranian regime. the same set of documents made it clear that bin laden was

concerned about the drone program, so much so that he urged al qaeda to move to a province of afghanistan that is heavily wooded and hard for american drones to be effective. so, yeah, one of the themes of this report is al qaeda has diffused, and i think that is a good news and a bad news story there. al qaeda or its affiliates are present in more countries that were not present in syria until recently. 16 countries in this report, compared to eight in 2008. it is a great question for everyone on the panel, including you -- does diffusion -- is diffusion a question we should be concerned about? the commonsense answer is yes. but if you think about it more

carefully, at the time when al qaeda was the least diffused in its history, the basically and pakistan, that was when it launched the september 11 attacks. diffusion does not mean a greater threat to the united states. a lot of these al qaeda affiliates are very preoccupied with what is going on locally. as mary just said, you know, if nusra is more focused on the assad regime, is that really a problem for the united states? obviously if the khorasan group is focused on the united states then that is a problem. it is an interesting question. does the existence of more affiliates create a greater or less threat to the homeland? >> if i was going to take a question as the moderator --which i will -- and dangerously, i might add, i think peter has hit on a excellent point, because the

issue becomes the al qaeda core to me, based on my research and reporting is much more of a movement or a set of ideas that can be adopted by regional groups who may not share the same in the goal as -- same in the goal as the united states. i think you see where it has become more diffuse. at what point does it become a strategic threat to the united states? based on the data in the open source reporting, it seems to cross that threshold when you see in syria how these groups from different regional organizations have made a decision at some level to work together with the focus being,, plots against the united states. you could make the same argument that boko haram has identified

itself with the al qaeda ideology, but at least it has not taken it to that additional step to target the united states proper, the homeland. but we see this distinction now, in syria, specifically with aqat, which i think has become one of the engines with the the organization now in terms of manpower and training. if you have the will, we have the people to help you execute it. that seems to be where the two intersect,. and this is one of the really important elements of this report, which is to what extent does it no longer matter whether someone in the al qaeda core is specifically directing plots against the u.s.?

in a very practical and pragmatic step-by-step way. where if they are able to provide the inspiration for others to join forces and coordinate to reach that end state. i would argue seems to be where we are now, and is in some ways more difficult for us to target, because it does not rest with a single individual. why don't you come on in? >> the authorization for the use of military force is very al qaeda specific. the phonon -- the phenomenon you're describing is a lot of groups that are liberating that are not really in that chain of command. you have overlapping phenomenon that make it very complex, much more complex than we have seen in the past. you still have al qaeda central. they are still trying to carry out plots against our allies. you have khorasan group as example of what they want to do. you have affiliates that are locally focused.

some of them will take direction to go international. both locally capable and willing to carry out attacks against the united states. then you have a splinter group like, say, the islamic state that has broken away from al qaeda, has the ideology, and is much more locally focused unless we open with a stick. then you have what i call god's little helpers, all of the groups that have popped up everywhere. they have the ideology, but do not take direct orders from al qaeda, but are willing to share resources and personnel. then you have the militias that do not have the al qaeda global jihadist ideology, but are more nationally focused. but they are willing to take in specific al qaeda members into their ranks and the u.s. policy

has this and tangle all of these and not all of them are covered. >> can i ask a question? if it is to me, i do not know. >> the authorization for the use of military force for last night's attack on the khorasan group, that is well within the ambit. the law is basically -- essentially the group that attacked us on 9/11, of which the khorasan group is part. now isis, which is devolved from al qaeda, it is less clear. it was interesting to me. the u.s. strikes, there were only u.s. strikes against khorosan. the five arab countries also engaged against isis. it seems to me there is some lawyering going on here. mary, i'm sure, knows the kinds of lawyers that work in the

white house and how clever they are. is it really legitimate? there is no u.n. authorization. this is not a nato operation. there is no arab league authorization. this is a coalition of the willing, not a very large coalition, although it has a lot of arabs in it and also the french, which is unusual. so, how kosher as a matter of international law? >> one of the things i think will has pointed out is we have a problem with definitions here, right? what precisely are we saying when we say al qaeda? it has been my assumption all along that this administration follows the amf to the letter of the law. that defines al qaeda as that group of people who carried out 9/11. it is specifically limited to the few thousand people who belong to al qaeda on 9/11.

we have a serious problem with definitions. if you do not redefine what you mean by al qaeda, under the amf, you have no right to carry out strikes against anybody. there is a separate authority to carry out attacks against imminent threat. this could follow that. -- this could fall under that. imminent threat to the united states. al qaeda itself is defined as this tiny little group we have basically wiped out. it reads language like strategic defeat. that definition, i think, needs to be dealt with. >> just on that point, when you look at the khorasan group, if you want to be creative in your interpretation of this original or foundational group of al qaeda, what you can see is there are connections. one lieutenant of bin laden is now within aqap, aqap has been the organization with the

individual who has trained them to make explosives and sent them to syria. if you really want to pull the threads, i think you can make the argument there is a connection, although it is the third cousin once removed by marriage or however you want to explain it. there is still that connection. and correct me if i am wrong, peter, al-fadl -- his connections to al qaeda predate 9/11? >> yes. >> he predates 9/11. he was part of this facilitation network in iran. and now he is in syria. the larger question is this question of definitions and distinctions. we are pulling ourselves into this vicious circle -- peter, i

want to bring you -- when you look at the threat, it is more diffuse. it is under the broad umbrella, but it does not have that top-down, like a fortune 500 leadership anymore. >> i want to return to this question, because, ok, we are at war with isis, which is divorced itself from al qaeda. mary has said the administration uses a narrow definition of all this. so, it seems to me when we did the first of strikes, there were two arguments being made by the administration, one of which was the eminent threat argument. the other was the genocide argument. the question is -- and both of those are completely legitimate and the president, on his article two authorities as commander-in-chief, imminent threat is a very reasonable standard. we all know isis -- everyone has

said repeatedly, jeh johnson, matt olson, they are not planning an imminent attack on the united states. so what is the argument being used? is it unstated that the amf basically covers is? i don't know. it is a basic question that has not been either asked or resolved. do either of you have any thoughts? >> i don't. i do not know why congress is not pressing the administration more. >> i think that they are in shock. i think when they come back from recess, they are going to be saying, wait a minute. >> i can imagine there is a legal justification for this under the genocide justification. we have seen about 150,000 kurds and other inhabitants head

across the border into turkey, fleeing for their lives. i wonder if there has not been a serious threat against that group in northern syria. isis wants to control the borders, because then they control the flow of foreign fighters and also is of resources. i imagine there is some sort of threat up there. people do not flee like this in the hundreds of thousands from their homes unless there is a serious threat. >> i will like to focus on the threat to the homeland in light of what happened overnight. do any of you think that the national terrorism center or the fbi will put out a bulletin warning that there could be retaliation for the strikes? is that one of the issues that has to be considered or factored in when there is an action such as this? and if so, does isis really have that capability and at what level? >> i don't think they have the

capability. just by virtue of the fact that there spokesman came out with the lone wolf attacks, that is the last play of a desperate terrorist organization that does not have a lot of cards to play. will they develop the capability over time? probably so. particularly if they are getting wound in with any of the other factions in aqap to do anything. i don't think they have the québec -- the capability in the near-term to do anything in the homeland. i would be more concerned if i was a european country. >> why is that a distinction with the geography? because they are closer? there are more foreign fighters there? >> exactly. there are thousands of foreign fighters in syria. we have far fewer people who have gone over. we are lucky to have an ocean between us and them.

>> when you look at the data, you see, to me, what is a remarkably low number of incidents so far of individuals who have traveled to syria and no back to their home countries and launched attacks there. is that because we are at the beginning of the curve year? we are at the beginning of the conflict? we do not know what the unintended consequences may be of our current actions there. or do you believe there is something a plate in the psyche of these individuals? if they would carry out an attack, they would refer to do it against syria -- preferred to do it against syria and iraq than in their home countries? >> you have identified three possibilities. all of them are true. a lot of these guys, and they are mostly guys -- although we saw an american female killed in syria. nicole mansfield. we have seen an american female who tried to join isis at the age of 19. for many of these guys, this is a one-way ticket. there are people going to syria from countries in the west with

no power filled experience. a small number committing suicide. we saw a floridian committed suicide. he conducted a suicide attack for our nusra. we saw two americans died for isis. douglas mccain and his colleague. his name has not been confirmed yet. this is a very dangerous war. by the way if you look at the numbers killed in the iraqi civil war, if you look at the syrian civil war, it is roughly 200,000. we are only three years into it. that is the same number that took 10 years of the iraqi civil war, which was four times more dangerous than the afghan civil war. syria is 12 times more dangerous per capita. it is a very dangerous place to be. people are going over there and they are dying. and they want to die. you know, for the people who are going over there. that is one factor. another is, we are aware of this problem, and this is an incredible report. al qaeda apparently an office in brooklyn on flatbush avenue in

the early 1990's. it was called the services office, which is the same name that bin laden and his colleague called -- basically it was known as the service office. we just did not know the returnees from the afghan war were going to be a problem. we are very conscious of that now. i wrote a piece in foreign affairs in 2005 saying there would be blowback from the iraq war because of these foreign fighters going in. it just didn't happen. there is a big difference between syria and iraq. there are a lot of foreigners going. according to a british government assessment, which was provided to me for cnn, there were at least 2600 europeans. there are 25 times more brits than americans. only a dozen americans have joined isis. it is all a matter of degree. you can drive from paris to damascus in a few hours -- none -- not at few hours, but it is doable. we are all over this like a wet

blanket right now. as is every european government. i will add one other point. what we're talking about, all this happened on the obama administration's watch. you cannot assign -- i think that is one of many reasons why the obama administration is very concerned about this. you can't say the syrian civil war happened under george w. bush. there is a huge governmental effort to -- and i think the only real way isis can succeed is what will mentioned, which is encouraging a lone wolf attack by someone who thinks that isis is great. not someone who has gone to syria, but like this yemeni guy who was arrested in rochester, new york. and by the way, he was an informant. it was not a real plot, per se.

>> so, if one of the avenues -- if one of the avenues is to inspire people in the united states who have not made a trip to syria and iraq, that brings me to the next important plank of this discussion, which is the use of social media. when i first wrote about this four years ago, i talked about it as the lifeblood of the new digital jihad. my information had been anecdotal. pre-9/11 you had to have this one-to-one contact to cross the threshold to violence. now it seems if you had grown up with social media, you are able to establish a much more intimate contact in a virtual way that allows you to cross that threshold, whether it means you make contact and it is enough to drive you to buy that ticket and get yourself to

turkey and into syria or to take action a home. major hassan, which is often held up as a ultimate case of homegrown terrorism, to me is a real anomaly. he had internet contact with the cleric that israel documented. but major hassan was 39 at the time of the fort hood attack, and he had met with him at his mother's funeral. so he had a personal connection. when you look at the homegrown cases, almost everyone is under 30, and the majority are under 25. there is something going on at a fundamental level in terms of how this message is able to reach people. peter, based on your observations, is this a way that isis has been able to show it is

part of the new generations of jihadi versus al qaeda core. >> vietnam was the first tv war. this is the first social media war. there are some important points to be made. social media gave us the illusion that we understood what was happening in syria. conventional journalism was not really happening, except with some very honorable exceptions such as cj chivers and others. it is very dangerous to get in. we, the media, were overreliance on social media. we thought we understood. but of course social media is very partisan and social media is very incomplete. from a journalistic point of view, i think it is a crutch we over relied on. from the isis point of view, of course, when you look at this 55 minute tape claiming al qaeda

will establish itself in india, which was total nonsense. it was the most boring -- 55 minute lecture, with a static camera shot. look at isis. isis is very good to be. -- good tv. that is why the cable news networks are showing a lot of their material. i think cnn has made a decision, a very good one not to air this appalling lecture by the british hostage -- >> [indiscernible] >> good. we need to exercise self-restraint, here, i think, because we do not want to inadvertently be giving them a platform. certainly there social media is very aggressive. >> my feeling is exactly the same as peter.

isis knows out to do this. it might be first of all they appeal to a younger generation that is immersed in social media, but the second thing going on here is al qaeda central or the al qaeda leadership has a vision of themselves as the doers, not be speakers. he has a name for himself, the wise man. he has this vision of him self as not the most charismatic guy, but he is the smartest guy in the room. this is a very interesting example. it is very poorly done. the output is badly done. but immediately a group claiming to be connected to them carried out an assault against a frigate in a pakistani port and managed to get it out to sea or something, because they had to be stopped by the pakistani

navy. then al qaeda put out a statement, a very boring statement, one that was full of all kinds of platitudes, claiming credit for this and saying that this was the first of many attacks. i agree they do not know how to do this anymore. they used to be on the cutting-edge. today they really have fallen behind. but that has not stopped them from being effective. >> i wanted to follow this up. effective in what way? >> effective in being able to insert people who they had historical relationships with within groups that have the capability to attack the united states. i am thinking of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, a group that is now in syria with the khorasan group.

>> there is no doubt a lot of these groups once had simply local kinds of grievances, local objectives, had no reason to be attacking countries with whom they do not have some sort of personal beef. let alone the united states. since the 1990's, al qaeda has spent time figuring out how to make appeals to other groups. talk of all these envoys, for instance. it is really kind of interesting for the later development of gs pc, which became an al qaeda affiliate finally in the 2000's. when you're talking about al qaeda in the indian subcontinent, obviously you're talking about a lot of groups with local grievances, but somehow they have been talked into joining up with al qaeda and their more regional at least vision.

>> it seems it has only -- it has almost been a decade we have been talking about al-shabaab in somalia. many of them are naturalized american citizens, but the young men from minneapolis, st. paul traveling over to somalia, joining al-shabaab. yet, we have not seen the reverse come here. and we saw -- to me, it seemed, peter, i don't know if you would agree, but it seemed to take a long time where it would reach a point where they launched the westgate mall attack, which is clearly a western target. as you know, people have been talking privately about mall attacks in this country since 9/11. there does seem to be that this connect -- that disconnect. >> >> for a lot of kids -- whether you think the figure is

30 or 40, it was a one-way ticket. we have had three or four american suicide attackers from minneapolis in al-shabaab. some of them just got killed in the war. it was also a very dangerous war. some of them got arrested in african countries or western countries as they try to come back. and none of them have conducted or tried to conduct any kind of terrorist attack in the united states. a number of them are still missing. they may be dead. we don't know. there was a lot of concern, if you go back to 2007, about this cohort. nothing happened. it is not a precise analog. they were overwhelmingly somalia americans who went over to somalia for nationalist reasons and hooked up with al-shabaab. people know to syria from every ethnic group and it is a much more religious, sectarian

battle. we are three and a half years into the civil war, we have only had one attack in the west during the syrian war, which was at the jewish museum in brussels, which killed four people. the war can go on for a very long time. we will certainly see other attack somewhere. i think that goes to the fact that every government is extremely, the americans and the british, concern about this. they are trying their best. >> i want to open it up for questions. if you have a question, raise your hand, identify yourself, as my old journalism professor used to say, bottom line up front, ok? in the back. >> gary sargent. i spent a couple of years in the -- in lebanon.

my quick question is comments on lebanon and how it is impacting this current fight, because nobody seems to talk about them much. we just -- he just did an article about drone used by has blocked. -- drone used by hezbollah. >> there is a small contingent of militants inside lebanon who have made some noise for many years, but there are not a lot of them. the number of them down south has been co-opted by the government. there were fears early on that a lot of this contingent was going to be activated by the war in syria. in fact, the whole society was possibly going down the tubes.

that is possibility. the longer the war goes on, the more that were increases. i have been more surprised at lebanon's reunion -- resiliency, a tribute to the sunnis not wanting to ignite another civil war. it has been really impressive to me that they have managed to stay out, even though the islamic state and our nusra have tried to kick the hornets nest and serve things up and drag lebanon into the war. so far, so good. >> just a comment on the has a lot tackled the weekend. it was reported by an iranian government news agency that has a lot employed a drone against our nusra on the syrian border. i am not sure if it is legitimate or not. i think that is very interesting. if this is true, it is the first time that a nonstate has used an

armed in combat successfully. it raises big issues for the discussion, because this is not the end of this. it is the beginning. if you are a western country with a relatively sophisticated air defense system, drums are not a problem. system, drums are not a problem. in fact, the pakistani air force could have shot it down, but they chose not to. however, if you are a western target somewhere around the world in a country without those things, and a militant organization -- requires an acquires an armed drone, you have a different scenario. sophisticated surveillance drone last month.

a fighter base 93, which they surveyed with the drone. the libyan opposition used one against gadhafi which they acquired for a hundred thousand dollars from a canadian company. hezbollah and hamas have been using surveillance drones. so arming a drone is much, much harder. it is not like just buying something from amazon and adding a kind of machine gun. it is pretty complicated. so there was no way hezbollah would have been able to do this themselves i don't think. iran, russia, and china all have armed drones and have not used them in combat so far. i think that sort of speaks for itself. >> let's take a minute here and draw down on the drone issue because the administration has held out the campaigns in yemen and somalia really as templates for how they're going to approach the issue in iraq. this is before the air strikes in syria. i'd like everyone to give me their assessment as to the efficacy of drones and whether one of the lessons of the last decade is that it has to be coupled with a significant force on the ground.

>> it depends on what your goal is. if your goal is to degrade an insurgent organization or a terrorist group, drones can be very useful with the caveat that of course if there is a government you have to partner with say in yemen it places a lot of political pressure on that government because it's not popular with the people. but, still, it is a very useful tool in degrading those organizations. >> degrading and containing. but that is not the -- >> exactly. that is exactly right. that is the problem with the framework particularly when -- in syria. the president has said not only degrade but destroy. that goes far beyond anything he has achieved with the same framework in yemen or somalia. >> mary? >> i agree. air strikes are an important tool and i don't think anybody believes air strikes should be gotten rid of or drones should

be gotten rid of as a way to deal with this problem we're facing, but on its own, attrition will not deal with an insurgency. in most of these countries that's what we're dealing with. in other words, we cannot simply kill our way out of this problem. it requires much more than that. i just don't think that the american people or this administration are willing to do what's probably necessary in order to absolutely deal with it unless we have some sort of terrible disaster. otherwise, the american people i think are really convinced that it's a problem over there, not a problem over here, and therefore we don't need to deal with it. >> peter, you in your last point alluded to something which i'd like to explore a little bit further, which is that we've had supremacy with drones now for a decade. but the technology has improved. we're now seeing other groups start to use the drones. we have used them in a way where

the rules are very loose. i mean, we are launching strikes in country we are not at war with, per se. in the case of yemen we used it to target an american citizen. how does that maybe come back on us now that the technology has made it more available to other nations or groups? >> i think we're in a situation which is not completely disanalogous if that word exists to where we were when we ceased to have the monopoly on nuclear weapons. when we have the monopoly we aren't interested in the rules of the game but when not, it is actually in our interest to create or think about some kind of international framework to government. and of course the international legal frameworks have been very much in our collective interests. it's both in drones and cyber

where we've had overwhelming superiority in armed drones and also offensive cyber attacks but the monopoly is evaporating in both areas. so it is quite easy to imagine the chinese saying, hey, there is a group of separatists in northern afghanistan who we're going to take out because they're terrorists by our status. we're not at war with afghanistan but essentially the rules of the road have been made by the americans. you can imagine iran making the same argument with separatists in pakistan. the list can go on. so it is time to begin the discussion about it because maybe the international framework is the right one but whatever it is we have to be comfortable with the iranians and chinese sort of saying, hey. that's the framework we're going to use. similarly with cyber attacks. surely, was it an act of war or an act of sabotage is an interesting question. and what is the point at which there is international agreement

about these issues? because right now we're being subjected to very intensive cyber espionage by the chinese. when chuck hagel went there some months ago to china, he tried to explain what the lines are to the chinese. apparently there wasn't much recognition of that. the point is we need to start having a discussion about these issues because we're in a different era of warfare. and we need to think about how to constrain, there is nothing wrong -- on the right this is unpopular as an idea because it would seem to constrain american power. on the left this is unpopular because it would seem to endorse kind of additional forms of warfare. but the point is that we are where we are. this is -- it's not completely new. but it is different. we should be having a discussion collectively about what it is

in this new world that we think the rules of the road should be. >> okay. next question. yes, right here, please. >> is anybody looking for mr. zawahari and if so is the fact we haven't found him a reflection of how inetcht our -- inept our counterterrorism campaign has been? >> i think the short answer is yes. i don't think our counterterrorism campaign has been inept and the person who is the best interest for that position is osama bin laden himself who before he was killed in our counterterrorism campaign wrote lengthy memos about how concerned he was about basically most of his contemporaries in al qaeda were dead and he was urging one of his sons to move to qatar because that's one of the richest and safest countries in the world. so our counterterrorism campaign has inflicted tremendous damage on al qaeda whether in

the arabian peninsula or al qaeda central. if you look at the number of people who have been killed in their leadership by drone attacks as we say in the report almost none of the senior leadership is left. it's al za warry and maybe two or three other guys still alive and going to what mary said about the attack in karachi, it's very interesting. this was supposed to be the launch attack of al qaeda in the indian sub continent. it didn't happen in india. it happened in pakistan which is where al qaeda is located. al qaeda today because of our counterterrorism campaign is effective in only one country, al qaeda central. it is pakistan. the limits of their ability is to do basically a failed attempt on a karachi naval target or kidnap an american aid worker in is early 70's warren weinstein who they're still holding. that is the limit of their capability. it is not very impressive. our counterterrorism campaign has inflicted tremendous damage on al qaeda.

of course we've just heard this discussion today as indicated that doesn't mean the ideology or global movement or network of networks is over but the fact is, you know, somebody said if we had this conversation in 2002 and anybody on this panel asserted that only 25 americans would be killed by jihaddy terrorists in the united states within the next 12 or 13 years you'd have said that person is crazy. that's where we are today. because our offensive campaign against these groups has been very good. our defensive capabilities have been extremely goodd. >> we've had some good luck, though, too. >> yes. >> the underwear bomb failed because the device was degraded. >> yes. the less obon is don't wear a bomb in your underpants for three weeks because it's not going to work. >> i agree that our counterterrorism has been fantastic. i have nothing but the highest

praise for it. but counterterrorism, again, is just one tool to deal with these guys. when you're dealing with an insurgency as in many of these countries counterterrorism only goes so far. what we've done is we've set the objective that we believe al qaeda is fighting for. we think al qaeda is all about attacking the united states, not just because they said that, but because they've demonstrated that they want to attack the united states, but, in fact, that's not their real objective. that's actually a means toward their greater end. the greater ends are about creating -- they have been doing everything possible in order to drive us out of their countries so they'll have a free hand to do whatever they want to in places like pakistan, syria, yemen, somalia, wherever they have managed to set themselves up. to me the distinction between local and global is one we created.

so on the local group in mali, we have captured documents from al qaeda in the islamic group where they are sending out what they call directives and they say don't talk about having a global or some sort of other kind of agenda, jihaddist agenda. talk about having a local agenda because that is what we want you to focus on right now. so we understood them just to have a local agenda and in fact they were being told hide your agenda so you can be more effective. >> okay. next question? >> right over here, please. >> i'm from the world organization for research and education development. i want to pick up on the theme you touched on. it seems this administration as well as the one before it had a clear preference for the capture

and kill counterterrorism strategies and yet 13 years later the threat of violent extremism still persists. i was wondering if you could share in terms of your recommendations for how the u.s. can leverage its soft power in developing a sort of soft counterinsurgency in places like iraq and syria. and in this particularly difficult threat environment, how would you recommend that we go about identifying some of the local, moderate partners we could be engaging to implement some of these counterviolent extremism programs? >> right. i firmly support soft power and especially counter radicalization efforts everywhere they're being put into effect. please, what i am going to say next you should not take as a

denigration of those effort. i support them whole heartedly. one of my first efforts was working on this issue. the thing is when you're dealing with genocidal groups or groups with these grandiose visions they are willing to attempt to implement on the ground and kill thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, soft power can only take you so far. what it can do is undercut their support and maybe their recruitment, but it won't deal with the actual threat we're facing on the ground in places like iraq or syria. >> can i make an observation? i think the united states has a basic problem when it comes to these issues. we are very good about overthrowing -- we can overthrow anybody we want but because we conceive of ourselves as not being an empire and to some degree we aren't we won't do what is actually required. so there is no constituency for what mary is suggesting in a sense in the united states. there is no -- john mccain, lindsay graham are not vacating

large scale ground troops for what would be really required to completely eradicate this threat. you know, we can -- the afghan war is the most unpop war in american history and, by the way, that went pretty well. i think we have almost an ideological problem which is we can go in and overthrow the regime but we won't sustain that sort of centuries long occupation as the british or the french did. we just won't. and so we're lost, kind of caught in this paradox which is we can do this quick fix but in the long term it's not likely to work that well. it may work okay. it certainly works probably pretty well for protecting the american line but it is not going to defeat an insurgency of the kind we saw -- we didn't defeat the insurgency in iraq it turned out and we were there for ten years. but there is no public appetite for what's really required. in fact, maybe that's a good thing. but it is certainly a very american thing. >> i also think we have to be pretty modest about what we can

achieve with counterradicalization efforts. i think it helps at the margins, but i think we've seen during the arab spring that political instability and authoritarianism can drive a lot of radicalization and bring people into a conflict that may be willing to sit it out in more peaceful times. we have a very limited capability to shore up a lot of these governments that are going to have to go through this transition in order to reach a greater level of stability that will fundamentally undercut support for this. but that's years, years in the making. and we have a small part to play in it. >> i find myself kind of nodding my head on one hand to what you're saying, the american people probably don't want and for very good reasons not to engage in this. also we have these kind of hopes that maybe strong, capable partners on the ground will be able to deal with it as so many of them did during the 1990's with threats that in some ways were very compareable.

but at the same time, i don't believe that it's a sort of hundred-year effort nor do i think that everything that was done in iraq was completely in vain. what i do think, however, is once you've engaged in a civil war, where your neighbors have been killing each other, you need to have a third party present for probably a generation to act as a guarantor of people's security and safety. otherwise, you can't trust people who, you know, yesterday were picking up guns to shoot at you. so the example i would use is actually bosnia, where you have the same kind of civil war and you had the same kind of low appetite on the part of the united states to engage, you know, boots on the ground, but with capable partners and a small injection of force, not an overwhelming one we were able to make a real difference but we still know that there are boots

on the ground in former yugoslavia and necessary there. otherwise, you don't guarantee people's security, safety, and people will hedge their bets and start arming up again to protect themselves as we saw in iraq once the only guarantor of the peace walked away. >> let's take that one further step with afghanistan. it's one of the lessons that we learned from our decision to completely get out of iraq. really twofold that we lost the eyes and ears of the military that provided that intelligence component. we became wholly reliant or largely reliant on the iraqis so we were somewhat blind as to what was developing within iraq. secondly, this is coupled with the campaign as we've said which has amounted to a targeted killing campaign. there has not been intelligence gathered from interrogations in the same way in the last five years as was under the previous administration with all of the issues that are associated with that. so how do we apply this to

afghanistan now? >> i think afghanistan is actually a slightly different problem because you haven't been dealing with the civil war. you don't have that on top of an insurgencyy. we're more dealing with a pure insurgency, which is in some ways easier, some ways more difficult. one of the great writers on counterinsurgency theory, a guy named galuzza wrote a book in which he described afghanistan as the perfect insurgent territory and almost impossible to control. so there are many differences here. with our effort the level of effort we actually put into a counterinsurgency was rather small compared to what we did in iraq, not as effective. so i don't see these are comparable. the only way they are comparable to me is this intelligence problem. and this problem of losing visibility on threats if we walk away. but what would be necessary in order to carry out a successful counterinsurgency, it's actually been done numerous times. despite the fact that people call it the grave yard of

empires. local actors have managed to invade that territory and control it for hundreds of years. including the perfections, including people from india, including what we call india today and so on and so forth. it's not true that it's impossible to win a counterinsurgency but the level of effort is something i think we have no appetite for. >> i want to go back to peter's point about domestic politics but not domestic american politics. talking about domestic politics in iraq, domestic politics in afghanistan. the reason why we do not have forces inside iraq to prevent the rebirth of al qaeda in iraq is because the iraqi parliament did not want it. we wanted to keep a force there. we urged them to let us keep one there precisely to deal with this problem and the iraq -- it was politically unpalatable. you saw the same kind of pushback against the american effort to keep forces in afghanistan with karzai just because we want to stabilize the country and we think it's the best thing for the country.

the domestic politics of those countries often do not allow us to remain there as the keeper of the peace to say nothing for the domestic politics in our own country which make these kind of long-term occupations absolutely unpalatable. >> i agree with that reading. there was this difficulty over the sofa and a lot of back and forth and all kinds of problems getting a formal sofa signed. on the other hand we have now about a thousand boots on the ground in iraq without a sofa so we've actually figured out how to do it. >> a sofa is not a couch, right? >> i'm just saying. yes. a status of forces agreement. right? >> the difference between afghanistan and iraq is 29 million afghans want us to stay. karzai was in a minority of one. they have a very simple view of this, which is, we can be somalia or we can be south korea. and agreeing with mary, you

know, we are the guarantor, still the guarantor. south korea was one of the poorest countries in the world at the end of the korean war and it is now the sixth richest country in the world. so afghanistan, you know, the bsa i think is going to be signed very soon by the president and ceo abdula. and by the way, we have a strategic partnership agreement with afghanistan that goes to 2024, which means, and you were on the nse and you can correct me if i'm wrong but the fact president obama said we're going to be moving combat troops or all troops out of afghanistan by the end of 2016, president hillary clinton or president jeb bush or whoever is president in 2016 doesn't have to -- can say, hey, look, i don't think this is a good idea. by the way, can you imagine the cost to the democratic party if there was an attack in the united states that was even remotely traceable to pakistan, afghanistan, if a democratic president went along with removing -- by the way, also for a republican president, forfor any president. we were attacked from

afghanistan on 9/11. so the point is that we are not bound by -- these are just -- this is the situation now. we already have an agreement in place that will allow us to have a long-term presence in afghanistan well past 2016. >> i agree. one of the misconceptions i think americans in general have about afghanistan is we're dealing with this intractable problem that's a centuries long one but afghanistan was actually the developed partner. when you look at afghanistan, pakistan back in the 1950's and 1960's and even in the 1970's. it was the one pakistan was afraid of because they were doing so well. and they had a well developed economy. they had international trade. they were on a path toward development. it was really only since 1979 that disastrous invasion by the soviet union and the civil war that had begun just slightly before then that we really have developed the afghanistan we all know today.

but there is a past we can look back at and it where you had decades of a really developing country that had a future. >> is there another question? well, that leaves it to me. so, you know, all of this said, what do you think the wild cards are and how does that impact what a future attack will look like? does a future attack still look like some kind of bomb that's onboard an aircraft? does it look like the boston marathon bombing? peter, i'll begin with you. >> i think one wild card we haven't discussed at all is egypt. i mean, the regime makes mubarak look like, you know, a nice guy. it's imprisoned 20,000 people, 2,000 people have been killed. sort of domestically. you know, what is happening in egypt is exactly what al zawari

has always said would happen, if you engage in the politics it won't work -- you base that on the nullification of the vote in algeria by the army and again the most populous country in the arab world, the army nullified the popular vote. sure the muslim brotherhood were ineffective and made tons of mistakes but they were the actually elected government so his essential analysis that there is no point in engaging in electoral politics if you are an islamist, it's basically been confirmed. the reason i think that is significant is because we are seeing in the signi and other places in egypt these kind of jihadi groups and as you know jihadi groups in the 1990's -- there was a mini civil war where 1200 people died. you could easily imagine that basically starting again because muslim brotherhood is a very large organization. essentially they've been criminalized in the country of

their origin. and i see that as, you know, egypt has fallen off the front page for all the obvious reasons. i think that is a big wild card, what goes on there. >> so i have two sorts of responses. one is what we might expect, sorts of threats from al qaeda. and the other is the sorts of threats we might expect from isis. i actually have a little bit to add. >> sure. >> i do believe lone wolf attacks are the most likely thing we'll see from isis because they probably, in the united states at least, lack any capacity to actually carry out attacks. but on the other hand, over the past four months or so, a very large number of isis cells have been picked up in other countries. it's not just australia, which just had a cell picked up. something like 62 members of an isis cell were picked up in saudi arabia. a bunch of people were picked up in kosovo. in morocco and in malaysia.

so it's not quite true that we -- i think that we just have to worry about lone wolf attacks. what we might not see, though, is -- this sounds really funny -- is the kind of restraint that we've seen before from al qaeda. by that i mean, al qaeda, i think, has a commitment to spectacular attacks. they have to make up for the kind of disappointment after 9/11. please don't think i'm saying disappointment, you know, in an affirming way. in the sense that if they do something lesser than a 9/11, then everybody will say, wow. look how weak you've become. right? >> right. >> but on the other hand, isis doesn't have anything to live up to. so i think they're far more likely to do things like a group of shooters at a mall than we would see from al qaeda. that kind of thing doesn't take all that much planning, does it? so that's my concern from isis.

from al qaeda, i'm very worried about the guys that they're -- they have gotten or are attempting to get in syria and what was said about the threat that they posed to the united states and others. because apparently undetectable bombs is a huge vulnerability. maybe we will not see that coming. >> so the crazy one. the true wildcard would be if the islamic's date pushed into saudi arabia. hear me out -- i sort of see islamic state like a party balloon. you squeeze it on one evening and syria goes into iraq. you squeeze in iraq in a goes to syria. both ends, and where does it go? maybe it pops. let's say it goes down south into saudi arabia, that would be

incredibly destabilizing to the political system and saudi. saudi probably has the military system and firepower with our help to push them back, but it is not completely outlandish. there is a big fall among islamic state for folders for an invasion and saudi arabia. it fits with the apocalyptic vision of the islamic state. isig part of that vision drawn from early islamic prophecies after they establish the caliphate, the muslim saviors going to mecca and the final battle against the infidels. that kind of invasion combined with the 1979 takeover of the mosque area in mecca, which was fueled by an apocalyptic group, with the threat of saddam hussein's invasion in the early 1990's, both of which were destabilizing to the saudi political system.

if you wanted to have a wildcard, that would be it. that would throw world energy markets into turmoil as a consequence. >> can i suggest why that is quite unlikely? >> come on. [laughter] >> it is important. look, the saudi air force was part of this. the last time the saudis was part of this coalition with in the first gulf war. it has been a long time. senior saudi clerics have issued fatwas against isis. they got to this sort of late. they have done criminalization and arrested 52 people within the last week or so. i think that they completely understand that this could be an x essential problem. saudis, when they came out of their own security, really got on top of it quickly. >> time for one or two final questions.

yes, please, right here in the front. i am not going to say the agency that i work for since i am here on a personal day. >> [inaudible] >> [laughs] what is the likelihood of i.s. are one of these groups using nuclear material to carry out one of these attacks? >> great question. >> i believe a terrorist group deploying nuclear weapons is zero. iran has had a nuclear system for decades and unlimited supplies. and it is still not -- we do not live in a movie. it is very, very hard for countries to acquire nuclear weapons. so the idea that a terrorist group could acquire nuclear weapons i think is highly improbable. one of the takeaways of this report -- you look at the 247 terrorist cases in the u.s., not one of them involved chemical or biological, forget about nuclear.

terrorists basically want to shoot people and blow up car bombs, things that are easy to do. even al qaeda, when it had a whole country at its disposal, it's anthrax experimentations which were amateur. they never even acquired weaponized anthrax. so i cannot think of a case where -- if there was a terrorist group in this country that deploys some kind of weapon if there was a terrorist group in this country that deploys some kind of weapon like this, it would be a right wing extremist group we have seen groups like this, kind of net cases, trying to acquire biological weapons or even acquiring them. but for some reason, jihadi terrorist have not been that interested in this. they did deploy chlorine in iraq during 2007. but this is the case of the dog that didn't bark and in my view it's unlikely to bark.

>> the only thing i would add is that i think there are at least some data points which say to me that they certainly have that aspiration. correct me if i am wrong, the foreign policy had very strong reporting based on a laptop computer they were able to obtain, i believe it was through free sr. army from an isis fighter, which discussed at length as they went through the interest and intent use biological weapons. to me, that is a very important data point, because i am not sure what our visibility is in that area. but it tells me there is the aspiration because the purported owner of that laptop was someone who had relevant training and university education. what also caught my attention was the group calling for some sadekeyth e.c.s.

is the poster woman for w.m.d. to me, these data points suggest that they certainly have the aspiration, and i am not working in the ic to know whether there is other data which points to confirm that aspiration or whether they have made more concrete steps down that road. >> i find myself in agreement with both of you that it seems highly unlikely that they will al qaeda, -- that is, will be able to create their own weapon. but at the same time, they do have this aspiration and have had it apparently since the 1990's -- i remember reading the trial transcripts from the 1998 attacks in which there was this clear intent to get this. they said they wanted nuclear weapons because they assumed the

response of the u.s. to an attack on the homeland would be a nuclear strike, and they wanted to have enough of a deterrent. which just says something about the u.s.misread also, i have seen sort of senior leaders say that we would love to have nuclear weapons. so i think the intent is absolutely there. whether they have the capacity and the capability -- it has never been done before, but then, they have done a lot of things that have never been done before. that's one. and then two, what about the always-present pakistani nuclear weapons? given the fact that a group of guys, including some officers in the pakistani navy, took over the ship and tried to do an attack on an american ship with it, i am not putting it be on beyond the realm of possibilities that there is a percentage, some percentage of the pakistani military, that

might no longer have the best interests of pakistan in mind. let's put it that way. >> ok, with that, i think we're going to wrap it up. it's 11:30. thank you very much to my fellow panelist, peter bergen, mary habeck, and william mccants. thank you to the bipartisan policy center. and our listeners and viewers on c-span and thank you to the yournce, as well, for attention and excellent questions. >> on behalf of the bipartisan you,y center, thank catherine, for moderating a fantastic panel. panelists.f our cthd, of course, i want to peter and his fantastic team -- emily snyder,, and tim moyer for writing this and my goal ist hopefully

>> coming up, the economy and foreign policy. obama's week in new york continues wednesday with two meetings at the united nations. at 10 a.m., the president speaks before the u.n. general assembly live on c-span. -- you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. here are a few of the comments we have recently received from viewers. c-spancently discovered 3 that i did not even know i had . it is right up my alley.

think you. >> c-span tries to be nonbiased. have the different lines, but there is no democracy. the voices are limited. i wish you could expand the voices to more third party people. the democrats and the republicans are basically the same. if you could limit the amount of discussions you have with republican and democrat, elected officials, and use more independent voice for discussions, thank you. c-span 3 is a very educational show. . listen to it mostly everyday i'm finding out more and more about my government and books

and history. please do not take it off the air. why is c-span favoring republicans over democrats? c-span is not fair. know whate to let us you think about c-span. , e-mail us, or send us a tweet. june the c-span conversation, like us on facebook and follow us on on twitter. >> similar tim kaine discusses in directing the u.s. strategy in battling isis.

his remarks are just a little over an hour. >> >> good afternoon. my name is ted strickland, the president of the center for american progress action fund, and on behalf of neera tanden, the president of the center for american progress and on behalf of our colleagues, we welcome you here. we thank you for joining us today and given what has happened over the last few hours, this event is a very timely event. we know that the islamic state of iraq, or isis, is horrifically barbaric. they have been described as too

violent for al qaeda. they've engaged in near genocide of yazidi minority group, and they have conducted gruesome beheadings. the american people are now galvanized in support of action to counter this threat. president obama has laid out his strategy to degrade and ultimately to defeat isis. we here at c.a.p. and c.a.p. action broadly support the president's plan but we are very eager for a robust congressional debate and new congressional action to authorize the specific mission. the constitution divides the power to declare war and the power to conduct war between the legislative and executive branches.

congress decides whether to fight and the president, as commander-in-chief, manages the fight authorized by congress. over the past 100 years, the balance of war powers has shifted toward the president. presidents have often relied upon commander-in-chief authority for even extensive military campaigns. an example, the libyan air campaign of 2011. congress has periodically tried to reassert its prerogatives on more powers such as the 1973 war powers resolution. but really hasn't been able to stop the trend. the obama administration claims both the 2001 authorization to use military force, or aumf, directed at the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 iraq war aumf which provided

existing congressional authorization for its military campaign against isis. however, many legal scholars disagree with this claim, creating a rather weak foundation for a military operation. it also appears to reverse earlier positions of the obama administration advocating for the narrowing or repeal of both the 2001 and 2002 aumf's. regardless of the merits of the obama administration's claim, it would be far superior to obtain specific congressional authorization for this military campaign. holding a vote would force the congress to commit to support the mission, especially important in this time of intense political polarization and obtaining specifically

congressional authorization for this mission would establish a strong precedent for any future presidents to follow. many in congress are calling for debate in action on a new aumf directed at isil when they return from a lame duck session following the november election. that is why we are thrilled today to have one of the strongest advocates in the senate of our congress to accept its responsibility to play its congressional role, its constitutional role in helping to define the strategy and authorize the military campaign against isis and that is our friend, senator tim kaine. before i specifically introduce the senator, i'd like to say a few words about the format of today's event. senator kaine will be delivering remarks from this podium. when he has concluded his speech, he will be joined by my colleague senior fellow ken goode for a discussion of the

critical issues and his remarks. then we will open it up for questions from the floor and that will conclude the program. senator tim kaine, he has served the people of virginia for the past 20 years, first as the mayor of richmond, then as governor, and now as one of virginia's united states senators. senator kaine has been a leader on foreign and security policy, serving on both the armed services and foreign relations committees. he has been incredibly supportive of veterans of the iraq and afghanistan conflicts as they enter american life and adjust to being back home. he chairs the u.s.-mexican interparliamentary group and he chairs the subcommittee on the near east, south and central asia affairs. senator kaine has been an early and a courageous voice pushing his colleagues and the obama

administration on the need for congressional authorization for the conflict with isis. he has introduced legislation that would authorize the conflict but oppose or impose appropriate limits on the use of force against isis. now, this is not a new issue for the senator. he has been working for a long time on updating and improving the war powers resolution. and, senator, we are honored, we are honored to have you with us today and i ask each of you to join me in welcoming the senator to the podium. [applause] >> thank you so much and i want to begin with they go my good friend governor strickland for his kind words and for the invitation of c.a.p. to be here today. there are few people in public life who i've come to know in 20

years in elected office that i feel as warmly toward both as a public servant and as a person than ted strickland. he sets a great example of public service that stems from a moral compass that is undeniable. if you know ted for five minutes, you detect that. that's one of the reasons i am happy to be with you to talk about the issue that is sadly topical. the war on isil, the phrase used by secretary hagel at the armed services hearing last week, has been going since the middle part of august when it moved from a defensive mission to protect american personnel at the embassy and consulate to an offensive mission against isil. by my quick calculations, including the events announced this morning by the president, there have now been thousands of virginians who have been

directly involved in the air strikes and other activities since that time and i know we have people here from all over the country and there are hundreds or thousands of folks from your states involved, as well. what i want to do is talk, as governor strickland mentioned, briefly about the threat, which is a very real threat. i take it seriously and i know many -- all who are here would take it seriously, as well, and that threat is why i support the basic pillars of the president's four-point initiative announced two wednesdays ago and i'm going to talk about that, the president's four points, briefly. but what i really want to dig into with, i hope you'll see my passion coming through my wonkiness because i'm going to dig into this in a signature way is a series of six reasons why i think it is absolutely critical legally, for precedent reasons, for the reputation of our institution, and especially for the servicemen and women we're asking to risk their lives, i think it's absolutely critical that congress complete the authorization that it began last

week when it voted on the arming of moderate elements in syria. it is critical that congress do that. if we're going to engage this mission, we got to do it right or not do it and if we don't get congress on board with it, we're not doing it right, and if congress won't get on board, we should stop doing what we're doing. and finally i want to talk about not just what congress should do generally that congress should be involved, i want to talk about specifically what i'm doing with my colleagues as we're tackling this issue legislatively. first in terms of the threat, the isil threat -- and i use the phrase "isil." there's different terms. i use isil because their geographic ambitions extend beyond iraq and syria to encompass a broader area of the levant so i like the isil phrase better because they're engaged in activities that could be destabilizing in lebanon right now. the campaign that they are engaged in violates basically

international norms of human rights -- the subjugation of women, crimes that could be considered genocide, violations of sovereignty, a series of significant violations of the most basically norms of human rights and they have carried out vast atrocities against individuals. for them to claim to be the islamic state of anything is a profanation of an important religion and that is a significant matter. they pose significant threat not only to iraq and syria but other nations in the region that we work closely with allies. they pose significant threat to allies in europe and africa. i traveled recently with members of the house and senate armed services committee in intel and foreign relations committee to tunisia and morocco, two nations we're working with closely in different ways. they expressed huge concern

about the foreign fighter issue. tunisian and foreign fighters have joined the battle with isil, often coming from europe, but the destabilizing possibility of those foreign fighters to european and african allies are significant and i am convinced they pose a very significant threat, isil does, to the united states. it's a significant threat. it's a growing threat. recently testimony of counterterrorism officials in the united states have not said that there is any credible evidence of imminent attack of the united states by isil but that does not mean that they are not a significant and growing threat and clearly they have been stating in words and demonstrating in actions whether it's the beheading of american journalists in such a grisly way, the recruiting of american foreign fighters or pledges to take action against the united states, that this threat is one we have to take very seriously. in addition to having a desire

to do harm and doing current harm in the region, they have significant sources of funding so they have what the military guys would say, are a desire plus a capacity because of the power they've been able to amass, the weapons they've been able to amass so that's the reason that threat that isil poses, that's the reason that i believe the united states needs to take action as part of a multinational coalition to include military action against isil. i believe that strongly and i frankly think that the steps that the president has taken as he outlined, are all steps that can be reasonably justified. now, we need to get into a debate in congress and i'm sure some sand paper will be taken to the mission and it will be changed as we do but the four basic pillars to the president's proposal i do not find controversial. the first one, humanitarian assistance. the u.s. is the largest provider of humanitarian aid to syrian refugees in the world. being the largest provider of

humanitarian aid in the world is not by accident. it doesn't happen out of the ether. it's an intentional strategy the u.s. has chosen and has often chosen, the complete destruction of the syrian chemical weapons stockpile did not happen by accident. it was a huge victory in the destruction of the ship involved with chemical weapons returned to virginia last wednesday. that's a strategy. so in the humanitarian area that is a pillar we can all support but we shouldn't be bashful about talking about what is being done in that area but the three military points of the president's presentation two wednesdays ago were counterterrorism operations against isil leadership. i detect broad support for that among members of congress. a targeted air strike campaign in iraq and syria to blunt the

momentum of isil and move them back. and to support ground forces battling isil on the ground. and then finally, that pillar, the training and equipping of the ground forces that will carry that battle to isil on the ground. now, the piece of it that's gotten the attention is the training and equipping of syrian moderates but that's not the entire pillar. this is about the training and equipping of the iraqi security forces, the training and equipping of the pesh merga, allies in the kurdish region and also, the more difficult task of the training and equipping of opposition forces that will battle isil in syria. i think those four points -- humanitarian, air strikes, the training and equip mission and counterterrorism operation against isil leadership, are all very reasonable. and worthy of support with some amendations that i'll get to in a bit but the point that i think is so critical is the president shouldn't be doing this without congress and maybe more to the

point, frankly, if we're going to assess culpability, congress shouldn't be allowing it to happen without congress. so let me get into the reasons why i think it is so important that this mission as enunciated by the president, has to be done right and what that means as congress has to be on board with all of it. i want to talk about six things. the constitution. the authorizations that congress passed in the early 2000's that are being used by this administration as justification. this president's own words and actions as a candidate and as a president. the reputation of this current congress. the precedent it sets for future presidents and future congress. and finally, the most important thing, an underlying value that really kind of is spread throughout all of the points that i'll talk about, especially the constitutional allocation of power. governor strickland stated it right with respect to the constitution. the constitution is extremely clear. the constitution is an interesting document composed of both complete precision -- you can't be president if you're not 35 years old -- and very

carefully worded ambiguity, you can't take somebody's property without due process of law. nobody can be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. what does that mean? the framers chose often to be specific and then they chose in other instances to be vague. along the spectrum from specific to vague, the war powers piece is among the most specifically and ted, you did a great job. it's congress to declare and president to carry out the mission. that's how they decided to do it. president has article 2 powers as commander-in-chief to execute a mission once initiated because the last thing you need is 535 commanders in chief but the initiation of military action is for congress to do. not only is the language of the constitutional provision clear, the purpose is also clear. the principal drafter of the constitution, james madison -- you'll forgive me, i use a lot of virginia references -- the principal drafter, madison, made very plain why the provision was drafted to have congress as the declarer of war. madison wrote a letter to thomas jefferson a few years after the constitution was finalized and

basically said this -- our constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that it is the executive that is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. it is for this reason that we have with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature. madison was familiar with executives, frankly, monarchs, that had had the power of the declaration of war and so in drafting the constitution, madison and the other drafters were very careful to pull that power away from where it had traditionally been placed and to put it in the legislative branch. the framers understood clearly that the president as commander-in-chief would have a solemn obligation to defend vigorously. there would be a need for immediate action to defend the nation and congress intended that the president should do it but they had a very clear understanding of what that article 2 commander-in-chief

power was and that was to defend against imminent attack. the first real test of this came when thomas jefferson was president and jefferson was seeing american ships both merchant and military subject to repeated attack by the barbary coast pirates in the mediterranean and jefferson knew, i can order my commanders to repel attacks all day long. i'm the commander-in-chief, i can defend our shipping interests but at some point he said what are we going to do? keep repelling one attack after the next? we need to go -- and it was almost the exact phrase that president obama used on "meet the press" two weeks ago. we need to go on offense against the barbary pirates. not just repel attacks but go on offense to eliminate the attacks. when jefferson made the decision it was time for an offensive mission, he said without sanction of congress, i cannot

go beyond the line of defense and he had to come to congress to get authority for the action against the barbary pirates that were offensive in nature. that was the understanding when the constitution was drafted but to give everybody their appropriate credit, beginning with wigs and federalists and on to democrats and republicans, the initial understanding has often been violated. as the governor said, the executive overreach into powers has been maybe particularly acute in the last 100 years but there's never been a really long-standing period of american history where we did it exactly according to hoyle. executive overreach is what madison saw but what madison maybe didn't see is that legislators like to abdicate and the symbiotic relationship between legislative abdication and executive overreach is the source of this problem up to today. but constitutionally the matter is clear. the president does not have article 2 power to go on offense against isil unless they are involved in an actual ongoing or imminent threat against the united states and there's no

evidence that they are as indicated by other administrative testimony. that's the constitution. the president and his team indicate that this mission, the four pillars, are justified by the 2001 and 2002 authorizations passed by congress. let me get into that for a minute. i think that argument is an extremely creative stretch by extremely creative lawyers that even, hey, i made creative arguments when i was a lawyer that even giving the ability to lawyers to make creative arguments doesn't stand up. in the hours after the attack of 9/11, president bush brought an authorization to congress and the authorization said give me, the president, the ability to go

after groups in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the united states. that was what the original authorization said essentially. even in the aftermath of the attack on the pentagon and world trade center, when emotions were high and we had a righteous desire to even the scales, congress overwhelmingly rejected that authorization. that was the cheney preemptive war doctrine, give the president the unilateral power to wage war against terrorist organizations he sees fit to wage war against. congress wouldn't give that power. congress insisted that the authorization are narrowed to those who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11. isil did not perpetrate the attacks on 9/11. isil was not formed until a few years after 9/11 so calling isil is a perpetrator of the 9/11 attack is torture of the english language and i would view it's essentially falling back into the preemptive war doctrine that congress rejected. the '01 authorization doesn't just go after the perpetrators of 9/11 because the bush and obama administrations have said you can go after the

perpetrators of al qaeda but you can also go after groups associated with al qaeda, associated forces. that definition by both the bush and obama administrations has been made so vast as to sweep in virtually anybody so i asked administration witnesses at a hearing before the armed services committee in may of 2013, ok, associated with al qaeda, so, what if a youngster is born in 2010, 2011, 10 years after 9/11, and in 2035 joins an organization in nigeria that claims to have a splinter relationship with al qaeda and that organization has just formed and that organization has no intent to do any harm to the united states. does the '01 authorization cover it? and the administration official said, oh, yeah, absolutely. no sense of irony, very blithe, absolutely, it covers it.

even in that instance to call isil an associated force with al qaeda when they have separated from al qaeda, when in parts of syria they are battling with al qaeda, again, is such i torturous read of the language that i don't believe a clear reading of even the original language or even the broadening law put on it by the administration would allow isil to be encompassed by the aumf. secondly, there was an aumf to authorize the war in iraq to topple the regime of saddam hussein. that regime is long gone. there have been a number of governments since. the administration has claimed this '02 authorization justifies this action against isil at least in iraq but again, i think that argument is specious. the purpose of that authorization is -- was not to engage in open-ended war in the zip codes that happened in iraq without limitation in terms of time. it was directed at the toppling

of a particular regime. both of the authorization cited by the white house for statutory report for the military operation is they do not provide support at all. let me go to my third argument. the president's words and actions, he understands precisely because additional argument i made what he was running for president in 2007. he doesn't have a unilateral power to wage war without congress. he knows the limits of articles to power. second, the president understands the limitation of the -- he gave a speech. he said we shouldn't be that wasg that aumf put together with their geographic limitation. he should've be broadening it, but narrowing it. we should be refining it. we should be on the path to repeal it. raqh respect to the '02 i

authorization, just a few months ago we had a hearing on it before the foreign relations committee. they came to be asked about it. they said it is the position of this administration that the obsolete and should be repealed. i would argue the president's own words as a candidate and as a president demonstrate that he understands the narrow scope of article 2 powers and understands it shouldn't be stretch rather, but narrowed. i would say parenthetically i know lawyers make broad arguments. that is what lawyers do you i do not think you served this ansident well by advancing open-ended and broadened interpretation of these authorizations when the president's own words and actions have suggested what he wants to do is narrow and repeal

let me go to my fourth argument. there is a million reasons why our approval rating is so low. i would argue that in the big picture, the major reason that the approval rating of congress is low is a belief that we too easily abdicate responsibility. we to quickly decide it is too complicated to come up with a funding model. it is hard to grapple with fixes to this or that program so let's just do a past job. it is so hard to do a budget, let's just do a cr for a couple months. i think the overall view that people have about congress is -- i don't usually agree with vice president cheney but he has one good line. he said congress likes to kick the can down the road.